CHAPTER 4 Tranquility As Seen by an Aberration Release_the_Monster. 1 The sound of an explosion slammed into Kamijou’s ears. His consciousness flashed on and off, unsteady, but he focused on the noise to keep from blacking out. Finally, he rapidly awoke. “…What…was…?” “You up?” Thor peered at his face. The thunder god had coughed up all that blood, hadn’t he? Just like Kamijou. His symptoms seemed less severe. They were still right next to the Windowless Building. The Calculating Fortress still had that big hole in it. They had been under a time limit—ten to twenty minutes—from the moment they started their break-in. What had happened with that? Thor gave Kamijou the answer. “If you’re wondering about those Quadrawing auto-attack helicopters, they’ve all been shot down. Fräulein Kreutune wrecked them—like a little kid tearing the wings off an insect they’re curious about. Nobody is chasing us, probably because she’s become their top priority.” “…What happened anyway?” “I don’t know.” Kamijou slowly sat up. Right before going down, he’d felt something happen inside his body, but he couldn’t quite remember what… “I destroyed something strange inside us with a high-voltage current,” said Thor bitterly. “That gave us control back. Before that point, it was kind of like when your organs reject something. I don’t know. It could have been some sort of body tissue, smaller than the eye can see.” “How did she destroy the Calculating Fortress?” “We don’t have time to snoop around the crime scene—not that what we’re doing is all that different anyway. Essentially, Fräulein Kreutune embeds a microscopic piece of body tissue inside a target to destroy it from the inside. If the target is a living creature, their body rejects it. If the target is inorganic, the tissue causes the target’s insides to expand and rip apart. Kind of like when a frozen water pipe bursts.” “……” “But I can’t figure out the underlying principle. What is she actually doing? What is she actually controlling?” “Huh? Wait, doesn’t that mean she’s manipulating body tissue, then? And everyone says nothing can kill her. Wouldn’t that make her like an esper who can control her body better than a regular person?” “I don’t think the whole nothing can kill her bit is meant to be taken literally. Something’s up…though it’s definitely not some cheeky little trick, either. If you ask me, yeah, she can’t die—but that’s just part of whatever she actually is. I’m thinking it’s all based on some insane underlying rule.” That was Fräulein Kreutune. She had needed no preparations or plans to bring down the impenetrable building’s armor, or to knock out Kamijou and Thor, or to even obliterate Academy City’s defensive weaponry. “…Bet you just wondered why anyone needs to protect her,” said Thor scornfully. “So does that mean you can’t help anyone who strikes you as appropriately weak? Someone who never told you their special circumstances, past or present? Someone who isn’t cute enough to project your own emotions on? Someone who you can’t talk to a lot and grow to be friends with? …Listen up, Kamijou. Tell me—is that who you really are?” “No,” spat Kamijou. He could still feel the inside of his ribs creaking and groaning. “If I used reasons like that to decide whether to help someone, I might as well have just made friends with her instead of worrying about it. Doesn’t matter if she won’t even look my way.” He had a lot to think about. His thoughts were interrupted, however, when he noticed how his gaze was drawn to the Windowless Building. Specifically, to the darkness inside the giant hole in the impenetrable fortress’s armor. Kamijou didn’t realize himself what had attracted his attention, but there was something inside that hole. “Don’t get greedy,” said Thor, gazing at the same spot as he was. “…That’s clearly a detour. Something off the beaten path. I don’t know what’s in there, but it’ll take more than a hole in the wall to expose the thing. It’s a decoy. If we throw caution to the wind and go in there, it’ll devour us.” “I know…” At the moment, Kamijou and Thor had two paths. Did they turn their gaze eyes from the Windowless Building to follow Fräulein Kreutune? Or did they turn look inside the structure to find answers to the biggest mysteries in Academy City—or the world? Fortunately, perhaps, the two of them already had a clear objective. “We prioritize Fräulein Kreutune. Let’s follow her.” “Good. I’m glad you don’t have to end up like one of the poor victims in those old fairy tales.” Thor sounded somehow relieved, but stopping Kamijou from letting the darkness devour him probably wasn’t the only reason for this. If Thor had been on his own, he wouldn’t have been confident he could resist the temptation, either. Even if he realized that stepping inside would have almost certainly led to his death—or an even worse end. “…Where’d she go?” asked Kamijou. “We can just follow the explosions.” “Think Gremlin or Ollerus have noticed?” “Anyone who assumed they wouldn’t become aware of all this is an idiot.” In that case, there was only one thing to do. Catch up to Fräulein Kreutune immediately and secure her. 2 Fräulein Kreutune sat on the ground, hands on her knees, and stared at a takoyaki stall. Thanks to it being Ichihanaran Festival prep season, restaurants geared toward students were packed, despite the hour being past the final school closing time. Aside from the normal brick-and-mortar eateries, many stalls had been set up on the road, taking advantage of the festive mood to sell things at surprisingly high prices incongruous with what they normally cost. Eighty percent of Academy City’s population being students, it was little wonder a high school–age kid working part-time was manning this particular stall. …Though normally, he would have to be helping his own school set up for the festival, here he was instead. He really didn’t want any of his classmates finding out—that would be a disaster. The position of “traitor” was a unique one during the Ichihanaran Festival. The student used an awl-like tool, sharper at one end, to spin the ball-shaped food on the pan round and round very quickly. The sight must have really whetted Fräulein Kreutune’s interest, because she’d had her eyes glued to the stall for a while now. As for the part-timer, however… …You know, I’ve never seen cream or chocolate in a takoyaki before. Taiyaki went through that revolution, but I don’t know if it’s necessary here… And who the hell is that lady?! Takoyaki was a mysterious food. It seemed so close, so familiar, but when you really researched it, you’d see how much your preconceptions clouded your perception of it. He’d always thought you only used one of these awl-like tools (he didn’t know the actual name of it) to spin the takoyaki as it cooked, but after watching the process at a chain restaurant where you could see into the kitchen, he’d realized for the first time you were supposed to use two. In the same way, he’d always imagined they were cooked all the way through by default, confusing raw takoyaki with the stuff sold in convenience stores with a longer shelf life. That had nearly led to disaster as well. As she stared at the stall, Fräulein Kreutune naturally creeped out the part-timer, but the takoyaki in the metal pan were almost finished, so he couldn’t afford to stop. And maybe, unconsciously, he sought a kind of mental stability in doing work he was so accustomed to. …What…? Who is she? Like, is she hungry or what??? I can’t just give her takoyaki, though. Not for free. Sales wouldn’t take that big a hit if he were to give her one or two. But if anyone else saw that, they’d want in on the freebies. It could draw a whole mob. That would be disastrous. Eventually, though, the student realized the flaw in his presumption. Fräulein Kreutune’s hands moved slightly as she sat half curled up on the road. It took him a few moments to realize she was mimicking him cooking the takoyaki. The movements were awkward at first, but steadily, she