PROLOGUE

A Boring Exchange Between Villains
Key_Shop.

Academy City’s District 15 was its largest shopping district but also its main broadcasting base. Many a television station and media-related facility lined the streets here, altogether giving it the highest property values in the city.

There was a giant mixed-use building among them, like any apartment complex combined with corporate office space. But this one was so lavish you could probably buy an entire detached house for less than it would cost to rent a room in it.

It was the home of a man called Department Store, and it was also his place of business. The evening landscape seen out the window along one wall was jaw-dropping—if this had been a restaurant, it could have expected quite a few patrons just for the view, regardless of whether the food was good or not.

“Don’t get too jealous,” the room owner, a man who looked college-aged, said with a shrug from his chair.

“It’s not like this place is comfortable; it’s just another hideout. I’d have to abandon it if it got raided. Can’t really relax here.”

He had no sense of caution toward Accelerator.

Red eyes, white hair. He had a crutch in one hand, but he didn’t come off as weakened by that in the slightest, since the aura he emitted implied he’d rip your body apart if you offended him. This was a Level Five esper—and still, the room’s owner looked at him without caution.

The young man was probably used to it. After all, considering the products Department Store dealt in, no decent person would ever try to do business with him.

“Well, I won’t ask what happened. Just pretend I’m a cute waitress come to take your order. No need to hold back,” DS went on, not appearing particularly irritated at how Accelerator maintained his silence. “What might you be after? A getaway car? Keys to a hideout? Or a money exchange, maybe? If you want to launder some stolen cash, today’s rate is 0.8. It was 0.75 before, so it’s a good deal, eh? And since you’re the type who stands out in crowds, I could show you some disguises or introduce you to a cosmetic surgeon.”

He listed these off the same way a server might explain the recommended dishes of the day. Academy City was surrounded by high walls, so it wasn’t possible to flee from inspecting eyes by simply running. It was more important to prepare a safe hideout—or look for a way to sneak onto a freight train in disguise to get outside city limits. (Of course, even with tricks like that, success rates were low.)

After hearing this, Accelerator was silent for a few moments.

Eventually, he gave a slow look around the large room. “A hideout, eh? If this is one of your hideouts, then does that make this a model room?”

“Well, it is my main product. Hideouts are what I built my business on. I’m confident in what I deal in, and I’m very particular about them. I’ve got ‘keys’ for everything from high-class apartments in prime real estate to campers parked in District 21’s hills. Want to see the catalog?”

But Accelerator didn’t bite. His eyes were fixed on something to the side. A blind spot, hidden in a corner of the room by the vast landscape out the window, protected behind furniture—and something hung there like a sandbag.

“That one of your products, too?”

“Hmm? Is that what you’re interested in?” DS glanced that way as well, seeing what was hanging in chains, his face turning slightly bitter. It was the look someone might give off when a friend discovered their private interests. “Unfortunately, I’m not offering that as an option right now. It’s more like a hobby of mine.”

It was a girl, about fifteen years old.

Nothing but white skin and underwear, her hands locked up, hanging there unmoving.

The girl was black-and-blue in some spots, but she just swayed there slowly, her strength expended, without a shred of embarrassment. Accelerator heard breathing, so she was still alive, but there was no light in her eyes.

Still looking at her, Accelerator stated, “That’s an awful hobby. Doesn’t that get expensive?”

“Somewhat, yes. Hey, seriously, don’t break it. This might be a disposable hideout, but I hate having to deal with corpses. And even without the liability, it was crazy expensive. You kill her and you’re paying seven hundred thousand, at least.”

“Looks pretty beat-up for that price. Doesn’t look like you whored her out, though.”

“I said it was a hobby, all right? That one’s for punching. She isn’t good enough for regular fucking. Or are you into the flat-chested ones? You don’t look it.”

Then, with the hand opposite the one holding the crutch, Accelerator grabbed an envelope from his bag and tossed it onto Department Store’s desk. Ten hundred-thousand-yen bills slipped out from the opening.

When he saw it, the young man’s lips twisted into a pained grin. “Hey, now.”

“Prepayment. I’ve got my own shitty jobs to do. I’m on edge. Can’t guarantee I won’t accidentally commit murder.”

Department Store clicked his tongue. “Just so you know, it’s seven hundred thousand just for killing her. Dealing with the body is separate.”

His tone was slightly disappointed. She was a hobby item, but he didn’t seem attached enough to her to be stubborn. He probably figured he could buy a new one anyway.

“What’s so interesting about that brat anyway? You the type who can’t get it up unless another man’s messed up the girl first?”

“Oh, I get it. Looks like you misunderstood me,” denied Accelerator casually. “I didn’t buy the woman hanging over there.”

“?”

“I bought you.”

Department Store didn’t immediately understand what Accelerator meant.

Gurrrch.

Not until he heard the wet sound of his own nose breaking anyway.

“Gh, gah, a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h?!”

Department Store screamed in pain, rolling out of his chair. There was a small bag on the floor near him. He realized that was what Accelerator had thrown at his face, but it didn’t make any sense. Accelerator had a crutch in one hand. The throw couldn’t have been that strong. But the pain was intense, like he’d taken a pitching-machine baseball to the face.

Holding his broken nose as blood spurted out of it, Department Store managed to get off the floor.

“Y…you bast…Fghh … What…? What the hell are you doing?!”

Department Store opened the expensive-looking desk’s drawer and pulled out a gun. But even when he pointed it at Accelerator, the esper didn’t react. In fact, he only grinned, the hand that had thrown the bag now at the choker on his neck.

As he smiled, he said, “By your standards…one human is worth seven hundred thousand, right?”

“…!!”

Department Store gaped as realization dawned on him.

Accelerator continued, though, as if to confirm that this was indeed the worst thing he could think of. “Bastard on the phone. Making me do all the stupid shit. I paid you the money, and I’m a little pissed off right now— You don’t mind if I kill you, right?”

Department Store, apparently overwhelmed with terror, pulled the trigger with his trembling finger. But Accelerator licked his lips and charged at him.

There was the sound of flesh tearing and bones breaking. Then something more than a simple scream—something more like a howl.

Five minutes later.

Poking the bloody ball of flesh with his toe, Accelerator exasperatedly switched off his choker. He didn’t have a scratch on him. As long as his ability was free, he could reflect every attack under the sun.

Still on his crutch, he used his other hand to take out his cell phone. After dialing, he put it to his ear.

“I’m done, I guess. These shitty jobs are all so boring. Eh? What do I need? Let’s see. A recovery team to pick up a chunk of flesh that gives off a smell which will make you vomit with even the slightest whiff, and…”

Accelerator paused for just a moment.

He looked over at the hanging girl and turned his choker on again.

With just the flick of a finger, the distant chains binding the girl snapped.

“…and a set of women’s clothing. Size? I don’t know. Just bring some ‘one size fits all’ crap. You assholes have no sense, so it wouldn’t matter even if I gave you a more detailed description. And put women in the recovery team. I see one man with them, and I’m kicking his balls off.”

After saying what he needed to, Accelerator ended the call. He grabbed a few random bills from the desk, then crudely threw them at the girl, who was now collapsed on the floor with the chains cut.

Without looking in her direction, he switched off his choker, shifted his weight onto his crutch, then called out in an impassive voice as he headed for the exit, “Live how you want now. Whether the rest of your life succeeds or fails is up to you.”

“…”

The girl in the underwear, who hadn’t shown much reaction until now, finally rolled her head to look at Accelerator’s back. Moving her red, cut-up lips, she asked quietly and suddenly, “Who are you…?”

“A villain,” he answered in a singsong tone as he went through the front door. “A villainous piece of shit.”

That was his daily life—their daily lives.

Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Mitsuki Unabara, and Awaki Musujime.

The four were called Group, and on this day, Group would once again root out the darkness in this city.

CHAPTER 1

I Believe in Your Kindness, at Least
Dark_Hero.

1

October 17, 6 PM.

Accelerator was by a window, sitting on the floor of the hotel room he was using as a hideout. His reason for sitting against the wall was simple—the devices he’d constructed and arranged on a spread-out newspaper. He couldn’t do this sort of work on the bed.

As he continued his task, he kept his cell phone nestled between his neck and shoulder. A small girl’s voice came through it. “Anyway, I think we’re having meat stew tonight, says Misaka says Misaka, reporting the results of her reconnaissance and stuff.”

“You don’t say. When did Yomikawa get good enough with rice cookers to pull off a crazy stunt like that?”

The device on the newspaper was a crutch.

It resembled a tonfa, but with a modern design, which he equipped by fitting it around his right forearm. He called it “a device” because it now featured several new improvements, such as a few small motors and a weight sensor.

At the moment, the crutch was standing up on four legs like a microphone stand. Accelerator poked at it.

… I think I’ve managed to put it back together now, but I wonder if the weight sensor can handle detecting my center of mass by itself. Maybe I should’ve jammed in an angle-adjusting gyro or something.

This precise analysis continued in his mind as he responded on his cell phone. The person on the other end was Last Order, a girl who appeared to be around ten.

“If you want, I can try negotiating to have her make some for you, too, says Misaka says Misaka, glancing toward the kitchen.”

“Yeah, sure. As long as it tastes just as good after freezing it, packing it, and shipping it through the mail.”

When he put his right arm through the crutch and grasped the handle, the four stands flitted like insect legs. Still sitting, he jabbed the crutch into the floor. Despite being nearly parallel to the ground, the mechanical legs began to accurately grab hold of the surface and support him.

Just barely scrapes by with a passing grade.

“You said you could come visit this weekend, says Misaka says Misaka, making sure.”

“…As long as my plans don’t change.”

When he manipulated the grip again, there was a clatter as the crutch suddenly retracted. It was made like an extendable police baton.

Wearing giant bracelet-like pieces that wrapped around his arm from the elbow down, Accelerator moved his right wrist to see how the setup moved as a whole.

Guess that passes, too. Can’t walk without a crutch, but it gets in the way when I’m using my ability.

As he muttered his impressions of the device, Accelerator moved the grip again to extend the crutch.

Jshhh!! The four-legged pole extended energetically, sending several tools that he’d left on the newspaper flying.

… Could maybe use it as a weapon if I amped up the power…No point, though. Don’t need any when I’m using my ability, and if I had to lift the crutch in an emergency, I’d fall over.

“Misaka is so excited for Saturday that she can’t wait— Ohh!! Yomikawa brought in the meat stew!! says Misaka says Misaka, making a report of the highest priority!!”

“Yeah? Your life is just full of detours, isn’t it?”

And then it happened.

The telephone rang—not his cell, but the one installed on the hotel bedside table. Accelerator looked over to it. Before he could pick up the receiver, the ringing stopped. It had rung exactly three times, as though it was preplanned.

That was the signal.

An RV or some other similar vehicle had probably pulled up onto the shoulder near the hotel.

“What’s wrong?! asks Misaka asks Misaka, bending her head at the telephone sound.”

“…It’s nothing. Just room service,” he lied, placing his weight onto his homemade crutch and slowly standing up. He became conscious of the sensation of a small handgun tucked into his pants on the back of his waist again.

Then, from the other end of the call, Last Order abruptly said, “Are you okay?”

She didn’t know about Accelerator’s job. And she didn’t need to know the details to worry about him.

“Don’t do anything dangerous, asks Misaka asks Misaka.”

“Do you even know who you’re whispering to?” he replied to the voice on the cell phone, as though thrusting it away. “No need for consideration like that when you’re talking with a guy who wouldn’t die even if a nuke hit him.”

Accelerator hung up, then stowed his cell phone in his pants pocket.

Without turning around, he headed for the guest room’s exit.

Newspapers and tools were strewn about the room, but minions from some organization or another would surely be along to tidy up anyway.

Motoharu Tsuchimikado was walking through the District 7 shopping arcade, a large avenue along the way from his school to his dorm. Tsuchimikado had blond hair, sunglasses, and a Hawaiian shirt over his school uniform, making him a fairly conspicuous person—but at the moment, there were some people present with even more visual impact than him.

Specifically, part-time maids, handing out fliers for restaurants.

As he walked through the shopping district, he watched the working girls, and his eyes relaxed slightly behind his sunglasses.

“…The times really have taken a turn for the better, nya…”

Not a moment after he’d muttered it, a powerful straight punch pushed into Tsuchimikado’s tall back. His little sister, Maika Tsuchimikado, was responsible. After eliciting a violent wha-bam!! noise you wouldn’t expect from her delicate little fist, she was currently, for some reason, sitting politely with her legs folded underneath her atop an oil drum–shaped cleaning robot.

The girl, however, hadn’t physically contorted her stepbrother’s spine out of jealousy.

“…You can’t call those professional maids. How dare they mix up maids, waitresses, and hostesses. How is this for the better, eh? That one even has Gothic fashion mixed in somehow. Do you think kneesocks make everything okay?”

Maika growled her questions, blue veins popping on her exposed forehead, since her bob’s bangs were combed back. Her own clothing consisted of a long-skirted maid uniform, mainly in dark blue. Unlike the ladies handing out fliers, it had a plain but highly practical design.

“M-Maika? That jagged black aura around you is making me feel like there’s a boulder in the pit of my stomach…”

“What I mean is: It’s all well and good the term maid has spread throughout the world, but it’s a problem if it spreads in the wrong way. Now people look at us lewdly just for wearing these clothes.”

“L-lewdly?!”

His stepsister’s remark got a huge reaction out of him.

This reaction was not, however, because he couldn’t forgive the unspecified large number of bastards who would apparently look at his little sister so rudely.

“But…But is that so wrong…? Maids are healthy in the first place, aren’t they? Unerotic maids—what reason could they possibly have for existing?!”

“…It looks like I’ll need to show my shitty brother what professional maids are made of.”

“No, stop, gwoohhh; my stepsister is using her body to show off pro-maid techniques to me?!” called Tsuchimikado, his words a string of lewdness, as a tiny fist beat him to a pulp.

Just then, a camper passing right by him gave a short honk of its horn. It looked like it had been trying to hurry a passenger car taking its time in front of it, but that wasn’t it.

It was the signal.

The camper had probably put on its blinker and gone down a side road—and it would park there for a time to wait for Tsuchimikado.

Without waiting to see where it went, he immediately started walking toward the nearby convenience store.

“Nya. I gotta go grab some refills for my mechanical pencils.”

“Hmm? I’ll come, too.”

“Wait, you’re gonna help me?! I actually have a ton of homework today, nya. I’m not even sure both of us together could finish it, but you’re really smart, so you could probably do the work of one and a half people. A brother-sister team-up operation should manage to finish by tomorrow morning.”

“…I don’t think I’m going to your room tonight…You’re already up a creek without a paddle if you’re asking your middle school sister for help on high school homework. But at least there’s still leftovers. You shouldn’t die of starvation. And with that, adieu!”

Still sitting politely atop the cleaning robot, Maika banged on its side with her small palm. Its sensors seemed to pick up from the gesture, since the robot swerved in the other direction, as though being controlled by a steering wheel.

“Heartless brute!!” shouted Tsuchimikado in front of the convenience store, his spirit shattered. After hanging his head, he went into the store, properly bought what he said he would, and then went down a side road away from the shopping district.

He opened the door of the camper that he found parked there. Inside was an earlier visitor, a white-haired Level Five, lying on a simple bed as though sulking.

Looking at that Level Five, Tsuchimikado said:

“…So what’s today’s homework?”

Awaki Musujime was in District 10. The place had a host of research facilities related to nuclear power and microbiology, as well as an incineration plant for laboratory animals, but even within this district stood a particularly infamous building.

The juvenile reformatory.

It wasn’t the sort of place a girl wearing the uniform of Kirigaoka Girls’ Academy, an elite Ability Development school, would normally be seen, but she couldn’t be picky—her comrades were interned there.

They were comrades in the sense that they had tried to complete a grand project together.

One that some might call a criminal act.

Thanks to a Level Four–Level Five duo from a school for young ladies as influential as Kirigaoka—no, possibly even more so—they’d already aborted the project itself.

Many of her comrades had been defeated through overwhelming power, then confined within this juvenile reformatory. And Musujime alone was free—only she, the project’s mastermind, the one who should have been the first to be caged.

An implicit rule had been handed down to her.

She would use her incredible ability, Move Point, to fight against even deeper darkness in Academy City. If she acquiesced, they would both physically and socially guarantee her comrades’ safety—and if she didn’t, that guarantee went away.

One day, she’d outwit this city.

She’d win this game that was supposed to be perfectly unbeatable so she could grant her comrades freedom once again.

That alone was Awaki Musujime’s goal—and there was nothing else to it. Rather, there was nothing left. Even her attachment to their rogue-like “grand project” had already vanished. There was no longer a proactive reason that kept her moving anymore. Right now, it was the endless negativity and the crushing circumstances that forced Musujime ever forward.

It doesn’t matter to me, she thought. I’ll do whatever this city wants, to a point.

But she would no longer stop, even if the result waiting for them was the utter collapse of Academy City’s leadership. If that came to pass, they could blame themselves for pushing her that far.

Musujime walked down the street, lost in thought in the dim moments just before sundown.

And then it happened.

Her cell phone ringtone went off in her skirt pocket. It was a different chime from a few days ago—she didn’t care about this sort of thing, so when her roommate had recommended this ringtone and then changed it for her, Musujime left it as it was, making it her default ringtone.

She gave a soft sigh, then took her cell phone out of her pocket.

After pressing the Accept button and placing it next to her ear, words from her roommate, which she’d grown accustomed to hearing, flew at her.

“Musuuu!! Where are you wandering around?!”

The voice was sugary sweet, like it belonged to a girl who hadn’t reached puberty yet.

Her roommate’s name was Komoe Tsukuyomi.

And in spite of her voice, surprisingly enough, she was a high school teacher.

“Today is the day that you’ll try your very best until you can make vegetable stir-fry, so Teacher has been waiting with an empty stomach juuust for you. Please come back right now and take ooon the challenge. You have to acquire at least one specialty at sooome point, Musu.”

At first, it might have seemed like her roommate was just trying to hand off the housework, but Musujime had been made aware in a short time that this sugar-voiced teacher had no such goals.

It was clear when the teacher continued:

“It isn’t like girls need to do housework or anything, but life is long, so it’s worth learning new skills to broaden your horizons. It’s not only cooking. Your teacher never heard what sort of life you want in the future, but it’s best to experience all kinds of things so you’ll be ready when you finally do decide what path you want to take. But you should only seek out experiences on the absolute condition that you don’t waste your own time or hinder the path you really want to take.”

Musujime suddenly stopped walking. Here in the twilight of District 10, she realized that, at some point, the dark pressure weighing gently down on the pit of her stomach had gone away.

Something in her was surprised—not on the surface, but something deeper inside.

Surprised that there was still someone who would speak to her like this.

“…”

Musujime wondered how to answer the teacher’s repeated “vegetable stir-fry, vegetable stir-fry,” but then a camper drove by right near her. The vehicle stopped next to a juice vending machine, and a man got out of the driver’s seat, heading to it.

Their eyes never met even once, but she knew the intent.

It was the signal to start work.

She’ll be mad at me—no, mad for me, she thought, before speaking again into her cell phone.

“…This is going to sound blunt, but something suddenly came up, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be making any vegetable stir-fry.”

“What?! Again?! Then what now? Your teacher was waiting for that stir-fry! To be honest, I figured you’d mess up a lot, so I bought so many vegetables that the refrigerator is insanely packed!”

“That’s good, isn’t it? Vegetarians live longer, you know,” said Musujime offhandedly and then hung up.

After looking at her phone for a few moments, she put it back in her skirt pocket and started toward the camper. When she opened the door, there was a white-haired Level Five napping on a plain bed and a blond man in sunglasses sitting at the table playing a portable game where miniskirted maids equipped with gigantic laser cannons went on rampages.

Giving the passengers a nasty look, Musujime spoke.

“…Since this is a camper, there must be a kitchen, right?”

Mitsuki Unabara was in a District 7 hospital. It was past six PM, but visiting hours seemed to run relatively late, perhaps part of the hospital’s policy. At the moment, it was right before closing.

The hospital room he was in was an individual one, but he wasn’t the patient. He’d come to visit a girl who had been hospitalized here.

“…You still seem to like that face, Etzali.”

The brown-skinned girl, sitting up in bed, spoke to him with a voice that sounded deliberately low. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was black, but somehow it seemed different compared to the hair Japanese people had. The girl—Xóchitl—hailed from Central America.

“And you still seem like you’re in a bad mood. Do your synthetic-fiber pajamas not suit your skin?”

As Unabara spoke, he placed a large wrapped object he’d brought with him on the side table.

“This is Aztecan native clothing. I struggled to procure it…But, well, you’d probably stand out if you wandered through the hospital in this. You can secretly change after lights-out and sleep in them.”

“Are you looking for gratitude?”

“What in the world has been getting on your nerves?”

“I guess you won’t understand unless I spell it out for you.” Xóchitl’s head swiveled, and she glared into Unabara’s eyes again. “What’s been getting on my nerves? You grinning like nothing even happened.”

“?”

“The original copy…You picked it up, didn’t you?”

Xóchitl’s gaze lowered to stare at her hands.

Slowly opening and closing her five fingers, she said, “Originally, my body—save for one-third of it—was supposed to be a complete dummy…And what happened? You tore every bit of it off before I even realized it. I’m still coming to grips with the difference in our skill and capacities as sorcerers.”

Before, a certain sorcerer’s society had ground away two-thirds of her physical body and made it into raw materials in order to weaponize and wield a powerful original grimoire. And Unabara was the one who had privately saved her.

Xóchitl moved her gaze from her palms to Unabara.

“…You’re holding on to the original copy, aren’t you?”

“It’s here.”

Unabara used a hand to open the collar of the suit he was wearing.

There was something like a holster there, like for holding a gun, but a rolled-up book written on animal skin was stuck inside. Before Xóchitl could examine it more closely, Unabara returned his suit to normal.

“Even after turning my flesh to dust, I couldn’t control it—and you can command it without doing anything?”

“Well, no…Frankly speaking, it feels like it’s taking everything just to keep it suppressed.”

Unabara’s voice was relaxed, but he understood a fraction, at least, of exactly how fearsome this original copy was.

And of how irregular Xóchitl’s situation had been—she’d been made into a mere specimen in order to use something like this as a piece on a game board.

“What happened?” asked Unabara.

It was the question he’d held onto ever since they’d reunited. He’d spoken it now because he decided Xóchitl’s body and mind had stabilized enough to do so.

Xóchitl fell silent for a moment, turning her face away from Unabara. With her brown-skinned cheek facing him, she muttered:

“You know of our fight against the American research institution, right? Against Scholarship City.”

“Yeah, and the particulars, too. I heard an official announcement say it had been destroyed by terrorists who had purchased an older, low-cost fighter jet.”

“The truth, of course, was that we launched a magical attack on it.”

That was all she said before going quiet again, but just for a few moments.

An open, straightforward battle between Central America’s largest sorcerer’s society and a nation that was, on the surface, the global police force. She would have contributed to that war from the back lines.

“I screwed up,” she said, as though delivering a boring report. “At the last possible moment right at the end, I violated orders a tiny bit. The price I paid was letting them mess with my body quite a bit. Considering our society’s codes, they were in the right.”

That couldn’t be true. Unabara had been a part of that society for a long time, but he’d never heard of any instances where they’d crush someone’s body to fuse it with an original grimoire, no matter how grave their crimes.

“There was nobody to stop them? Tochtli? She was your war buddy, right?”

Unabara knew it was over and done, but he couldn’t help saying the name of another girl—Xóchitl’s colleague.

But Xóchitl shook her head.

