CHAPTER 1

The Speed of Too Soon a Change
In_a_Long-Distance_Country.

1

Academy City’s School District 3 had several international exhibition halls, and it was connected to School District 23, the city’s ocean-facing front door, by a direct railroad line. The former possessed many facilities for visitors from abroad, like hotels (all of the highest grade in the city), while the latter held all the airports. The distance and distinction between the amenities of the two was to curb flight noise around the city’s upscale lodging.

The city hosted many of its events in District 3. Some were motor shows collecting the very best in self-driving technology, while others were robotics expositions featuring the fruits of mechanical engineering. These exhibitions weren’t purely for fun projects—mostly, they were for promoting the city’s cutting-edge tech. City officials would present technology approved by the General Board to be of the proper standard to put to use outside the city, select the trade offers from the countless outside corporations that were most beneficial (not search—for Academy City, it was always select), and amass huge amounts of funding.

Another of those such shows was going on today.

On display were, among other things, unmanned attack helicopters, the latest in exoskeletal powered suit apparatuses, and even high-output optical weapons that could aid in aerial bombing.

Even the event’s name was the Interceptor Weaponry Show, showing how absurdly dangerous everything was.

“Pfhaaa…”

Someone let out a deep breath—a girl in the domed exhibition hall’s corner with a powered suit attached to her torso, making the act look oddly humorous.

“It’s so hot…,” grumbled Yomikawa, her helmet tucked under her arm. “Why are these powered suit demonstrations so exhausting?”

Next to her, a woman in work clothes shot her a glance. She was a member of the powered suit development team, looking as out of place in her outfit as a small child in a tuxedo; she was used to a white lab coat.

“Don’t worry, it’s not just you,” she said. “There’s a lot of hot air floating around the hall.”

A laptop rested on the engineer’s knees. There was a thin card reminiscent of a cell phone inserted in its side. Its screen displayed technical data for their exoskeletons.

“Look, that doesn’t make me any happier, ’kay?”

“I didn’t say it to make you happy.”

“Still, I wonder why there’s so many gosh-darn people here,” Yomikawa went on. “An interceptor weaponry show on a weekday is pretty hard-core, y’know? Doesn’t this hall look like it’s over capacity?”

“Actually, it’s press day, so there aren’t many here. Tomorrow it’ll be open to everyone. It’ll look like hell.”

“Look, that doesn’t make me any happier, ’kay?”

“I didn’t say it to make you happy.”

Terribly discouraged by her engineer, Yomikawa placed the helmet under her arm on the floor with a clatter. The helmet was almost fifty centimeters across. It had looked like she’d been wearing one of the oil-drum-shaped city-patrolling robots on her head. The rest of the powered suit resembled thick plate armor, making the whole thing look pretty top-heavy.

“So hot. You know what, I’m just gonna take off the rest…,” she said, wriggling her neck out, then continuing to crawl out of the suit. Underneath the armor, she wore black clothing, like the kind special forces used.

Yomikawa sat down with her back against the motionless mech suit and started futilely fanning herself with a hand. “Jeez, these really aren’t made for wearing in combat suits, eh? Wonder if there’s a more breathable exoskel-exclusive outfit lying around.”

“I guess you should have gone along with the planning head’s idea. Take off the suit, and bam! a knockout bikini. It’d get a lot of applause from the press. They’d be ecstatic.”

As far as Yomikawa could tell from the monotone, the engineer didn’t care one bit about her problem. She used a towel to wipe off the beads of sweat sticking to her face. “That guy gets way too into it whenever we start talking about promotional models.”

“It’s probably his hobby, sadly.”

“You couldn’t find a more boorish woman in all Japan than me. I could never pretend to be a booth babe. How on earth did I end up in his sights?”

“I guess Anti-Skill has it pretty rough, huh? They make you do odd jobs like you’re the SDF or something.”

“If we get odd jobs, it means there’s nothing else to do and the world’s at peace. Still…” Yomikawa stopped and looked around.

Booths all over were displaying a myriad of tools for killing people. The usual tinge of “capturing berserk espers while doing the least damage possible” had been stashed in a corner. Instead, one could see nothing but super-powerful, highly lethal weapons—the sort that would penetrate a tank if a person tried to hide behind it, and then them, too.

The booth organizers had certainly changed course quickly. And there’s only one reason I can think of…

Yomikawa stole a glance at the laptop the engineer was using. Along with a diagram of the powered suit she’d just been demonstrating was a small window showing a television feed. It was a news program, with a reporter reading from a manuscript.

“Early this morning local time, large-scale religious protests have broken out in the industrial city of Toulouse in southern France,” said the newscaster. “People have flooded onto a road several kilometers long that follows the Garonne River, which runs through the center of the city, and they continue to severely affect infrastructure networks like transportation.”

The program showed a recorded video of a pitch-black city lit brightly by torch flame, with massive crowds of people marching along. Some of the men and women carried banners with French vilification written on them, while other young people were setting fire to Academy City signboards and holding them aloft.

Technically, they were only protesting—these weren’t uncontrolled riots. Still, the sight of thousands parading through the streets with their anger on full display intimidated Yomikawa enough to give her a chill.

“In Dortmund, in central Germany, a bulldozer thought to be stolen has rammed into a Roman Orthodox church, severely wounding nine priests inside. Authorities believe it’s retribution for the recent string of protests, but nobody has claimed responsibility yet. With worries of the conflict between the Roman Orthodox Church and Academy City escalating in the future on the rise…”

She’d seen it already, but she couldn’t shake the bitter feeling. Like a tiny ember spreading to a dry heap of straw, the world had changed a lot these past few days. With the Roman Orthodox Church’s simultaneous worldwide demonstrations and certain people’s overreactions to them, the conflict was accelerating by the second.

And now, Academy City was throwing an interceptor weaponry exhibition as though in response. At a glance, one could take it to be the General Board officially announcing that the city would not yield to the protests.

But this…was all executed too well for that, she thought.