got the knack of it. There was nothing in her hands, yet for a moment, he saw takoyaki cooking utensils in the gentle curvature of her pantomiming fingers. Wait, like, what’s her deal anyway? Her clothes are so weird… Isn’t she cold??? Maybe she’s doing a fitting for some kind of Ichihanaran Festival costume. Then something else happened. “Hey!!! You there!!!” He heard a low male voice call out. The student gave a start, and as he turned around, he gave another. There were four of them—Anti-Skill officers decked out in full gear. They packed enough punch to settle an average convenience store robbery in a matter of seconds. The student thought for a moment that his traitorous behavior in focusing on his part-time job during Ichihanaran Festival prep had run afoul of some rule he didn’t know about. But he quickly realized he was mistaken as the group surrounded Fräulein Kreutune. The officers took out their radios and spoke into them. “Individual in question confirmed. We’ve just arrested her.” “……” “What? That’s not in our jurisdiction. Why would we escort her there? I can’t follow this order unless I get an explanation! She already destroyed four of our autonomous attack helicopters. If we’re going to bring her anywhere, the closer it is, the safer we’ll all be!!!” “……” “Wait. Just hold on, please. To begin with, standard protocol dictates we take her to our office. Tell me why you’re asking us for an explanation. If you can’t convince me, then we’ll process her as usual.” The Anti-Skill officer was intimidating, like a super-evolved version of a gym teacher. But it sounded like there was some internal strife going on, and that doubled the impression. The student felt frightened for no real reason, but Fräulein Kreutune—the target of the officers’ hostility—just kind of sat there. At most, she crooked her head slightly. …Uh, what the heck? Is she an industry spy disguised as a foreign diplomat or something? The Ichihanaran Festival was meant mainly for students, but particularly high-ranking members of important cooperative organizations frequently showed up to observe. He’d heard people would sometimes disguise themselves to be mistaken for such an individual… Then he saw something he would rather not have. Fräulein Kreutune had been mimicking his movements as he cooked the takoyaki before. But now her fingers had begun to move in a different way. She hadn’t suddenly become terrible at the takoyaki movements—no, she’d switched to an entirely different gear. Wait. Is that…? The student followed Fräulein Kreutune’s gaze as she sat on the ground, hands around her knees, seeing what she was looking at. The Anti-Skill officers. She watched the gun-toting professionals as they quarreled over their radios—their communication didn’t seem to be working—and she absorbed something. She expressed that something using the movements of her fingers. It was just like with the takoyaki. At first, her movements were awkward. But with time, they rapidly grew more precise. “Anyway!!! Without a good explanation and legal grounding, we can’t obey that command!!! Got it? So send a legal expert to our office or something. Maybe a law teacher?” Oh shit, thought the student. The Anti-Skill officers still hadn’t noticed the change in Fräulein Kreutune’s movements. He got the feeling that this little piece of information would be the difference between life and death. For just an instant, because of how unnecessarily angry they were, the student wavered on whether to call out to them. And that moment of hesitation was all it took. “Momozawa, cuff her. Yashiro, bring the car around! Weird interruption, but nothing to worry about. This is our—” The officer’s words cut off. Fräulein Kreutune had stood up without a sound. With four of them surrounding her, any of the officers could have immediately reacted to even a fidget. They could have grabbed her shoulders and pinned her to the ground. And yet… “H-hey!!!” the panicked officer shouted as a threat. But the student felt like something wasn’t quite right. If he had to make an analogy, it was sort of like trying to desperately extol the virtues of living to someone who had already jumped out in front of a moving train. It happened a moment later. A barrage of dull noises—coming from the woman, now that she had absorbed something violent from the scene in front of her. 3 All in all, she was lost. Fremea Seivelun looked around the nighttime streets of Academy City. After leaving the dentist’s office, she’d wandered over to a stall, lured in by its promises of fruit-filled marshmallows. She remembered that. But the next thing she knew, Hamazura and Takitsubo were gone, and she couldn’t even find the dentist’s office, even though she knew it was right around there. “…I can’t believe he got lost. At his age! Anyway, Hamazura must be so embarrassed! Nya!” she declared, assuming a daunting stance in the middle of the street adorned with electric declarations. However, a true lost child wouldn’t be able to grasp her situation. Fremea’s student dormitory was in School District 13, an area home to a lot of elementary school students. There was a twenty-four-hour café nearby, which—unbeknownst to her—was constantly staffed by someone from the reborn Item. Someone could try to attack her again, like remnants of the Freshmen. But this was District 7. On top of that, transportation between school districts was rare. Fremea had mostly been using Hamazura’s belt as a handhold to get by, letting herself be guided through the crowds. She didn’t have enough input information to go home on her own. People talk a lot about how drunks have a homing instinct, but Fremea didn’t have the correct initial settings for any homing instinct to work properly in the first place. “Anyway, I’m hungry now… I can’t leave Hamazura, though, because he’s lost. I’ll have to be the big sister and find him!!!” Fully committing herself to the exact opposite of what the situation called for, she decided to take a look at a map of District 7 on a sign. …But a map wouldn’t tell her where Hamazura and Takitsubo were. More importantly, she couldn’t even tell where she was right now. Nevertheless, she nodded proudly to herself twice. Then she declared: “If I just make a big circle around here, I’ll have to run into him!!!” Try as she might to draw over as large an area in District 7 as she could in a single stroke, though, it was like telling someone lost in the Sea of Trees near Mount Fuji to just go straight to get out—an armchair theory at best. If that sort of thing worked, no one would have trouble navigating in the first place. And Fremea hadn’t even checked the scale of the map. And so the girl missile looked away from the sign and took her first step—right before it happened. She ran straight into someone. “Nyaaa!!!” “Huh? What the heck, says Misaka says Misaka in surprise and stuff… What?! Lost kid located!!!” “I-I’m not a lost kid!!! Nya! I’m a big sister!!!” The entire Misaka network—an electronic information network using the equivalent brain wavelengths characteristic of clones—had something to say about that. The two girls, however, were none the wiser. The girl named Last Order gave Fremea a close once-over, then stuck out her chest in pride, despite not being that much taller than Fremea. “I guess I have no choice. I, Misaka, will help this lost child, says Misaka says Misaka, getting way up high on her high horse.” “Anyway, I don’t remember doing anything to give you the right to boss me around!!! You think you’re so cool just for being a little taller! Well, you made a big mistake!!!” “Standing on your tiptoes to make yourself taller? That just proves you’re a kid. A real adult would look back fondly on their youth, says Misaka says Misaka, acting like she knows everything.” With one smooth, vigorous motion, Fremea pointed her index finger at Last Order. As if she were laying all her cards on the table, she then shouted into the streets: “I’m wearing a bra!!!” “What???!!!” Last