“I haven’t seen her since before they carried out my sentence. I was just a weapon until you extracted the grimoire. Maybe Tecpatl would know—he was in command of the operation—but I haven’t seen that creep since then, either.”

Xóchitl leveled her gaze again at Unabara’s suit…where the original copy was stored away.

“In the end, it wasn’t a matter of the magician’s natural gifts. It seems like the idea of trying to use a grimoire’s original as a convenient tool was too much to ask, given the limits of the human body. Even after all that, I was at the mercy of the grimoire’s every whim.”

“…I think I agree with you on that. Original grimoires aren’t something you can simply use as a trump card. Even if you use teamwork to bring out a power you don’t understand, it would still only invite destruction…Actually, with Group and me…Joking aside, if I caused them any trouble, they’d probably put me through the ringer.”

For some reason, Xóchitl was quiet for a moment.

“…Teamwork, huh?”

“?”

“Never mind. When you talk about your friends now, I’m sure the first people you think of are people I don’t know.”

“Xóchitl—”

“Don’t try to tell me I’m wrong.”

The brown-skinned girl blocked Unabara from speaking, as though creating a thick wall between them.

“Whatever your reasons were, the fact is that you defected to Academy City, and now you’re doing secret work as one of their pawns. You knew that would constitute a betrayal of the ones you once called friends. I mean, look at me— You took me down. That was some great teamwork, eh?”

Xóchitl spoke quietly, admitting that she’d lost while rubbing salt in the wound anyway. When she saw Unabara’s expression tighten slightly, she finally made a satisfied—but slightly gloomy—face.

“Isn’t that right?”

After saying that, Xóchitl averted her face slightly from Unabara.

She pursed her small lips, and in a voice low enough that she didn’t know whether he could hear her, said:

“…Etzali, my brother.”

For an instant, time stopped.

And before Mitsuki Unabara could make any reaction, the hospital room door flew open with a bang!!

A blond young man with sunglasses, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, burst into the room.

“Unabara, you bastard!! How the hell are you gonna explain what she just said, nya?!”

“Etzali, stand back!! They must be new hunters from the organization!! Damn, did they decide they needed to get rid of me along with you?!”

Before Unabara could advise her that, no, this visitor was a complete weirdo but not an enemy, Tsuchimikado stomped closer to him, veins popping out of his temples.

“Unabara…!! Does this mean that you had a little sister back in your homeland all along? Then what are you doing falling head over heels for a middle school girl in Academy City attending Tokiwadai?!”

“Wait, I…What are you talking about?!” Unabara’s shoulders gave a major jolt.

Xóchitl, who had previously been cautious of Tsuchimikado, stopped moving immediately after hearing him talk, then turned to stare at Mitsuki Unabara again.

“…A middle school girl? You don’t mean you betrayed the organization for a reason like that, do you?”

Unable to deny this, Unabara started sweating bullets. He avoided looking her in the eye. After all, it wasn’t as though he was infatuated with that girl just because she was in middle school. It wouldn’t have made a difference if she’d been in high school or college instead—he wasn’t some huge lolicon who had risked his life because of his inclinations.

“Wait, she called me her brother just now, but our relationship in the magic society was more like teacher and student—that’s all!!”

“In other words, a stepsister!! That’s actually even better, nya!!”

Amid Unabara’s and Tsuchimikado’s cries, Awaki Musujime peered into the room from outside.

We came here to gather everyone together for a job, but if it was going to be like this, wouldn’t solving this on my own have been a better idea?! she considered, relatively seriously.

She spoke to Accelerator, who was leaning on the wall nearby, without looking at him.

“Brother, sister—what are they even talking about? I swear, we’re about to head for a battlefield with bullets flying everywhere, so I wish they’d act a little more appropriately.”

INTERLUDE ONE

Academy City, District 1.

This district, lined with nothing but facilities presiding over judicature and administration, had none of the vitality of the other normal districts. Residential areas were absent as a matter of course, but restaurants were also few and far between. In exchange for condensing the mechanisms required to maintain a smoothly running megacity into one area, this district held only the bare minimum needed to function as a human settlement.

It was a sprawling, highly mechanical landscape, and yet, mixed within that zone was one extremely peculiar building:

The General Board office building.

Considering how it occupied an entire skyscraper, it went beyond “office building.” Combined with the fact that its upkeep costs were 100 percent paid for by taxes, the term palace might have been more appropriate. In any case, it was an extremely extravagant building, and it had been prepared for but one of the twelve leaders of Academy City.

That man’s name was Thomas Platinaburg.

Thomas—the building’s owner—was currently standing in a vast, gorgeous room within his tower that resembled the audience chambers that could be found often in RPG castles. The space, used for meetings with visitors, took up one whole floor.

His surroundings were currently absent of subordinates, however. Given his position, it wouldn’t be strange if Thomas brought countless bodyguards with him, but he purposely distanced others from this expansive room. And right now, this official General Board member was, in fact, meeting with a guest.

A guest he’d called personally from outside the city.

A guest who was a sniper for hire.

She was a tall woman. Fair-skinned, with long blond hair. Her beauty could have easily earned her a spot to shine under stage lights, rather than stand on muddy battlefields. But at her feet, as she sat on the sofa, was a bag large enough to fit an entire person, most likely containing her “tool of the trade.”

She was relatively famous in the industry—though Thomas didn’t know whether being famous was an honor for their particular line of work.

“How is Mr. Sunazara doing, Miss Stephanie Gorgeouspalace?”

Thomas named two people.

Stephanie was the sniper’s name. And Sunazara was the name of the man that sniper had looked up to as a master.

The woman nodded straightforwardly in response. “Things are going well. He hasn’t woken up yet, though. Still, it’s all possible because of the Academy City life support equipment you lent us, and so you have my thanks. Without it, he would have been gone by now.”

“No, no. It pains me quite a lot as well. It seems we had a minor disagreement and some other minor issues, but your friend was still harmed by one of Academy City’s people.”

Once before, five secret organizations—Group, Item, Block, Member, and School—had fought, and several had fallen apart. Chimitsu Sunazara had been hired by one of them and subsequently lost to someone from a different organization. The bomb he fell prey to had blasted an entire building apart, leaving him heavily wounded and comatose.

When Thomas Platinaburg had heard about the news, he had secretly retrieved Chimitsu Sunazara and sent him and a life support–equipped bed out of the city to Stephanie.

Not out of pure kindness, of course. It was to indebt her to him, to bring him business that would be to his benefit.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who would you like me to target?”

“Oh, yes. I will prepare the documents separately, but…You may know his name already. Academy City’s number one—the Level Five known as Accelerator.”

This request wasn’t made as a representative of Academy City. On the contrary, it was an extremely personal ambition.

On September 30, Accelerator, who had engaged an Amata Kihara–led Hound Dog force in battle, raided Thomas Platinaburg’s personal residence while searching for information and even fired a shotgun at Thomas himself.

And this here was his act of retaliation, pure and simple.

Of course, it was retaliation in two ways—both simple revenge on an emotional front and a clever way of disciplining his subordinates who couldn’t keep things under control.

“Can you do it?”

“If you tell me to.”

Her answer was what he’d expected. He’d had the “consideration” to distance his subordinates from the actual talks, and above all, Thomas had prepared a trump card.

“When firing on the target, there is no need to worry about collateral damage. No matter who you involve in the process, we will cover it up…Yes, and if you wish to fill Saiai Kinuhata and the other former members of Item with lead the way they did to Mr. Sunazara, that’s be fine by me.”

“Well, well. This on top of everything you’ve already done for Mr. Sunazara. Yes, Academy City’s technology is truly a wonderful thing. I have never seen healing devices quite like that.”

“Ha-ha. There’s more than just good technology in this city, but I’m proud when it finds peaceful uses.”

“Yes, quite…It is incredible that you managed to place a small transmitter inside Mr. Sunazara’s wounded body. It seems slightly different from a basic nanodevice, however. Still, one cannot quite find something so miniaturized inside a body anywhere else.”

A moment later.

A chill permeated the room’s air, all the way to its corners.

Except…it wasn’t the air. Not on close inspection.

It was just Thomas Platinaburg himself, perceiving the world around him again, this time through the filter of terror.

“Please, wait.”

Thomas held out a hand to stop her.

“I’m sure you’re well aware of how vital the technology that went into that life support machine is. It may be downgraded to an extent for use on the outside, but it still has incredible value as Academy City tech. We wanted to deliver Chimitsu Sunazara to you as swiftly and safely as possible. However, we cannot have our life support technology leaking to external actors. That was why we put that in him. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to get Mr. Sunazara, sleeping in his bed, to you this quickly.”

“I see.”

At this time, Thomas Platinaburg failed to notice something. No one could reasonably blame him, but it was a fatal oversight.

After all…

Stephanie Gorgeouspalace never normally spoke so politely.

And the other fact…

…was that purposely changing her tone like this meant she was suppressing her emotions to an extreme degree.

“Well then, aside from the grain-sized transmitter, he’s been fitted with devices that give off shocks, so you could stop his four major organs at any time with one signal…Is that also part of the basic safety precautions?”

A shock of another kind shot through Thomas’s body.

An unpleasant sweat dripped down his skin, all over his body.

But it was already too late.

The next thing he knew, Stephanie, who had been sitting on the couch, quickly blurred and appeared directly in front of him. She reached out with her right hand, and with the feather pen she’d gripped in it, stabbed it straight into Thomas’s gut.

Thomas didn’t feel the pain of his flesh tearing.

There was no time for that.

“I fear I must return the favor.”

When Stephanie pulled the feather pen out, there was a small transceiver in her hand. What had she buried in the wound? And the transceiver’s frequency—what was it supposed to send a signal to? When Thomas came up with a guess, he felt the fear of death so clearly it paralyzed his most basic sensation of pain.

“Your poor tricks were a mistake. If you had been up-front about returning Mr. Sunazara and making this request of me, I would have been glad to be your pawn.”

“…Wa…Wait…”

Thomas Platinaburg, face trembling, glared at the assassin…and more specifically, at her thumb on the transceiver. Abandoning the polite speech he’d been using for show, he made his final attempt at negotiation in a ragged voice.

“…If you…cause a mess here…it could get in the way of your revenge…If you would be up-front…about letting me help you…you could easily…avenge Sunazara…”

“Oh, yes, I forgot to mention one thing,” answered Stephanie immediately, without seeming to have particularly given it much thought.

Almost like she was cutting the conversation itself off.

“My revenge is against all of Academy City.”

An instant later, she pressed the transceiver button.

The transmitter buried in Thomas’s wound responded quickly, executing a special electric shock. It swiftly stopped four of his organs, which put an end to him as well.

His final moments were one long scream.

Without so much as a glance to the fallen corpse, Stephanie pocketed the transceiver, her expression annoyed at the triviality.

She began to hear the pattering of footsteps nearby.

Thomas’s black-suited bodyguards had probably heard his screams and were finally coming. Judging from the number of people she noticed on her way to this reception room, she estimated there would be around two hundred of them.

But Stephanie’s expression was utterly unconcerned. Humming to herself, she unhitched the fasteners of the giant bag at her feet, then withdrew her “tool of the trade.”

It was no sniper rifle.

Her weapon of choice was a light automatic shotgun.

She could carry it around, with effort, but it was a special firearm, based on the high rate of fire of a machine gun and normally used while mounted on a tripod, except its ammunition was purely shotgun rounds. A custom gun, designed just for Stephanie, with enough destructive power that firing at point-blank range would transform an armored car into a crunched-up aluminum can.

The reason Stephanie, who nominally worked as a sniper, had brought a direct weapon like that was very simple.

“Mr. Sunazara took potshots from afar.”

At last, mixing in a somehow nostalgic tone, Stephanie Gorgeouspalace finally returned to her usual voice as she spoke to herself.

“But isn’t it simpler to get up close and start firing like crazy?”

Bam!!

The massive doors crashed inward.

At the same time, a calamitous storm thundered out from her shotgun.

Her revenge had begun.

CHAPTER 2

A Simple Yet Complex Point
V.S._Calamity .

1

“I see.”

The voice of one of the General Board members, Shiokishi, drifted into the camper.

That didn’t mean such a prominent city figure had personally visited the vehicle Accelerator and the others were aboard. No, it was simply a live-video call, displayed on a screen.

“Well, I’m glad you could resolve the Hula Hoop issue without much damage … But still, I checked the battle report you sent, and I have to say that you’re all incredibly high spec. As always,” the man continued, his tone half appalled.

For once, Accelerator and the others were in agreement: This was the last person they wanted to hear that from.

Pictured on the large screen was not a soft old man who would look good in a tuxedo.

Well, maybe he was like that on the inside, but at a glance, you wouldn’t be able to tell, because…

He was wearing a powered suit.

It increased the user’s physical abilities with highly elastic wires and powerful motors, which in turn was covered by thick armor. The stocky mech, better described as weapon than armor, was making Shiokishi’s elegant chair creak.

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

They didn’t know who of the four he’d spoken to, but Shiokishi’s tone was casual. He didn’t appear unhappy, even though his subordinates looked at him the way someone might regard a crazed person.

“Calmly think it over for a second and you’ll understand. This world we live in has no shortage of things that can end a person’s life. People often say ‘I can’t believe that happened to him’ or ‘He wasn’t a person anyone would hate’ … But that’s absurd. Humans die when their time comes, whether or not there’s an apparent reason. And all the more true for someone in my position. I’m of the opinion that anyone who wants to escape the grasp of sudden misfortune has no choice but to be on guard at all times.”

With his heavily armored hand, he rapped on the caramel-brown table in front of him.

“That’s why I excuse myself from meeting with you all in person, instead using video feeds and the like. Why let others know where I am? One can never be too careful.”

“What’re you so scared of?” spat Accelerator. “I bet you’re just holed up in some nuke shelter.”

“Are you saying I should stop worrying if that’s true? Perish the thought. We’re in Academy City. Let’s see—Musujime, was it?—the thickness of the walls doesn’t mean much if you have an ability like hers. Even now, I’m scared someone might throw a bomb inside this room.”

“…You may be on the General Board as well, but you seem quite different from others on it, for instance, Monaka Oyafune.”

The one who said that was Mitsuki Unabara. It was probably because he’d been in contact with said board member during the Hula Hoop incident.

In contrast to Shiokishi, Oyafune started by trusting others, then trying to advance matters through compromise and cooperation—a rare sight in the General Board, which was mostly a collection of blackhearted men and women of authority— But…

“No, that’s simply how she defends herself.”

…Shiokishi saw it differently.

“It’s rather like the Self-Defense Forces. She makes an appeal to her harmlessness on the basis that she doesn’t possess any apparent offensive capability, denying others any excuse to attack her. It’s a high-level technique in its own right, and one I certainly can’t imitate … In the past, though, she used to be quite the aggressive negotiator. Her daughter must be the main reason that she …

“Still, even with this, I feel uneasy,” noted Shiokishi, wrapping his hands around his stumpy powered suit. “I would be slightly more reassured if there were cyborg technology that let me change out pieces of my very body instead of having to equip a machine like this. But it seems there are many problems on that front as well. Understandable, too—precision equipment starts to die after around five years, and having major surgery each time to exchange artificial organs would be too much of a strain. It would be less taxing to take those artificial organs and consolidate them all into a life support machine, put that into a powered suit, then wear it on the outside. And while cyborgs still have bodies with limited capacity, you can add as much machinery to a powered suit as needed. I will admit that as a development of the hospital bed and the portable oxygen tank, it is nice, but if you asked me, I—”

“Mr. Shiokishi,” cut in Tsuchimikado. He knew that once this board member started rambling about his stupid obsessions, they’d never hear the end of it. “I assume you went through the trouble of contacting us for more than a basic combat report. It would have been faster to go through The Voice on the Phone if that was all you wanted.”

“I’m sure you had a faint idea, but I have the agent that normally commands you elsewhere at the moment. More than one incident is occurring in the city, after all …I thought he’d stop before things got out of hand, but to think that youngster at our table would be taken out.”

“…”

“There’s no reason to be distrustful. No need to fret over undisclosed information—everything is connected. If you all do what you need to do, everything will become clear sooner or later.”

The camera wobbled. “Sugitani? Minobe?” said Shiokishi shortly before someone outside the video frame grabbed the camera and restabilized it.

“On that note, I’d like to request another job of you.”

“…Are you saying that we’re looking at back-to-back crises?” asked Tsuchimikado again, remembering the past death matches between the five organizations of Group, School, Member, Item, and Block.

Shiokishi, however, shook his powered suit helmet. “It’s nothing that serious. Essentially, I want you to mop up the leftovers. Associates of what used to be Spark Signal, the ones who attacked the Hula Hoop, still seem to be hiding in Academy City. If we leave them to their own devices, they may come up with strange contingency plans.”

Their associates.

Ones who sought information about Dragon, one of Academy City’s deepest, darkest secrets.

“I’ll forward you the target details, but this should be easier than the Hula Hoop incident … At least, easy enough that you won’t need too much time to prepare. After surviving something like that, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble dealing with them. That’s about it.”

Shiokishi moved to hang up, but suddenly, Accelerator asked:

“…Ever heard the word dragon before?”

“A famous word. I believe it’s in the title of one of our video games beloved the world over.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue. If Shiokishi had said he didn’t know, Accelerator could have pressed the issue, but a reply like that left him no room to maneuver. If he pursued the subject any further, Shiokishi would just evade it.

Whether he knew about Accelerator’s intent or not, Shiokishi clapped his thick steel palms together a couple times and wrapped things up by saying, “You’re all students, too. Get this trivial stuff out of the way, and you can go back to leading your own lives.”

2

Tonight was Rikou Takitsubo’s welcome-home party.

Having suddenly ended up in a position to prepare for it, Shiage Hamazura and Saiai Kinuhata had bought a large amount of silly party favors in a District 7 shopping area.

“…Hey, I don’t get this. Why am I in a movie theater, and why are we the only ones in here two minutes before the show starts?”

“I’m a short-film expert, so it’s super-okay. And these are the ten-minute-long kind so you can watch a bunch of in a row with five minute breaks in between. If you do the math, we can watch two and still totally make it in time to meet up with Takitsubo.”

“Wait a second—none of that explains why it’s empty except for us two.”

“You’re being too loud and I’m like totally holding it in right now, so please don’t talk to me, Hamazura.”

You want to watch that badly, huh? he thought, shoulders drooping.

Kinuhata’s hobby was watching movies, but she didn’t seem very interested in blockbuster Hollywood films or the like. But when it came to B movies, or anything bad enough that it could be called a C movie, she couldn’t seem to pass it up.

“Gwah, this is awful. It only just started, but I can already tell from the first two minutes that this movie is totally gonna suck…”

“Well, that’s usually how it goes when you get me involved!!” shouted Hamazura at the top of his lungs in the dark, since there was nobody else in the seats anyway. “You were the one who dragged me into this theater!!”

But Kinuhata, not caring one bit about what Hamazura had to say, shook her head, expression downcast. “No, no. That’s totally not it. I don’t want to watch C movies that are self-aware, where they’re like Yippee, let’s all make a really dumb C movie!!— I want to see the natural ones, the ones where they were super-serious about taking on Hollywood but had so many problems they ended up being C reels.”

“Yeah? The fact that the setting of this one is supposed to be the near future but the heroine is wearing a dress straight from the Middle Ages with no explanation. I can put that down to the world building, but…Doesn’t this story take place in the middle of winter? Did they film it during the summer or something? Everyone’s sweating, and now I can’t think of anything else.”

“Hamazura. Look at the left side of the screen. You can totally see a smokestack from a thermal power plant on the opposite shore…”

“Are you serious? That completely ruins all the SF atmosphere they worked so hard for! I heard about bad shots where planes fly over while filming, but the least you can do is make sure ahead of time that none of the buildings are wrong!!”

Even Hamazura, who didn’t particularly have a thing for movies, had his head in his hands at this one. For a short while, Kinuhata was fidgeting, thighs rubbing against each other, but finally she said, “I can’t hold it in any longer. I totally don’t have it in me to stick this one out. I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll put all my eggs in the next short-film basket.”

“What? I have to go it alone?!” cried Hamazura in a fluster, but Kinuhata had already swiftly left the screening room.

With nothing else to do, he looked back at the screen, intending to kill time rather than seriously enjoy the movie, then noticed that they were having some kind of strategy meeting that was leading right into the climax.

… What? The map behind that noble girl…

Hamazura, whose eyes had become like a dead fish’s, abruptly started paying attention again.

… A map of Martian craters and mountain ranges? Why isn’t it a regular world map? Why would they go through the trouble of hanging a map like…Waaaaaaahhhhh?!

Then, like he’d been hit by lightning, his eyes ballooned.

They said it was a midwinter story, but it wasn’t an Earth winter at all!! They pretended like it was, but it was actually a “what if” set in modern times—and on a bizarrely developed Mars!! So when the cast was looking all hot, it could have been natural depending on how they did the terraforming. That smokestack before wasn’t a filming slipup … Gwaahhhh!! It got me!!

The story had suddenly gotten a thousand times better in the last five minutes. The boring first half had been planned all along. The filmmakers wanted these five minutes to really shine, so they purposely left viewers in the dark earlier. Like giving someone a cup of water after a difficult marathon.

If anyone used this method in a hundred-minute feature-length film, the viewers would simply hoist the white flag long before the end. But this was a short film. It was over so quickly that even if the beginning was incredibly boring, the audience would just idly keep watching along. It’d all been calculated.

Uwaaahhh! Uwaaahhh!! Uwaaahhh!!!!! What is this? This isn’t a C movie. They’re seriously filming like they 100 percent wanted to compete with Hollywood!! You’ve gotta be shitting me. This thing is only ten minutes long. How’d they manage to do more world building than some trilogies that are just going through the motions?! How did they cram so much in it and still disguise it so you wouldn’t be able to realize earlier?!

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” At this point, Shiage Hamazura couldn’t help laughing. He seriously considered kissing Saiai Kinuhata’s feet at this point. Yes, he understood now—the point of wading through so many terrible low-budget short films was to hunt for new talent like this. The overwhelming feeling of discovery made Hamazura keep laughing, but…

Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.

He felt someone’s eyes on him.

Nervously, he turned around…

There was the girl, the peerless lover of movies, who had only just returned from the bathroom.

With a face that screamed “Damn it!! How could I have walked out on such an interesting work?!” she was peeking into the screening room from the slightly ajar door and trembling all over.

After the screenings ended…

I see, so the director’s name is Beverley Seathrough. I’ve gotta look her up … thought Hamazura, mentally taking notes as Kinuhata walked next to him.

At the moment, Kinuhata was walking like a limp fish, with no energy and a pitch-black, thunderhead-like aura around her, wearing a face like it was the end of the world.

“Kinuhata? Hey, Kinuhata. Don’t worry. You’re a winner at life. I would never, ever have seen that work of art by myself. There are as many movies out there as stars in the sky—but you found that one. Your antenna is the real thing.”

“…And now Hamazura is totally pitying with me. C movies are all about luck. Maybe this is totally a sign my senses aren’t what they used to be…,” Kinuhata muttered.

Right as they were thinking they’d go back to the hospital to meet up with Takitsubo after wrapping up their side-adventure, Kinuhata’s cell phone suddenly went off.

For a few moments, the flaccid, dark-eyed Kinuhata didn’t react, but eventually, she took out her phone with strangely delayed movements and put it to her ear.

After a short exchange, she eventually hung up and looked at Hamazura.

“Hamazura, please, like, go pick up Takitsubo without me. You totes know where to go, right? If you just go to the booth in District 3 and wait for me there, it would be cool.”

“Eh?”

“It’s a job. The higher-ups are finally starting up a new team, so they want us all to, like, get together and slaughter a bunch of terrorists threatening the city. I guess they’re some people who used to be called Spark Signal.”