Weapons development wasn’t like building plastic models. One had to submit an application for development, go back and forth with budget proposals, carefully discuss it, design prototypes, do hundreds if not thousands of simulations with what they built, hammer out the numbers they were looking for, and only then would they have a “product” to display.

The string of demonstrations had worsened just these past few days. Weapons development needed years of work. They couldn’t possibly keep up. Which meant…

Academy City was already prepared for this, she thought. They foresaw this happening to the world, and instead of stopping it before it started, they plotted to have control of things after the fact, didn’t they? Shit. It made her want to spit.

Maybe Academy City wouldn’t be the one to pull the trigger on a war, but it was clearly trying to profit from the idea.

The engineer, owner of the laptop, used her sleeve to wipe the sweat from her brow and reluctantly looked over at the news screen. “Every channel’s the same thing. Times like these make me wish I had a contract for variety show channels or something.”

“…What do you think?”

“Hmm.” The weapons research scientist paused briefly. “I don’t like having more work. Unpaid overtime is even worse.”

“This expo is totally different from usual, isn’t it?”

“Well, the head of planning was really into it. Saying things about overturning the foul stereotypes of the defense industry and thus opening up new markets. Crazy stuff, if you ask me. This whole place is specifically for developing weapons. He looked delirious from the heat, so I hit him with an ice cube.”

“The technology they’re showing off clearly isn’t to sell to outside companies. Which basically makes this a military exercise…Showing our ‘enemies’ only the destructive power of a swarm of unknown weaponry, using intimidation to play the diplomacy card—that’s all we’re doing.”

“I suppose. They are quite destructive. The head of planning lost a few screws because of it, though, and he started blurting out even more nonsense.”

“They might be making deals on these products, but it’s not like we’re shipping the ones on display,” said Yomikawa. “It’s like taking the full-auto function out of rifles and lining them up in your storefront. We’re just selling them stuff three or four generations worse…And even those are just barely reproducible by the technology outside Academy City.” Yomikawa looked at a group of men in business suits talking to one another right next to a nearby platform. “Plus, we’re talking about buying and selling licenses, but the only facilities in any country that can manufacture the core components of these weapons are already aligned with this city. Meaning we can tell exactly how many are produced and where they’re deployed to. Jeez, why does Academy City go so far to get money?”

“With enough capital, it can mass-produce silly weapons,” said the engineer. “The head of planning is apparently trying to send a giant humanoid robot into space next. And I bet the pilot candidate will be a teenage boy, too.”

“…You really have no enthusiasm for this, huh?”

“Not in the slightest.”

2

Though Aiho Yomikawa had no way of knowing, a certain boy was at the middle of this great conflict.

Touma Kamijou.

Other than his power, Imagine Breaker, he was supposed to be a totally normal high school student. But if what God’s Right Seat had said was right, he was now an enemy of two billion people. Thinking back on the incidents he’d been wrapped up in these last few months and how gradually they’d all been resolved, though, it seemed reasonable.

And so, this boy Touma Kamijou, relatively central to the conflict…

“—Now, I want you to tell me why you did something like this.”

…was being lectured harshly by a tall female teacher in the faculty room.

To be more precise, he wasn’t the only one being lectured. Blue Hair and Motoharu Tsuchimikado were right there with him, hanging their heads. Seiri Fukiyose was behind them, too, looking frustrated, wondering why she’d been called here.

The faculty room was filled with haphazardly placed office desks made of steel. Many teachers were around, probably because it was lunchtime. They were doing all sorts of things, like eating meals, grading tests, and riding electric wooden horses to lower their body weight.

Their teacher, Suama Oyafune, wasn’t eating a meal, nor grading tests, nor riding an electric wooden horse to control her body weight. Instead, she was sitting on a cheap-looking swivel chair, her legs crossed and clad in beige stockings, combing her hard, needlelike hair up with a hand, and glaring at the students out of brand-name inverted triangular glasses that must have been expensive.

“I’ll ask again. Explain to me why you thought it would be all right to get into a huge brawl in the school building and have a lively clash of burning souls with your fists as weapons.”

Silence.

A TV on the room’s wall was broadcasting the news. “Because of repeated demonstration marches and protests, Italian soccer leagues have determined their stadiums unsafe and suspended their morning games.”

“You can’t explain it?” she demanded. This irritable teacher who always wore brand-name clothing and accessories was famous at Kamijou’s school for being particularly strict with “disciplining.” She was in charge of a different class, so they really hadn’t talked to her much, but today she’d been the one to catch them.

Their class’s homeroom teacher was Komoe Tsukuyomi, but even she couldn’t keep an eye on the classroom during lunch break. Suama Oyafune had happened to walk by during their fight, then captured them and dragged them off to the faculty room by the proverbial ear.

“I mean…,” said Kamijou, steeling himself and looking straight at the teacher, eyes glinting. “Come on! Blue Hair and I were arguing about whether red or black bunny girls were better, and then suddenly Tsuchimikado comes in and calls us idiots and says, White ones are obviously best, and that doesn’t even make any sense!”

Clatter-clatter! Suama and her chair flipped over.

The volume of Kamijou’s voice was one thing, but the opinion must have been a little too stimulating for a teacher wearing inverted equilaterals.

The math teacher looked away from the three idiots to Seiri Fukiyose, who was standing behind them.

“…D-don’t tell me you were part of this ridiculous argument, too…”

“I was just trying to shut these morons up!!” shouted Fukiyose in reply, blood vessels appearing near her temples. “Why did I get dragged here, too?!”

Still, when Oyafune had stepped into their classroom, Fukiyose had Tsuchimikado in a headlock, had already kicked Blue Hair to the floor, and was in the process of giving Touma Kamijou a forehead slam. She was doubtlessly number one, the boss of the kids.

Meanwhile, Tsuchimikado, wearing his blue sunglasses, shook his head from side to side. “Flat-chested white bunnies for the win, meowsa.”

Blue Hair couldn’t stay silent about that. “S-stop making everything flat, you asshole!! Besides, you’re not even into bunny girls! You’d take anything as long as it was a loli!!”