Order’s shock created a literal lightning effect behind her thanks to her natural electricity-producing esper ability, while Fremea, perhaps believing she would lose somehow if she didn’t use this trump card to deal the finishing blow, continued her attack. “And I already pick out my own bras for myself!!! I go into sexy underwear stores like they’re my own backyard! So anyway, I’m in a totally other dimension from a kid like you!!!” “This… This will not stand. You’ve just issued a challenge to Misaka’s very genetic predisposition!!! says Misaka says Misaka, on the verge of crying!!!” …Incidentally, the person her genes were copied from—Mikoto Misaka—did indeed have a tragic chest area, but that was decidedly not the case for Mikoto’s mother Misuzu. Last Order still clung to that tiny ray of hope. “Stupid little baby!!!” “What did you say, you twerp?! says Misa—” “You’re a lost little girl, and I’m sending you home!!!” “That’s my line, you stupid lost child!!! says Misaka says Misaka, annoyed that you won’t let her finish her sentence!!!” The girls began grabbing each other’s hair. This nearly devolved into all-out wrestling, when out of nowhere, an announcement from a local broadcasting station played on a giant screen attached to a blimp flying overhead. “An adult woman never lets herself be ruffled by an unexpected guest—she shows hospitality all the same. No phone reservations needed! This week’s edition of Ladies in the Know, our special on the best restaurants in Academy City you never knew existed, can be used by one and all! For details, tune into the Urban Channel, available on cable!!!” “……” “……” Fremea and Last Order stared up at the night sky for a few moments. They then turned to glare at each other at the same time. In shockingly matching tones, they both declared: ““We’ll have an in-the-know contest over the best restaurants in Academy City!!!”” Now that the girls had an idea in their heads, they would not stop until they carried it out—and they gave up on both Hamazura and seasoned green onions!!! 4 Sirens blared everywhere. Red blinking lights sullied the night scenery in myriad, disorganized variety. Anti-Skill’s special vehicles were most numerous, but fire engines and ambulances ran in an endless stream, too. Air ambulances flew around in great numbers as well, though they were harder to make out against the darkness of the sky. The students harried by Ichihanaran Festival prep, however, were easygoing. Or maybe it was just because being out working like this was such a departure from their regular routine. “Hey, what’s all that about?” “It’s pretty over-the-top. Maybe some guy brought alcohol into a school building?” “I could see Anti-Skill and ambulances responding to that, but why would they need the fire department?” “Well, it’s the Ichihanaran Festival, right? Maybe the fire department wants to show off to everyone. You know. They show up at school, get their fire hoses ready, and bravely put out a big fire caused by tempura oil.” …That wasn’t the case, of course, but that was how the students tried to explain it: by locking it inside the framework of their own understanding, as if not sensing danger was synonymous with not running afoul of it. Students passed this way and that with piles of midnight snacks to get them through their night of work. But amid this scene, there was a bench next to a few vending machines that none of them bothered to notice. The problem was neither the vending machines nor the bench. It was the dark-skinned girl with braided silver hair lying on the bench. Marianne Sringeneier. Standing tall behind the bench was a person in the form of an oil drum. Her name was Mjölnir. Both were official members of Gremlin, the group that had rocked the world. “…Wonder what all that racket is about.” Behind Marianne, Mjölnir rocked back and forth. She seemed happy somehow—not because of the change in the situation, but because Marianne had briefly come out of her daze to notice her surroundings. If paying close attention to the Anti-Skill special vehicles, you would find a specific rule governing the direction they traveled. Analyze that data even more and you might have been able to pinpoint the epicenter of the Academy City disturbance. And it wasn’t just the one epicenter; you might also notice the irregular vehicle movements, the ones that seemed to be drifting about the streets without a care in the world. …However. “So now what?” Killing one or two people wouldn’t be the end of it. The land, the terrain, the city, the culture, the history… Would they destroy that? Would they replace all this scenery with something grotesque and psychedelic? That was the question she asked. In response, Mjölnir shook back and forth. The girl, who had taken on this optimized form of her own volition, was something of a rarity in Gremlin in that she wasn’t the least bit disgusted by Marianne’s words and deeds. Without Thor here to twist the situation this way or that, the axiomatic truth was the two of them would come up with extremely unsettling plans during a strategy session. A giant boulder placed atop a steep hill. Just a little bit of force from a single person would easily send it rolling. But once it picked up speed, there would be no group of people large enough to stop it. Not even the boulder itself would be able to halt its course. Still lying on the bench, Marianne stuck her hand into the pocket of her overalls and fished out a saw made of gold. It was meant to modify human bodies or outright destroy them—to disassemble and recreate a person without letting them die. With all the prep for the festival taking place around them, nobody seemed to mind Marianne twirling around a bladed object like that. Even now, people saw her as just another piece of the city’s peaceful scenery. But with only a little force, a nudge in the back, however… …she would create a vision of red and black as far as the eye could see… “…Ugh, that would be so much work. I don’t wanna.” The oil drum rattled back and forth, but Marianne decided to stay on her bench bed and sulk. No sorcerer could wield their powers without the motivation to get them going. 5 “Momozawa’s and Kakita’s teams are down? Those morons!!! They probably tried to take all the credit! This is what happens when you don’t play like a team!!!” Anti-Skill officer Aiho Yomikawa shouted into her radio. The Windowless Building, the center of District 7, stood only a short distance away. Several Anti-Skill special vehicles were parked here, and though they were supposed to be maintaining order and elucidating the situation, they weren’t even being allowed into ground zero. A blue vinyl sheet partitioned the scenery. If Yomikawa’s eyes and memory could be trusted, the wall of the Windowless Building had been gouged out. This was despite its armor plating being supposedly impervious to nuclear weaponry. “We don’t know anything about the suspect fleeing the scene, but she likely blew a hole in the Calculating Fortress from the inside and shot down the entire auto-copter squadron the city deployed to get things under control. She could have used weaponry, or an esper ability…or maybe just brute force. We don’t even have that level of intel. Stay frosty. Assume the suspect’s attacks can penetrate our jackets. Don’t go after her alone, even if you spot her! Am I clear?!” Touma Kamijou drew back into the shadow of a nearby vending machine, listening to the angry shouting. It was a lot noisier here now. Too noisy. Thor, who was hiding as well, sighed. “They’ll tighten up inspections soon. Inspections we obviously don’t have time for.” “Who did Gremlin send here? Aside from you, I mean?” “Doesn’t matter. They haven’t acted yet. If they had, Academy City would look a hell of a lot different now. I bet they’re making doubly sure this sudden opportunity isn’t some kind of trap.” Thor swore under his breath. “Ollerus’s group should be up to something now, but not backstage—somewhere even deeper in the