3

“…Wasn’t Saiai Kinuhata supposed to be going to her secret meeting place?”

“…Saiai Kinuhata went to her secret meeting place, totally got fed up within five minutes, and came right back.”

As soon as they ran into each other again, they began to argue.

They’d split up earlier, but before Hamazura reached the hospital, he’d been accosted by the returning Kinuhata…He wondered if there was some kind of transmitter on him, but it didn’t seem particularly like it.

As they walked on foot toward the hospital (final closing time was past for schools, and so the last trains and buses had already left), Hamazura asked, appalled, “What the hell happened? Weren’t they making a new team so you could fight some terrorists?”

“Yes, but listen to this.”

Kinuhata began relating some of the events she’d just experienced.

After coming to the dimly lit underground area, Saiai Kinuhata looked around at the faces waiting there. She frowned, and then with perfect timing, her cell phone went off, and she heard these words through it:

“Heya, thanks for coming. Item, School, Block, and Member got destroyed in the last battle, right? And so, I have for you … … Ta-daa! A new team made up of their survivors! I know you were killing one another before, but I hope you get along great!”

“Hey, wait, no, you’re yanking my chain!! Something weird made its way into your story right off the bat!”

“At first, I thought it was a joke, too, but it was super-serious. I totes couldn’t put up with them, so, like, I ran away and came back. Oh, right—the Heart Measure girl in the dress totally told me to say hi to you, though.”

“…Great. I’ve got a sinking feeling I know exactly who that is.” This made Hamazura literally droop, but then he looked up again. “Wait, then will you be all right? Those phone people seem to have a lot of authority. They gonna let you off batting away their orders?”

“Well, probably not. That’s why I want you to help me with something. If I can do the whole thing by myself, they won’t be able to complain.”

“Huh?” The boy’s eyes went wide.

Kinuhata put it plain and simple. “Steal a car from around here and, you know, get us transportation like you always do. We’ll use it to chase the so-called friends of Spark Signal, the guys who attacked the Hula Hoop, and mop them up real nice. We can’t afford to let Takitsubo wait much longer. Let’s get this over and done with, lickety-split.”

“Just you wait. Weren’t you just going on about how I didn’t need to answer to Item anymore? Did you think I wasn’t serious when I said I want to wash my hands of this shady business and support my beloved Takitsubo—”

“Then you can just go by yourself with Takitsubo and totes leave me behind even though she’ll probably be super-worried when I never come no matter how much time passes but just as long as you have fun and everything, it’s fine I guess.”

“Damn it!! We worked so hard on this welcome-home party, and you’re just gonna leave an unpleasant aftertaste?!”

“If you don’t like it then get moving and get us a car please so we can bust some Spark Signal terrorist skulls and then celebrate our girl getting discharged from the hospital come on Hamazura come on!”

With her even using a soft, coaxing voice near the end, Hamazura, teary-eyed, swore and shoved his hand into his pocket. Out came what looked like lock-picking tools.

Keeping one eye on Kinuhata as she used her cell phone to get in touch with Takitsubo and tell her to go ahead of them to the nearby District 3 private salon on her own, Hamazura easily unlocked the door of a family car parked on the road.

“Man, you’re really the type to rely on acquaintances, huh?”

“Did you, like, say something, Underling Hamazura?”

4

The camper with Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Awaki Musujime, and Mitsuki Unabara in it had arrived at District 3, a gathering place of celebrities and rich socialites.

As Tsuchimikado displayed the orders sent by Shiokishi on their big screen, he said, “There are twenty holdouts. With as many submachine guns and grenades, evidently…So yeah, it does seem like an easy job, like the boss man said. Apparently, their main job was to support the guys who messed things up at the Hula Hoop.”

“Sure, killing them would be simple,” said Accelerator from the simple bed he sat on, rolling his eyes over to Tsuchimikado in a glare, “but are we just gonna keep doing everything those General Board shitheads tell us to? Depending on how we play this, we could be close to a chance at getting a glimpse of Dragon.”

“Are you suggesting we fight alongside those former Spark Signal terrorists? With the ones who would take over the Hula Hoop and kidnap children to use as negotiation tools?”

“…”

“From our perspective, it only makes sense to investigate Dragon. But we can’t do it the wrong way. These former Spark people are all garbage human beings. If we leave them be, they could take over some random building…But if you’re willing to get innocent people involved while investigating the mystery, then the four of us would be finished.”

Accelerator sucked his teeth in annoyance.

He was the epitome of evil, a Level Five treated as a living strategic weapon. He was even dropped out of a bomber once. However, he had a strong aversion to harming civilians—more specifically, harming the world where a certain young girl lived peacefully.

After Accelerator fell silent, Musujime was the next one to speak. “These holdouts—where on earth are they hiding?”

“They’re moving through the underground mall that’s beneath the station. It’s closed up already, so no civilians are there, but if they went all the way up there, they must be thinking it won’t be very hard to break through security.”

Most open-air markets stayed active until late at night, but the ones attached to stations were an exception. Because the last train was scheduled to match up with the school’s closing time, stores in the underground mall closed up early, too.

Using the remote, Tsuchimikado pulled up a map of the mall. “They probably know by now that their main force at the Hula Hoop is gone. They seem to be going through the mall to reach vehicles parked elsewhere, and from there, they’ll make their next move. Still, we’re not sure whether they’re simply running or trying to shift to a Plan B that involves high-powered weapons.”

“Where exactly do they have their getaway cars?” asked Unabara.

Tsuchimikado idly pointed beyond a wall of the camper. “There.”

“…I’m sorry?”

“I gave the driver instructions to cut them off. If we wreck their cars first and have one of us wait here, Spark Signal won’t get their way, at least for a while.

“Of course, we won’t be stopping there,” added Tsuchimikado. “We’ll leave our anchor here, and the other three will do mop-up at the mall. It’s fine—Musujime can do pinpoint sniping with her ability, while Unabara and I can pretty quickly crush them in the confusion.”

Accelerator, of all of them, was the one who suddenly frowned.

As Number One glared at him, Tsuchimikado grinned thinly and tapped his own neck. “You just came from fighting back at the Hula Hoop as well as dealing with Department Store, right? Save your electrode battery.”

“Tsk.”

Accelerator didn’t have any particular responsibility to obey, but he also didn’t need to be the one to offer them assistance. If those idiots would take care of the small tacks, he decided, he could just leave them be.

At that point, the camper stopped moving.

As Tsuchimikado reached for the rear door leading outside, he said, “Let’s go give ’em the usual fight to the death.”

5

When it came to one’s wallet, the underground mall in front of the District 3 station was the kind of place a person needed some courage.

The area the former Spark Signal members were proceeding through was already closed and unpopulated. This section dealt in various kinds of sports brand clothing; uniforms from world-famous soccer leagues were lined up in year order. Those who knew their value would be okay with the cost, but for those who didn’t, the price tags this place was buried in were completely inexplicable.

“(…Over there. Low-recoil submachine guns are made to be used in one hand, but attaching a heavy grenade on it defeats the purpose. Fortunately, it looks like this will be easier than we thought.)”

“(…Shouldn’t we still consider the dangers of grenades being used in an enclosed space?)”

Tsuchimikado and Unabara were discussing their plan in hushed voices as they peered around a corner of the hallway.

Cell phone in hand, Tsuchimikado got in touch with Musujime, who was waiting slightly farther afield.

“Targets sighted at point BBE. Can you see them?”

“I’d like to tear them all a new one now. Would you mind giving the signal?”

“Count down from five. Start at the edges and move in.”

Tsuchimikado hung up and gripped his handgun in both hands.

Twenty terrorists, formerly of Spark Signal, ventured through the dark, closer and closer to their position.

Exactly five seconds after hanging up:

Tap.

Almost without any noise, a corkscrew had penetrated one of the armed terrorists.

Normally, Awaki Musujime’s Move Point didn’t make a sound. The soft tap was likely made by the flesh near the wound as it was pressed inward by the corkscrew that had suddenly appeared, ignoring three-dimensional space.

A scream rang out.

But at first, the armed band didn’t realize they’d been attacked.

Continuing further, corkscrews attacked a third person, then a fourth.

The terrorists were grouped together in one cluster as they watched their comrades in the front, back, left, and right all fall down at once, writhing in pain. That was when they finally realized the situation they were in, but since all four victims had fallen together, the ones still on their feet couldn’t figure out which direction was safe to escape toward and instead ended up staying rooted in place.

They could expect their prey to be frozen in confusion for only two, maybe three seconds.

And Tsuchimikado didn’t let that slip.

“Here we go,” he said quietly to Unabara, before bringing his gun up from around the corner.

Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

Bang!!

A gunshot and a flash—clear as day this time—and another terrorist fell. Now that there was a clear enemy, the remaining units began to counterattack with their submachine guns as they retreated, firing in Tsuchimikado’s direction while looking for anything they could use as shields.

As he and Unabara attacked with pistols from the front, Musujime, who had gone even farther around them, used Move Point and shot through one Spark Signal supporter after another.

In the blink of an eye, the group was down to half its original number.

But then:

“(…Crap, the grenades!!)”

Seeing his opponents’ fingers reach away from their the triggers on their firearms to another one close by on the gun, Tsuchimikado focused on those points and fired.

But they got the better of him.

All of them, about ten now, completely synchronized, aimed their grenades at Tsuchimikado and Unabara. Ten explosives fired off at the same time, arcing toward them while revolving through the air like soda cans.

“… Jump!!” hissed Tsuchimikado, leaping through the glass window next to them in the passage. It shattered as he landed inside the store.

But Unabara didn’t follow.

He reached out for a large button on the wall. It was for the shutters, which were for both crime and fire prevention.

After he slapped it with his palm, a thick metal wall slammed down right before the grenades got there.

It blocked the explosives.

Boom, boom!! Enormous blasts rattled from beyond the wall, wrenching the shutter inward toward them. Still, any fire-hot gales and fragments that made it through wouldn’t be able to hurt Unabara.

“You idiot!!”

However, Tsuchimikado was furious.

“Why’d you reduce our chances to attack?! If we give them time, it’ll only make their counterattacks stronger!!”

To get around the shutter, the pair tried going through the broken window and the store, but the seconds it took drastically affected what happened next.

Whoom!! A new blast split the air.

It hadn’t been to attack Tsuchimikado or Musujime or Unabara.

“!!” Tsuchimikado hastily checked the passage and saw, past the dust cloud, a large hole in the ceiling. That was right where Spark Signal had just been. The wreckage that had fallen was piled up just like a staircase, giving them a perfect route up to the surface.

And now, the former Spark Signal members were nowhere to be found.

They’d made a clean getaway.

“Damn it!!” swore Tsuchimikado loudly, grabbing his cell phone. He called up Accelerator, who was waiting aboveground. “They got out of the mall!! About ten! We’ll get up there with Musujime’s Move Point, but leave your position and pursue them!! They probably aren’t going back there anyway!!”

6

Even Accelerator, who was waiting behind the front lines, managed to get a good view of the explosion.

White stuff was billowing up; he didn’t know if it was smoke or disintegrated building particulate. As he made his way in that direction on his crutch, he received even more information:

The asphalt had been blown away, as if something had erupted from below.

Debris was scattered everywhere, while nearby car and restaurant windows had been shattered.

Was that girl crouching and holding her head…bleeding?

He heard groaning and crying from around him, mixed with the sounds of approaching ambulance sirens.

The Spark Signal troops must have already fled.

“(…Villains.)”

As Accelerator watched those caught in the cross fire moaning indecipherably and the curious onlookers who had come to see what was happening lollygagging their best, he slightly, ever-so-slightly, clenched his teeth.

“(…A bunch of piece-of-shit villains go charging in, and this is what they pulled out?)”

Tsuchimikado and the others were probably chasing Spark Signal like honest idiots, but Accelerator didn’t really feel like going along with the whole thing. He’d honestly started to consider just shooting them alongside the targets.

His fingertips had just begun to crawl slowly up toward the switch of the choker-style electrode at his neck when it happened—

A much louder wail drifted to him.

There were a lot of people confused by the sudden incident, but this voice went beyond that. Reflexively, he looked toward the source and got a little closer. He saw a boy, about high school age, yelling at an ambulance crew. The crew member seemed to be trying to give medical aid to a woman the boy knew, and the boy was desperately trying to stop him.

“…?”

The woman looked like she was in college, or maybe older. Somewhere around there. The papers that had fallen out of her bag were school-related, so maybe she was a teacher. She seemed more gravely wounded than the youth, who had a line of blood trickling down from his forehead. She was unconscious, lying limp. Normally, you’d think she needed medical attention at once, but…

“Just stop!! Stop!! Don’t give her that medicine; you can’t give it to her!! If you do, it’ll have the opposite effect!!”

“But if I don’t give it to her, she won’t make it to the hospital! Do you know what her heart rate is right now?! And she doesn’t have any allergies to this medication. Why on earth are you refusing her treatment?!”

The high schooler and the paramedic both seemed worked up about an urgent problem.

“…Look, you just can’t,” said the boy, clinging to the paramedic’s arm, his voice sounding squeezed from his throat.

“She’s…She’s pregnant.”

The crew member’s face turned to blank surprise at the word. There was no need to question why and who it had been.

The high school boy looked away but continued frantically working his trembling lips.

“You hear all the time about how drugs that are fine for normal people have bad effects on the baby, don’t you?! What about those meds? Is it really safe?! She could die, you know!!”

“That’s…I…”

It was a delicate problem. A great deal of medicine was developed on the premise that it wouldn’t be used on very small children or pregnant women, so they probably hadn’t done any real testing to check how safe it would be for a pregnant patient. Theory was one thing, but even a medical professional wouldn’t know exactly how things would turn out in practice.

“I’ll be honest. When I heard she was pregnant, everything went black. I had no idea what to do. I wished the whole problem would disappear, like fog. Actually, I still do. Really. Why did this have to happen?”

The high schooler bit his lip after his rambling, then continued.

“We were walking around here, and it would sound good if I said it was for a date, but she was trying to calm me down because I was so panicked. I kept asking myself what I should do, but I had no idea. But this isn’t fair. It can’t end like this. What did I want to do? Did I want to break up? Then why am I still clinging to her now…?”

For a moment, he fell quiet.

Moving his lips furiously, he continued, his voice scraping.

“I don’t want to lose her…”

The shaking high school kid finally had tears in his eyes, and he shouted with all his might.

“Maybe I have to make a decision, but this is bullshit!! I don’t have a clue what I should do, but I don’t want to let things get decided for me like this!! Please, do something!! You’re an expert at saving lives, aren’t you?! Please, save them both!!”

The ambulance crew member faltered. But think about it as he might, there was only one thing he could do.

One possibility was to not save either of them, and the other was to definitely save at least one.

He was a professional, and if someone had asked him to choose, he already knew which it would be.

“…I’m using the tonic. At this rate, they’ll both just die.”

“But…!!”

As the scrupulous tirade continued, both men heard the clatter of a crutch on the ground.

“Move.”

It was Accelerator.

“Huh…? H-hey, wait! This is for professionals to hand—!”

Without waiting for an answer, Accelerator shoved the paramedic aside with one hand and took his spot. He crouched there, then reached for his choker electrode switch. After that, he slowly reached for the pregnant woman’s belly.

Once before, to save a certain little girl, he had reverse calculated from skin-level electrical signals to completely analyze her entire brain structure.

From his point of view, gathering precise information on a baby by touching the mother’s skin was a piece of cake.

… Sex, female. Weight, 244 grams. Nourishment supply level, 3,825. Mental activity rate, 3.8. Heartbeat, 60. Stimulation response rate, 5.52. Cytodifferentiation, 88…

After closing his eyes for only a few seconds, he finally turned off the electrode.

To the paramedic, who was on his butt on the ground, he said, “The tonic. Two and a half grams of Ectorin. Attach a coating-type chip to the carotid and inject it over five doses, ten seconds each with a short break of twenty seconds in between. If you do that, you’ll save them both.”

“Wait!!”

It was not the crew member but the high school boy who argued.

“What’ll happen to the baby if we do?!”

“That’s what I just did those goddamn calculations for, shithead!!” shouted Accelerator in return.

The kid, overwhelmed, fell silent in spite of himself.

Ignoring him, Accelerator continued, “If you really don’t want them to die, do what I said. If you medicate with the values I gave you, it won’t harm the mother or the child. You don’t want both of them to die because you’re fussing over the details, do you?”

Having said as much as he intended to, and without waiting for a reply, he looked at the paramedic.

“You’ve only got five minutes to decide if you want to start. You want to save them both if you can, don’t you? Give my method a shot. You’re using the damn tonic anyway. No reason to refuse, right?”

The paramedic shook his head, then eventually took a strip out of a handbag. It looked like a stick of gum. He put the thing on the woman’s neck, like Accelerator said, and then peeled it off again after a short time before repeating the process.

Finally, he’d done it five times, just as Accelerator had told him to.

“ … Uughn … ”

They heard a quiet groan.

At first, her companion didn’t know whose it was.

But then, the moment the unconscious woman opened her eyes a crack—

He honestly felt like he was going to collapse on the spot.

“…No effect on the baby, either. Cell division rate looks fine, too,” said Accelerator, turning his electrode on for a short time and doing a quick examination with his fingertip. “Get her to the hospital,” he said to the paramedic. “And also, take it outside District 3’s jurisdiction and into District 7. It’s a little longer to get there, but their hospital would never turn someone down. With a delicate patient like this, not every place will accept her, even if you request it normally. In the end, it’ll be quicker to bring her somewhere that will take her no matter what.”

Finished, Accelerator turned his back to them.

He couldn’t afford to stay here forever. He needed to be sure he wiped out all his targets, now also to make sure this situation didn’t happen again.

But—

“Hey!! Wait up— Hey!!”

It was the high schooler from before. Accelerator didn’t turn around to his shouting, but he did stop rather than leave.

The boy rambled to his back. “Thank you. If you hadn’t done something back there, I would have lived the rest of my life an empty shell.”

“…Get lost already.”

He’d muttered that, but maybe the high schooler hadn’t heard him.

He continued. “I won’t forget what you’ve done. I’ll never forget that you saved something more important than my own life!! At some point, I want to make it up to you. So—”

The boy’s words cut off.

The cause was a sharp clack and a dull impact to his cheek.

Something hard and black was pushed up against his forehead before he knew what was happening. It was a small gun. Accelerator had pulled it from his pants belt and hit the kid’s cheek with the grip, then pressed the muzzle against his brow. Maybe it would cause a new commotion, but Number One wasn’t the kind to care about that.

“Get lost,” he repeated.

For a few moments, the teenager was speechless. He backed away a few steps. Finally, he bowed his head to Accelerator. Very deeply. Then, he turned around and ran in a straight line to the ambulance with his acquaintance on it.

After the vehicle drove off, Accelerator returned the gun to his belt and took a slow look around.

“…”

He mumbled something.

But no one heard it.

Eventually, his slender finger reached for his electrode’s switch.

Gra-bam!! An explosion rang out.

Neither the victims nor the curious onlookers at the scene saw anything of Accelerator after that.

However.

They would say they saw giant new cracks in the asphalt, as though they were the traces of a monster’s wrath.

7

The family sedan Shiage Hamazura drove (after stealing it) was on its way from District 7 to District 3. They were on an elevated road bypass. Currently, he was chasing some terrorists to help with Kinuhata’s job, but…

“Hey, what is this? Hey!! What is that crazy thing following us?!” cried Hamazura after glancing in the rearview mirror, then turning his head to check behind them. He was baffled.

No one could really blame him, though.

“An HsAFH-11 Hexawing—an unmanned attack helicopter, by the looks of it,” said Kinuhata with the kind of mild irritation someone might get from being stuck in traffic.

It resembled an Apache or something, clearly a military helicopter since it had wings with missiles and stuff attached to it. But it wasn’t that brand specifically; its jumbled wings each split in three, and with a loud cracking noise, it now had six wings. They moved and rotated as though they were human arms with joints, lining themselves up with their target.

And all six had the hots for the car Hamazura was driving.

At least it was polite enough to match their speed. As he stared at the low-flying helicopter in the mirror, he felt his throat dry up.

“This is horseshit!! Okay, fine, I stole a car so we’d have transportation! But that’s all I did! And they sent that after us?! Is that normal?!”

“Does that look like one of Anti-Skill’s toys to you, Hamazura?! They’re totally not the ones who sent that!!”

“Then what? Are those terrorists you’re chasing intercepting us? You’re telling me they have stuff like this?!”

“No. Hexawings are unmanned weapons belonging to Academy City’s air defense forces, right? Some rando dregs would never be using it for combat.”

“So it really is Academy City?! The leadership is after us?! There’s only one reason I can think of! It’s because you ignored the instructions you received on the phone and went home!!”

“…Hmm. But are they really that, like, short-tempered?”

“Why are you so calm about this?! Do you understand our situation?! How fast do you think a military helicopter can fly?!”

“Hmm? Well, it’s, like, an HsAFH-11, so about three thousand kilometers per hour max, right?”

“Mach 2.5?! How is it still classified as a helicopter?!”

“Relax, they can’t use the rocket engines while the wings are deployed. The wind pressure could, like, damage the joints. Right now, it can only go three, maybe four hundred kilometers per hour.”

“Considering we’re in a car, I don’t think the difference matters!!”

As they argued, the Hexawing aligned its movements with the car’s, and in relation to them, it practically seemed like it had stopped dead. Hamazura didn’t know the specifics, but it appeared as though it had finished locking onto them.

“Now what?! If it hits us with a missile or something, it’ll take us out in one shot!!”

“We’ll have to pray it uses short-range antitank missiles,” said Kinuhata with a ridiculous notion, while leaning down and squirming around as she tied some kind of rope to herself.

“That would definitely take us out in one shot!!”

“No, no,” said Kinuhata, sitting back up. “The short-range anti-armor missiles used by the Hexawings totally seem to be SRM21s. So they must be using, like, infrared sensors to lock onto us.”

“And?! Who cares if it’s ultra-shortwave radar or infrared or ultraviolet?! Now that it’s after us, we can’t get away!! Do you have any idea how fast those missiles will fly at us?!”

“Oh, calm yourself. Have a smoke or something, dude.”

Hamazura hacked and coughed. “A road flare?! You can’t light one of those in the vehicle!!”

“I can’t? But I can totally use it like this, see?” said Kinuhata, sticking out a tongue. She opened the passenger seat window and hurled the flare outside.

A second later, a relatively short-looking missile blasted out of one of the Hexawing’s armlike wings.

Hamazura thought his heart would stop for a moment. But as it turned out, the missile didn’t hit the car and send it flying away in roiling flames.

The reason: the road flare.

By tossing out a dummy heat source, they’d gotten the short-range missile to veer off course.

“Hawt,” noted Kinuhata casually.

The threat, though, wasn’t gone yet.

Ka-bam!! The missile, diverted toward the smoking flare thrown above the road, exploded. They’d avoided a direct hit, but the intense blastwave was coming straight for the car. Its window glass shattered, and the car’s body shook around unnaturally. As the car threatened to spin out, Hamazura desperately fought to keep it under control, lest the wheel be taken from him.

On top of that, as the Hexawing fanned away its own flames with its gusting rotors, it continued to pursue Hamazura’s car.

He could floor it, since there were few cars around, but a casual commuter vehicle would never be able to use its speed to shake an attack chopper.

“Now what? You probably only had one of those things, and if that thing’s predictive function learns our response and switches weapons to a machine gun, flares aren’t going to work as defense anymore.”

“Hamazura, just hush and take a left at the next fork.”

“Huh? What did you say? The wind is blowing too loud for me to—”

“Hhnnnn!!”

