Chapter 1: The Signal Shot Nobody Heard
CHAPTER 1
The Signal Shot Nobody Heard
Compass.
1
October 9.
Today was the anniversary of Academy City’s independence, and a holiday within its walls.
The hospital in District 7 was no exception. Since morning, its air had felt relaxed. A frog-faced doctor left through the front entrance and felt the soft morning sunlight on his skin.
Beside him stood a small girl of about ten.
She was called Last Order.
On September 30, the Hound Dogs, led by Amata Kihara, had kidnapped her and used a device called Testament to input specific data into her brain. The hospital had been working to remove that data, but the job was now done and she was being discharged.
“Finally leaving the hospital and nobody’s here to greet you,” said the doctor, sighing.
Last Order didn’t seem too worried. “‘Misaka can ride the taxi by herself,’ says Misaka says Misaka, sticking out her chest.”
“Well, we’ve eliminated the virus in your brain, so I suppose there’s no more cause for worry. I’ll put the taxi fare on Ms. Yomikawa’s tab, so go straight to her apartment, all right?”
Just then, a taxi arrived at the roundabout in front of the hospital. The frog-faced doctor waved it down, then put Last Order, who was holding her belongings, into the back seat.
As he watched, the driver asked, “Where to today, miss?”
“‘The amusement park in District 6!’ says Misaka says Mis—”
“To the Family Side II apartment in District 7. Don’t forget, all right?”
The frog-faced doctor had stopped the nonsense about to come out of Last Order’s mouth—in the end, he was the one looking after her.
The driver gave a pained grin. “I understand.”
“Do you need me to give you directions?”
“No, there aren’t many apartments in this city—it’s all student dorms. And I can just put it in the car’s navigation system.”
When the frog-faced doctor pulled his head out of the car, the back door closed automatically. With Last Order on board, her hands on the window and her eyes staring outside, the taxi began to gently roll away from the hospital.
After it vanished from sight, the doctor went back to his hospital. He walked through an uncluttered hallway and into a space for conversation with only a simple sofa and table, then went to the vending machine along the wall and bought a coffee.
This vending machine was the kind that used paper cups. There was no liquid coffee inside the rectangular metal box; instead, it made it automatically, starting with grinding pre-roasted beans. It took a bit longer this way, but it tasted good, and was a nice way for him to switch gears.
The doctor exhaled. Next I’ve got to finish the Sisters’ adjustments and release them from here as soon as—
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted.
Ker-click.
Someone had pressed a gun to his back.
The doctor froze.
He listened to the shallow breathing directly behind him, thought for a moment, then spoke.
“Already back from Avignon, are we?”
“Shit. Where the hell did you get that information?”
The voice was familiar—Accelerator.
In his right hand, he held a walking cane designed with a modern aesthetic, but since they were in a hospital, it didn’t make him stand out very much. And he’d used his body to hide the gun in his left hand from others.
The doctor didn’t bother to put his hands up. Instead of acting conspicuously, he spoke quietly, all for the sake of the patient behind him. “…You always have quite the greeting prepared, don’t you?”
“I want info. The blueprints for this electrode.”
Accelerator was talking about the choker on his neck. It looked like an accessory, but it actually had an electrode fitted in the back that converted his brainwaves into other electric signals. Those signals gave him restricted access to a special electronic communication network called the Misaka network.
The doctor was the very man who’d made the electrode. He kept his face steady and replied, “Why do you need them? If your choker is on the fritz, I can fix it for you.”
“Just give me the blueprints.”
“Last Order wanted to see you. If only you’d gotten here a little bit earlier…”
“Can it. That has nothing to do with you.”
“That isn’t true. She was my patient, and she wanted to see you. It’s my job to make it work out.”
Accelerator quietly cursed. “…I know that. That’s why I waited until now, dumbass,” he spat, sounding truly bitter.
The frog-faced doctor reached into his white coat pocket and took out what looked like a mechanical pencil’s central casing. It was, in fact, a USB drive. He moved his hand behind him.
“You were prepared.”
“As I said, it’s my job to prepare whatever my patients need,” said the doctor, looking at the vending machine, which was still churning. “But it’ll be hard to put what’s in there to use. I make everything I need myself, you know? If you wanted a second electrode, you’d have to start by manufacturing the machine tools.”
“…”
Accelerator took it, then quietly stepped away from the doctor’s back.
The doctor turned around.
There was no one there; not even a trace. He’d probably used his vector-changing ability to jump into the nearby stairwell.
“…”
The doctor stared silently at the empty space.
An electronic beep went off at his side. The doctor removed his coffee from the vending machine and took a sip of the bitter liquid.