shadows. Fräulein Kreutune will meet a miserable end no matter which one of them captures her. We’ve gotta find her. And fast.” “…No, wait,” Kamijou objected quietly. “If you’re right, then both groups won’t know whether to trust any of this intel about her. Not when it was flung at them out of nowhere. It’s not like they’ve come in direct contact with her, which means we can fool them. We spread misinformation. Make them think it’s gotta be a trap, that they’d be careless to intervene now. We keep them away from her. Would that work?” “I’m picking up what you’re putting down. Got a specific plan?” “Neither group will believe us if we try to give them direct advice. Instead, we scatter the bait in secret before anyone can act—before they realize all this intel is actually right. We want our actions to show that everything about this woman looks like a trap.” The first problem they’d need to solve was how to get away from the swarm of Anti-Skill officers in the area. Thor would probably go on a rampage if left to his own devices. He’d stick out like a sore thumb, and once Gremlin’s or Ollerus’s group caught wind of it, any chance he and Kamijou might have had would be gone. They couldn’t lay the trap if they came under constant surveillance beforehand. Kamijou patted Thor on the shoulder and pointed. “We’ll play it by the book.” “The fire truck?” “Their uniforms. Big and bulky—they’ll hide everything about us, including our faces. They won’t know what we look like or how old we are. We borrow ’em for a bit. And then we just walk on out of their perimeter.” 6 Last Order and Fremea Seivelun arrived in School District 10. It was adjacent to District 7, making it easily accessible on foot—but the number one thing it was known for was, in a word, its roughness. According to one anecdote, delivery workers would purposely go around this district on the way to their destination. It was a legendary area during normal hours, but at night and during Ichihanaran prep, nobody acted with much restraint; it was very clear this was the last place the girls should have been. If you came up with a tagline like rescue these two girls who wandered into the lawless District 10 by any means necessary, a film studies club could probably make an entire independent action movie out of it. But Last Order and Fremea had something in common. When it came to danger, they were both incredibly dense. “Heh-heh. Look at that parking garage—it’s Street Stall Spire, very famous in Academy City! says Misaka says Misaka, puffing up with pride.” “I—I knew that already anyway!” “Then do you know what the most popular store in the Spire is? asks Misaka asks Misaka, going in for the kill.” The easiest way to conceptualize the Spire was to think of it as a parking garage occupied entirely by station wagons and RVs that had been converted into street stalls. The garage wasn’t packed to the gills, given the space the vendors needed for guest seating and tables, but that still equated to around four or five hundred stores in a single building. While the Spire wasn’t an enclosed space, the vendors had set up more than the necessary number of fans and ducts for ventilating exhaust gas. Combined with the LED bulbs providing illumination at irregular intervals, the structure itself looked like a homemade assemblage of junk. The lines of stalls had no sense of uniformity, which allowed an impression of motley filth to dominate. School District 10 was already infamous for how dangerous it could be; there was always someone with dyed hair or a shaved head in eyeshot. Scars and tattoos were as prevalent among the patrons as glasses and contact lenses. To cut right to the chase, girls like Last Order and Fremea would get a game-over screen within five seconds of entering the building—or so one might think. “What the—? What are little kids doing here?” “C’mon, man! You can’t put the brochures here—it’s filthy! What if someone gives these harmless girls a shakedown?!” “Hey, you two! If you’ve got nothin’ else to do, come be my bodyguards. I’ll whip up a few soy sauce eggs for ’em as a treat!!!” “You’re quite far from home, you know? So be careful while getting to that big ole station, okay?” Surprisingly, many people were neither ally nor enemy. It was the number one law (lol) of delinquents: Always be nice to little kids and also abandoned cats left out in the rain!!! “Anyway, don’t the shops change as you get higher up?” asked Fremea. “Indeed, they do. The lower floors are meant for the majority of customers and the majority of consumption, with lots of junk food. The upper floors don’t get as much foot traffic, but they sell weird food meant for connoisseurs and make enough to get by, explains Misaka explains Misaka.” Last Order lifted her arm and pointed. “But there are some crazy shops on the upper floors, too, patronized by only the craziest guests, adds Misaka adds Misaka.” The parking garage had elevators as well but not as many as a department store or a hotel. Too many guests crowding them led to lines, which led to fights, so their usage was banned. Following the flow of traffic, the two girls headed up several slopes toward the highest floor. Last Order’s comment about the food growing more specialized the higher you ascended seemed to be true. At the very top, coffee shops owned by men in tailcoats and stalls where a woman would serve tea ceremony dishes became more common—and yet all were terribly inexpensive, which might leave people wondering if something was wrong instead of being happy at the prices. Neither girl noticed any of this. Last Order was mostly in the lead as they trekked toward the backmost part of the top floor and a single stall. It was a small food truck, yes, but unlike all the other places, this one didn’t have a kitchen area inside. Serious camping equipment surrounded the truck, allowing for open-air cooking. Apparently, it was a popular place, but many of its seats were empty, perhaps owing to the time of day. Only one person cooked, but a few other women were present, though they seemed to have no connection to food or to the service industry. Spend a month in District 10, and you’d be able to pin them as hired hands—bodyguards in public, doers of dirty jobs in private. But as stated many times already, neither Last Order nor Fremea were aware of any of this. Pale-blue diodes blinked at the ends of the bodyguards’ zero-nicotine electronic cigarettes—at least, that’s what the items looked like, but in reality, they seemed incredibly suspicious—as they took them out of their mouths. The two girls ignored them and went to the only person doing the cooking. They also ignored the positioning of the tables and chairs nearby, pushing them out of the way. “I’ll have the usual! says Misaka says Misaka with great impact!!!” “…I ain’t never seen you before. And you better not go around sayin’ that line in this district, y’hear? Wouldn’t want you endin’ up in some shady dealings.” The chef’s voice was flat and low, devoid of emotion. Fremea took it upon herself to sit down on one of the camping chairs. She glanced around. “Anyway, what kind of restaurant is this?” “Chinese food.” “Nya. You don’t look Chinese.” “We call salted-butter ramen and mild chili oil Chinese food in this country, miss.” Last Order sat down in turn, then pulled in her chin for some reason, retaining her know-it-all expression. “Misaka knows this store doesn’t have a menu display, says Misaka says Misaka, revealing hidden information. After all, they only make one meal!!! says Misaka says Misaka, pointing and throwing information at you!!!” “Yeah, the dish is—,” started one of the bodyguards before another woman stomped on her foot. The chef’s eyes had no emotion in them. “Hey, as long as you’ve got the money, I ain’t complainin’.” With that, he opened the lid of a silver stockpot and stuck into it a tool that looked like a ridiculously large fork. Fremea’s nose twitched. Her brows knotted at the oddly sweet aroma. “…What