Without saying any more, Kinuhata suddenly shoved the hand brake lever up from the passenger seat.

Ga-clunk!! The car rapidly decelerated and began to slide sideways in a drift.

The abrupt diagonal movement caused the car to charge straight into the left-hand side of the road.

“U​w​w​w​o​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?!”

Panicking, he put the hand brake back and moved the wheel. If he was careless enough to step on the brakes, the car was sure to spin out. Instead, he purposely used only slick steering ability and didn’t decelerate, bringing the car’s motion back on its original vector.

“What’s the big idea?!”

“You, like, want to survive this, right, bro? After this, go straight on this big road. It’s super-big, three lanes on each side, but keep the car from swerving as much as possible and keep going straight.”

“Did I get myself into a terrible mess without realizing it?”

“That’s par for the course, isn’t it? Anyway, just go totally straight.”

“Are you sure about this? I know it might not work, but shouldn’t I try to weave to throw off their aim…?”

Hamazura drove the car as Kinuhata directed, even while grumbling to himself. He looked around, foot depressing the accelerator. This area had a lot of high-rise buildings, meaning the Hexawing would also naturally go straight if it was following the car. If the helicopter moved around without care, it’d probably crash into a building wall.

Plus, there was the occasional signboard sticking out from a building, and other paths crisscrossing above the elevated highway, meaning the Hexawing lowered its altitude as it chased the car. Within moments, it had sunk to a point just over the ground, about the same height as the car or a little higher.

“Hey, Kinuhata, are we—? Pfft?!”

When Hamazura glanced at the passenger seat, he sputtered in spite of himself.

Saiai Kinuhata was leaning out of the passenger-seat window—well, no, she was doing far more than that. Almost her entire body, save for her legs, was outside the window. With her slender feet parked on the seat to keep her stable, she was pointing the gun in her hand behind the car.

But the car, moving forward, was obviously creating a massive stream of wind.

“Wow! Ow-wow!! Ow-wow-wow, those dainty bits!! Kinuhata, that’s way beyond a panty flash but panties what are you panties going to panties?!”

Kinuhata fired a bullet through the car into the driver’s side door, then said, “…Keep your eyes on the road and, just like, focus, please.”

“Yes ma’am!! But panties!!”

Ignoring the weirdly excited boy, Kinuhata took aim at a point behind the car again. Almost as if in tandem, the Hexawing’s machine gun barrel moved with it.

“Kinuhata, that won’t work!! Maybe if you had a high-caliber cannon, but some 9mm gun can’t bust through a military copter’s armor, can it?!”

“…I’m using self-destroying bullet tips, duh. They’re made of clay-like paper material, so if I shoot it indoors, it totes won’t hurt any allies. They’re designed to break up super-easy.”

“Then it should be even worse against armor!!”

“Who said I was trying to penetrate the armor?” sighed Kinuhata.

“I’m trying to shoot out the air intake for its engine, obvs.”

Bang-bang! Bam-bam!! Gunshots repeatedly rang out. They converged on what looked like a hole right underneath the helicopter’s rotor.

Like cars, helicopters obtained energy from reactions between fuel and oxygen, so when building one, the designers had to include a hole to suck in the air. If an impurity became lodged inside, it would stop the engine—and probably bring the helicopter down.

In general, though, the air intake would have several countermeasures in place to prevent issues like that from happening. Normally, it would block the entry of dust from the downward air the rotors created and had a fine net that stopped impurities from getting inside. Something nine millimeters in size probably wouldn’t get sucked in.

However.

This point came with an important footnote.

Saiai Kinuhata’s bullet tips were designed to break apart. They were created from a papier-mâché-like material. To prevent ricochets in cramped areas, they broke into pieces the moment they impacted with the target.

Yes.

Into pieces—pieces like the ones you get from breaking dry papier-mâché.

The bullet-tip fragments, now mere particles finer than sand, rushed mercilessly between the metal grating’s tiny holes that protected the air intake. And with the impurities now inside the engine, they immediately caught fire and made the engine break down. This led to the entire Hexawing’s available lift decreasing dramatically.

With a boom, smoke rose from the helicopter’s engine.

The Hexawing’s nose veered ever so slightly from the road’s direction—and not a moment later, its side began scraping against the asphalt.

The machine was loaded with a large amount of aviation fuel for the rotors, special combustion agents for the rocket engines, and explosives like missiles and gunpowder. The explosion was fantastic.

“Freaking sweet—I did it!!”

Kinuhata wriggled back into the passenger seat like a snake, but Hamazura didn’t have time to watch.

A massive shock wave, the likes of which were incomparably larger than what the short-range missile caused earlier, was heading for the car. In the blink of an eye, Hamazura lost control of the steering wheel, and this time, the car actually did start to spin out.

“Shit! Kinuhata, use Nitrogen Armor!! If it can block sniper-rifle rounds, you should manage!!”

“Wait, what about—?”

Kinuhata tried to yell at him in opposition, but there was no time to listen.

The car, completely out of control, slammed hard into the elevated highway’s side wall.

“Guh…”

After losing consciousness for a moment, Hamazura sat up slowly. He’d been launched outside the vehicle, but he’d avoided injury by hitting a synthetic fiber balloon filled with a lot of water. They were lined up on the sides of the road to soften impacts during accidents.

Where’s Kinuhata … ?

He glanced around, looked at the busted sedan, but he couldn’t find any sign of her. He didn’t know how long he’d been out for, but she’d probably woken up before him. Maybe she couldn’t find him and went off to do her own thing.

INTERLUDE TWO

Stephanie lived in a hopelessly peaceful nation, and she wanted for nothing in her life. The tepid, safe environment was exactly what made her start questioning things (or what gave her the time to do so), and that made her decide to fly out into the world. She was a civilian, and her motive for going to the battlefield as a mercenary was an extremely puerile one: She was concerned, as many are, about the distortions in society. She was at an age where she couldn’t allow people to go on suffering the way they did. An age where she wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t do things herself.

And then.

The civil war in Costa Rica became the first hell she’d ever experienced.

A baptism—not for an official soldier, but the kind reserved for mercenaries. The new recruit was assaulted by incomplete intelligence. They’d been told there would be attack helicopters, but not that the helicopters were equipped with extra electronic devices and machines linked up with swift antipersonnel ambush radar setups on the ground. It had found Stephanie and the rest of her mercenary unit’s hiding place in the underbrush, and a rain of rocket fire had descended upon them from above.

Their patchwork unit was annihilated that very day.

All of her comrades ended up in worse shape than mere corpses. None of their dog tags even remained, supplied on loan from their client. In Stephanie’s case, it was nothing short of a miracle that her head and limbs were all still attached. But being the sole survivor hadn’t been something she’d achieved on her own merits.

A large-bore antitank rifle had penetrated an attack helicopter’s fuel tank from very far away.

That was when she’d first come across Chimitsu Sunazara.

Unlike Stephanie, he went to battles alone, without particularly forming any teams—a rare type of mercenary. He’d picked her up after she had been wounded and saved her life. No, it wasn’t just that. Stephanie had come to this battlefield with half-assed, biased knowledge. Without Sunazara reteaching her all the skills she’d need, she would have ended up on some other battlefield in the same exact situation and died a dog’s death.

Stephanie decided to stick with Sunazara even after the civil war ended. It was partly because she looked up to him, but she couldn’t deny that she’d done it for a shrewder reason—staying by someone strong was a surefire way to survive as a mercenary.

And as they traveled to more and more battlefields, Stephanie suddenly realized something.

She knew what she got out of this relationship, but what was Sunazara getting out of it?

He was a sniper, a mercenary who acted alone. He’d never formed teams before. Apparently, it was because allies had held him back and dragged him into a desperate situation before, but then why would he want to take a newbie like Stephanie along? She was pretty sure his motive wasn’t that he just wanted to have a young woman wait on him hand and foot.

She’d never directly asked Sunazara the reason, but she eventually built up a general idea from the things he’d casually do and say.

Maybe Sunazara was tired of the life.

Because of his job, he was almost guaranteed to kill others. Even if he avoided vital spots and aimed for arms or legs, his high-speed, high-powered rifle bullets would tear limbs right off and cause them to die of blood loss, agony, and shock. Snipers pinpointed their targets from far away—he’d never be able to use less powerful rounds.

On the other hand, Stephanie’s realm of expertise was not long-range sniping.

She’d fooled around with sniper rifles, taking after Sunazara, but she knew they didn’t match her personality on a fundamental level. She was best in high-speed combat after closing to extremely close ranges.

And there was no rule that said she absolutely had to kill her hostiles.

She fought her enemies inside ten meters, five meters, and occasionally one meter. If she used low-powered handguns, she could shoot their limbs and end the fight without killing them. And if she didn’t know if someone was an enemy or not, she could also opt to use martial arts to disable them.

Maybe Sunazara, who only ever killed, envied her options and flexibility. And maybe it was crying for the moon, but perhaps Sunazara had viewed those choices—and her—as valuable.

As he put his sniper’s skills to good use, he analyzed Stephanie’s movement patterns and gained the ability to close in to middle and close range without making a noise.

Maybe then, if he did that, he could use low-powered rounds and shoot his opponents in the limbs, creating tactics that could end conflicts without killing.

Of course, doing things you aren’t used to on a battlefield brings mortal danger with it.

However.

If he could use those tactics, then it would be fine.

If those tactics failed, then at least it would decrease the number of people who died at his hands.

…Maybe that was what the taciturn man had been thinking.

When she considered that, she decided she wanted to save him.

Using a method other than the worst one, the one that Sunazara himself unconsciously longed for.

In spite of all that, Stephanie’s determination would, in the end, come to naught.

Group, School, Item, Member, Block. Sunazara had participated as a mercenary in the conflict between five organizations in the darkest parts of Academy City and had been beaten instead, leaving him a comatose patient in critical condition.

And by curious coincidence, in a situation Sunazara himself would probably have described as “the meagerest salvation born of a worst-case scenario,” Stephanie Gorgeouspalace now swore vengeance.

Even knowing he hadn’t asked for it.

But she did anyway, against the one person who had granted him a path to salvation through the utterly banal, trivial method of death and violence when it should have been more complex, more nuanced—she vowed vengeance against Saiai Kinuhata.

CHAPTER 3

Destruction Opens Yet Another Path
Battle_to_Die.

1

Accelerator and the others had returned to the camper.

The air was heavy.

There was normally no festive, jovial mood when the four were together, but this was far worse. The camper interior was tense beyond the breaking point. The stress could have killed small animals.

“…And so, everything goes the way Shiokishi wanted it,” spat Accelerator. “Anyone who tries to learn about Dragon gets erased wholesale. I bet those guys we took captive in the Hula Hoop aren’t alive anymore, either.”

“Sugitani, you said his name was?” said Tsuchimikado suddenly, leaning against the wall. “Back when Shiokishi made that video call to us, he said the name of a couple of subordinates—I think they were Sugitani and Minobe.”

“Still,” said Musujime tiredly, her fingertip playing with her hair. “I wonder what Dragon is, in the end.”

If it was a question they could answer so simply, nobody here would be suffering, but she couldn’t help asking it.

Unabara glanced at Tsuchimikado for just a moment. Tsuchimikado, a sorcerer like him, gave no reaction, so Unabara decided to put in his own two cents. “Unlike all of you on the science side, I happen to be on the magic side. If you want my opinion, the term dragon has religious connotations to it. For example…Angels.”

Accelerator’s shoulders twitched when he heard the word.

All because of one night:

September 30.

That night, Accelerator and Hound Dog’s Amata Kihara had fought to the death over a girl named Last Order. And there, he had witnessed something he might call an angel. A mad dance of glowing wings, each over ten meters long. There were still parts about the incident that day he didn’t fully understand, but he’d done some of his own research and figured out a few things:

The wings’ appearance was connected to Amata Kihara and Last Order.

And the name of the virus Kihara used that day was ANGEL.

He lived in Academy City, so he couldn’t just discard it as something magical, something occult.

It could be that Unabara’s viewpoint was completely misguided, and that Dragon really was something entirely different…but if there was a possibility that angel and Dragon were connected, Accelerator wouldn’t be able to stay uninvolved. It would link Last Order to Dragon, Academy City’s best-kept secret.

… What aren’t we seeing?

From the start, Last Order and the other Sisters had supposedly been created as materials for the Accelerator experiment. They should be useless now that the experiment was over. And yet, they were very deeply related to the city’s depths.

At this point, he had to start wondering whether his initial assumptions were wrong.

In other words, whether there had been something else to the Level Six shift experiment.

If all these results had been in accordance with someone’s plans, they could have conceived the experiment as something designed to fail from the outset.

… What have that brat and I gotten wrapped up in?

Accelerator didn’t personally care what happened to the former Spark Signal members who had occupied the private salon. But the fact that they could have gotten clues about Dragon in that situation only to have them snatched away made him feel worse, powerless.

“For now,” continued Unabara, “the string of incidents starting with the Hula Hoop has ended, so…that would mean we all go home now.”

“What about Dragon?” asked Accelerator pointedly. “We gonna go hide under our beds without finding anything?”

“…What, then you’d rather raid Shiokishi’s hideout?!” spat back Tsuchimikado, amazed. “Considering he wears a powered suit around the clock, he’s serious about protecting himself. His home base is probably as strong as a reinforced fallout shelter. We’re not going to get in so easily—after all, he would have designed it assuming people like us were the ones coming for him.”

Without a word, Accelerator turned his glare on Musujime. She had a means of transportation that ignored three-dimensional limitations: Move Point.

Musujime, however, shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think how we do it is the issue.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only that we can’t peacefully invade a fortress of that scale. We’re up against one of Academy City’s twelve leading figures. To put it bluntly, we’d need the resolve to become terrorists on the level of those at the Hula Hoop.”

“…If we could ally with someone equally prominent—in other words, one of the General Board’s official members—we might get in smoothly from using politics or have the fortress itself be opened,” added Unabara. “Though that’s predicated on the assumption that there’s someone like that we can ally with, of course.”

Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Awaki Musujime, and Mitsuki Unabara each had people they needed to protect. Considering that, unraveling the Dragon mystery through terroristic brute force wasn’t a very good plan.

Academy City’s number one thought for a moment or two about a certain young woman, casually looking over to the camper window as he did so—and then, suddenly announced, “Doesn’t look like we have much time to prepare.”

“?”

Not understanding, but deciding to observe what Accelerator was staring at for now, the rest directed their gazes out the same small window.

A moment later.

Ga-boom!!

The payload of a portable antitank missile launcher collided with the camper, the explosion transforming it into scrap iron.

Naturally, it would take more than that to kill the likes of them.

The camper had several entrances and exits. Tsuchimikado and Unabara each jumped out separate doors, Musujime used Move Point to escape, and Accelerator used his ability to bust through the wall himself and flee in the direction opposite where the missile came in.

The four, however, didn’t group back up and confront their new enemy—or anything of that sort.

They each fled, scattered, following different routes. That was how Group did things.

… Must be Shiokishi. We learned too much about Dragon during these incidents, and now we’re targets, too, predicted Accelerator calmly, diving into a narrow alley for the moment. Which means it’s likely he put together an assault team in full knowledge of my “weakness.” Instead of trying to kill me in the shortest possible time, they make it a battle of attrition to drain my electrode battery. They know I’d break them like toys if they just rushed in.

For a moment, he wondered about the camper’s driver, but he didn’t spare him many thoughts. He hadn’t heard any screams right after the blast hit. The driver was probably an accomplice; it was likely they fled before the attack.

… But that doesn’t mean I have to stick to running away like they want me to. It’s actually a plus that I know who the enemy is now. Better than not knowing who I’m fighting anyway. If I find their group first, then exploit the right blind spots to wipe them out, I won’t have any issues.

And to use a tactic like that, he’d have to shake them off for now. He took a left, then another left into an alley, trying to get a look at the enemy lines from behind.

Greee.

All of a sudden, Accelerator’s electrode shut off.

… ?!

Accelerator, who had been adjusting his leg force using his vector ability, promptly lost control and fell to the road. It wasn’t purely a physical problem. A thin sensation akin to a numbness racked his brain, right up to the deepest parts of his mental faculties.

As though he were drunk or sleep addled, his thoughts became incoherent and lost their continuous flow.

He understood his current state of being on the ground but couldn’t connect that to any thought processes that could tell him what to do next.

What had attacked Accelerator as he squirmed along like a caterpillar was a very simple phenomenon.

Someone had controlled his electrode switch remotely.

And if it had affected him despite being deep inside an urban canyon, they were probably spreading the remote-control waves over a wide area. Accelerator’s ability borrowed power from an electromagnetic network composed of almost ten thousand military-grade clones, and if he was cut off from that, he wouldn’t be able to use his ability at all.

Normally, Accelerator would have been able to consider all this in an instant—and even think of a countermeasure.

But in the current situation, he’d been robbed of the very ability to think.

“…”

Gritting his teeth, the fallen Accelerator looked at his right hand.

It held a homemade crutch he’d added features to for times like these.

It had all kinds of motors and sensors built in, but it hadn’t retained any function to suitably carry Accelerator when his ability was removed. Right now, he faced the very real problem of not being able to get up.

In the meantime, he heard several sets of footsteps getting closer.

He could feel a sense of crisis at something, but he couldn’t concretely relate that to what he should do in response.

“…”

Footsteps approached from the other direction, too, where the alley let out. He was boxed in now, but Accelerator couldn’t even calmly analyze the sense of danger.

Someone grabbed his arm. Then they threw him into the passenger’s seat of a sports car parked near the alley’s mouth.

There was nothing he could do. The car zoomed off, driving through the nighttime streets at a high speed.

As the distance from Shiokishi’s pursuit unit increased, the remote-control waves lost effectiveness, which gave Accelerator his faculties back. Number One returned his electrode switch to normal, glared at his crutch, and then looked at the driver.

“…You?”

He remembered the face.

It was the high school–age boy who’d gotten wrapped up in the explosion in District 3. He was supposed to be with the wounded pregnant woman and heading for a hospital in District 7…

“Why are you suddenly so surprised?” asked the high school kid, dropping the sports car to a legal speed. “Anyway, I guess your body really does move when it has to. Thanks to that, I didn’t have to let the person I owe my life to—no, someone who protected something even more important—die.”

The high schooler smiled from his eyes.

Accelerator, however, pulled his gun from his pants belt and smoothly leveled it at him.

“…You learn quite a bit, even in a bullshit world like this,” he spat. “Rescues in the nick of time don’t happen very often, for example. Especially if one of the General Board members, Shiokishi, set up this raid. I’d never coincidentally run into a familiar face.”

“…”

“You’re the same as me, aren’t you? Someone who lives in the world of evil. Who put you up to this? Did Shiokishi think up a two-layered trap?!”

The high schooler, gun trained on him, looked not at Accelerator but straight ahead.

“You are right…,” he said, the words coming out like molasses. “I’ve got the same scent as you. Totally different grade, though. My job is to be a lackey and support the big shots like you. Grunt characters bought at a discount and expended wholesale. But,” he added, “no matter how foul I may be, that doesn’t change the fact that you saved someone more important than my own life. And I’m not rotten enough to let a guy like that die without helping.”

“…”

“This isn’t just some cheap I-owe-you-one situation. Totally different level. It’s a debt, and I’m repaying this debt. If you don’t like it, you can feel free to shoot me right now.”

For a short while, Accelerator stared at the side of the high schooler’s face.

He never looked his way.

He was probably convinced he wouldn’t get shot.

Accelerator tsked, then moved his gun’s aim away from him. “Keep going.”

“How far?” asked the young man with a smirk.

Without thinking about it too much, Accelerator answered, “I’ve gotta kill that Shiokishi bastard.”

Shiokishi of the General Board had bared his fangs at Accelerator and the others to make sure certain information on Dragon wouldn’t get out. Once he knew his first wave hadn’t been able to finish them off, he would probably go after the most effective vulnerability.

In other words, he’d take Last Order hostage.

Accelerator presumed he hadn’t yet played that card. If he’d had a hostage from the start, he’d have threatened them before attacking and tried to contain them.

Accelerator had to settle things now, before Shiokishi could move on to plan B.

To defend or to attack?

He had the option of quickly grabbing Last Order and going to ground…but he didn’t think that was a good idea. It wouldn’t be enough. What he wanted to protect wasn’t her alone, but the very world she loved. It was too difficult even for Accelerator to keep fighting while protecting everyone around Last Order at the same time, like Aiho Yomikawa and Kikyou Yoshikawa.

Then what should he do?

After thinking for a moment, a wicked grin came over Accelerator’s face.

What he would do was simple.

Victory favors the bold.

Kill before being killed.

A duel of speed, of which could wipe out the enemy camp faster.

… Well, obviously, thought Academy City’s number one deep down, letting out a low, unintentional laugh. I’m already covered in blood—this suits me far better!!

2

A dull, throbbing pain ran through Saiai Kinuhata’s head.

Stephanie’s automatic shotgun had delivered massive damage despite Kinuhata’s Nitrogen Armor. Without her shielding, Kinuhata was an incredibly frail (according to her) girl. If the shotgun shells kept pelting her, one would eventually be fatal.

… Ow. Taking more than seven hits when I’m super-close, like closer than five meters, would be really bad…!!

Kinuhata did some broad analysis from the damage she’d sustained as she burst onto a slope leading out from the District 3 underground. The subterranean mall was apparently closed off because some terrorists had been running amok, but…

“Nya-ha-ha!”

Behind her, Stephanie laughed, wielding her hunk of steel over a meter long in both hands. The large firearm was extremely strange to see against the scenery of a Japanese city.

“Your escape route is quite straightforward considering you’re running from bullets, isn’t it?”

“?!”

Another volley of shots followed without hesitation.

Bshaaaaa!! A long sound from many short ones overlapping.

Stephanie would have been aiming down at Kinuhata on the slope from aboveground. In other words, the ground, that thick wall of asphalt and concrete, should have gotten in the way.

Nevertheless, a rain of bullets stormed toward Kinuhata.

It was like an avalanche. The scattershot was powerful enough to turn an armored car into a sponge within three seconds, and it took her a few seconds to realize it was even tearing away chunks of the artificial ground. And during all that, a ton of pellets struck her body.

She slammed into the floor once, then bounded back up like a basketball. As she did, she desperately balled herself up to roll over the floor and avoid the concentrated attack. Because the concrete that made up the underground mall’s ceiling (and therefore, the aboveground surface) was destroyed, parked passenger vehicles and such also rolled down in the avalanche.

“!!”

Kinuhata didn’t pause to think.

She grabbed a car falling at her with one hand. Her petite palm touched the door area and made an awful cracking noise. Countless wrinkles shot through the metal frame, as though she’d clutched a cushion.

She’d acquired a hulk weighing about five hundred kilograms, but it wasn’t so she could use it as a defensive shield.

It was a weapon to throw at her opponent and crush her.

That was right when Stephanie Gorgeouspalace stepped on the landslide of concrete wreckage to approach the underground mall.

Her footing was unstable, creating a situation where she wouldn’t be able to immediately jump left or right to avoid it.

And Kinuhata planned on using all her strength to kill her.

… Comin’ at ya!!

She twisted her upper body once, fueling it, and swung around the passenger vehicle. Now she just had to let go, and an attack like a giant, building-destroying wrecking ball would fly straight at Stephanie.

She didn’t know if the woman was a soldier from outside or a mercenary, but she wouldn’t be able to stand up to an Academy City–made Level Four.

That was what she thought anyway.

Ga-krrsh!!

Stephanie’s shotgun struck the vehicle right in the fuel tank.

It was a literal instant before Kinuhata let go.

Wha—?

The car’s rear half transformed into a crushed empty can. Then, all that fluid stored in the tank ignited like a bomb.