“But it’s the truth, nya, Blue Hair. When faced with such a powerful loli, any tiny, insignificant clothing attributes like bunny suits or gymnastic leotards or school swimsuits mean nothing. In conclusion, lolis look good in anything, so obviously, a bunny girl loli would still be the best, meeeow!!”

“Say that again!!” cried Kamijou. “I knew it! This isn’t even about bunny girls to you!!”

As the three idiots rolled up their sleeves and got ready for round two, the triangle glasses–wearing, suit-clad lady professor Suama Oyafune, who was still overturned with her chair, took out a whistle and blew.

Pfweeeee!! came the whistle’s shrill command as the gorilla-like civic guidance teacher, Mr. Saigo, stood up at the back of the faculty room and lumbered over.

3

In the end, they were all ordered to do some weeding behind the gymnasium after school.

With little exposure to the sun, the area was damp, with weeds energetically overtaking the place. Just looking at how big the green surface was made Kamijou lose the will to work, and the thought Why bother cleaning if nobody comes back here? permeated the air from every mind.

However, something else was really responsible for draining his enthusiasm.

“Tsu-Tsuchimikado, Blue Hair, I’ll get you back for this vanishing act…”

Right now, out of the four ordered to weed, only Kamijou and Fukiyose were here.

Abandoned and alone, Kamijou’s shoulders drooped as he stared at the vast area behind the gym. On the other side of that thin wall, he could hear high-spirited voices he just knew were from the volleyball or basketball club as they enjoyed their after-school time to the fullest. It made the heavy mental chains of this unproductive weeding all the heavier.

Still, muttering under his breath about his nemeses disappearing wouldn’t make the weeds go away. Kamijou picked up a pair of work gloves from a wheelbarrow he’d brought over to carry the weeds to the garbage area, stating, “We’re not gonna be done weeding by the time they kick us out for the night anyway. Let’s just take it easy until then.”

He continued under his breath, “It’d be over a lot faster if we could get a pyrokinetic over here, too.”

Fukiyose wasn’t happy about being sucked into this, either, but she was pulling out the weeds more efficiently than her grumbling partner.

Five minutes later, having grown bored, Kamijou once more spoke to the girl squatting down a short distance away. “By the way, Fukiyose…”

“What is it?” She must have been bored, too, because it didn’t take any coaxing to get her to respond.

Kamijou started moving his hands again. “Weren’t they talking about suspending midterms in October? But you’re still using all your free time to study for them by yourself. How come?”

“What, that?” she asked curtly. “If we don’t have midterms, that means our second semester grades are gonna be based only on our finals. And the finals will probably be at least twice as big. That’s even more reason not to let up, isn’t it?”

“…”

“And I’m not letting you see my notes.”

Kamijou had been on cloud nine, thinking No more midterms, whoopee! but Fukiyose delivered the finishing blow with no concern.

The unexpected hit put Kamijou into coward mode. “H-hmph. School studies aren’t everything, you know!”

“You make it sound like studying is all I can do.”

“…You can do something else?”

“Yes!!” shouted Fukiyose from her stomach. “I may not look like it, but I can throw a forkball. Not that I have any real interest in baseball!!”

“Really,” said Kamijou slowly. “Not from online classes or some kind of forkball health exercise, I bet.”

“It…It doesn’t matter how I learned it. All that matters is if I can pitch one or not! Don’t give me that suspicious look—I’ll prove it to you!!”

“Yeah, yeah. But we don’t have a ball.” Kamijou sighed.

Fukiyose took a ball the size of her fist out of her skirt pocket. “You can never be too prepared!!”

“…Um, that ball has something written on it. ‘Squeeze this ball one hundred times a day to facilitate alpha waves…’”

Kamijou gaped, but the girl didn’t care. She actually seemed pretty motivated and started digging at the ground a little with one foot.

Kamijou had no catcher’s mitt for the ball, so instead, he put on several pairs of work gloves. He walked away with no small degree of reluctance, then squatted and did his best impression of a catcher’s pose.

When he spoke, his words were monotone, like one big, long sigh. “Go ahead, Fukiyose.”

“All right, Kamijou. Don’t be too impressed by my amazing one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour pitch!!”

“A one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour forkball?!” he cried in a fluster. “I’m already impressed by that amazing bluff!!”

Fukiyose, really getting into it now, gripped the white ball, slowly turned, and held it overhead.

It was just a windup, but Kamijou suddenly shouted, “S-stop, stop, Fukiyose!!”

“What do you want?!” she shouted back unsteadily, stopped midway through her pitching form.

But Kamijou had hesitated to give it to her straight, so he skipped the important parts and said, “Skirt!!”

“…?”

Fukiyose frowned, searching for the meaning in his gaze. She looked around her waist area, discovering there that holding up her knee had flipped up her skirt and revealed her cutely patterned underwear…

…before launching an overpowering fastball.

Kamijou missed the timing, and the soft rubber ball slammed into his belly with a hard, violent splat!!

As Kamijou writhed in agony, he spoke, voice trembling. “…Th-that wasn’t a forkball. You just threw it as hard as you freaking could…”

“That one didn’t count!!” shouted Fukiyose, giving a quite masculine excuse, as she caught the ball from Kamijou. “Jeez. This time I’ll throw a forkball. It’ll drop pretty quick, so put your mitt lower.”

Saying something or other, Fukiyose began to go through the pitching motion, but since Kamijou had pointed out her skirt a moment ago, her leg movements ended up rather stiff.

Her balance was a bit wobbly because of that, but the pitch she threw had an astounding amount of force behind it. With a splat!! the ball struck the layers of work gloves he wore. It wasn’t even a hardball, just a toy, but it still stung his palm. Plus, she hadn’t thrown it underhanded like a softball player but overhanded like a pro baseball pitcher, and that sealed the deal.

Kamijou squeezed the ball a little. “Did that…drop?”

“Yes, it did!! Weren’t you watching? Couldn’t you tell it dropped right before it got to the batter?!”

“Huh? It just looked like you threw it normally.”