do you sell here?” “Huge pieces of meat, answers Misaka answers Misaka immediately.” Last Order puffed out her chest, which was pointless for her. “You know—the huge pieces of meat you only ever see in manga and stuff!!! says Misaka says Misaka, running her mouth about something she’s never even seen!!!” “A-anyway, you said you’ve never seen it!!! Nya, nya!!!” And out came the very product Last Order had advertised. The plate was big enough to hold an entire family-sized pizza, but there was certainly no salad on the side. Only a humongous roasted pork fillet sat there in its entirety, bisecting the dish. It was as thick as a Swiss roll from the supermarket. Last Order’s face lit up like a foreigner in another country who understood a superficial phrase she’d just used in the native language. “See I told you!!! says Misaka says Misaka, her eyes glowing and stuff!!!” “…Anyway, this looks like roasted pork fillet. But it smells sweet. The outside looks crunchy, too. It is like the stuff you put on top of ramen?” “No, that’s just somethin’ used with Japanese ramen. It’d be too oily to eat by itself,” answered the chef, flipping open a sports newspaper as though he was done working for the day. Fremea cocked her head. “Wait, um, then is there a fork or a knife or—?” “Tsk—tsk—tsk, says Misaka says Misaka, waggling her index finger as an effective preface.” “…Anyway, if you keep acting like such a know-it-all, I’ll splatter meat sauce on your clothes.” “Wait, wait!!! Misaka will explain, so wait a second!!! begs Misaka begs Misaka!!!” Last Order, panicking, put up her hands in a meaningless guard. “I said it was a huge piece of meat like you see in manga, remember? confirms Misaka confirms Misaka. And have you ever seen any manga character go at it like a civilized person with a fork and knife?! demands Misaka demands Misaka!!!” “…Anyway, how do you eat it, then?” asked Fremea. Last Order let her actions do the talking. “Like this.” She grabbed both ends of the meat slab and chomped down right in the middle of it. In that instant, time stopped for Fremea Seivelun. She felt a pillar of common sense crumble to pieces within her. Her mouth opened to let out her primal instinct. “It’s manga!!! It’s manga meat!!!” “Right? says Misaka says Misaka, giving you a smug look.” “…Nya. I see. So this is mammoth meat…” And so Fremea, also feeling admiration but not quite in the right way, set upon the giant platter of meat. 7 Kamijou and Thor were next to the loading dock of an expensive hotel outside Anti-Skill’s perimeter. They removed their firefighting gear and tossed it into a metal dumpster, then left. “What’s important here,” said Thor as they walked, “are the three groups: Fräulein, Gremlin, and Ollerus’s force. All three are moving about in Academy City, but we have no idea where any of them are.” “…Not even Gremlin? Aren’t you with them?” “If we constantly checked up on where everyone was, I’d never have had a chance to run interference like this. I could contact them and meet up. But if we do that over and over again, they might catch on.” The two boys walked down a sidewalk along a main roadway. Their first goal was to get away from the chaos’s epicenter. On the way, they passed a group of students who seemed to be pulling an all-nighter for Ichihanaran Festival prep. An Anti-Skill officer on a pedestrian bridge looked this way and that, which nearly made Kamijou tense up until Thor elbowed him in the side to snap him out of it. Being hyperaware of Anti-Skill would just draw attention. “And what about you anyway? Ollerus met up with you, right?” “We didn’t exactly trade contact info. I don’t know where he’d be right now. And I don’t know how many of his friends he brought along, either… He’s obviously not gonna listen to me if I tell him to stop fighting with Gremlin or that the whole Fräulein thing going on is a trap. He’d just be suspicious of where I got that information.” “That only leaves one option.” “If we go after someone, it has to be Gremlin. You have their contact info, and they trust you. Make them think Academy City’s elites and Ollerus’s group will show up at the same time. Then Gremlin won’t dare to try and get info on Fräulein until they’re totally sure of the situation.” “Right, right,” interrupted Thor. “But then we’d be letting Ollerus’s group roam free. Sure, Gremlin might be after Fräulein so they can use her for their own evil ends—that doesn’t mean we can just hand her to Ollerus on a silver platter. She’s the core of Gremlin’s plan—or rather, Othinus’s. There’s no way Ollerus’s team won’t think of killing someone who is normally unkillable to foil it.” “Once Gremlin falls into our trap, they’ll naturally be way more cautious… And once Ollerus’s group realizes that, they’ll probably send someone out to scout things out. That’s where we can lay the second trap. We don’t know where they are, but if we make them realize something’s changed, they’ll wander right into our hands. That’ll give us a point of contact with them.” If they could feed fake information to Ollerus’s eyes and ears on reconnaissance, then they could rob the entire group of their ability to properly judge the situation. “Right,” said Thor. “So we make Gremlin think the science side and Ollerus’s group will gang up on them, and we make Ollerus think that Gremlin and the science side will gang up on them.” And with both groups too cautious to act, Kamijou and Thor would grab Fräulein and vanish. Then they would finally be able to protect her. “…But that’s quite a tightrope to walk,” Thor continued. “Physically, it’ll bring Gremlin’s and Ollerus’s forces closer together, and they are dangerous when mixed. In the worst case, the trap won’t work, and they’ll start shooting. This city will turn into a war zone. And I’d be surprised if Fräulein could avoid the aftermath.” “We’ve been walking a tightrope from the moment Gremlin infiltrated Academy City… Our trap needs to buy us time. One day or even half a day. Our top priority is rescuing Fräulein, but we need a few hours to prepare for that. We have to set up this timetable perfectly, or it’ll all come crashing down.” 8 Fully sated, Last Order and Fremea left the Street Stall Spire. Then they both cocked their heads. “…Where’s the station again? asks Misaka asks Misaka, confused.” “Anyway, don’t ask me. Nya! I thought you were in the know.” “I am in the know! I just felt like giving you a pop quiz!!! says Misaka says Misaka, having to explain every single little thing!!!” Both girls had been given a cell phone by their respective guardians, so they could have opened up a map service to search for their current location and destination, but when you don’t use a program very much to begin with, you won’t think of it when you’re in trouble. Despite the dangers present in School District 10, road signage was relatively plentiful for one simple reason: the concentration of various facilities any other district would have shied away from because of their low land values. Then again, District 10 still held the title of most dangerous place in the city, so there wasn’t any guarantee the road signs were even correct to begin with. Cases where signs had been bent or broken, replaced without permission, or turned so that their arrows faced the wrong directions were not unusual here. If you asked someone who lived here why that was, they would probably say there was no reason. After all, it was no more than the logical extension of smashing the school windows at night. So with that all said. “Anyway, District 7 is north, so we should just walk north, and we’ll get there eventually.” “Oh! Very nice idea!!! says Misaka says Misaka, her eyes going all sparkly!!!” And so the two idiots plunged headlong down the path only a lost kid would choose. Within five hundred meters, however, they ran into their first obstacle. A T-intersection now barred their way forward. “…Now what? asks Misaka asks Misaka just to make sure.” “Nya! If we don’t know, we can just ask someone!!!” Despite not knowing her current location, Fremea dashed off in a random direction, Last Order trailing along in her wake. For no other reason than they happened to be close by, the pair went up to an unfamiliar tall woman and asked her for directions. “Anyway, which way is District 7?!” “…?” The woman had long silvery hair. The woman had fair white skin. The woman mimicked Fremea’s side-to-side motions. The woman was on the run from a variety of people. And. The woman was named Fräulein Kreutune. 