Sound vanished.

Her vision was wiped out by a single flash of light.

Struck by the blast wind, Kinuhata’s body hurtled to the side. Intense light and heat rushed into the underground mall, which had little illumination save for its fluorescent lighting, and black smoke crawled along the ceiling.

Her counterattack had been stopped by yet another.

But what surprised Kinuhata wasn’t only Stephanie’s quick wits.

It was the foundation underpinning them.

She’s … used to this? This outsider is super-knowledgeable about how to fight espers like me … ?

Logically, that was impossible. Even within Academy City, where supernatural powers were just a part of life, not many would be able to lead the Level Four Kinuhata around this easily. And there couldn’t have been a whole lot of individuals who could match her technology and tactics from the outside world.

“Wait…”

After realizing that, she unsteadily looked up.

Stephanie, shotgun in hand, was descending the rubble and entering the underground mall.

“Wait, are you…?”

“Oh, you finally figured it out? Before becoming a mercenary, I was an average person who lived in a peaceful country…It was the guilt. I knew there were people suffering out of fear of bullets and artillery and land mines, yet, I could fully enjoy a relaxed peace. That was why I decided to save the people embroiled in warfare.”

As the blonde pointed her hot barrel at her, she smiled and said, “Yes, I was originally from Academy City. I used Anti-Skill’s arresting techniques for killing. That was why Mr. Sunazara, a sniper, looked at you so oddly, wasn’t it?”

So that was why.

Why Stephanie Gorgeouspalace knew exactly how to kill espers.

“If I remember right, you can use the nitrogen in the air to block my attacks, right?”

Slip.

She pointed her light submachine gun in a completely different direction.

“I’ll start by messing that up. Fortunately, there seem to be many delicious restaurants in this underground mall…How many propane gas tanks would you say there are?”

She pulled the trigger.

3

Accelerator proceeded down the midnight streets in the sports car, chauffeured by the high school student. After getting in touch with Tsuchimikado via cell phone, he learned the other members were currently fleeing using their own routes, like he thought. And then:

“Great. I think you’re the first one to get out of the pursuit unit’s encirclement. I want you to go to District 21 now. There’s an observatory in the mountains.”

“Eh? What, does Shiokishi have a shelter in the mountains, too?”

“No. He’s an official General Board member. If we want to take him down, we’ll need to be prepared politically … Meaning we’ll need someone with the General Board’s level of authority. The twelve board members are a wily bunch. The one at that observatory is probably the only one we can hope for any cooperation from,” explained Tsuchimikado, adding under his breath, “Tsugutoshi Kaizumi is a good person, but the brains of his operation is Seria Kumokawa, a female high school student, who is too much of a genius for him to handle.”

“Well, who the hell’s this person who could help us out?”

“Monaka Oyafune,” answered Tsuchimikado immediately. “She’s having an astronomical observation event as charity with the kids who were kidnapped in the Hula Hoop incident … She’s the best person out of the General Board. I don’t like to do things this way, but she owes us. This might be the only chance we ever have to negotiate with her.”

With that, the sports car Accelerator sat in headed for District 21.

This school district was the only mountainous one in Academy City. Nevertheless, its altitude was extremely low, and even the highest peak only reached about two hundred meters. The district was famous for its reservoir as well as its animal and plant research, but many also knew it as a center for astronomy.

Small parabolic antennae, each about one meter across, possibly a type of radio telescope, lined the slope at constant intervals. The mountain roads Accelerator and the student’s car drove up were intentionally free of most artificial light. Skid marks were visible in several places on hilly, curved parts of the road. Maybe they held illegal street races here on weekends.

The observatory was near the center of the mountains.

It was on a large concrete land, the only flat place here, as though rebelling against the mountains’ slopes. The sports car entered the parking lot. When it did, Accelerator spotted a small bus. There was nobody inside; the kids must have been having fun, safe at the event they’d planned to have from the start.

“You can drop me off here,” said Accelerator, opening the passenger door and pushing the tip of his crutch onto the asphalt.

The high schooler serving as his driver frantically interrupted him. “H-hey, wait a minute! What about my debt to you? Even a grunt like me can tell you got involved in something crazy. I can’t just call it quits after giving you a quick lift.”

“I didn’t do anything amazing. If you do any more than this, I’ll be the one who owes you,” said Accelerator, getting out of the car and standing up on his crutch. “…And if you go any deeper, you could end up a target, too. I don’t care what happens to random lackeys, but if someone uses that pregnant lady I saved as a hostage, it’d leave a bad taste in my mouth.”

“You’re…”

“I’ll contact you if I really need help. Stay hidden until then. It’s important to keep the useful pieces stowed away. That’s how we survive. Let me use you like that.”

“All right. Hey, let’s trade cell numbers. If things get bad, make sure to give me a call.”

They both used their cell phones’ infrared communication function to exchange phone numbers.

After that was completed, the high school student finally drove off in the sports car and left the observatory, albeit reluctantly.

Anyway … thought Accelerator with a short sigh.

The number he’d given him was obviously a dummy he’d set up in advance, and he’d rejected the incoming number as well. Now their connection to each other had disappeared completely. It was Accelerator’s way of tying up loose ends.

He looked toward the large observatory building from the parking lot.

In there was one of the General Board members: Monaka Oyafune. The VIP that would be the key to defeating another board member, Shiokishi.

If she was the best person on the board, then she was probably Accelerator’s polar opposite.

He’d never actually talked to her before, but Oyafune owed Accelerator for two things. The first was, as Tsuchimikado mentioned, the fact that they’d saved those kids at the Hula Hoop. The second was when they’d stopped a sniping attempt on Oyafune during the clash between Group, School, Item, Member, and Block.

Tsuchimikado had a forked tongue, so he probably wanted him to use those points skillfully to get her cooperation—and as was clear from Accelerator’s words and actions, no job was more unsuited to him.

… This is going to be a pain in the ass.

He scratched his head, then walked with his crutch toward the observatory. Whatever the case was, he’d have to see her face-to-face and start talking before anything would happen, but…

“Please go home.”

That was quick, thought Accelerator.

Incidentally, the one who had insulted him as soon as he’d opened his mouth in the parking lot a short distance from the observatory had not been Monaka Oyafune, but a short man who appeared to be her secretary. Accelerator didn’t know how many secretaries the lady had or how many she’d gone through, but the man who stood before him appeared highly strung, glaring at Academy City’s number one and blocking his path to Oyafune.

“And yes, even Mrs. Oyafune was very skilled in her time. She excelled in negotiation and bargaining rather than using force, but she was so feared by foreign diplomats they called her tactics peaceful acts of invasion.”

The secretary’s fists, which had never punched another person before, trembled as he spoke.

“But she’s done with that now. She doesn’t live a life of going back and forth between light and dark anymore. Don’t you understand that? You’ve looked at the peaceful world from the darkness all this time. Don’t you know how difficult and important it is to cast that away? Or are you so addled with your world that you don’t even understand that?”

Accelerator tsked in irritation, but it wasn’t particularly toward what the secretary had to say.

… “Most likely to cooperate,” my ass. This just turned into the biggest pain of them all. How dare he use me like some dime-a-dozen minion. Next time I see him, I’m gonna need to put five bullets in him before I’m satisfied…

He felt something seething in his stomach, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he said, “Sorry to bother you.”

“…You’re…giving up?”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me to. What, would you rather stand your ground and make this a bloodbath?”

“Even if I had to, it wouldn’t change what I need to do.”

The secretary’s face paled, as though he’d only just now considered the possibility. But he still wouldn’t yield the way.

Accelerator questioned, “Can I ask you one thing? What the hell happened to her?”

“…Her daughter,” answered the man after a pause. “When the General Board was deciding on provisions related to the restrictions of weapon export to the outside, Mrs. Oyafune, who was anti-munitions, used her own bargaining tactics to gain advantages with it. She truly hated warfare. But then, an envelope arrived at her office. In it were an unused magnum and a picture of her daughter…Nothing came of it in the end, but I suspect Shiokishi, a supporter of the munitions business.”

“…” Accelerator’s eyebrow very slightly, but very certainly, moved.

As though he’d acknowledged Academy City’s number one as a person now that he’d said he’d leave, the short secretary averted his eyes as he continued. “Mrs. Oyafune withdrew from the front lines after that. She’d live in a sphere that doesn’t contact this city’s darkness, but it also blocks what happens in the darkness without them knowing, in such a way that they won’t go after her…That’s how she wants to live now, foolish though it may sound. It’s a very delicate balance—a golden ratio created by Monaka Oyafune, skilled negotiator…If you and yours intervene, that balance collapses. Her daughter and others close to her would end up being targeted again.”

“That so?” muttered Accelerator under his breath.

Just as he was about to turn his back on the secretary, Monaka Oyafune had finally noticed their little squabble. The old woman came running out to where he was. The secretary’s expression changed, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Excuse me, but…Who might this be?” asked Oyafune, mystified, looking at Accelerator.

Accelerator had once saved her life in secret from a sniper’s attempt to kill her, but because it had been secret, Oyafune probably didn’t know who he was.

“…Never mind.” He wasn’t about to boast about it, either. Tsuchimikado had told him to use it to his advantage, but that thick-skinned, shameless bastard could go to hell for all he cared. “Just asking directions.”

Finished speaking, Accelerator started to turn his back to Oyafune and her secretary.

But this time, the secretary began to question him.

“…And what about you? You must have at least known things wouldn’t have gone the way you wanted them to. But you came anyway. Here’s my final question: What happened?”

“Why would you need to know?” spat Accelerator in response. “You turned me down, and now you only want to know what’s going on? It would just add to your burden. You’re better off not knowing what sort of trouble is going on between that bastard Shiokishi and me.”

“…” The secretary’s expression shifted.

Details aside, he’d probably gotten a good idea of what was happening. For whatever reason, he knew that Accelerator needed to fight one of the General Board members, and to do that, he needed Oyafune’s assistance as another board member. Nine times out of ten he wouldn’t be able to beat Shiokishi without her help, and even if he had managed, he’d still be treated as a criminal.

Out of reflex, the secretary looked away from Accelerator. “…Sorry.”

“It’s my problem. Nothing you need to get involved with,” Accelerator replied, sounding tired of the nonsense. “I should have just done this myself to begin with. It might cause some problems, but it wouldn’t have gotten you tangled up in it.”

Once the fight with Shiokishi ended, Accelerator would probably be branded a terrorist.

After losing all support, he’d be unable to live life the way he had been. He wouldn’t be able to see Last Order very easily anymore, either. And if their interests clashed, he could also end up fighting Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Mitsuki Unabara, and Awaki Musujime.

But—

So what?

Hadn’t he made this decision for himself? That he’d keep fighting to protect Last Order, even if he had to make an enemy out of Last Order herself? This didn’t change anything. His course was set—he didn’t have to drag Oyafune into it.

“Sorry for bothering you. Forget what you heard here. I’ll settle the score with that shithead myself.”

Without waiting for an answer, Accelerator turned his back completely this time.

But then—

“What are you doing?!”

Suddenly, he heard a new voice.

It belonged to a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten. It was one of the grade school kids who had been part of the astronomical observation charity event. And it was the hostage boy Accelerator had saved at the Hula Hoop in the nick of time.

“You’re the hero from earlier, right?” the kid tried again. “What are you doing here?”

“…Nothing.”

“I heard you talking before.”

Accelerator and the secretary looked at the boy anew. He’d come closer in the meantime. With no hesitation—right up to Academy City’s number-one monster. Without an ounce of caution, probably because he’d saved his life.

“I didn’t know what you were talking about, but you’re going to fight again, right? To save people in a situation like I was in?”

The boy looked straight up into Accelerator’s eyes as he spoke.

“Then I’m coming, too.”

… Are you kidding me? wondered Accelerator, unconsciously wanting to face-palm. “Get lost, stupid brat. Who’s going to fight with whom, here?”

“Well, those people said they’d abandon us!!”

The abrupt comment surprised Monaka Oyafune most of all. The secretary frowned slightly, as if he had an idea.

“I know you wouldn’t fight for something stupid. And I know you’re going somewhere really dangerous! So I’m going, too. I won’t let you be alone. If there are people in trouble like I was, then I want to fight, too!!”

He had no idea what was happening, but he spoke sincerely.

Considering the child’s practical usefulness in combat, it was an all-too-unrealistic request. Despite that, Accelerator didn’t ignore him and leave. Even though he was looking directly down at the boy, he responded to his honest words with an honest reply of his own.

“…I don’t need your help.”

“But—”

“I was alone at the Hula Hoop, idiot. Did it look like I was ever in any danger from those terrorist insects?”

“I don’t know. I was blindfolded.”

“Right. Then I’ll just tell you—I was in no danger then, and I’ll be in none now.”

That wasn’t true.

Accelerator knew the truth; he reigned over the world of darkness, after all—but Monaka Oyafune and her stocky secretary knew it, too.

Accelerator was strong. But in order to wield his power to its fullest in the darkness, he needed the support of several departments and agencies, not the least of which was the General Board. Losing all that, making them into his enemies, turning all of Academy City’s military against him—that bespoke incredible danger.

This wasn’t his problem alone anymore.

It involved everyone he needed to protect.

They could freely control his electrode and block his abilities whenever they chose. Crawling through the mud and rain during the battle like he did with Amata Kihara of the Hound Dogs would be unavoidable.

But…

“I’m the strongest Level Five in the city. Some random brat doesn’t have the right to worry about me.”

Accelerator didn’t mention any of the hardships that awaited him.

The boy didn’t need to know.

What he said was simple. It was so that he wouldn’t drag the boy into the darkness, so that this child wouldn’t be exposed even to a fragment of the risks that would soon befall Accelerator.

“Listen up. Even if you see someone suffering, grabbing a weapon without thinking and killing the thugs makes you as much of a villain as them. Someone who can murder people just because it makes sense to them, without thinking about other people’s feelings or giving them a chance to become better—you can’t call that a good person. You don’t need to turn into that. That’s my territory. Something I need to do alone.”

That was courageous, and only those who knew the details would have understood that.

Monaka Oyafune and her secretary both only understood a small piece of it.

“I can fight just fine on my own. There’s no room for someone like you.”

“…I still want to,” said the boy abruptly, resisting the gentle words that tore him down. “I still want to fight, too.”

Then the boy looked up at Academy City’s strongest Level Five and shouted at the top of his lungs:

“I don’t want to give Academy City to cowards like them!!”

Other people finally seemed to notice the commotion.

Several men in black, maybe other secretaries or the facility’s security, came up to them, and one placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The gesture itself was gentle, but it was clearly for the purpose of getting him away from Oyafune. Even as the man restrained him, the boy didn’t turn away from Accelerator’s gaze. Even when their teacher came out a few moments later, he looked into his eyes until the end.

Accelerator watched the boy for a while as they brought him back to his classmates at the astronomical observation event. And he wasn’t the only one.

Monaka Oyafune, official member of the Academy City General Board, was watching the boy go as well.

“…You mentioned Shiokishi before, didn’t you?”

“Mrs. Oyafune!!” the secretary said frantically, trying to stop her.

But Oyafune was looking directly at Accelerator. She knew, thanks to the incident with her daughter, how politically fearsome Shiokishi could be.

She also knew the dangers of this battleground that Accelerator was about to enter.

In contrast, Accelerator spoke his next words as though spitting them out. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“By that, I take it…you intend to fight him, like that boy said.”

Oyafune gave a short sigh, considering the boy’s final words.

I don’t want to give Academy City to cowards like that!

The boy didn’t have a particular enemy in mind. In his mind, the “cowards” were just a vague image about the darkness that lurked in the city.

But perhaps that was why Monaka Oyafune thought the way she did. As someone who knew about the city’s darkness but decided to stop fighting—didn’t that make her one of those cowards?

She was merely one old woman who tried to argue things out with the world, without shedding blood or relying on military force, using only her powers of negotiation. Was she not someone who could proudly object to hearing the word coward applied to her?

“…I wonder what I should do,” she murmured suddenly.

“Hell if I know,” answered Accelerator, clicking his tongue, peeved. “It’s your life. You decide.”

The words cut to her core, and despite herself, she smiled.

Accelerator could deliver that line so assuredly because that was how he lived his own life. Even now, he was protecting something.

Monaka Oyafune placed her hand on something nearby.

It was a black, bulletproof car.

She placed her right hand on the expensive vehicle’s roof first, and then placed her left hand on it in the same way. Then, she turned to face the car fully.

Bang!!

She drove her fist as hard as she could into the car.

“Mrs. Oyafune!!” cried the secretary.

But she ignored him. For the first time in a very long time, she’d felt the pain of damaging something in her fist. She turned to face Accelerator again, her expression looking like she’d expelled all the negative emotions she had held deep down.

“…My eyes are finally open.”

“Give me a break. I just decided I’d do this alone like a minute ago, you know,” said Accelerator, almost like asking for confirmation.

“It’s my life. I get to decide,” she answered immediately. “When I received that photograph of my daughter along with a magnum, I decided that breaking my own fangs would be the most appropriate way to protect what’s important to me.”

“…”

“But I wonder why I didn’t think like this: ‘They’ve severely underestimated me by going after my daughter.’ Why didn’t I realize that if I don’t root out the evil, nothing important to me will ever escape them?”

Monaka Oyafune moved to stand directly in front of Academy City’s strongest Level Five.

They stood on equal terms now, not because of any trivial violent power they possessed at their fingertips, but because of something in a different dimension, something that came from a pillar deeper inside the human heart.

Accelerator knew others with eyes like that.

Aiho Yomikawa from Anti-Skill and Kikyou Yoshikawa, formerly a scientist.

“Let’s pay Shiokishi a visit. That would be the best plan. His base of operations is impenetrable, whether by raw power or political sway, but if I add my own authority as another board member to the fight, I can remove the latter obstacle, at least.”

Accelerator tsked in irritation.

But the secretary wouldn’t let it go with just that. “But, Mrs. Oyafune, that method would be—”

“I’ve made up my mind. Even if this person was to leave, I would fight Shiokishi alone. In which case, working together would be ideal, wouldn’t it?”

The secretary, sensing her strength of will, then gave a sharp glare at Accelerator. He’d just said he wouldn’t get Oyafune involved in this so—

“This young man told me to decide. He didn’t force me to do anything. And I decide how I live my life. You’ve no right to blame him. He afforded me the utmost consideration.”

“Damn it…!!”

After cursing, something he would normally never, ever do, the secretary opened the black bulletproof car’s door and groped around the dashboard. He came out with a gun.

But it wasn’t to point it at Accelerator or Monaka Oyafune.

It was the opposite.

“Someone as amazing as you doesn’t deserve to die over something this worthless, Mrs. Oyafune. This person has the capacity to bring happiness to many people on a much larger scale than this.”

With practiced movements, he checked how many bullets remained in the magazine and then glared at Accelerator. “You! Now that you have her cooperation, I expect a modicum of responsibility!! Protect her with everything you have! If you let Mrs. Oyafune be killed, I will turn you into Swiss cheese!!”

“That was good. You know, you might be cut out to be a villain.”

“Would you not say awful things and make them sound like compliments?” he muttered as the three climbed into the black sedan.

Their destination, at last, was the home base of Shiokishi, the General Board’s string puller.

With history’s strongest villain in tow, the General Board’s negotiator Monaka Oyafune rose up once again.

4

Something must have happened to Saiai Kinuhata.

Hamazura and Takitsubo finally guessed as much after sneaking out of the private salon building. The terrorists were no longer in control of it, and Anti-Skill officers were still performing a site verification.

“…I got a message from Kinuhata on my cell phone.”

On the screen of her cutely designed phone was a message saying she was going to lead Takitsubo out of there and to wait for her for a little while. Time had passed since then, but Kinuhata hadn’t shown herself at all. Eventually, the two of them escaped the private salon building on their own.

“Hey, did you get in touch with her? I hope we didn’t pass each other by.”

“I’ve been calling her, but I can’t get through.”

Takitsubo’s vacant eyes stared at her cell phone. Hamazura couldn’t tell whether she was like that all the time, or if she hadn’t completely shaken off the ill effects from the Crystals. She’d already been using them when she and Hamazura first met.

“Hamazura, what should we do?”

“Well, Kinuhata is a lot more durable than us,” said Hamazura. “I mean, she’s a Level Four. And she did send a text. Maybe we shouldn’t make any careless moves and wait for her to get in touch. It would take something pretty crazy to kill her—”

Boom!!

All of a sudden, a huge explosion went off in another part of District 3.

It didn’t blow up a building; it had gone off underground. No sooner did the distant ground start to crack than crimson flames began to erupt from underneath.

Because there was more than one explosion.

Bam-ka-bam-ka-boom!! Several roiling balls of fire flared up at once. The asphalt split, swallowing passenger vehicles parked on the road into its ant-lion pit. Few people were nearby, probably because of the terrorist incident at the salon building, so thankfully it didn’t seem as though any bystanders had fallen into it.

Somehow, the explosions seemed to be getting closer, little by little.

As Hamazura watched, he eventually said with trembling lips, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. This is ludicrous, isn’t it?!”

There was no guarantee Kinuhata was directly involved with those explosions, but flashy bombings like this usually had something to do with people on the “dark” side like Hamazura and Takitsubo. The possibility was higher than zero.

“What’s even exploding anyway?”

“Hamazura, it might be the underground mall.”

When he looked where Takitsubo was pointing, hordes of customers were just starting to pour out of a department store entrance. The smoke had probably come up from underground, and now they were frantically evacuating.

Hamazura looked around and found an entrance to the underground mall that was also connected to a subway ticket gate. After descending the staircase, essentially a smokestack now, an orange-colored light was there to greet them.

It was a hellscape.

There were no flames near where he stood yet, per se. However, the massive, burning orange inferno farther in was flinging tiles from the floor and ceiling and glass panes all over the place, becoming almost like a thick wall made of light. The air itself was strangely warm. It made him feel like he was inside a giant oven.

Something was definitely happening, but there was still no proof Kinuhata was in there.

Hamazura wavered.

This firestorm was far too dangerous to enter to search for someone he wasn’t sure was there. But it wouldn’t solve anything if the flames got to him while he was trying to make up his mind.

… Keep going or turn back…?

“Hamazura, look!!” shouted Takitsubo, pointing at something.

Something was flickering beyond the orange flames. No, it was a silhouette. A small one, standing still, obscured by the wall of fire.

When Hamazura spotted it, he unintentionally cried out, “Kinuhata!!”

The young woman, surprised, turned to look. She wasn’t relieved at seeing the face of someone she knew—in fact, she shouted back, her expression seeming even more tense after noticing them.

“Get down, dumbass!! Hiding behind things won’t work!!”

As soon as he heard those words, he saw it.

Another figure, this one fairly tall, standing behind the flames.

It was holding something long and slender—something that looked like a machine gun.

“!!”

Hamazura pounced on Takitsubo, and they both fell to the floor. The heated tile felt like it was scalding him, but this wasn’t the time to worry.

Ba-bam!!

A volley of bullets flew at them from beyond the flames.

A line of them flew horizontally at about waist height. And the bullets didn’t seem like regular rifle rounds. Not only did they damage the glass-block walls, they tore big chunks out of even the concrete pillars near the stairwell.

“Nya-ha-ha!”

The firing stopped for just a few seconds.

The bullets had ripped through like a tempest, but the shooter probably hadn’t intended to kill Hamazura and Takitsubo. The tall person’s target was probably Kinuhata. They brought the huge gun up again and pointed it in Kinuhata’s direction, and then the tall…probably woman said:

“You’re using nitrogen to make walls, so I figured I could stop you by messing with the air. But it sure is hard to get all the nitrogen out when it makes up seventy percent of the air, isn’t it?”