“K-Kamijou!! You weren’t standing where the batter should be, so you wouldn’t know!! If you actually swung a bat, you would have realized how sharp my forkball is!!”

“Oh. Well, now you’ve said it, Fukiyose.” Kamijou smirked and took a small plastic-handled broom about fifty centimeters long from a few dustpan sets he’d brought just in case. “That sounded a lot like a challenge to me.”

Gripping the handle vaguely like a baseball bat, he rolled his hands on his wrists to gauge the timing of his swing.

Meanwhile, Fukiyose, for her part, having caught the ball Kamijou tossed back, gave a fearless grin. “Trying to beat Major League Fukiyose’s pitch, are you? You’re pretty funny—for a monkey.”

“I’ll knock this one out.”

“I’ll show you—the drop of a true forkball and the humiliation of defeeeat!!”

“Right out of the paaaaaaaaaaaark!!”

A baseball thrown.

The sound of air parting.

If he waited to see if it really dropped, he’d be far too late on the swing.

Unable to assess Fukiyose’s true intent and ability, he moved to answer her challenge.

Power and tension coursed through his body.

He judged the timing, exhaled slightly, set his feet, turned his hips with his arms, swung the broom in both hands as hard as he could…

And…

4

Suama Oyafune, clad in a suit, inverted triangle glasses, and even stockings—all brand-name—understood that beautiful women had an advantage.

Of course, she only knew that because she’d been relegated to constantly having disadvantages in the past.

Anybody, no matter what they looked like, could become beautiful to some extent. Suama’s theory went like this: Even if “high level” or “mid-high level” was aiming too high, “high middle” was perfectly doable. And if she got up to that “high middle” level, she’d begin to see the benefits here and there.

Beautiful people had an advantage.

Her students would listen to what she was saying in class, her fellow teachers wouldn’t look down on her, and some would even give her their seats in the cafeteria. All of these advantages came from spending an hour in the bath every day, putting on face lotion before bed, eating a proper breakfast every morning, managing her weight so it wouldn’t affect her skin, dedicating over an hour to putting on makeup before leaving, and freely using magazines and the Internet to shop around for Western-style clothes—a boon gained from keeping herself polished, both on the outside and the inside.

For Suama Oyafune, her makeup starting to fall off after school let out—especially if sweat was making her drawn-on eyebrows run—was a major source of anxiety. Still, beauty was defined by one’s attitude and aura, too. If she was too obviously worried about her makeup, she would gain less of the benefits of being beautiful, so checking mirrors over and over and going back and forth to the powder room wouldn’t be good.

…

Suama slowly looked around.

She was in the faculty room. At this hour, most teachers had gone to advise their clubs, so it was thinned out. If nobody was around, maybe she’d secretly check her eyebrows…

“Phew~! Making handouts sure is hard work!”

In a seat relatively close to her was a teacher who looked like an elementary school student, hectically working.

Komoe Tsukuyomi.

The stack of papers clearly exceeded what any one person could be expected to handle. This tiny teacher was known for creating the most effective teaching materials based off precise data on each individual student, but she must have been undertaking other teachers’ work, too.

Right now, with the city’s peacekeeping Anti-Skill being rounded up in great numbers, they didn’t have time to make every single thing for their classes. Other non-Anti-Skill teachers would have to help them out.

Even Suama had handouts and such to make for other teachers, but the woman couldn’t help but be more interested in Komoe Tsukuyomi’s “minimalism.”

“…What kind of health routines do you need to keep such young and lustrous skin? Actually, mathematically speaking, those values are impossible.”

“??? What is? I’m pretty good at math, so I can help you.”

One hundred and thirty-five centimeters quickly came pattering up to her after hearing her greatly perplexed voice. Suama admitted there were several things she could learn from the tiny woman as a teacher, but was anyone sure she wasn’t actually in elementary school?

Komoe Tsukuyomi came over and took the papers on Suama’s desk without asking, then went over them one by one, nodding to herself. “By the way, Ms. Oyafune, did my students cause you trouble? I apologize for that.”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh yes. As his teacher, I would like to take Kami and the others to task as well. Do you know where they are? They left right after homeroom. Have they gone home already?”

“Oh no,” said Suama in a louder voice, reflexively looking at the clock hanging on the wall.

It was almost six o’clock.

It had been hours since she’d told them to weed.

“Ack…I’m sorry, Ms. Komoe, I’ll go get them right now!!”

“Well, okay. But where are they?”

The relaxed senior teacher’s words came at her back; Suama had already burst out of the faculty room. Club activities were winding down, too, and nobody who didn’t belong to an after-school club could be seen. The hallways were dim and mostly empty, so as she walked toward the faculty entrance, she quickly began to feel how much time had actually passed.

Well, delinquents who cause fights at school shouldn’t have that much patience. They’ve probably gone home already without doing any of the weeding.

Still, she’d meant to check on them after about half an hour, then scold them a little and make them go home, so she couldn’t help but feel reluctant now. It had been a rash punishment, so she also couldn’t easily apologize to the students now.

Meanwhile, after reaching the faculty entrance and changing into her relatively high-class pumps, she hurried behind the gymnasium.

And there, the inverted triangle glasses–wearing female math teacher saw…

5

“Come on, come on!! Thirteen wins, nine losses—that forkball of yours is nothing!!” challenged Kamijou, gripping his short broom with both hands and waggling it at Fukiyose.

“Be quiet!! Nine losses, and you’re still running your mouth…Besides, if we were using a real hardball, it would spin a lot better!!”

After introducing a rule where each loss equated to five minutes of full-power weeding, the match between Kamijou and Fukiyose had gotten seriously heated. Their high school souls burned with such ferocity that it would make one forget that if they just took it easy and did the work together, it would have been much easier.

Unlike Kamijou, who was quite happily swinging the bat, Fukiyose was breathing heavily as she kept a firm grasp on the baseball, her shoulders moving up and down. She checked the time on her cell phone. “Besides, there’s still thirty minutes until schools close…That’s enough time to turn it around!!”

“By the way, are your pitches dropping like they’re supposed to?”

