Chapter 2

And knowing what he did about what the two girls were actually like, chills immediately ran down his spine. But the five delinquents, as well as Rikou Takitsubo, seemed to take the whole thing at face value. The girl in the tracksuit started to get especially unruly. She went up behind Hamazura and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him, as though asking him to hoist her up onto his back. “…You don’t get to take him,” she said. “Hamazura belongs to me.” At that moment, Hamazura heard the sound of something very important snap—in those five delinquents’ heads. “H-hey,” managed one of them as they all moved their lips to no avail. “Hey, hey, hey, hey!! The hell is this?! Who do you think you are?! Some kind of millionaire? Well?!” His voice came out sounding like a seal’s, maybe a fur seal’s—one out for pure murder anyway. He stormed right up to Hamazura and attempted to grab his collar. But… …Mugino, who actually did have Hamazura in a subtle armlock now, twisted herself slightly. To escape the pain rushing up his elbow, Hamazura had to turn with her like some kind of revolving door. That threw off the delinquent’s aim. Instead of Hamazura’s neck, the man ended up jamming his outspread fingers into his shoulder. “Nghaaaaaahhhh!! That goddamn hurt, you bastard!!” “Eeeek. Hamazura is so coooool.” As if that wasn’t enough, Mugino, her encouragement now sounding even dumber, twisted Hamazura’s arm again, then kicked him in the waist to send him hurtling right into the other delinquents. Meanwhile, Kinuhata peeled Takitsubo cleanly off his back. “Wha— Wha…?” Hamazura’s eyes were still spinning with bewilderment; he couldn’t make sense of what was going on. But apparently, the delinquents had already made up their minds. “No more screwing around, asshooooooooooooooooooooole!!” “Tell that to this monster pretending to be a woman, daaammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!” Shiage Hamazura had only one choice. Run. So he kicked up some dirt from a flower bed on the sidewalk to blind the pro-wrestler guy, then took the opportunity to punch through their blockade. 6 After Yomikawa confiscated the smoking breast-enlargement machine, Yoshikawa went to her own room and closed the door to program her DVR to record a show. The living room TV was already on the selection screen for a drama Yomikawa wanted to record; Yoshikawa had grumbled that she wished they had infinite tuners as she left. Voices were pouring out of the TV at the moment. And both the reporter and the people responsible for putting the program together seemed like they hadn’t so much as smelled the front lines before. “…World War III started and ended in just twelve days, but we’re still getting many eyewitness reports of occult activity. Experts are calling this Third War Sickness, and just like British Halloween, it appears to be a form of mass hysteria caused by wartime stress. Many are now voicing the opinion that people are owed serious and swift compensation…” Accelerator didn’t have anything to do, either. But as he lay there on the couch, he felt like something was…off. He looked down and saw Last Order snuggled up with him on the already cramped sofa. “…What are you doing?” “Misaka is taking a nap, too, says Misaka says Misaka simply.” “Hey—” “…Zzz.” Before the city’s number-one esper could complain, Last Order just fell asleep on the spot. Accelerator clicked his tongue in annoyance, but then a different voice spoke to him—it was Misaka Worst, sitting on the armrest at the end of the couch. “You finally got peace back,” she said. “How does it feel?” “…What are you getting at?” “Nothing, really,” she said, her statement clearly implying something. Once, there had been a great darkness in Academy City. And it had taken the form of humans who possessed great strength but found it very difficult to live due to various circumstances. Sometimes, their acquaintances would use them as a shield, and other times, they’d be forced into certain jobs in exchange for the necessary documentation and status to live a normal life. Accelerator had been one of those people. But that cycle had already been broken. Accelerator had destroyed it himself at the end of World War III. Motoharu Tsuchimikado. Awaki Musujime. Mitsuki Unabara…though that was most likely a false name. As Accelerator lapsed into thought, the commentator’s voice continued, clearly already drunk on peace. “…Setting aside whether any actual occult phenomenon occurred, giant golden rings and what appear to be huge ribs have been left behind in several cities around the world. Though, ‘golden’ isn’t quite accurate. The United Nations plans to dispose of them in the anoxic region of the Pacific Ocean, aiming to kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of the objects and supplying oxygen to the altered ocean current. They hope this will help restore several fisheries. But as they have done no investigations into the matter, I personally believe they have a different objective in mind…” Once, a band of people known as the Group had lurked within that darkness. Accelerator didn’t know exactly what they were up to at the moment, but he assumed they were confronting their respective environments of peace and quiet in this shit-heap of a city. But something was lacking. Something was missing. After the war, Accelerator had cut ties with