9 The next step: Lay a trap for both Gremlin’s and Ollerus’s forces. There was something they would need to have a fighting chance. To obtain the object in question, Kamijou and Thor headed for the nearest school. Considering all the Ichihanaran Festival prep going on, they’d be relatively free to go in and out and not have to worry about security at this hour. And for the exact same reason, the school was now filled with all sorts of items—like carpentry tools. Even Kamijou wouldn’t normally have wanted to invite Thor—or anyone from Gremlin, for that matter—to his school. It was far too dangerous a point of contact to give. But you couldn’t make an omelet without breaking an egg or two. They could think of no other way to get what they needed. …However. “Wait, really? Kami isn’t back yet?” As Kamijou tried to go through the school gate, he heard a voice that immediately made him jump behind a nearby tree. There appeared to be some people having a conversation in the schoolyard. One was Komoe Tsukuyomi, a 135-centimeter-tall teacher, and the other was Seiri Fukiyose, executive officer for the Ichihanaran Festival. “Miss Yomikawa said he just got caught up in a fight and that he should have been released from the Anti-Skill office by now.” “He was supposed to be staying over tonight to work. Now he’s lost in the crowds and isn’t contacting us! Ugh! We’d be better off assuming he won’t be around to help us!!!” There was so much oil that a tiny little ember would probably cause the whole schoolyard to erupt into a sea of flames. Kamijou began to sweat profusely from his every pore. He knew one thing for sure. If those two caught him now, they would ruin everything. His tight, intricate, timetable-like plan would fall to pieces instantly. “…Hey. Hey, Thor!!! What the hell are you just standing there for?! Get over here! Stay out of sight!!” whispered Kamijou. “Huh? Why? I don’t get it,” Thor whispered back. “…The whole reason my good name has been tarnished is because you suddenly picked a fight with me!!!” Deciding they wouldn’t be able to march in the front, Kamijou dragged Thor, who still didn’t get it, away from the school grounds. They could loop around the neighborhood and try to go in the rear faculty entrance instead. Schools at night are sometimes thought of as scary places, but with the classrooms and hallways constantly illuminated and people going every which way, this one was far from a silent locale. Each class was working on what they’d be showing off, making a variety of objects by assembling sheets of plywood and the like. The halls were crammed with items, making them harder to walk down than ever before. But the unorganized mess also gave off that special excitement you only felt when a major event was approaching. Thor seemed almost enthusiastic enough to start humming, in fact. “Nice, nice! I like this. I should have brought a spray can. I’m feelin’ like doing the wall up in graffiti.” “You’re too into this. Snap out of it. Did you finish getting everything ready?” “Well, you did destroy my Soul Arm with your right hand before. I tried fixing it up with what I had on hand, but I can probably only use it once. Should be enough, though.” “Good. Wait, what? Only once???” “Yeah. So what?” Kamijou knew Thor wasn’t lying, but then something didn’t add up. Indeed. He got the feeling he’d quarreled with someone who looked a lot like Mikoto Misaka near the Windowless Building. What had that been about…? “Anyway, where are the computers in this place? Since it’s Academy City, do you have one in every classroom?” “Maybe, but it’d be faster just to use the technology room. I think there’s a really expensive commercial printer in there, too.” They just had to make sure nobody from Kamijou’s class spotted him. The farther away from his classroom he got, the less they’d have to hide. Once they got to an area for a different grade level, they’d even be able to pass a group of girls, for example, like normal people. “What’s that? Why are all those girls in tracksuits carrying buckets?” “They probably just used the club showers. Their hair was wet.” “…Ah, peaceful days. Must be nice. Wish I was part of that.” “I’m supposed to be part of that! But you people keep barging in, and now I might have to repeat a year!!!” The IT room they reached was larger than a normal classroom. Specially made, it featured around forty computers lined up in rows. Nowadays, of course, young people generally had their own computers, so nobody was quite sure how grateful to be for this room, considering the investment that had gone into its creation. The door was unlocked, and the lights had been left on. It had probably been opened for students wanting to print a variety of posters for the festival. Home printers had gotten more precise than before, but they could generally only print on A4-sized paper. Machines that could handle A2-sized posters were harder to find. “But nobody’s inside. This is our chance.” Touma and Thor snuck into the IT room. The first step of their mission was complete. 10 Marianne leaned against Mjölnir, the giant, black, oil-drum-shaped objet d’art, holding a cell phone. “Hmm. Lot of unconfirmed information flying around about this Fräulein Kreutune chick. There’s no telling if my alterations will affect her, and Thor is off doing who knows what… And with only your firepower, Mjölnir, I don’t think we can win a straight-up fight on our own.” The drum rattled side to side as if in protest, but Marianne ignored it. The voice on the phone sounded as if it thought everything was going according to plan. “Yeah. That’s why I’m out here, too… Anyway, I feel like they probably noticed all the weird stuff happening in this city already.” “You mean Ollerus’s group?” “Yeah. We’ll need a crap ton of firepower to suppress the target. We don’t want them sneaking in and snatching her after she’s captured. So we’re gonna start by taking the annoying bugs out of the picture. For now, let’s meet up.” “Sure, sure,” said Marianne offhandedly before hanging up. The way she moved about the city at night with a giant oil drum looked quite humorous, in a way. A good portion of the students running about through the streets to set up for the festival paid a lot of attention to them. This didn’t result in any incidents, however, probably because of the frequent patrols of cleaning and security robots. But those students failed to realize something. The dark-skinned girl strolling by was an expert in human modification and destruction, someone who could create flesh-colored hellscapes of gushing blood and who could yank open the curtains on such a tragedy at any time she wished. “Argh. Thor told us no preventative attacks. But I think we’re getting to the end of our prep work here.” Marianne’s tone was brusque, despite her accurate understanding of his strength. She gazed at the peaceful scene ahead but would not scruple to destroy it all. They had agreed to meet up with Thor in the plaza in front of a station in District 7. The station was known for how busy it was even after the last train was well and gone, but now with all the festival prep happening, people would likely be more spread apart. The place wasn’t all that crowded. “West entrance, west entrance… Huh? Is this the right one? Where’s Thor…?” Marianne looked around but couldn’t find him. She took out her cell phone. Only to stop mid-motion. Mjölnir rattled from side to side, not seeing the change. Marianne stared wide-eyed at