… Is she the one who did all this…? Hamazura, pressed to the floor of the fire scene, struggled to make heads or tails of the situation. Was she using the propane gas in restaurants or something to turn the mall into a sea of flames?

The way she held her gun…It seemed to vaguely resemble the bearing of the delinquent-wrangling Anti-Skill officers.

But someone who fought to protect children wouldn’t be willing to set an underground mall on fire just to fight an esper.

Someone in the darker parts of Academy City like us … ? That huge gun is clearly different from the terrorists’. Theirs weren’t meant to be hidden … 

The enemy knew how Kinuhata’s ability worked and was trying to take advantage of her weakness.

After considering that, Hamazura took out his handgun.

It was good for carrying around, but with a short barrel, its accuracy at long distances was pretty poor. If he wanted to make sure he hit, he’d have to get within at least thirty meters.

… That machine gun is obviously better than my piece. If she realizes I’m trying to shoot her, she won’t think twice before mowing me down. What do I do? How do I get in close without getting noticed…?

He racked his brain over the question, but his opponent didn’t wait for him. The tall female figure continued, “But if I get the specific conditions right, explosions can create something like a vacuum for a moment, can’t they? Like cutting winds, a strictly localized event…The hole would only be a few dozen centimeters across, but still.”

“?! Hamazura, get out of here right—!!”

“If I shoot a bullet from that hole, you won’t be able to use your precious shield, will you?!”

Ba-boom!!

Several explosions went off at the same time.

They almost appeared to be surrounding Kinuhata’s small frame. Overwhelming flashes of light blinded them, and a shock wave rolled toward Hamazura and Takitsubo as if through a tube.

Hamazura immediately covered Takitsubo’s mouth and nose with his hands and shut his eyes tight. If they inhaled this sirocco, it would sear their throats and organs.

Once the scorching gale had passed, Hamazura finally opened his eyes. Beyond the flames, the tall figure was pointing her gun at Kinuhata.

This was what the enemy had meant.

If she created a localized vacuum, Saiai Kinuhata wouldn’t be able to cover that part with her shield. Then, if her adversary fired a bullet through that hole, the shot would hammer into her defenseless body.

“Kinuhata!!”

There was no response.

Only the awful, continuous rattling from the tall woman’s smoking gun.

5

Accelerator’s group reassembled.

Location: District 2. The area boasted many R & D facilities in fields that created a lot of noise pollution, like automobiles and explosives. Large soundproof walls encircled the district; the place even had noise-canceling equipment installed that worked by emitting sound waves of opposite phase.

“Given the neighborhood, it’s not very populous…Lot of munitions-related facilities, too,” explained Tsuchimikado, somewhat appalled. “Considering the fact that Shiokishi is an armaments fanatic, it’s basically his home turf.”

They were on a street built alongside a large bypass, in an area populated by gas stations and fast-food joints. It might be easier to think of it as a highway rest stop.

Musujime, leaning against the black sedan, asked, “So do we know where this Shiokishi person’s hideout is?”

“According to Oyafune, it’s one of the testing shelters in the district,” Accelerator spat. “They use explosives here, don’t they? They set up model shelters and do endurance tests by hitting them with explosions from different angles. Shiokishi’s private fortress is way tougher, and it blends right into the scenery.”

“And as for Oyafune…?” Tsuchimikado craned his neck, bringing the old woman into his view. A smile crossed his lips. She had changed into a suit.

When she met his gaze, she bowed slightly and said, “Yes, I’m quite prepared.”

“You were having your secretary wait ‘somewhere safe,’ right?” asked Tsuchimikado with a shrug.

Accelerator looked at Oyafune. “Surprised your secretary let you do this.”

“Well, can’t allow any dangerous acts, after all,” she replied vaguely.

Tsuchimikado clapped his hands together. “We have everything we need, so let’s finish this quickly. We’re not exactly going for a polite visit and a pleasant tea party.”

Meanwhile, Shiokishi, one of only twelve official General Board members in Academy City, frowned.

This dome-shaped building, shielded with special armor, was quite spacious but had little in the way of furnishings. The general impression it gave off was that of a battleship. Only a few lavish chairs and wardrobes dotted the area, just enough to highlight their captain’s tastes.

For Shiokishi, peace and security were the greatest luxury and the result of having expended a maximum amount of work and capital. In reality, this heap of military secrets had enough money spent on it to purchase an entire European castle, complete with furniture.

And now—that peace and security, the highest and richest form of pleasure, was beginning to shake under his feet.

“An enforcement of the equal-authority inspection system by an official member of the General Board…?”

Yes, the twelve had an agreement like that, didn’t they?

The General Board’s main members needed to have equal power at all times. They couldn’t allow one to amass significantly more influence and cause the balance to collapse. During their assemblies, all twelve members’ opinions were treated equally. The objective, he figured, was that they needed to lead Academy City in an extremely democratic way.

It was, of course, all a farce.

Each of the twelve amassed power in their own fields that set them above the others and tried to control the city in any way that could possibly benefit them, all purposely at the expense of the others who nominally had “equal authority.”

Normally, there was no possible way any of them would come waving the flag of such an ornamental system.

… Can I reject it? Shiokishi wondered immediately.

Usually, he’d be allowed to.

But it wouldn’t work this time.

After checking his avenues of metaphorical escape on the General Board’s network again, he saw the twelve members each had their own trivial little pacts. No one pact had very much effectiveness, but strangely, they were put together so that they would interfere with the equal-authority inspection system. If he tried to use one method to block it, that would violate a different pact, and if he tried to dissolve that pact, that in turn would trigger yet another one. It felt incredibly tenacious to him, like a spiderweb strung over many years only to finally corner its target at a dead end.

“That fox…! She kept on forming asinine peace treaties even if it meant cutting off her own authority or support divisions—but it was all for this?!”

It was terrifying that, despite its tenacity, her plan had never revealed even a hint of itself until the trap was sprung. He thought he’d been keeping tabs on Monaka Oyafune’s movements this entire time.

“What shall we do, sir?” asked his hand-reared assassin Sugitani as the man stood beside him. “This shelter has equipment to physically and politically prevent third parties from entering, but almost all our political defense functions have been disabled by Monaka Oyafune enforcing the equal-authority inspection system. And…”

“If the cameras are right, we can presume that Oyafune either has Group, not the least of which is Accelerator, under her thumb, or is working jointly with them. Refusing her inspection and holing up inside the shelter won’t lead to peace and security…After all, I fully prepared an assassination on her, and it ended in failure. We should assume they currently have more strategic value than a nuclear weapon.”

Clad in his thick powered suit, Shiokishi kept folding his hands together nervously. In contrast, Sugitani, who served him, was more self-possessed.

“…Will they really go through with such a hardball approach, sir? Even if ignoring their official inspection gives them the casus belli they need, attacking this place would lead to a war between General Board members.”

“…They’ll come,” answered Shiokishi, tapping the foot part of his composite armor on the floor. “This all relates to Dragon, after all. They’re grasping at straws, so they’ll come.”

“Group aside, that wouldn’t be Monaka Oyafune’s intent, would it?”

“That woman’s reasons for acting are even more dreadful. I’d thought her declawed until now, but she’s always been the sort of woman who would fight entire countries with her life on the line just because some kid she’d never seen before was crying. There are no political methods that will work. If she’s making her move, the only thing we can do is respond by force.”

“Shall I capture her daughter, Suama Oyafune?”

“It might work for Oyafune, but not Group. Does it seem like we have time to do anything we don’t need to?” responded Shiokishi, almost cutting him off, as though he’d run the simulation on that possibility several times. “We’d split our forces to secure a hostage. What if they occupied this shelter in the meantime? We might have a hostage, but it’d be meaningless if they pointed a blade at my own throat. Doing that wouldn’t lead to a foundation for peace and security.”

…If Shiokishi and his forces got their hands on something more important to the enemy than their lives, then even if they pressed a gun to his head, there would probably be room for negotiation. But this decision to pursue another path was a matter of Shiokishi’s principles. He would never factor the possibility of risking his own life into his plans, not even as a joke.

Whatever the case was to be, Shiokishi made his decision for meeting it:

“We fight them here.”

Sugitani didn’t voice any objections. He would merely obey his master’s decision.

As though he felt his attitude was peaceful and secure, Shiokishi softened his tone and continued. “All of us. Gather the Group pursuit team and the hostage retrieval team here. Hold off their invasion from within the shelter and, in the meantime, have another unit surround them from the outside as well. We’ll crush them with a pincer attack.”

“Oyafune has the justification for her actions. What about that, sir?”

“Yes, we can’t just repel her. Have our intelligence division thoroughly scrape the inspection-request paperwork. They can claim her stamp on the paper is blurry if need be—as long as they can materialize a reason we can’t accept it, we’ll gain the upper hand.”

Shiokishi’s mind worked quickly within his powered suit. His brain was built to do calculations the fastest when pursuing peace and security.

“Ulterior motives are hidden within the reasons for action we give one another. After offering a suspicious justification, all that remains is to win or lose through violence. If we win, it will be easier to influence the other official General Board members…and I’ve made that happen many times before. This will be no different.”

“Yes sir.”

“It’s time to begin. Whatever the case is, I’ll have no peace of mind until Monaka Oyafune and Group are annihilated.”

Having come to an area with many similar dome-shaped shelters, Accelerator and the others stopped.

The shadows grew behind parked cars, building corners, and factory roofs.

At a glance, the scenery was mundane—but professional combat specialists, geared with special bulletproof equipment and weapons like submachine guns and rifles, had blended in with it.

Shiokishi’s pawns.

When Accelerator’s group stopped, they took it as a signal.

Not of surrender or capitulation.

No, they took it as a gesture that they would resist until the bitter end.

Powered suits began to jump off building rooftops, each almost seven meters tall, one after another. Remote-control armored vehicles with arms equipped, often used for bomb disposal, made sudden stops, creating a barricade. Giant, tanklike turrets were attached to the armored cars’ roofs.

Tsuchimikado chuckled in spite of himself. “Classic Shiokishi, so keen on his munitions. The weapons he gives his chess pieces just ooze with playfulness.”

“…What do you think?” asked Musujime. “Someone on the General Board would know normal forces won’t work against Accelerator.”

“Haven’t you noticed that?”

Accelerator, on his crutch, jabbed his jaw toward the sky, toward the very top point of the domed shelter Shiokishi was probably hiding in. There was some kind of basketball-shaped metal sphere on it. It looked almost like an omnidirectional transmission radar used for jamming.

“That thing interferes with AIM fields. I bet the main part of it takes up a ton of space in the dome. The juvenile reformatories in this city have AIM jammers to prevent people escaping using their abilities, right? It’s a special version for the General Board. It’s probably set for you, too. The scariest thing for a shelter that can stand up against nuclear detonations would be a teleport ability that ignores three-dimensional defenses.”

Musujime took the military flashlight off her waist. She twirled it in her hand like a baton and frowned. “…I can use the ability itself, but it feels like my aim would be thrown off. I could warp things, but they’re likely to get stuck in the ground.”

“If this guy is on the General Board, and he’s a weapons and munitions specialist, he’d obviously know my military value. And that these minions could never finish me off,” growled Accelerator, fed up. “But if he can get an AIM-field sample from me during the fight, he might use it to calculate the data for interference waves or something. And if he keeps going, he could wipe out at least Musujime and me by forcing our abilities to go out of control.”

“What will we do, then?” asked Monaka Oyafune, who had never been directly involved in combat in any way, with a somewhat tense expression.

“Same thing I always do.”

Accelerator, in contrast, bent his neck as if to crack it and brought his hand to its side.

To where the button for his choker electrode was.

“Use the front door.”

6

Shiokishi was famously prudent, a fact that was clear from how he kept himself in a powered suit twenty-four hours a day. His base of operations was highly sturdy, too, of course. The domed facility, about two hundred meters across, blended in with the other test shelters in District 2. People said it could withstand standard strategic weapons.

However.

“Not sturdy enough, is it?”

Accelerator’s murmurs drifted on the wind.

“When something uses the catchphrase nuke resistant you gotta use power like this.”

A massive ga-boom rumbled through the air.

What Accelerator fired had been simple. He’d used one hand to grab a car parked nearby and lobbed it with all his might. The physical laws he took advantage of were nothing special; the tool he used wasn’t made of a unique material, either. Just by adding in his anomaly of vector control did a simple projectile throw end up smashing the shelter.

“Let’s go,” muttered Accelerator in annoyance before flicking his electrode back off. To save as much battery power as he could, the Level Five proceeded forward with his handmade crutch. No one present could stop him. The nearby defenders had lost consciousness from the impact caused by the shelter’s destruction, the remote-controlled armored cars had been flipped over, and the powered suits’ joints were destroyed.

Accelerator stepped over the remains of a blasted-away wall section and set foot inside the facility. “Should be ten or twenty minutes before Shiokishi’s forces reorganize. We capture Shiokishi and have him order them to stand down before that happens.”

“Such a pain,” said Musujime, unamused. “If you can do something this monumental anyway, we might as well crush him to death from a distance right now.”

Accelerator answered with a tsk. “We kill him after we get info on Dragon out of him.”

“E-excuse me, but…,” started Oyafune, who had come with them, looking behind her. “Tsuchimikado isn’t following us.”

“He’s holding them off outside,” said Accelerator. “We didn’t check to make sure they’re all down for the count, and reinforcements could still come later.”

“It would be bad if he decoded my AIM diffusion field or Accelerator’s, but Mr. Sunglasses doesn’t rely on his ability anyway.”

Oyafune looked like she wasn’t convinced, but Accelerator and Awaki Musujime ignored her. If he died, then that was that. Group was only held together by their value as a combat team. In Group, you proved that value without saying a word.

Accelerator’s strike had turned the inside of the dome to mush. The interior was now like a Swiss roll that someone had taken a fork to and mashed up as the group went through it. The normal routes didn’t matter. They proceeded farther and farther inside through gaps in collapsed, crushed, and exploded walls.

Eventually, they saw several men who looked like Shiokishi’s personal soldiers lying on the ground. The aftermath of Accelerator’s dome-rattling attack had probably knocked them all out.

“Officially, this is an inspection,” said Accelerator. “Oyafune, it’s your job to have a face-to-face discussion with Shiokishi while we protect you from the flanks.”

“We’ll keep breaking walls until we get to his hideout, but in the end, you’ll be bearing the brunt of—”

Before Musujime could finish, something changed.

All of a sudden, a partition slammed down from the ceiling like a guillotine. It blocked the passage and isolated Accelerator and Musujime from Oyafune.

“Musujime!!”

“!!”

Her ability could freely move people at a distance without regard for three-dimensional restrictions. But as Musujime stared at the partition, she shook her head. “No response. Something else must have happened on the other side. Oyafune isn’t over there.”

“Useless piece of shit!!” Accelerator almost reached for the electrode switch at his neck, but they heard a new set of footsteps.

“I request a match.”

The one who had said that was a man in a suit. He was familiar to Accelerator. It was Shiokishi’s private soldier who’d killed all the former Spark Signal members occupying the District 3 private salon using a large handgun. If he remembered right, the man’s name was Sugitani.

Sugitani took a box of cigarettes from his suit’s inside pocket, then pulled one of the thin tubes out of it with nothing but his lips. “I do believe I told you I’d be praying to never see each other again.”

“That’s rich, coming from the ones who set this all up.”

“I also remember telling you it was your job to see to it that this didn’t come to pass.”

In order to light the cigarette, Sugitani exchanged the box for a cheap lighter. Contrary to his outfit and mood, it was a clear plastic lighter one would find for sale at a convenience store.

“Do you know about Dragon?”

“That?” said Sugitani, bringing the lighter closer to the cigarette in his mouth to light it.

At least, that was how it looked to Accelerator.

But the next thing he heard was the soft shhhh of gas escaping.

The sound came from Sugitani’s lighter, and it knocked Awaki Musujime, who had been standing next to Accelerator, to the ground.

It was as if she’d been punched.

There was no scream.

The strange attack had completely knocked her out.

It’s not lighter gas … ?

The device probably encapsulated a gas of a higher pressure. By releasing it all at once, he’d fired a small paralyzing bullet. With his frontal surprise attack a success, the man spat out the cigarette and said to Accelerator, “Modern combat isn’t about how many forces either side controls. It’s about settling things before it gets to that point.”

“…”

“Shiokishi’s orders. Musujime was a higher priority to destroy than Accelerator—she can hop freely through walls, whereas you only have high destructive power.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“A Koga. Or a descendant anyway,” answered Sugitani in a self-deprecating tone. “A band of cowards who have been doing this sort of thing and calling it justice for a very, very long time.”

As he spoke, he took out his large handgun.

But that probably wasn’t his main weapon. Considering his fighting style until now, he wouldn’t use such obvious methods. Or maybe that was what he was going for, and he’d purposely commit to a direct attack using bullets.

With this kind of enemy, the more someone thought about it, the deeper they sank into the mire.

As Accelerator watched him closely lest he slip up, Sugitani said, “Oyafune is done for.”

Accelerator’s eyebrow twitched at that.

“Two old people from the General Board are now face-to-face, but Shiokishi is wearing his special-order powered suit. It’s too strong for any weapon Oyafune could hide in her clothes to affect it. The woman will die, torn apart by greater force than a heavy construction machine.”

“I doubt Shiokishi would give the okay if the plan involved his own life and limb.”

“Think of it as a bit of selfishness on my part. I’m sure Shiokishi is surprised right now, but he should be able to carry out his duty regardless. Someone armed with a powered suit wouldn’t lose to an old woman, after all.”

Sugitani spoke simply, without sounding especially prideful.

“If we can eliminate Oyafune of the General Board, we will eliminate all political opposition. He will mobilize all of Academy City’s forces to drive you into a corner, and if they go through the appropriate channels to secure a trump card like Last Order, everything will be over for you.”

7

Two of Academy City’s highest executives—two General Board members—were currently meeting face-to-face.

Between them stood a table, one with no teacups and snacks, constructed instead for honest dialogue. It was wrapped in a quiet air, characteristic of the upper class. Accelerator’s attack had fractured the dome and exposed the starry sky to the two people below, but even that seemed tolerable as an element for such an interior.

Oyafune and Shiokishi.

Two elders, both deeply involved in many historical affairs, each offered the other a peaceable smile.

“Where to begin? My request of you is really quite simple. It isn’t money, it isn’t political sway, and it certainly isn’t your life.”

Oyafune was the one to touch things off.

“I’d simply like you to refrain from selfishly integrating and expending the lives of others on all projects and operations you devise and execute in the future. Simple indeed, is it not? All others, aside from yourself, uphold this rule as a matter of course, after all.”

She was right in that her words, when taken in isolation, sounded simple.

But he knew Monaka Oyafune would pursue it aggressively. This wouldn’t end with a verbal promise, with an “All right, I swear not to do it anymore.” She wouldn’t be sated unless she forced Shiokishi to dismantle his private, directly operated forces, then indirectly exerted influence on other units to steal every last drop of the power and authority he needed to hire and use mercenaries.

That would be synonymous with stealing everything from him.

She was essentially eliminating all that made him appear powerful and sentencing him to become a mere layman.

“Oh, yes, and I should ask you about Dragon as well.”

“Is that necessary for you?”

“Not particularly for me, but my collaborators, Group, have asked me to inquire about it.”

Shiokishi watched her through his powered suit helmet, focusing on her face as she sat across from him. Still, he was silent for a moment before opening his mouth to speak.

“…My dear Oyafune, how much do you know about Dragon?”

“Nothing at all. Though if my authority is what it is on paper, I’m sure I would have had several chances to find out. I expect you know best of all why that didn’t come to pass.”

“It is something that must remain out of sight,” he said quietly, not realizing she was criticizing him. “I am doing no more than accomplishing tasks necessary to protect Academy City, one by one. That is how dangerously critical the very word is. You may refer to me as barbaric, but only because you know nothing about Dragon. And I have no intention of telling you.”

“Oh, I am of the same mind,” answered Oyafune immediately, without losing her gentle smile. “And I would stoop to actions considered barbaric if I needed to. If it benefited me protecting those precious to me from your evil grasp, I would have no choice but to pursue this Dragon.”

“Then we are at an impasse.”

“We both say we want to protect Academy City, but I believe we’re referring to different things. That’s why our paths have split.”

“I see.”

Shiokishi gave a single short sigh from beneath his helmet.

Roar!!

A moment later, he used all his powered suit’s output to punch Oyafune with his special-alloy fist.

The powered suit Shiokishi wore was a custom-order piece of equipment, upgraded even beyond the ones the city used for military purposes. The remodeling was geared more toward defensive power and durability than its mobility and compatibility with other firearms, but that only meant the giant fist he flung at Oyafune was all the sturdier.

This was far beyond what a heavy construction vehicle could do.

It would smash an old woman’s body to atoms.

CHAPTER 4

Two Monsters with an Invitation to Hell
Dragon(≠Angel).

1

Aiwass.

That was what the being, apparently classified under the code name Dragon, called itself.

Accelerator confronted the blond humanoid, very cautiously observing it.

In all honesty, his thoughts wouldn’t connect with what he’d set out to do next.

The basic direction for all of Group, including him, was this: to find Dragon’s identity, the highest secret in Academy City, then use it to bargain with the city’s leaders. They never thought for a second that the Dragon itself would appear before their eyes.

And perhaps…

Perhaps Accelerator had considered, somewhere deep down, the possibility of Dragon’s identity never coming to light.

But now that it was suddenly right in front of him, perhaps his thoughts hadn’t caught up yet.

“That is a very mystified face,” said the being named Aiwass, without changing its expression. Its very golden locks appeared to radiate a faint light.

“Is it truly so incomprehensible that I should appear in this way?”

Of course Accelerator wore an expression of shock. Academy City had been keeping this being under lock and key until now. Why, of all things, would it choose to appear? Accelerator considered several possibilities, then chose the most logical:

“…A servant of Shiokishi’s? You’re too late to serve as reinforcements.”

“Are you being serious?”

Aiwass shook its head. It was clearly expressing its intent, and yet, Accelerator couldn’t even guess at what it was thinking.

He stayed silent for a moment, internally coming to reject his own hypothesis. Yes, Shiokishi must have despised … or more like, feared Dragon, he thought. This wasn’t even close to how one of his pawns would respond.

However.

If that was out, then why had Aiwass appeared before Accelerator?

“Because I have acknowledged a level of value in you, and because of that…I’ve taken something of an interest in you,” said Aiwass—its tone casual, as if to reject everything Group and Shiokishi had done up until that very moment. “You wished to meet me—and thus, I appeared. Are you unsatisfied with that?”

That was insane.

But this being didn’t appear to be hiding anything, either.

Did it mean to say it silently took out Tsuchimikado and the other two because it didn’t find any value or interest in anyone but Accelerator?

Now what … ?

Accelerator lowered his center slightly.

Several people had shown up before now and posed a threat to Accelerator’s life, like Hound Dog’s Amata Kihara and School’s Teitoku Kakine, but this Aiwass was cut from a completely different cloth. He couldn’t even sense malice from it.

Aiwass was supposed to be the most crucial asset for Academy City’s leadership. But there was more than one way to use it; defeating Aiwass was sure to deal major damage to the top brass’s scheming, but maybe there was a more effective way to use this dragon…

In the first place, he didn’t know what kind of role Aiwass had.

Unless he knew that first, he wouldn’t be able to devise effective ways to use the being.

He started to feel like a dog on a leash.

Aiwass realized that and showed emotion for the first time—an expression that seemed surprised. “This result differs from my predictions. I had thought you would charge at me to take revenge for your friends, then end up flat on the floor within three seconds.”