“I keep telling you they are! They’re forking great!! Why can’t you tell that they’re dropping suddenly right before getting to home plate?!”

“Really? I feel like they’re just slowing down and falling like anything else would…”

“Get a closer looooooooooook!!”

Fukiyose, roaring with all her might, lobbed the ball.

Whhhrrrrrr!! In response to the approaching baseball, Kamijou wound up for a full swing.

A forkball…

But then his body reacted unconsciously to Fukiyose’s words, causing him to adjust the short broom’s course down a little.

Once again, however, the ball didn’t curve much at all.

A normal straight pitch flew at him.

“You…You can’t do it after all!!”

He quickly tried to bring the bat back on track, but he was too late.

Nevertheless, he felt the ball’s edge nick the broomstick.

“Gwoooohhhhhhhhhhh!!” bellowed Kamijou even as he felt the hitting sensation fade.

After taking a chip out of the broomstick, the baseball curved slightly upward and continued to fly behind him.

Shit, I missed?!

Fouls were a concept that didn’t exist for this contest. If Kamijou hit the ball in front of him, he won, but otherwise, Fukiyose won. They made vague judgments to decide whether her pitches were strikes or balls.

Plus—and this was the really annoying part—whoever lost had to go get the ball. The loser already had to do five minutes of full-power weeding as punishment. Having to chase down faraway balls was a huge pain.

So he stood there for a second in his pose, broomstick still out to the side, instantly starting calculations in his head. Gah. That’s thirteen wins and nine losses. No, wait, ten losses. Maybe I’ll filibuster her, walk real slowly to go get it…

Smack.

Then he heard an odd noise from right behind him.

“…?”

He didn’t understand, but Fukiyose, who was facing him, had a shocked expression and was standing stock-still. He could practically hear the blood in her face retreating.

??? Is there something behind me?

When Kamijou turned around…

…he saw grass and dirt stuck to inverted triangle–shaped glasses…

…and, wearing them, the teacher Suama Oyafune, clearly having taken the ball to the face.

The baseball would have hit her in the stomach if not for Kamijou’s swing glancing off it and changing its course—right into her face.

“…”

Suama Oyafune was taking slow, deep breaths, but she was obviously trembling.

Ahhh, aaahhhhhhh…By the time Kamijou started shaking, it was too late.

Suama Oyafune plunged toward him and swung a clenched fist just as Kamijou, unaware, went down on his hands and knees in prostration, coincidentally dodging her knuckles, and now, the math teacher’s anger at the ball and at her own missed attack compounding each other, she drove the sharp heel of her pump into his back.

6

Suama Oyafune hastened back to the faculty room.

Ms. Komoe was absent; she must have gone somewhere.

Technically, she’d already gotten the grass and dirt off her face with a handkerchief, but still…

Waaah!! Dirt, dirt, dirt!! It’s stuck to my face, I just know it! And maybe my penciled eyebrows are coming off because I accidentally wiped them!! What to do, what do I do, aghhh?!!

Her panic was so pronounced a blind person could have seen it. She made sure nobody was around before forgetting about going to the powder room and taking out a hand mirror to check her face right then and there.

For now, her eyebrows were fine.

But that wasn’t enough to relieve Suama Oyafune.

Beautiful women had advantages. If she wasn’t beautiful, she would be disadvantaged. That was how life worked.

Okay, so my clothes—dirty. Over here, too. And over here?! My hair’s a mess, I’m sweating, my stockings are running from walking so fast, where do I even start?!

For now, she took her suit jacket off, brushed off the flecks of dirt that made it to her white blouse. But some clung stubbornly, so she took the blouse off and shook it out.

Then she removed her running beige stockings so she could change into the spare pair she had in her purse. Due to the way she moved, her tight skirt turned all the way up during that, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. She had to go back to being the perfect, beautiful teacher as soon as she could.

But then…

…the faculty room door started clattering.

Suama froze, one leg raised to put through her stocking.

“Wait…I…wait!!” she said immediately.

“Huh? For what?”

She knew he’d heard her, and yet the door clattered open anyway.

It was Touma Kamijou.

And Suama Oyafune, her blouse open in the front and her black underwear visible, her tight skirt flipped up so she could put on her stockings, stayed absolutely still.

“Ky—”

She checked herself just before screaming.

Instead, she reached for a nearby desk and grabbed a fifty-centimeter super-large triangle ruler with a magnet for using on blackboards in class. Then she hurled it with all her might at the faculty room entrance.

Kamijou quickly slammed the door shut, and the triangle’s tip stabbed the doorframe like a shuriken. The lodged ruler wobbled back and forth.

A shout echoed into the room from the hallway. “Ooowwahhhhh!! That could have killed me!!”

“Explain to me right now why you came in after I told you to wait!!”

For the moment, she pulled the stockings the rest of the way up, closed the front of her blouse, put her arms through the suit jacket she’d hung over the back of her chair, and hurriedly started for the hallway when…

Brk.

This time, she heard a strange noise from near her thighs.

“…”

She’d just unsealed these stockings two minutes ago. Are they running already? thought Suama, thoughtlessly checking her thighs.

“U-um, excuse me…”

As if he’d timed it that way, Touma Kamijou nervously opened the faculty room door once again.

To see Suama Oyafune, her legs in an O shape, her tight skirt up, bent over and looking around her crotch area.

Beauty aside—the scene did enough damage to her very womanhood.

“—!!”

This time, the math teacher silently threw a super-large protractor for blackboard use at the entrance of the faculty room. The door closed again, and the second teaching aid got stuck in it as well.

A quaking voice came in from the hallway. “I was just trying to explain why I came in before!!”

“It had better be worth making this situation so much worse. I demand a concise explanation of logical fact!!”

“Uh, the schools close down soon, so can we stop weeding now?”

“That was all?!”

Blood vessels appeared around Suama Oyafune’s temples. She grabbed a super-large compass for blackboard use from a desk, then burst out of the faculty room, ready to wallop the failure of a high schooler with it.

But Touma Kamijou wasn’t there.