a bulletin board in the station-front plaza. Most of the flyers on the board were advertisements for plays and the like, because of the citywide cultural festival. But one was out of place. It showed a big mug shot of a certain girl’s face. Small letters had been added below the photograph with detailed information. They read: Suspect: Marianne Sringeneier. A dangerous individual sighted during an incident in Baggage City. She was last seen near District 7’s Bright Stair Hotel. If you have any information on her, please report it to Anti-Skill. “…That’s just great.” Marianne quickly ran her eyes over the flyer, then looked away from the bulletin board. Larger plazas always had Anti-Skill stations nearby. Careful not to turn her face toward it, she left the square. Normal Anti-Skill officers weren’t what scared her. The core of the issue lay elsewhere. Accompanied by Mjölnir, she took out her phone again and called up Thor. “We’ve got a problem, Thor! Looks like information about me has gone public in Academy City. If Ollerus’s group finds it, we won’t be able to use that hotel as a hideout anymore!!!” “Academy City and Ollerus’s force… We could take them out on their own but against two at once? We’d be in trouble. And if we focus on Academy City, Ollerus and company might get closer to the treasure.” “……” If Ollerus’s group had caught on to Fräulein Kreutune’s importance, they might try to squash Gremlin’s—or rather, Othinus’s—plans by killing the supposedly unkillable woman. A woman they’d found no substitute for. Letting Ollerus get to her first would put them in an extremely dangerous situation. “…Thankfully, I’ve got all my work tools on me. We can move to a different hideout just fine. The info flying around might be a trap, too. No guarantee there. Maybe we should focus on getting a new bed so we can do some real analysis.” “Got it. You two already stand out. Be quiet about it, go slowly, and make sure nobody reports you. And no random fights with drunks, either.” Marianne ended the call, then swore in spite of herself. She almost took her phone and smashed it into the ground, but Mjölnir rattled around, causing Marianne to just barely hold herself back. “Whatever. A new bed, eh? If they put out a warrant for me, then every hotel will have my picture by now… Guess we should look for an abandoned building or something.” 11 One of the buildings around the station-front plaza was a department store. In its café, Thor hung up his cell phone. “They’re on the move.” Thor and Kamijou had lured Marianne to this District 7 plaza only after getting everything ready, of course. They’d forged the warrant notice on the bulletin board. Thor had once transformed into Mikoto Misaka and approached Kamijou. It was with that same sorcery he’d morphed into Marianne, allowing Kamijou to take a picture with him on his cell phone, sneak into a school—still active at night, since its students were setting up for the festival—and print out the notice. While a calm observer might notice a variety of deficiencies and flaws, Marianne wasn’t familiar with the format of Academy City’s public bulletins. The forgery was more than enough to make her break into a cold sweat. Kamijou sat across from Thor, watching the plaza outside the window as well. He took out his student notebook. “If Marianne does anything strange, Ollerus’s group will probably want to send someone out to see why. This is where we have to set our second trap.” “We’re really playing it by your schedule?” “Are you worried about me going alone?” Kamijou grinned a little. “We need to lay a trap to fool Ollerus and his people—so that they miss Gremlin entirely. If you showed up, they’d go all out and try to fight you. It would defeat the purpose. “And,” he added, “you’re the only one who can get back into the action after taking damage from Fräulein Kreutune. She’d kill me in one hit. You’re the best card we have to play, so we have to keep you hidden. Anyway, hand me that pen. The Ink should be water based.” With the pen attached to the table for writing down visitor feedback, Kamijou jotted something into his student notebook. “If Marianne takes this seriously, she’ll shake off anyone coming after her with sorcery. And she won’t employ that awful spell that uses people like building blocks, I hope?” “She might if she was trying to break through them. But what would she get out of causing a big incident by using her sorcery just to withdraw? Even a modification freak like her would be careful of that. Besides, she can modify more than just bodies. It’s just that it’s so crazy to see her mess with humans, you know? Draws all the attention.” “What do you predict she’ll do?” “There’s an accessory in Norse mythology that makes the wearer invisible. Since Marianne can create armaments of the gods, she’ll probably use something like that.” Thor admitted it all easily. “And any sorcery that hides you from others has a certain characteristic: The sorcerer using it has no way to check if they’re actually hidden… I already tampered with the geography here. She lost the ability to successfully conceal herself from the moment she set foot in the plaza. You’ll never lose sight of her.” “I see,” murmured Kamijou. He wiped a few drops of condensed liquid on the outside of his glass of iced coffee with his finger, then used the moisture to stick two pages of his notebook together. “Then I’ll get going. If you can’t join back up with me, you’re on your own.” Kamijou left the café and ran down the escalator. Once he was out of the department store building, he scanned his surroundings. He spotted Marianne’s silver braids. He took one deep breath, then slowly began to follow her. He obviously couldn’t let Marianne notice him. On the other hand, his goal wasn’t to figure out her final destination. It was to stop anyone else from pursuing her—a tangled situation indeed. Which meant Marianne wasn’t as important as the stretch of neighborhood behind her. Kamijou exited the plaza after her. He walked down a narrow path, turning corner after corner, all his senses alert as he watched his surroundings. If anyone had been using sorcery to make themselves invisible or otherwise difficult enough to detect, then perhaps his physical senses wouldn’t be able to perceive them, but still. …A pursuer would have no reason to let Marianne detect mana like that. Ollerus’s force won’t be quite sure how to handle this. At least, I hope that’s the case. Marianne continued along her unnecessarily serpentine route. Maybe she was worried about Anti-Skill tracking her. After he turned a few more corners, Kamijou’s shoulders lurched. Something was wrong. By the time he realized it was the clear cover protecting a vending machine product sample, he’d already turned the corner. The cover reflected light—and something else. Kamijou suspended his pursuit of Marianne. He found a door behind a building, opened it slightly, and slid inside. After quietly closing the door, he heard regular footsteps approaching from outside. Keeping his back to the wall, he glanced at a nearby table. The Ichihanaran Festival generally involved students renovating their school grounds into stalls and stages for plays and whatnot, but a lot of regular stores put up decorations, too. That might explain the toolbox on the table. Kamijou grabbed an electric drill. On the outside, it looked kind of like a pistol. As he did, the regular footsteps passed the door and began to grow faint again as they went after Marianne. Before the footsteps were fully out of earshot, Kamijou reached for the back door’s knob again. He turned it slowly, careful not to make a sound, and pushed on it ever so slightly to open it. He peered outside. He saw the back of someone small. He saw familiar blond hair. Thor had told him she was part of Ollerus’s group. “Leivinia Birdway…” Now that he was seeing her again, though, he instantly felt a strange pressure weigh down on his heart. Hawaii. Baggage City. Gremlin had affected