“…What you just said to me is a better way to make that happen,” growled Accelerator.

Yes—Aiwass had taken out Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Awaki Musujime, and Mitsuki Unabara without so much as making a sound.

If one was to ask Accelerator if that was enough to engage in hostilities, he’d have said no. As stated multiple times in the past, to Accelerator, Group was only held together by how valuable each member was to use.

First, he’d extract any information that seemed useful out of this Aiwass. He’d decide whether to be hostile after that.

Having settled on his course of action, Accelerator stared the newcomer down again. “What are you? And why do they hide it with the code name Dragon?”

“Must I start explaining from there?” said the being as if it was about to remark on how surprisingly dull he was. “My identity is nothing special. I’m naught more than a simple hboiebeingaeb…”

Aiwass’s words blurred.

Accelerator frowned, but even the being who had spoken them brought a dubious hand to its throat, checking its voice.

“…Well. I cannot even express this level of meaning in this world. The headers are insufficient. I would struggle to explain it this way. May I take a more roundabout route? It would be simple to convey this directly, but if I did, it would cause a wgbudcollapsewsrui, you see.”

Aiwass didn’t seem like it was speaking in riddles or jokes.

To begin with, Accelerator was hearing things strangely. For some reason, at the moment Aiwass’s voice blurred, the direction of the sound source itself shifted away. It sounded very unnatural to him, as though the left and right speakers in a pair of headphones were reversed.

“Do you know the words Fuse Kazakiri?”

“…?”

He remembered Shiokishi mentioning something about that, but Accelerator didn’t know what they meant. But when Aiwass saw his face, it exhaled softly.

“It is troubling indeed to speak of things from beginning to end. Remember my words and research them on your own time later. In any case, it is a being called various things, one of which is man-made angel. This is accurate given its properties, but it doesn’t reflect Fuse Kazakiri’s true nature. She is really something of a production line for the purpose of giving form to me, Aiwass.”

Accelerator didn’t understand most of that, but the word angel did stick with him.

The wings of light that appeared when Amata Kihara injected Last Order with the virus. Even that wasn’t the important part? It was just a piece of the plan prepared for this Aiwass creature?

“Allow me to use a crystal as an analogy. What substances are close at hand—water or salt? Yes, I believe I’ll use salt this time. Assume that there exists highly dense saltwater called an AIM diffusion field. However, crystallization cannot occur from that alone. In order to proceed efficiently, it is better to inject impurities into the saltwater. It can be a simple twig, or a small grain of dust, or a nsrioangegau such as Fuse Kazakiri…Well, the crystallization itself is simple, but when aiming for the desired shape in the desired size, it then becomes necessary to consider the core’s properties.”

“…What you’re trying to say is that you were created based on this Fuse Kazakiri thing?”

“Strictly speaking, Fuse Kazakiri was the one who was adjusted in order to create me. It would be correct to think of her as a factory assembly line. In any case, I will not deny that I was born after the stylings of Fuse Kazakiri. It would be more accurate to say uymanifesidvif rather than born, but— Blast, my words cannot catch up. I suppose I will say that I was not born, but rather emerged. Strictly speaking, it is different, but I cannot express it in any other way.”

Aiwass brought its index finger to its chest, then moved it down toward its stomach.

“Aleister seems to love his circuitous methodology, but, well—cloning technology is not enough for me.”

If Aiwass was a mass of AIM diffusion fields coming together, that would mean it wasn’t human.

This was all ridiculously fantastic, but Accelerator didn’t laugh it away.

In fact.

He would have felt even stranger had the being standing in front of him said it was a human just like him.

“What will you do?” asked Aiwass. “I appeared out of mere curiosity, but what will your next actions be? What would you like to do? For example, do you desire to use my information to quash Aleister’s ambitions?”

“…Are you being serious?” Those words heightened Accelerator’s caution. “I don’t know what the chairperson’s goals are, but you’re at the center of all this. I mean, to crush his plans means sending you, whose existence is supported by artificial means, back to the void.”

“Indeed.” Aiwass nodded, long hair waving. “But what does that matter?”

“What…?”

“Let us speak of history.” Suddenly, Aiwass veered the conversation in a different direction. “Those who live on the ground here do many different things, celebrating them as ecological or protecting the environment. They say things like many species of animal and plant will go extinct at this rate, earnestly picking empty cans off the road and trying to reduce the amount of smoke.”

“Never seen such a master Peeping Tom before.”

“You would suggest you humans do anything worthy of me watching?”

“Cut the crap. What are you getting at?”

“Only that history will not change at all,” answered Aiwass with ease. “Long ago, an ice age visited this planet. The environment changed drastically, and many animals and plants went extinct…But did history itself end? The flow of time doesn’t budge, regardless of whether the small creatures clinging to its surface live or die. If global thermonuclear war broke out right now, and all higher life vanished from the face of the planet, it means nothing to the thick pillars of history. Ten thousand years, one hundred thousand years—eventually, other plants and animals will appear on their own to replace them.”

“…”

“It’s all the same. Though I may not be one suited to speak of this dimension’s history. This man, Aleister, has not learned his lesson and evidently wishes to use me, but I would not be particularly troubled were his plans to be set back. After ten or a hundred thousand years, I will asbumanifesoagbv…or rather, appear, at another opportunity. Even that has no real worth to me, however.

“Now, then,” added Aiwass, long hair swaying, arms slowly spreading. “What will you do? It may be entertaining to kill me here and frustrate Aleister, you know. That is, if your full powers are capable of such a thing.”

Aiwass was unreadable.

Accelerator felt like random gears in his mind were missing; his normal aggressive thoughts weren’t coming to him. It didn’t matter whether or not he had proof—he knew that even given a long period of time, he wouldn’t find a way through. There was no point in merely fighting. It felt to him as stupid as running on and on, trying to reach the horizon where the sun was setting.

He stayed still, and Aiwass, its hands still spread out wide, continued. “Oh? Are you sure about that? I should say this first— Aleister, whose power you trust in a negative way, is far from a perfect human.”

“What?”

“Several seams have begun to come apart in his schemes.”

Aiwass spoke as though it meant nothing, despite it having to do with literally its entire existence.

“Aleister himself seems to think that each time an irregular phenomenon occurs, he can simply work it into his plan to be beneficial and recover from it. But the small cracks are beginning to grow larger. At this rate, the situation will develop into something that not even Aleister, executor of the plan, would have expected. Yes…”

He had a bad feeling about this.

He could sense he shouldn’t listen.

But Aiwass continued, as though mentally cornering stunted, pitiable humans was the only thing this being could enjoy in their boring world.

“…Yes, like how the core of his plan, Last Order, is headed for certain ‘collapse’ down the road at this rate. Well, she is just a clone, so he might simply be able to create another with the same functions.”

Those two words were enough.

His top priority eliminated all discouraging factors and determined Accelerator’s next actions.

2

Where am I? thought Hamazura as he ran at full speed through the deep, dark corridor.

Where was he? He was alone. Rikou Takitsubo, whom he hadn’t let out of his sight until now, was no longer there.

The reason was simple—they’d been forced apart. The figure slowly following him from behind, as if making sport of him, possessed enough strength to do that. It wasn’t a matter of pure physical power or abilities. Something far more overwhelming—terror—rested in the foundation.

“…Haaamazuraaa.” A voice, audible from beyond the dark.

“?!” Without turning around, Hamazura surged into a sideways leap. He hit the metal railing, his body rattling, leaning over it. By the time he realized this passage was actually a raised bridge, he was already plummeting.

But it was probably still better than the alternative.

A moment later, with a ga-bam, a terrible flash of light stormed past. It melted the very metal walkway he’d just been standing upon, blowing it away and leaving an orange waterfall in its wake.

The Meltdown.

The fourth-ranked Level Five.

“Gah!!”

Right after those monikers crossed his mind, he slammed into the floor on his back.

He must have fallen about three meters, down onto another suspended walkway. And below the metal grating, yet another artificial floor reached past.

This was a very large space. It was probably over a hundred meters across just in width and likely several kilometers long. And even farther below Hamazura’s feet was a line of small jet fighters. A quick glance revealed over twenty of them.

… Which means I’m in the aviation capital of the city, District 23…?

It didn’t seem like any old repair yard. This was probably a testing ground for conducting trials on new models. The freight train Hamazura and Takitsubo had shared had been ferrying materials here.

Then it happened:

The clack of her shoe.

It came from above, probably from the walkway Hamazura had fallen from.

He immediately ducked for cover, diving behind a box-shaped obstacle that looked like a crane control seat.

“Well, it looks like you’re fast to escape, at least. As usual. Are you sure? You left your beloved Takitsubo behind.”

“Erg … !” Hamazura’s back teeth grated back and forth.

He couldn’t see it from behind cover, but he could tell—Shizuri Mugino was probably dragging the limp, disabled Takitsubo along with her one arm. She had a simple reason for not killing her—it was to torment him as much as she could.

In truth, he would have liked to jump out and confront her instead. But if he attacked that monster head-on, he’d never win. He’d be reduced to cinders in a moment, and that would be that, leaving no one to rescue Takitsubo. If her goal of tormenting him was gone, Mugino would kill her without delay.

… Damn it, damn it! Damn it!! Why? Why?! Why did she have to show up now, of all times?!

His hands trembling, he took out his gun and popped out the magazine to check how many rounds he had left. In the meantime, only the demonic voice of Mugino mocking him resounded through the jet fighter testing site.

“Are you panicking because you don’t know how I survived? Cyborgs, cloning, and nanodevices, oh my! If you guess right, I wouldn’t mind giving you a bonus. But you probably wouldn’t get it anyway. You seem pretty dull.”

Ga-bam!! Boom!! Several rays of light shot down in sequence. They hadn’t been aiming at Hamazura precisely, but just the vibrations from the aftermath sent fear coiling around his entire body.

“It’s apparently an application of the ‘negative legacy’ left behind by some perverse doctor named Heaven Canceler, in any case. They said they used an oil-and-fat-based melting skeleton to stabilize my flesh’s regeneration rate, then induced rapid cell division. I don’t think the man himself would have used it like that…though I suppose that doesn’t matter. I’m having too much fun watching you cry.”

Hamazura edged his head out from behind the box to get a look at the situation.

“Haaamazuraaa. Hide-and-seek is nice, but would you mind coming out soon? If you don’t, I’ll start aiming at this precious Takitsubo.”

Agh!! He heard a grunt. Mugino had grabbed Takitsubo’s hair, then held her in front of her like a shield.

Mugino then slowly brought her other arm, the intensely flashing one made from Meltdown, a hair’s breadth away from Takitsubo’s skin.

“Gya-ha-ha!! Now, where should I begin roasting her? Should I melt her little face off? Or should I shove it against her little pink and burn it to a black crisp?! Hey, Hamazura, what do you think? It’s about to turn black like a mummy— Will you still be able to get off if you stick it in?!”

Damn it …

“I’ll count to three. If you don’t come out, the punishment is a brand on Takitsubo’s . You want to abandon her? I bet you’re masturbating to the smell of burning virgin.”

Mugino’s countdown wasn’t the usual drawn-out kind.

In fact…

“Three, two, one…Ka-boom!!”

“Damn it!!”

When she’d rattled off her countdown, Hamazura burst out from behind the crane control box. Immediately, he leveled his gun at Mugino, but she was many times faster. Plus, she was using Takitsubo as a shield.

“There’s a good boy, Hamazura.”

Ga-bam!! A massive burst split through everything.

She moved her fingertips like flicking a rolled-up piece of trash. Nevertheless, what came was an attack more terrifying than even a battleship cannon. It shot straight by Hamazura, striking an oil drum sitting behind him. Whoosh!! The fuel ignited, a blast of hot wind whipped out, and Hamazura’s body flew over five meters into the air.

If she’d wanted to, she could have killed him instantly.

But she didn’t—because she wanted to torment him first.

… Damn it…

It took all his energy to flip his facedown body back up. As he did, he cursed himself. A Level Zero who beat Shizuri Mugino once before? What a joke. Now he understood very well how many coincidences and miracles had interceded on his behalf back then. This woman named Shizuri Mugino wasn’t some low-level monster he could kill many times over with ease. The factor known as Shiage Hamazura did not function as a trump card against her. He couldn’t win like this.

“Hamazuraaa, Hamazuraaa!!”

He heard her calling his name. When he did, he clenched his teeth and tried to get himself up.

But Mugino moved quicker than he did.

Still, it wasn’t to finish off Hamazura now that he couldn’t move properly. From the start, she’d been drawing out their hellish time together so she could thoroughly and completely torture him.

She then set her sights on Rikou Takitsubo.

“What, are you trying to hype yourself up to be a lone, tragic heroine? You’re no normal princess, are you? Didn’t you have the strength to fight at some point?”

“?!” A noise, half gasp and half choke, struggled out of Takitsubo’s tight throat.

Mugino tossed her limp body aside casually, then reached into her pocket with her one natural arm. Out of it she took an object that was about the size of a mechanical pencil’s graphite case.

It was a case for Crystals.

“Ability Stalker. If you put it to full use, you might have been able to reverse my AIM field and hijack my ability, hmm?”

Ping. Her fingertips flicked the small Crystal case. It clattered to the floor and rolled, coming to a stop right next to the fallen girl.

Takitsubo…and their last piece of Crystal. She was the one who could turn things around.

But if she used it, she would surely “break down.” Even her current unenergetic condition was thanks to the side effects from Crystals.

She couldn’t take any more. If she used them even one more time, it would be over.

But…

“You know, if you want to run, you can be my guest.”

Mugino’s words rattled the near-dead girl on the ground.

No, they didn’t just rattle her—they were so forceful they nearly broke her.

“But then I’ll burn Hamazura to a crisp, and he’ll die. Because you abandoned him to his death. Gya-ha-ha-ha!! I don’t really care what you do. Either way, I’m sure I’ll get to see something entertaining!!”

Rikou Takitsubo moaned and reached out a hand.

This was a choice that she knew would bring her own destruction upon her.

She had one reason, but it was enough.

She had to save Shiage Hamazura, who was beaten and about to be killed.

“O​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​!”

She groaned like a beast and, finally, her hand grabbed the Crystal case. She flipped open the lid immediately so she wouldn’t hesitate, as though sticking a knife in her own chest. Mugino cackled when she saw it. She seemed amused beyond all else that her feelings of wanting to save someone precious to her would lead to a nightmarish outcome.

… Hamazura…Takitsubo firmly shut her eyes and opened her mouth.

Her shaking hand moved, trying to fling the contents of the Crystal case inside it.

Then it happened.

“M​u​g​i​n​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​!​!”

Shiage Hamazura unleashed a scream.

A moment later came the sound of a giant motor. The arm for the crane they used to do maintenance on the jets had shuddered, and when Mugino realized it, she took a few quick steps backward. The hook on the end of the arm, still holding a load, swung around in a wide arc like a giant morning star on a chain. And instead of hitting the one who had dodged it, it struck Takitsubo in the side, just as she was about to take the Crystals.

Grkkk!!

It was an awful noise.

The Crystal case burst open, and Takitsubo went over the railing and disappeared into the level below.

“Ha-ha-ha…”

Despite herself, a grin had formed on Mugino’s lips.

The result wasn’t in her script, but coincidences sometimes brought even greater amusement with them.

“Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! What the hell was that, Hamazura?! Who were you trying to protect?! Some friend you are, finishing her off personally!!”

But then, as Mugino laughed uproariously, a damp chill suddenly came over her.

She’d been jeering at and mocking Hamazura endlessly, but he’d never reacted. He’d shown no humiliation or regret.

Mugino realized it too late.

Hamazura had been going after Takitsubo from the beginning. He’d both stopped her from using the Crystals and removed her from Mugino’s clutches. Even if it meant harming the person he wanted to protect, it would at least let her avoid a decisive, fatal blow.

She thought back.

The stuff hanging off the crane hook—hadn’t it been a worker-use powered suit, the kind for working with hazardous aviation explosives? Yes, one to give to the frail Takitsubo to raise her chances of survival even a few percentage points.

“…Shizuri Mugino…”

And why would he go that far?

That was obvious.

“It looks like one death just wasn’t enough for you.”

Then, the Level Zero who had once brought down the fourth-ranked Level Five stood up once more.

And ironically, for the same purpose—to save a girl named Rikou Takitsubo.

3

Accelerator switched on his choker electrode.

Now he could use the number-one Level Five ability whenever he wanted: the ability to alter vectors. The power to reflect every possible attack, a power that could bring forth from that trivial capacity catastrophic destruction. As long as he had it, there would be no enemy he couldn’t defeat.

Aiwass had said this to him, a hint of scorn passing across its face.

That if Aleister’s plans continued, Last Order would “collapse” not long into the future.

And implicitly, it had told him this as well:

If you believe you can kill me, then do it. But I’m sure power on your level couldn’t eliminate my existence even temporarily.

… Well, you asked for it. Manipulating his leg force vectors, Accelerator exploded forward. I don’t know if you’re a clump of AIM fields or an angel or what, but nobody who intentionally tries to harm that brat deserves any mercy. I’m wiping you out of existence and making things easier for myself, just like I said!!

Aiwass didn’t even try to dodge. It gazed upon Accelerator, its hands still loosely spread.

Accelerator dove straight into range. He thrust an open hand as hard as he could—and with it, all he had to do was manipulate its vectors, and he’d be able to destroy Aiwass from the inside out.

However.

Ga-bam!!

An instant later, a shock wave of causes unknown pierced through Accelerator’s upper body in a diagonal line.

He’d been cut right through, as though with a heavy katana. Immediately after he felt it, his body slammed into the floor, and he tumbled backward a few times.

An unbelievable amount of fresh blood spewed. It wasn’t only from the gaping wound in his upper body, but from his mouth and his nose as well. All joking and metaphors aside, the wound was so huge it was strange none of his organs were leaking out of him.

“Gh…bh, g​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?!”

He didn’t know what had just happened. Several had gotten through his reflection technique before, like Amata Kihara and Teitoku Kakine. But Aiwass was different. It wasn’t using some strange logic exception to slip through. Even after he’d taken a decisive blow, he couldn’t analyze what had just happened to his own body.

“Oh. That was my mistake,” said Aiwass, its voice relaxed in contrast.

Something sprouted from its back, parting through its long, blond hair. Wings. Wings that shone, radiated far too much for human eyes, brighter than a nuclear explosion. Had those wings been what sliced through Accelerator?

They were abnormal.

They weren’t simply golden. They glittered in a pale platinum, with white mixed at its core…Words may not have been enough to describe it, but that was the only way Accelerator’s brain could express it.

Not being able to comprehend something he was physically seeing gave him a strong sense of unease.

“I see you’ve planted some sort of snconstructionbozl-use virus, Aleister. You went through Last Order to embed self-defense bseouabilitygbu in my beuomanifesdnn? Well, I do indeed apologize. It seems he nbspgaddnpsir something like a suicide preventer. If you want to sbgpkillnapedv me, please do something about the nspidhwinggorws. They move of their own accord.”

Aiwass’s words were growing stranger and stranger.

But Accelerator wasn’t exactly listening. His eye color shifted into a red more baleful than the red of the blood spurting from his body. Still fallen, his hand reached out and found the ground, smashing the floor tiles.

“A​b​e​o​u​g​h​a​b​a​e​o​u​g​b​a​o​k​i​l​l​w​o​b​n​o​w​e​u​f​e​r​y​a … !!”

Ga-bam!! Accelerator’s back burst. Jet-black wings carved out from it. Dark wings, in contrast to the pale platinum ones Aiwass had. His upper body bleached in crimson, even his lips and teeth turned bright red, the demon swayed and rose with a gravity-defying smoothness.

“‘Do what thou wilt.’ That shall be thy law?”

Accelerator had no way of knowing, but that sentence was written in the Book of the Law and described the pillar central to a certain sorcerer long ago.

“Unfortunately, you have the wrong rggtimerigeneration. Yours are, in the end, the rsgpowernophe from the eon of Osiris. You cannot hosefenemygierd me, one who lives in Horus.”

There was a massive, thundering roar.

It was the shock wave created by the two types of wings, jet-black and pale platinum, clashing.

The collision created a storm.

Ga-baaaahhhh!! Blazing-hot winds whipped up around Accelerator and Aiwass.

But the battle was far from equal. With the first attack, Accelerator’s black wings shredded apart from their base, and with the second, they came completely off. Something more howl than scream rang out. Meanwhile, Aiwass’s pale-platinum wings swung. Fresh crimson blood scattered, dancing into the air, erased by the whipping winds.

They were in two completely different dimensions.

Despite the power of Accelerator’s black wings, it was like swinging around a heavy wooden club. Aiwass’s, on the other hand, were like swords of legend, thoroughly sharpened by advanced technology.

There was the sound of something falling.

No—a person falling.

“Is that all?” said Aiwass simply, watching Accelerator sink into his pool of blood.

A normal human would have died for sure, but Accelerator was still breathing. He had unconsciously used his vector-altering ability to force his blood to circulate from torn vessel to vessel. Hence, a lot of red liquid now flew around him like juice spilled in space.

But that was it.

All he could do was cling to life. No resuscitation, no miracle, would come from it.

“I had mentioned Last Order as an easy way to tempt you, but this went faster than expected. Your level of maturity wouldn’t even be able to cope with Fuse Kazakiri. You’re getting impatient again, aren’t you, Aleister? …Teitoku Kakine is worth thinking about as well.”

Once it was finished speaking, Aiwass turned on its heel. Using its legs, it left that place. It was actually stranger than seeing it suddenly disappear or take flight would have been.

Until—

Grick!! Aiwass felt something small breaking at its core.

An error had occurred in the AIM diffusion field aggregate’s bonding that governed its existence. Aiwass considered the cause and then turned around. It began to break into pieces, starting with the tips of its golden locks, and even then, Aiwass’s face remained stoic.

“If I’m right…”

A ragged voice.

It belonged to Accelerator, but they weren’t indecipherable words like Aiwass’s speech. He spoke in a human language, saying, “…You’re using…Academy City’s…AIM fields…to emerge…And to control it, you made…this Fuse Kazakiri thing…and put a virus in that brat…Which means—”

“Yes, you’ve thought this through.”

Aiwass smiled, its fingertips crumbling and losing shape all the while.

Its eyes gazed at Accelerator’s crutch.

“Your jammer for blocking waves that remote control your choker—you reconfigured it for the entire Misaka network. The network is essentially a signpost for guiding all of Academy City’s AIM fields. So yes…Blocking the Misaka network’s interference from this space, in this location alone, is indeed like removing the crystal’s core and reverting it to saltwater. However…”

As it spoke, Accelerator’s legs were trembling madly.

Even though Aiwass hadn’t done anything.

“Do you understand? It is also cutting off the only lifeline you have right now.”

“…”

There was only the continuous plips of dripping blood.

Accelerator had been just barely stopping the blood loss by using his ability and forcing his blood to flow through broken vessels. If he blocked off his own vector-altering ability, only one thing could happen.

“…Shut…up…,” he said, lips trembling. He’d set the jamming to grow stronger as time passed. Eventually, he wouldn’t be able to talk or walk. Mustering what strength he had left so he could finish things before that happened, he drew his gun.

Not a strange, unknown power belonging to an angel or a demon or what have you, but a weapon he would wield as a human.

He’d walked this bloody path in order to save one girl named Last Order. To that end, he was determined to make even Last Order his enemy and reign as a soot-black king of evil.

He was a villain—and not the kind who would prostrate himself to save his own life in a place like this.

It was petty and not the type of villain Accelerator presented to the world.

Therefore, he didn’t hesitate to make the decision.

No matter how much of his blood spewed, even if he collapsed, even if all his innards were exposed by his enormous wound—in order to save Last Order, he would pull the trigger his finger was already touching. That was his evil.