All she saw was a figure dashing around a corner and vanishing toward the stairs.

“What on earth is going on…?” muttered Suama, decidedly exhausted, but her voice went unheard.

7

“Crap…I really thought she was gonna kill me,” muttered Kamijou to himself as he trudged home in the dying light.

With October starting, this time of day had been getting chillier, little by little. In response to the temperature change, there were somewhat fewer people around, too, compared to the summertime. The big screen on a blimp floating in the darkening sky featured a newscaster telling everyone to be careful with flames because the air was dry.

As Kamijou weaved around the cleaning robots ambling along the sidewalk, he wondered what he’d have for dinner, then decided to stop off at the department store by the station. He was a little worried about his refrigerator’s contents. If he traveled a little farther away, there was a cheaper supermarket, but he’d be late getting home if he went there now. That would lead to Index, who was waiting in his dorm room, throwing a fit because she was hungry.

In any case, with the station close, he caught a glance of a brown-haired girl wearing a Tokiwadai uniform, facing away from him. It was Mikoto Misaka, he realized.

Moreover, she delivered a high kick to a juice vending machine, then started to wonder if all the machines in the area were malfunctioning…

When Kamijou saw that, he decided not to say anything and leave and promptly made a 180-degree turn. “…They say a wise man keeps away from danger. Also, to let sleeping dogs lie,” he whispered to himself.

“Who says that?” came the answer from right behind him. He gave a jerk and went ramrod straight.

Cautiously, he made a second 180-degree turn to find Mikoto Misaka. Bewildered, he groaned in spite of himself. “Please spare me…”

“Again, from what?”

“Mr. Kamijou is extremely worn out from weeding after school and many other things! So please spare me any further trouble!!”

“What the heck are you even talking about?!”

As he tried to flee at Mach speed, Mikoto grabbed the back of his neck and snapped into his ear, “And would you stop trying to end all our conversations whenever you get the chance?! You never answered the text I sent you, and I want to see what happened to that, so let me see your cell phone!!”

“A text…? You sent one?”

“Yes!!”

Kamijou thought for a moment, then took out his cell phone, opened his mailbox in front of Mikoto, and looked at it askance. “…You did?”

“I just said yes!! Geh, your in-box is empty?! It’s not treating my address as spam, is it?!”

Mikoto was astonished at this whole text thing, but then she arrived at another fact.

As Kamijou pressed the buttons, she clamped onto his hand to stop him, then peered at the names in his in-box folder.

“…Okay. Why, exactly, do you have my mom’s number in here?”

“Huh?” Come to think of it, I did run into drunk Misuzu Misaka in Academy City the other day…

Mikoto, still frowning, used her thumb to control his cell phone, then called up the person in question.

“Wait, hey!”

It wasn’t on speakerphone, but between the volume being turned up loud anyway and the short distance from him to her, he heard the call tone.

“Okay, Mother, I have something to ask you.”

“Huh?!” came back Misuzu, sounding shocked. “Is my display bugging out? My phone isn’t showing your number, Mikoto.”

Just from what Kamijou heard from their conversation, she seemed to ask how Misuzu ended up with his phone number.

“Hmm…” But Misuzu spoke slowly as she answered. “I think I remember meeting that boy one night in Academy City, but…Mommy can’t remember things from when she’s drunk. Even Mommy doesn’t know when any of this happened! Oh-ho-ho-ho.”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” Mikoto nodded before hanging up.

She smiled sweetly, closed the phone with both hands, and returned it.

“What…do…you…think you’re doing, getting my mother drunk like that?!”

“What?! What kind of eccentric reasoning is that?! And I’m sure your mom remembers! That laugh at the end was too suspicious for her not to!!”

It only took a moment’s thought to figure it out, but she seemed convinced that her little family was on the brink of destruction, since her face was bright red and she’d lost her cool.

Time for a change of subject!! thought Kamijou, deciding to take the plunge and steer the topic away through brute force. “C-come on. Mr. Kamijou has to go home and polish rice now…Wait, don’t you have a curfew, too? The sun’s already down!”

“What? Curfew? Easy to get past,” she said flatly.

Kamijou was already feeling fed up with this conversation.

Mikoto, meanwhile, didn’t seem to care about his mental health whatsoever, but the change in topic seemed to be successful. “The checks do feel like they’ve been getting stricter, though. Maybe because of all the stuff going on lately. Even people who never read the newspaper are all busy checking the news on their cell phone TVs and looking for info sites on the Internet.”

“…”

“I guess everyone’s worried, huh? …Especially after how it got like that before.”

Mikoto was probably talking about September 30.

The incident that directly triggered the current “unseen war.”

The incident where Academy City’s gates were destroyed; residents all over the city, student and teacher alike, were systematically “attacked”; the peacekeeping groups Anti-Skill and Judgment were completely shut down; and a road demolished into a hundred-meter-long crater.

No one person was responsible for them all. Thanks to several organizations and opinions intersecting, not even Kamijou, who was directly involved, had a full view of it…Actually, he was starting to think nobody could understand the whole thing. And if a central figure felt that way, those who were only dragged into it would have pretty limited information.

Maybe the farther from the center one was, the more opportunity they had to observe from a safe location. And even Mikoto probably didn’t take Academy City’s announcement that “foreign religious groups were conducting scientific supernatural ability research in secret, and espers they’d developed were the attackers” at face value.

Mikoto looked away from Kamijou and stared off in the distance.

About five hundred meters from here was the street leveled by a certain great “angel’s” appearance. Kamijou thought maybe she was thinking back to what happened on September 30, but she actually appeared to be gazing at the airship in the darkening skies. The giant screen attached to its side was running a news program right now.

“The large-scale Roman Orthodox demonstration and protest activity, which was limited to European nations until now, has begun in the United States.”

The newscaster reading the script was calm.

“Today, protests have occurred in San Francisco and Los Angeles, shore cities on the West Coast, but they are predicted to spread throughout the entire country.”

The image changed to what was probably Los Angeles. It would have been the middle of the night there, but the video took place during the day, so it must have been recorded.