things directly—but the root cause lay elsewhere. He felt his consciousness sway, almost more than made sense, but he wouldn’t let that stop him. Not after he’d come this far. If Marianne and Leivinia ran into each other, Kamijou and Thor’s plan would fail—their traps to distance the two forces would be ruined. “……” Kamijou tightened his grip on the electric drill he grasped. He opened the back door a little more, then stepped out onto the narrow street outside. He’d prepared himself for this long ago. And in a way, he was glad it was her this time. 12 District 7 is that way. If you lose your way, just look at the stars. It’s close enough to walk back. “W-wow, wow, we’re finally back somewhere I recognize, says Misaka says Misaka in admiration. I had no idea the true queen in the know was here all along, says Misaka says Misaka, surprised at the sudden intruder.” Upon following Fräulein Kreutune’s directions and getting back to School District 7, Last Order looked around wide-eyed. Fremea put her hands on her hips. “Nya. Lost kids are always such a handful. Anyway, please don’t cause me any more trouble than this.” From beginning to end, she’d never realized that she was the lost kid. Meanwhile… “…?” Fräulein Kreutune had, for some reason, led them by the hand back to District 7. Last Order gave her a few pats on the back—well, more like on the waist—with her little hand. “For now, I should say thank you, says Misaka says Misaka, trying to thank you but in a kinda condescending way! By the way, what’s your name?” “My name…” Fräulein Kreutune’s eyes moved upward, but her neck remained still. It was less like she was trying to remember something and more like she was mechanically sifting through a huge amount of data. “Fräulein Kreutune. Yes… That is my name.” “Oh, okay. Let’s trade e-mails! says Misaka says Misaka, starting her next mission!!! Because apparently that’s the friend-making ritual!!!” “…?” “Nya. Anyway, do you have a cell phone?” “…Cell phone…” Fräulein Kreutune’s eyes moved in odd directions a couple more times, but the woman didn’t seem to come up with an answer she liked. However, it didn’t matter to Last Order or Fremea if she found one or not. “Anyway, fine, nya! I guess I’ll lend you this!” Fremea took an egg-like device out of her pocket. A round fastener and a string was attached to its tip, like a key holder. It was a crime prevention beeper meant for children to carry around. Hamazura and the others had originally given it to Fremea in anticipation of the Freshmen’s attack. It was a cheap thing; any interference from someone who knew what they were doing would naturally render it inoperable. The members of the new Item didn’t have much faith in it. But now Fremea launched into her grand explanation, sniffing smugly. “This thingy uses something called GPS. If you pull the string, it will tell any cell phone it’s connected to exactly where you are! If you do, um, if you do this with it—see? It’s fine! Anyway, if you want to see us again, just pull the string and we’ll come running to your side!!!” …If it was actually hooked up to a GPS, Fremea would never have gotten lost. It was clear as day she didn’t really understand how the device worked, but… “Oh, hmm! But then we wouldn’t be able to contact her, says Misaka says Misaka in complaint.” “Heh-heh. It can actually receive simple zero-yen text messages! Anyway, it can only get messages from cell phones that are registered and only under one hundred and fifty characters. And it can only receive, not send. It’s got a lot of annoying restrictions, but still!!!” “…?” Fräulein Kreutune cocked her head and looked at the crime prevention beeper she’d just been given. Last Order looked up at her. “Okay! The ritual is done, which makes you our friend! says Misaka says Misaka just to make sure you know!!!” “…Friend?” “Nya. Anyway, there’s no real reason we can’t be friends.” “…Friends.” The angle of Fräulein Kreutune’s head deepened. Eventually, her eyeballs turned. “Yes. Understood,” she answered. “We are friends.” 13 “Which brings me here.” Leivinia didn’t so much raise her hands as she leveled them almost horizontally into a shrug. She continued without turning around. “You’ve changed since I saw you last. Is your right hand out of commission? Either way, I agree with you about the power drill. Definitely more effective depending on the situation. But could you stop nudging the tip against the back of my neck?” “Just don’t move, all right?” Kamijou, who had approached her from behind, keenly felt the trigger switch. He spoke quietly. “I know you’re powerful enough to lead a sorcerer’s society, and I know you can fling your group around however you want. If we fought for real, I’d be helpless. But now I have the upper hand. I can turn on the drill before you try anything.” “Can you, though?” If anything happened, Leivinia would meet a more miserable end than dying from a bullet. Despite how clear that was, though, her muscles weren’t tense in the slightest. “You don’t seriously think you can kill me like this, do you?” “……” Kamijou didn’t answer. His gaze went past her. Marianne had disappeared around a corner, apparently not noticing any of this. Birdway sighed languidly, as though a fish had just gotten off her line. “I never thought you’d side with Gremlin after all this. Do you understand what you’re doing?” “If you’re asking if I’m doing the right thing, then, well, I don’t know. But I’m thinking for myself now at least.” “Even though someone might have planted those ideas in your head?” “I think you’re the one who likes doing that stuff.” “……” For a very brief moment, Leivinia’s breath caught. Kamijou ignored this and continued. “I saw what went down at Baggage City. You knew that would happen, and you used me anyway. I can’t keep trusting you anymore. I’m not naive.” “You want my honest opinion?” “What, that you kept casualties to a minimum or something?” Kamijou desperately tried to stop the hand holding the drill from trembling unnaturally. “I bet. I’m just a high school punk. You could probably do all sorts of crazy, complicated calculations. And you got the optimal answer in the shortest time. You confined the entire disturbance to Baggage City. Maybe the chaos would have spread through the whole world otherwise, and the future would be just that much worse. I bet that was the conclusion you came to.” “Well, I—” “I’m not done,” interrupted Kamijou before she could finish. “After seeing it for myself, I can’t bring myself to say it was the best option. Kagun Kihara died. A girl was crying—she had to live with it! …Maybe that was never part of the plan. Maybe it was an accident. But nothing you did was an accident!!! I don’t know what you got out of making all that happen, but it doesn’t change the fact that you sacrificed that city for your own gain!!! How am I…?” Kamijou trailed off, realizing that his lips were trembling. He was rattled. Why? Was he losing the ability to control his temper? Was all his frustration at Birdway’s betrayal welling up inside him? Or was he hoping that, even now, Birdway would deny it all and explain how mistaken he was? But she hadn’t. Was that what rattled him? Unable to grasp the depths of his own heart, he squeezed out his next words. “…How am I supposed to unconditionally trust someone like you…?!” For a few moments, Leivinia remained still. Kamijou couldn’t see her expression, as her back was turned. A short while passed. The she sighed slightly. Languidly, she spoke again. “Well, I was already prepared for this.” “…What?” “Just realizing my goals are definitely the right ones. Anyway, here’s my response: Get that lame-ass toy off my fucking neck. Especially if we’re not friends. I’m not a saint. I won’t just sit here and let a complete stranger do this to me.” Ker-click. As if something had just switched over, Leivinia’s tone changed. Into a tone Kamijou had never heard from her. It was cold. Chilling. Or possibly reminiscent of death.
Chapter 103
56 min read