“Do what thou wilt. That shall be thy law.”

Aiwass spoke in a singsong voice. Its hands had already broken apart up to the elbows, and its palely shining wings of white-cored platinum were as still as a device with the cogs removed. Its body was partly transparent, and an object that looked like a triangular prism appeared briefly in the center of its head, only to disappear again. Its surface moved around without end, like a keyboard, clacking and clacking and clacking.

When it realized the muzzle was suddenly pointed at it, Aiwass spread its arms—which only went down to the elbows—and spoke with a smile as though welcoming him.

“I see. Then show me thy law.”

A gunshot rang out.

It left behind only two sounds: one like a crystal shattering—and another, the dull thud of a person falling.

4

Shizuri Mugino jumped down to the next level of walkways. The metal grating clanged, echoing through the jet testing center. Hamazura was there, leaning, wounded, against the outside of the crane operator’s box, glaring at Mugino’s one real eye.

“One death just wasn’t enough, hmm?” she mocked. The arm of light she’d created in place of her lost limb crackled. “You’re right. It’s nowhere near enough—if you wanted to face me with words, your complaints could use the help of a few more brain cells!!”

Za-spark!! Her flashing arm swelled explosively.

But Hamazura moved first.

His limp hand held the gun, so he could’ve raised it up, taken aim, and fired. If he’d taken that much time, Mugino would have used it to blow off Hamazura’s limbs quite cleanly.

Instead, he immediately pulled the trigger while his arm still hung low. The bullet naturally flew off in an unexpected direction…and struck a fire extinguisher nearby.

Ba-bom!! Pressed by the gas, a cloud of white powder closed around his profile.

… Hiding in the fog, are we?

“Are you still screwing with me, Hamazuraaa?!”

Giving the impression of someone in the audience throwing a tomato onto the stage during a poorly written play, Mugino’s Meltdown launched a bright beam. A second pure-white ray, then a third, fired off in sequence, carving fatally into the silhouette beyond the fire extinguisher powder and blasting it away.

“Damn, I wanted to take my time crushing him. Did I accidentally kill him instantly?” muttered Mugino in spite of herself.

But the results begged to differ.

The thing she thought she’d blasted away had been one of the cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly next to him. While Mugino was preoccupied with the dummy, Hamazura had immediately jumped off the grated walkway and onto the lowest floor.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Escaping with a smokescreen and a dummy? …I had no idea you were a goddamn ninja!!”

She fired light downward, mostly out of irritation, then jumped down to the lower level herself.

Several jets were lined up in the vast space. Even for testing purposes, they were already completely finished, paint and all. Missiles and bombs of various sizes were even attached to the underside of their wings—maybe they planned to do tests fully equipped to see if they could bear the loads.

Now, then.

Mugino looked around with her one remaining eye.

Shiage Hamazura was probably hiding somewhere, watching, waiting for his chance. He’d at least realized that she’d shoot him in the back if he kept running at this point.

“…”

She glanced at a jet and briefly wondered if he would use one to counterattack. If he used its 20mm or 30mm Gatling gun and a variety of missiles, she’d probably have a little trouble.

… But no, that would be a bit much, she thought, rejecting the idea. She was sure a street thug like Shiage Hamazura wouldn’t know how to control a specialized vehicle like that. And even if he could, that didn’t change the fact that they were in a warehouse. As for any jets that could fight while standing still—with Mugino’s ability, she could vaporize it in one attack.

She walked slowly down the kilometers-long passage, her soles clicking, and she smirked. This was it, this was it. If he walked up right in front of her, she’d send him to his death in one hit.

But he had to do his fair share to get there.

“Wheeere in the wooorld could you beee, Haaamazuraaa?” she sang with a random rhythm, her flashing arm swaying to and fro.

And then…

“I’m right here.”

Suddenly, she got a stupidly honest response.

“?!”

It came from right next to her. She’d been on the wrong end of a crazy handgun counterattack last time. She twisted around quickly and fired Meltdown before getting a read on her target. Bra-zakk!! A brilliant flashing light surged out, and the jet in the direction she’d released it melted in an orange color.

But just before that, she saw it.

She saw, in the place she’d attacked, a maintenance tractor alongside long and slender bombs loaded like drainpipes at the park…and on top of them, a wireless headset on maximum volume so the sound would leak to its surroundings—plus a wireless LAN-attached fiber scope, probably used for maintaining the planes.

There was no time to consider her options.

Before she could think, the single two-hundred-kilo bomb her heated attack had blasted went up in a brilliant explosion—and caused the bombs, missiles, and airplane fuel nearby to ignite instantly.

Hamazura, who was hiding somewhere far away, didn’t get off scot-free, either.

He’d been working quietly but swiftly after spotting what looked like an electric-powered tractor for pulling around the fighters, and now he was behind cover about five hundred meters away from the explosion. He’d used a small truck loaded with a complete set of painting supplies for changing a jet’s color and used one of the maintenance crew’s wireless transceivers to project his voice. The huge blast had knocked him to the floor.

“G​u​w​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​!​!”

His eardrums felt like they were going to explode. He felt a strange pressure from within, as though his eyeballs were going to pop out. But what worried him more was Takitsubo. He couldn’t find her. He’d left a radio for guidance somewhere far from where he’d knocked her down and given her a work-use powered suit with the crane, too. It was too heavy to move in normal mode, and its high-mobility mode seemed to require a special electronic key, so she couldn’t use it for battle. It should have given her a little protection against the blast…though he hoped she wasn’t still in the explosion’s radius.

Whatever the case, Shizuri Mugino must have been caught up in the blast.

Fortunately for Hamazura, she still tended to look down on all her enemies. It certainly wasn’t a mistake, necessarily speaking, but it gave way to openings and missteps she didn’t need to have.

… That was a two-hundred-kilo bomb meant for busting pillboxes made of thick concrete. You’re not supposed to use them on unarmed humans. Mugino should be out of the way with that…Now to find Takitsubo and get out of here…

Hamazura tossed the transceiver and the small fiberscope monitor away, then ran back along the path he’d come.

Hot gusts blew madly.

The floor near the site of the explosion was completely collapsed, having caused a cave-in to a basement space under it. Walkways above them had twisted and fallen. Hamazura walked through their midst. He searched high and low, shouting Takitsubo’s name, mindful that a secondary or tertiary explosion could happen at any moment.

And then he heard a rustling.

“Takitsubo?!”

Hamazura looked in that direction.

However…

“Haaamazuraaa…”

A chill.

For an instant, all his body warmth left him.

But by then it was too late.

From inside the dark smoke reached an arm of glinting lights. Hamazura did his best to twist aside, but an awful noise and smell dispersed from near his ear. A sizzle. Like oil dripped into a well-heated frying pan.

“U​g​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​?​!”

Mugino stepped through the smoke to look down at the writhing boy. “Did you think this…this mass-produced weapon could defeat the city’s number four, Hamazuraaa?”

“Shit, shit shit fuck shit!!”

Hamazura desperately clamped down on the pain devouring his ear, grabbed his gun in both hands, and fired.

But suddenly, Mugino disappeared.

She’d unleashed Meltdown like a rocket engine. She’d probably made the same quick maneuver to avoid the two-hundred-kilo bomb. With a muffled whoosh, she escaped outside his field of view and said, “Your counters are all obvious— Do you really think they’ll work?!”

A massive roar rose up.

It was the sound of the tip of her boot digging into Hamazura’s back and kicking him several meters into the air.

He couldn’t even grunt at this point. He’d stopped breathing, and his body fell—but not onto the floor, oh no; it fell through one of the cracks the bomb had made.

Bam-slam. Ka-bam.

Several shocks hit him, one after another.

Intense pain washed over him, so terrible he honestly thought part of his spine had fallen out of place, but he didn’t have the time to cry about anything. He sensed a chilling intent to kill from above him and used all his energy to roll to the side. A moment later, Mugino’s light stabbed toward him, time and time again.

“Run! Run!! Run away, little piggy!! Let me enjoy this hunt a little longer!!”

Pieces of the floor were stuck all over him. He started to lose track of whether he was the one rolling, or if the tempest of fragments was rolling him. Nevertheless, he twisted and dove behind cover. Perhaps aggravated she’d lost sight of her target, Mugino immediately jumped into the basement space as well.

… Where is this? Is there an exit…?

Hamazura, hiding behind an obstacle, eventually glanced around.

It was an odd sort of room. It was around a hundred square meters, but there were protrusions in the wall at even intervals. And past those protrusions, he could see what looked like an air conditioner vent covering the entire wall. One of the sides was reinforced glass, and he could spot what looked like a control room for something on the other side.

This was an airplane-testing facility.

Which meant…

… a room where they test durability against air friction…?

Hamazura was up against a capsule-shaped model of about three meters. It was made to be the same size as a fighter cockpit. Though it was a model, the reinforced-glass canopy moved up and down properly, and it was made out of the same combination of materials as the real planes.

The stepladder-looking thing had probably kept it in the air, but it had been knocked on its side by the blast. The reinforced-glass canopy covering the cockpit was half-open, too.

“Haaamazuraaa…”

He gave a start. Just hearing his name called made his shoulders jerk. He frantically searched for an exit door, then found one. But it was far away. If he jumped out from behind the cockpit model, she’d shoot him five hundred times before he opened that door.

He couldn’t use that exit.

He’d have to end things here.

But the gun in his hand alone didn’t seem able to kill Mugino. She could use her ability like a rocket engine to flee outside the range of a two-hundred-kilo bomb going off. A normal person wouldn’t even be able to aim a 9mm bullet at her.

He had to use something stronger, something more overwhelming; something that wouldn’t even let her escape. But he wasn’t a powerful esper, and a mere Level Zero like Hamazura couldn’t bring anything like that to the table.

“I swear, this is all so idiotic. It might have bothered you a lot, but it’s bothering me a hell of a lot, too, I’m telling you.”

Click-click. Her footsteps drew closer. If she went around his cover, it was over.

“Anyway, maybe I’m better off than Teitoku Kakine. They picked the number two up in a way worse state than me, apparently. They had to put him in a container with this sticky liquid in it, get all three pieces of his brain back together, hook his side up to this machine bigger than a fridge to make up for his crushed heart—that kind of thing. I hear he’s basically just a big clump of meat they keep around so he can spit out his Level Five ability now.”

Hamazura desperately looked around.

“The General Board chairperson must really want to reuse us. I wonder why? Anyway, the only thing I can say for sure is that you’re dying here.”

He searched for a clue to turn the tables. And…he found a last ray of hope.

“Hey, Hamazura.”

And then it happened.

“Why…?”

Suddenly, he noticed a change in Mugino’s voice. He thought for a moment, then shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to take action. He would hesitate in a situation where a moment’s delay would be fatal.

But Shizuri Mugino still said:

EPILOGUE

I Won’t Let This End in Tragedy
Brave_in_Hand.

The blond monster, Aiwass, walked on two legs, a run-of-the-mill cell phone at its ear.

It was near the edge of an exposed steel beam in a building still under construction. It walked while looking at the moon, not paying the slightest attention to its oh-so-narrow footing. The precarious metal perch held no value, so it had no interest in the thing. That was the only reason.

“Is it truly so mystifying, Aleister?” said Aiwass slowly into the cell phone it had acquired from parts unknown.

The other person was silent for just a moment, then answered, “If you wanted to, you wouldn’t need to move on foot. And the same applies when it comes to conveying your intent. Your actions are indeed perplexing and seem quite inefficient.”

“To stand on two legs and converse through a convenience of civilization…Is that not an act from which one can draw significant value? Perhaps, though, it is perplexing to a man who floats upside down in a glass container in the pursuit of efficiency first and foremost.”

Efficiency and value.

That seemed to be what distinguished the two monsters.

“Oh, yes. About the ‘number one’ you finally succeeded in creating by building this whimsical city for over fifty years.”

“Are you about to tell me things haven’t proceeded as expected?”

“Well, you can allow it, can’t you? You have margins of error. Still, I must say, his mind was more puerile than I thought. He bemocks himself as evil, but I wonder if he realizes it is only because of a fervent thirst for goodness…Even though the one who he pursues, the Imagine Breaker, doesn’t act according to good or evil in the first place. That boy simply acts in line with the mental activity that bubbles up to the surface, only to be arbitrarily deemed ‘good’ by others.”

As Aiwass looked at the moon, it smiled very, very thinly. Its expression seemed to say that a short moment’s idle conversation held more value and interest than even destroying the world.

“And perhaps,” it said, “you admire them, hmm?”

“ … ”

“Heroes come in many shapes and sizes: those who try to stay on the straight and narrow, obeying the emotions that well up within them, even if nobody teaches them; those who have committed a grave mistake in the past and try to walk a proper path even as their sin causes them agony; those who can become a hero for one person alone, even if they don’t have the talent and weren’t chosen by anyone. Each sort of hero is someone who will rise again and again, no matter how many times they are beaten.”

“ … Aiwass.”

“These three types of heroes seem to be equipped with what you lack. I cannot blame you for admiring them…After all, there was a time when you could do nothing except fall to pieces and wail.”

“Aiwass.”

Aleister said its name one more time.

He who appeared both male and female, both adult and child, both saint and sinner, let a sharp twist creep into his voice for a mere moment. Normally, his voice was clothed in all emotions: joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. But now something was different.

Aiwass’s expression never changed.

Perhaps Aiwass didn’t even find that reaction worthy of its interest.

“I will be using whatever I can. Even if that means you. You may laugh and speak of errors in my plan, but allow me to say something as well—that absolute superiority of yours is by no means an eternal guarantee.”

“I didn’t particularly gain this power out of desire, nor do I maintain it through effort,” said Aiwass into the cell phone. “Well, that’s fine. I’ll emerge here again if I find value and interest.”

Moments before daybreak, Aiho Yomikawa awoke for some reason. Even she didn’t know why. She was a talented Anti-Skill officer, and as a result of her training, she could accurately sense the presence of others. Without turning on the lights, she left her bedroom and found her apartment’s living room window had been opened.

On alert, she searched the room and discovered two things. The first was that a roommate, a girl named Last Order, was nowhere to be found. And the second was the sticky trail of blood leading from her room to the living room window.

Yomikawa’s expression changed, but then she found a third clue.

It was a small note.

A short sentence had been written on it using bright-red blood, the characters shaky. There was nothing indicating who had written it, but Yomikawa recognized the words right away. She couldn’t glean deeper meaning from the words, but this one, abrupt sentence was written there:

I’ll save this brat’s life. I promise.

Only the periodic sounds of shaking disturbed Accelerator. He was in a dark space—a freight train container. And this freight train, which ran before the first commuter trains started, was set to keep chugging along and head outside Academy City. There would have been freight checks near the outer wall on their way, but Accelerator, active in the dark underbelly of the city, knew that certain processes could get a stowaway through them.

There were no voices.

It was so silent it seemed strange that this served as the hiding spot for two people. In Accelerator’s hands, as he lay curled up and unmoving, was another person, a girl, who was also still. It was Last Order, fully unconscious, the brunt of her weight on Accelerator. Aiwass’s appearance must have placed considerable stress on the girl; she was exhausted beyond what he’d ever seen.

“The girl presents a problem.”

Accelerator recalled the words, delivered from on high after he’d been completely trounced.

“It depends on Aleister’s plan, but whether it’s right now or far in the future, there is no doubt she will eventually be destroyed. She will die during the process of him integrating me into his plan. I wouldn’t rely on that doctor. Bluntly speaking, he’s just another human. His skills aren’t perfect, and if the technology in this city could do something for her in the first place—well, Aleister would never leave any causes for concern sit and not do anything about it. Still, though, losing this body if and when his plan crumbles is just one of myriad possibilities. If you want to save yourself tears later, walk a path besides the one that already exists.”

What was the intent behind those words?

As though he’d seen value and interest in something, Aiwass’s words alone continued to flow.

“Go to Russia.”

Accelerator had stayed silent and listened.

Aiwass wasn’t someone he could deal with in anger, a problem that he could tear limb from limb, and that fact alone disturbed Accelerator enough to fry his nerve cells.

“More specifically, head for the Elizina Alliance of Independent Nations, which broke off from the motherland. That place is beginning to transform into the center of a planet-scale war. Every civilization’s knowledge and technology will be honed into militaries and weapons and converge there … and something you’ve never seen before will appear as well—a completely different ‘law.’”

Aiwass, mindless of others’ thoughts and feelings, continued uttering words alone.

“The index of prohibited books—remember that term. The index itself is not there, but there is something crucial related to it.”

“…”

Accelerator’s puny evil didn’t stand a chance against power that overwhelming.

What should he do now? It felt like he’d been using a GPS map to cross some flatlands, but suddenly his screen had gone dead. He couldn’t figure out what it was he needed to aim for.

Academy City’s strongest monster. Nobody could see him hiding in that freight train, but if they had been able to, everyone might have felt the same.

They would have seen an abandoned child, one who had been wandering around the vast city’s streets and had finally curled up in abject exhaustion.

There was a crunch.

It was the sound of him crushing his cell phone in his hand—his only connection to Group, Aiho Yomikawa, and Kikyou Yoshikawa.

Accelerator brought the young girl in his arms close again, and his lips moved very slightly. In words that were almost unspoken, he said:

To Russia.

The supersonic passenger jet Shiage Hamazura and Rikou Takitsubo rode pierced through the heavens, maintaining its balance and a fixed course on autopilot. But that wouldn’t last forever. Hamazura had no way of safely landing the jumbo jet.

… We’ll have to use parachutes to get off.

Hamazura was busy placing bombs from the testing facility all over the plane as he thought out their next move. This passenger plane, though, was another part of Academy City’s top-of-the-line technology. They couldn’t let another country recover it, and he didn’t want such a huge mass falling intact anyway. It would be best if they detonated the jet above a sea or a flatland.

After he finished setting a bunch of explosives, Hamazura headed for the passenger seats rather than the cockpit. Takitsubo was there, tiredly leaning against the wall.

“Everything’s set. Will this really be okay?!”

“…Yeah. This plane has a built-in security package that melts all the important circuits with strong acid when it crashes to prevent technology from being salvaged. There should be almost no risk of secret information winding up in another country’s hands where it can be used as a weapon…”

There was no firmness in her voice.

Hamazura was no scholar, so he couldn’t even guess as to how much the Crystals had damaged her. But she probably wouldn’t heal if they did nothing. And he got the feeling that no outside medicine could do anything about it.

In the end, they would have to rely on Academy City technology if Takitsubo was to have any chance at survival.

… Our victory condition isn’t to escape from Academy City. And it’s not to destroy the entire science side.

Shiage Hamazura made the decision on his own.

… It’s about surrendering to Academy City in the most optimal way. I mean, we’d obviously never be able to beat them. I should narrow my focus to how well I can lose.

At the very least, he’d negotiate and get a guarantee for Takitsubo’s safety.

In the same way this supersonic jet was built using technology secret enough to warrant installing acid to erase its traces, Takitsubo’s Level Four body and DNA map were also secrets they couldn’t let fall into another nation’s hands. He would use this as leverage to cut a deal with the immense City. That was the only way to survive.

No matter…

No matter what dangers he had to face after getting Takitsubo back safely and losing his only bargaining chip.

“??? Hamazura, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

Hamazura forced himself to smile, then placed a bomb on the door leading outside the passenger seating. He took Takitsubo by the shoulders and veered her away from it so she wouldn’t be caught in the blast.

And then Takitsubo put her arms around his neck.

Their faces drew closer, then their lips touched.

It lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough to completely shatter all of Hamazura’s pessimistic plans.

“Don’t leave me.”

That was all she said.

Hamazura understood how much meaning was packed into those few words, though.

“All right…”

He embraced Takitsubo again. Whatever happens, we’ll both survive. “I’ll never leave you,” he said with trembling lips. “Damn it, I promise. I swear I’ll never leave you!!”

The frantic words brought a faint smile to the girl’s face.

The supersonic passenger jet slowed down. Hamazura didn’t understand it, but while he was setting the bombs all over the inside, Takitsubo had messed a little with the autopilot settings. She didn’t seem to have any more luck in taking control of the flight yoke to fly the plane but, after reading the manual a bit, she had apparently learned how to make a few small setting adjustments.

“I wonder where we are,” Hamazura said.

“If the GPS is right, probably Russia. I think we’re near a country called the Elizina Alliance of Independent Nations. There won’t be any civilian facilities here, so there shouldn’t be any damage if we blow up the plane here.”

“I see,” said Hamazura. No matter where they were, he’d keep running. He’d make use of anything and everything to keep Takitsubo safe, and in the end, they’d both find happiness. After steeling his resolve again, he remotely detonated the bomb attached to the passenger seating exit.

The door blew off instantly.

Because of the air pressure, a gust of wind launched Hamazura and Takitsubo out into the wild blue yonder like air escaping a balloon. With parachutes on their backs, they held hands as they fell, as though it were a skydiving competition.

They flew to their new battlefield, intending to grab hold of hope with their own hands.

Meanwhile, a certain spiky-haired boy was also headed for Russia.

The battle with the Roman Orthodox Church and the Russian Catholic Church had entered its climax. As a result, a girl who had memorized 103,000 grimoires had been put in mortal danger. In order to rescue her, he would have to defeat Fiamma of the Right, the apparent mastermind based in Russia, as soon as possible.

“Wait for me.”

That was all the boy said.

To rescue a certain girl, his legs carried him unhesitatingly onward, into the heart of the worldwide war.

I won’t let it end in tragedy.

Several protagonists, each with their own feelings in their hearts, unerringly assembled in one place.

Their paths, which had been separate once, would intersect.

And that would be when the true story began, with the stage standing atop the most terrible battlefield in the world.

AFTERWORD

To those of you who have been reading since Volume 1, it’s good to see you again.

For those of you who purchased all twenty-one volumes at once, thank you with all of my heart.

I’m Kazuma Kamachi.

As explained in the beginning, this book’s story is closely linked to Volume 15 of the novels. It’s chock-full of science terms, centered on the key word Dragon, which appeared to hint at deeper goings-on at the end of Volume 15.

Aiwass says this as well at the end of this story, but heroes come in many different varieties. Accelerator, a villain who desires good above all others, and Shiage Hamazura, who became a hero by crawling up from his position as a bargain-sale grunt character whose death would have made perfect sense. They’re different kinds of heroes from Touma Kamijou, and I have to say it’s a lot of fun having them show up out of the blue…Of course, that said, it’s only because Touma Kamijou’s story is central to the whole thing that we can get excited more effectively in contrast by this one, a story about villains and street thugs.

Maybe I just can’t help liking characters who fight with their lives on the line for someone or something precious to them, whether it’s Kuroko Shirai or Acqua of the Back. I was thinking at first that I’d make the subtitle for the epilogue Hope_in_Hand, but I changed it to Brave_in_Hand to denote their bravery, and it struck me as much more suitable for these protagonists!

I’d like to thank Haimura, my illustrator; my editors, Miki and Fujiwara; and Iwakura, who kindly assisted with the powered suit designs for this novel. To be honest, with the unique atmosphere of the villains’ side that clings to Accelerator and Shiage Hamazura, I think the illustration really has its work cut out for it more than the prose. Thank you very much for your support once again.

And a thank-you to all my readers. The only reason I can continue this irregular series whose mood completely changes depending on the volume is because you all decided that way of doing things can be okay. I’d like to try various things in the future as well, so I look forward to your continued support.

Now then, as I humbly close the pages here.

And as I pray that the heroes’ battles will grace the pages of the next book.

Here, now, I lay down my pen.

What form will the battle of these protagonists, each with bravery in hand, take?

Kazuma Kamachi