Damn it. It made another big jump…Kamijou’s face unconsciously twisted, like he was looking at terrible wounds.

As though a marathon had just started, an ocean of people was covering a big three-lane road. They were holding what appeared to be homemade Academy City banners, setting them on fire and holding them overhead or slashing through horizontal ones.

The idea was to tout how angry they were by marching down a mostly set route for hours. It wasn’t like a riot, where everyone let their anger consume them and destroyed everything in sight.

But that didn’t mean it was safe. The video showed a man bleeding from the head leaning against the side of an ambulance—there must have been a brawl. A sister, her face black-and-blue, was helping an exhausted priest to his feet, calling for help.

All of them were just normal people. None seemed related to anything like espers or sorcery.

Maybe, in a broad sense, the demonstrators were Roman Orthodox followers. Some would be wearing crosses around their necks, and others would be singing hymns from the Bible.

But unlike Vento of the Front, it was hard to imagine them being involved with the dark side of the religion. They went to their schools and jobs like normal people, and on days off, they would chill at home and have barbecues in their big backyards. That’s all they were, really—wasn’t it?

“…What is happening?” muttered Mikoto as she stared at the airship screen. “I don’t know what happened on September 30, but we didn’t want this, did we? They say that one incident triggered all this, but Academy City was minding its own business. Why are they fighting and hurting one another? The mastermind won’t even show himself, either, so those people are the only ones suffering. Isn’t that weird?”

“…”

Kamijou silently listened to her words.

A mastermind.

Mikoto had been using that term unconsciously. Part of that was probably hopeful: If someone was making everything worse, one just had to get rid of that someone and everything would go back to normal…Mikoto had raw power in the form of her Railgun, so maybe she found that easier to understand.

But there was no “mastermind” behind this.

Sure, certain people had been responsible for the incident on September 30 that started everything. Vento of the Front and Hyouka Kazakiri—plus whoever was behind them. Maybe if they could have stopped whoever that was on that day, they would have solved everything by “defeating the mastermind.”

Still, in fire terms, it hadn’t been kindling that started the damage. It was a giant wildfire, born as a result of something else. They were past the point where they could stop anything just by capturing the mastermind.

The demonstrators and protesters were completely normal people living over there. Nobody was ordering them, forcing them to do this. They’d seen the newspapers, seen news programs, and gotten angry, so they were participating in the protests—acting purely on individual beliefs.

To use the “defeat the mastermind” method to stop worldwide demonstrations, that meant beating up every single protester throughout the world.

They couldn’t do that. Shouldn’t.

But then how were they supposed to fix everything?

“…What’s happening?” Mikoto repeated. Her words lodged in Kamijou’s heart.

This wasn’t something children would come up with an answer for.

 

INTERLUDE ONE

The Tower of Execution, also known as the Tower of London, was a tourist attraction in England.

Once it was said to be the end of the road for prisoners, a facility for blood and torture and beheading, one so harsh that people said that none who passed through its gates could return alive. Now, however, it was open to the public, and it was easy for anyone to take a field trip to it, costing a mere fourteen pounds—less money than going somewhere for afternoon tea. The exhibits showed both its history as a place of execution and many of the British royal family’s jewels.

Meanwhile, however, an enormous blind spot lurked just out of sight, where its “facilities” were still operational.

It sat right next to the tourist attraction, but like a shadow cast by a bright light, one would never see nor enter this labyrinth from the outside. The dark group of facilities retained their past roles, which had given the building its “Tower of Execution” nickname—namely, capturing prisoners and, if necessary, torturing or even executing them without hesitation.

Enter from the front, and one would never see the shadows.

Enter from the back, and one would never escape them.

“…It’s oppressive in here, as usual.”

Stiyl Magnus muttered in spite of himself, as he breathed out a cloud of cigarette smoke. Unlike the touristy part, these more practical hallways were narrow and dark. Smoke from his lantern clung to the chaotically arranged stones in the walls, and with each flicker of the flame within, the human shadows it cast appeared to writhe. The floor was covered in a light layer of cold dew, as there were no systems to let moisture escape.

Then the girl walking beside him spoke. She was Sister Agnes Sanctis, a former Roman Orthodox nun.

“About this interrogation of Lidvia Lorenzetti and Biagio Busoni…”

“There are things I need to ask them about God’s Right Seat,” he replied. “If someone leading an entire force like you hasn’t heard of them, asking a VIP would be faster.”

“…Think they’ll talk, those aristocrat priests?”

“Well, that’s part of why I’m letting you see firsthand how we do things in England,” he quipped. “It’s too much effort to lecture every single person in your unit about it, though, so I’ll leave that in your hands.”

He stopped in front of one of the doors. It was thick and wooden, blackened, and weighed down by absorbed moisture. He opened it without knocking, then entered the quite cramped three-meter-square room beyond. This was still only an “interrogation” room, so the commonplace Inquisition torture devices were absent. The only things in the room were a table bolted to the floor and two chairs on either side of it, also secured in place.

The chairs on their right had minimal cushioning.

The chairs on the left, however, were exposed planks of coarse wood. Their armrests featured belts and metal fixtures, too—they were made for holding people’s arms still.

And those two left-hand chairs did, in fact, have people bound to them.

Lidvia Lorenzetti.

Biagio Busoni.

Both were “high executives” in special positions in the Roman Orthodox Church.

Stiyl sat down in one of the chairs on the right and, sounding like this was a pain for him, said to them, “You know what I want to ask, yes?”

Agnes seemed to hesitate to sit down in the other chair; she remained standing next to him, looking uneasy with nothing to do.

Biagio, the middle-aged bishop anchored with belts and clasps to his chair, glared sharply at Stiyl. Agnes, formerly of the bishop’s own cloth, winced even though the look wasn’t directed at her, but Stiyl didn’t seem to care.

Biagio’s face was pallid; he had been sufficiently sleep-deprived to wear down his mind but not enough to damage his health. The shine in his hair and skin was gone as well. It was like he was steadily drying out.