the darkness. Consequently, he couldn’t examine any of the data he’d need from the information network strung all throughout Academy City’s underworld. Interception was still an option, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with the darkness. So for better or worse, Accelerator no longer had any way to know what had become of others. Yes—he couldn’t find out if anyone who had taken part in the war had gone missing. There was no way to know whether the person who had stood at the heart of the fighting had returned home. “…Zero human casualties are being reported on Academy City’s side after the war, and while that is joyful news on its own, it once again exposed the city’s monopoly on technology as well as its military disadvantages. Academy City has released a public statement on the matter, saying that…” The news channel would be of no assistance to Accelerator—not with the sloppiness of their reporting. But in that case, what was he supposed to trust? 7 There was once a project to create military clones based on the somatic cells of Mikoto Misaka, the city’s third-ranked Level Five. That project failed. The people running it hadn’t been able to bring out the abilities they needed from the clones, so they repurposed the cloning technology in a separate experiment, which produced a large quantity of specimens. Those specimens were the Sisters. Last Order served as the command tower for the remaining Sisters—who currently numbered almost ten thousand—while Misaka Worst was an irregular specimen born of the later “Third Season,” the name for a third clone-manufacturing project. The electrical signals from those ten thousand brains formed a nexus known as the Misaka network. While it was an aggregation of the Sisters’ intracerebral data, the network itself also behaved with a single intent all its own. Last Order was essentially created as a kind of “keyboard” of sorts, which would allow someone on the outside to access the network, while Misaka Worst was meant to extract thoughts and emotions from the system itself—mainly the malicious ones. And so… “What? Shopping?” asked Accelerator suspiciously as he lay on the couch. Aiho Yomikawa, the tracksuit-wearing teacher, nodded. “I don’t care if you’re back from the battlefield or whatever, but you’re home now, so it’s time to contribute to society a little.” “Slave driver.” “Oh?” she said casually, feigning ignorance. “Maybe it’s just me, but I think being a part of society is toughest when you’re useless and unneeded.” “Ugh.” Accelerator rose from the couch. “Quit spewing that awful psychology-textbook crap at me. Goddamn teachers…” “Nah, I’d never make it as a school counselor. If someone causes a problem, my first response is usually corporal punishment. So yeah.” “What do you need?” “Food. Everything on this leaflet that I circled in red.” “…You want me to go grocery shopping. With a marked-up flyer.” “That’s right. Put in some effort, and I just know you’ll get used to it.” Giving in to Yomikawa’s “encouragement,” Accelerator reluctantly used his crutch to get to his feet. As he did, Last Order, having been completely wiped out in a spaceship game (she’d woken up from her nap, declared she’d get revenge, and lost to Misaka Worst again—badly) peered over at him. “Misaka too! Misaka too!! says Misaka says Misaka, worried about you going all by yourself!!” “Pipe down, brat!!” he grumbled. “Don’t make this weird domesticated Accelerator fantasy any more real than it has to be!!” Misaka Worst looked awfully fidgety for some reason as Last Order kept on saying, “Misaka too! Misaka too!” In truth, she’d been having a second battle alongside the one in the video game. A real battle. As mentioned before, Misaka Worst drew out a lot of thoughts and emotions from the will of the Misaka network. Mostly the malicious ones. And malicious certainly didn’t stop at just anger or hatred. There was also envy, for example. Jealousy that Yomikawa had spent so long talking to Accelerator. The desire to go shopping with him, too. Thoughts like those would spread among all the information-sharing Sisters, and when they caused a feedback loop with the network’s will, Misaka Worst would be the one to feel most of the effects. Normally, Misaka Worst wasn’t supposed to receive any commands from Last Order. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any exceptions. Which meant… …Gwaaahhh?! I want to go! I want to go shopping!! Goddamn it! I don’t give a single shit about Accelerator, but this network! This stupid network and its stupid brain waves! Aaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!! Fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget itchy itchy fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget fidget itchy itch itchy fidget fidget fidget!!!!!! was about the extent of the vortex of emotions raging in her mind at the moment. And unfortunately, it was just too much for her. After all, she’d been created to extract all the malice. Something in her head almost audibly snapped, and Misaka Worst shot to her feet. She knocked Last Order away to get her to stop clinging to Accelerator’s pants. And then she said… “M-Misaka… Misaka will gladly go shopping with you aaaaaahhhhhh!!” A few minutes after Yomikawa smiled and handed her a wallet, Misaka Worst found herself sitting on the floor, facing the wall with her knees drawn up.