“…What do you want to ask?” he said. “If you want a lecture on the Bible, leave it for Sunday.”

“God’s Right Seat. Tell me everything you know.”

“Why don’t you bring in those puritanical torture devices you’re so proud of? Then I’ll show you the depths of my faith, you inexperienced whelp.”

Biagio maintained an insolent attitude. Lidvia, in the meantime, didn’t seem interested in exchanging words at all. It wasn’t that she was willing her emotions away; her expression was perfectly natural and unchanging. Biagio was letting his irritation show. Perhaps she was the one with more perseverance here.

Biagio’s answer came as no surprise whatsoever. Agnes determined that this might take a while.

“Do not belittle Necessarius.”

But Biagio wasn’t the only arrogant one in the room.

Stiyl Magnus puffed out a thin cloud of smoke and smiled.

A chilling, brutal smile.

“I don’t particularly care if you die during torture. Necessarius has ways of extracting information from the brains of corpses. Depending on protection and injuries, of course.”

Those words were enough to shake even Agnes, standing nearby, to the core.

Biagio realized Stiyl wasn’t bluffing and made a woefully bitter face. Lidvia seemed to finally take an interest as well—she glanced sharply over at Stiyl without moving her head.

The man didn’t get particularly worked up over this; his voice was beleaguered, like he was staring down a pile of paperwork. “What I mean is, what you call ‘torture’ is a different beast than what we call ‘torture.’ None of this thinking it’ll be easier if you died. I don’t mind if you resist, but let me say that would be a waste of your lives.”

Silence continued for a few seconds.

As Biagio kept his glare on Stiyl, Lidvia spoke readily. “Such trivialities mean nothing to us,” she said, looking straight at him. “That aside, there is one thing I’d like you to tell us, however. What is it like ‘outside’ right now?”

Stiyl frowned at that but remembered a moment later…Come to think of it, I did get those reports, didn’t I?

From what he knew, Lidvia Lorenzetti was an eccentric even in the Church, one who only reached out to help people society couldn’t accept. From her point of view, being locked in the Tower of London and not having the information she wanted from “outside” made her worry about those under her patronage. The fragments she’d caught about “worldwide chaos” served only to deepen her anxiety.

After thinking that far, Stiyl grinned.

Then he said, “I’m sure you can guess.”

Lidvia’s expression twitched with a growl. It went without saying—the first victims of the revolts and disorder had been the weak ones.

“…Hmph.”

On the other hand, Biagio Busoni had a strong sense of elitism, believing those in the priesthood were supreme. He seemed more interested in the fruits of the chaos than its harm.

Lidvia watched Stiyl. “In exchange for my cooperation, I request the release of my own who are currently being held in this tower. The release of people who can quell this chaos, even if only slightly, and build a roof over the heads of the weak.”

However, it was Biagio who reacted to this, not Stiyl. He spat, not trying to hide his vexation.

Stiyl, meanwhile, was nothing if not relaxed. “You think I’ll accept?”

“I will make you accept.”

“And how?” he asked. The woman caught her breath.

As she sat there, both hands fixed to the armrests of her bolted-down chair, her lips began to move quickly.

“…San Pietro elude le trappole dell’imperatore e del mago.”

Stiyl frowned. They’d confiscated anything Lidvia could use as a Soul Arm or spell. No decent sorcery would activate just from a verbal incantation.

A light appeared anyway.

But not from Lidvia Lorenzetti.

It emanated from Agnes, as she stood next to Stiyl—more accurately, from the cross hanging at her chest.

“Damn!” Before Stiyl could react, a pillar of light flashed madly from the cross. It extended toward Lidvia in a straight line, destroying the belt and clasps holding her right arm down.

With that hand, she grabbed a sharp piece of broken metal from the ruins and thrust it at Stiyl’s chest.

Slash!! Two hands intersected like bullets.

“…”

“…”

Stiyl and Lidvia remained silent.

Both had pressed something against the other’s throat—Lidvia the metal fragment and Stiyl the corner of a rune card.

“—! Lidvia!!” Agnes recovered from her momentary shock and hurriedly grabbed the Lotus Wand from the wall she’d stood it against.

But Stiyl, still glaring at Lidvia, waved Agnes back with a hand.

The sorcerer was clearly having fun with this. As if to say this was what made it an interrogation.

“Did you think so little effort sufficient to take my life?”

“I have no other choice if you will not release those relevant,” said Lidvia, her voice dispassionate. “Oriana Thomson. I request her release and that you let her lead away those overwhelmed by the revolts.”

“Why don’t you consider your position again?”

Stiyl’s voice didn’t shake, either. Oriana was the talented “smuggler” who had joined up with Lidvia.

“Your smuggler knows what’s happening in the world right now, too. On top of that, she offered a deal—to have her mentor Lidvia Lorenzetti shelter the weak, and she’s already agreed to temporarily cooperate with the Puritans. Tell me to release her all you want, but Oriana won’t have any of it.”

“…”

Lidvia and Oriana had both been thinking the same thing.

And Oriana had acted first.

Lidvia quieted, and Stiyl continued, “…Let’s not let her resolve go to waste. If the Roman Orthodox Church—or rather, God’s Right Seat—is creating this situation, there must be a clue as to how to overthrow them, correct?”

Lidvia didn’t answer for a few moments. Biagio tsked and looked away, as if to say this was all a farce.

After a period of heavy, heavy silence, she slowly opened her eyes. “…What are you hoping to gain?”

“Necessarius’s goal is explicit,” he said wearily. “To save the lambs lost and engulfed by the overwhelming power of magic. That’s what it was back then, and that’s what it is now.”

Lidvia stared sharply at him.

He didn’t flinch.

Whatever she was searching for in Stiyl’s expression, eventually she slowly exhaled and relaxed. “…I haven’t met them directly,” she said. “I have heard fragments of information by chance, however.”

Lidvia Lorenzetti’s words echoed through the dark interrogation chamber.

Next to Stiyl, Agnes finally took a seat and spread out a piece of parchment to record.

“According to that information, God’s Right Seat is…”