2
Mitsuki Unabara was in a room inside a certain District 7 building.
It was the second of a multi-dwelling apartment complex called Family Side.
The room was designed for a family to use; it was fairly spacious 4DLK, meaning four bedrooms and an open area that served as a living room, dining room, and kitchen. Judging by the furniture, though, only one person probably lived here. All it took was a quick look around the other empty rooms to figure that much out. Maybe it was the same for the rest of the apartments.
He poked around as he talked with Tsuchimikado over his cell. “…Anyway, I’ve arrived at Management’s apartment. I’ll start searching now. As for things that he could have stored information in…There’s a computer, an HD recorder, and a few game consoles that probably have storage media in them.”
“If there’s even the slightest possibility, grab it. We could potentially find bits of information stored inside rice cookers or washing machines if we took them apart to get their AI configuration memory cards out.”
“It sounds like this will be a pain,” muttered Unabara. “I do still wonder what sort of jobs Management was helping with.”
“I’m looking into that now,” answered Tsuchimikado wearily. “A new criminal organization just formed a day or two ago, thanks to him. He filled their gaps, provided the personnel they needed. And they paid good money for fighting strength to use right away. They’re sure to pull something very soon. It’s our job to figure out what—and to stop it before it happens.”
“Will it be bad enough that Group needs to make an official outing?”
“Look, just get to work. I want to complain about all this just as much as you, but these are the only jobs Group ever gets: piles of shit and nothing else.”
“All right,” answered Unabara.
He walked through the big apartment, sticking little tags on the computer, the HD recorder, and the rest. He didn’t plan on dragging everything, refrigerator and washing machine included, out by himself. For now, he was marking them so that their ancillary organization could carry them out later.
Well, that about does it. Just as Unabara had finished his run-through, he noticed something odd:
Bills.
“…” There were several paper bills on a waist-high shelf.
Nothing about that was unnatural, but they felt strangely isolated from any wallets. Unabara prodded about the room, finding a credit card and a passbook.
The placement of objects in a room said a lot about a person’s daily routine. But by Unabara’s analysis, the way these bills were sitting on this shelf seemed abnormal. Putting them this far away from a wallet made it seem like the resident was making sure they wouldn’t get mixed up with any others.
He looked at them again, then flipped them over and started speaking into the phone. “Tsuchimikado, do we have any equipment that can read IC chip information?”
“What?”
“I found five paper bills here. If I remember correctly, Japanese yen minted and circulated in Academy City come with microchips in them. We should probably investigate these as well.”
“Right. I’ll get something ready…I didn’t find any notable info here. I’m gonna give up on the department store’s cleaning room and head over your wa—”
Unabara didn’t get to hear Tsuchimikado’s voice until the end.
Boom!!
A rocket suddenly broke through the window, flew inside, and exploded right in the middle of the room.
A clamoring of heavy footfalls rushed the front door.
Men dressed in gray armor moved into the room swiftly yet cautiously. There were five, all with full face masks and identical equipment. Not a single one stood out from the rest.
Without a word, one of the men signaled with a finger to check the charred apartment—the formerly five-room one, given that, as they stepped over an air conditioner that had fallen to the floor, one of its thin interior walls had collapsed.
Not only did no automatic fire-extinguishing system turn on, the regular fire alarms weren’t even working. They’d disabled security ahead of time.
They didn’t exchange words among themselves, and so the soft clacking of metal stood out—they had their firearms, which were hitting against their hard armor, ready and loaded.
Seriously…Mitsuki Unabara sighed as he watched. He was spying on them from a small gap in a door that had been knocked diagonal by the explosive impact, his back against the wall of the kitchen space. He’d jumped into the room the moment the rocket had crashed through the window.
Now he produced an obsidian knife from an interior pocket. They tried to destroy the information by blowing up the entire room. Must be people who’d be in trouble if we got our hands on Management’s info.
This was the third floor.
Moving slowly so he wouldn’t make any noise, he went up to the smashed window. From this view alone he spotted about fifteen more men, all dressed in black. There were probably a lot more waiting out of sight. He was completely surrounded.
“…”
Unabara’s dismantling sorcery, the Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, was incredibly powerful, able to completely disintegrate objects by concentrating and reflecting the light from Venus onto them.
But on the other hand, he needed to designate his targets one at a time. In exchange for the ability to one-hit kill even the strongest enemies, he could only go one by one for even the weakest.
They’re using mainly 9mm submachine guns, plus military handguns of the same caliber. If they started firing in this cramped space, skill wouldn’t make a bit of difference—I’d be full of holes in no time.
And furthermore…this is bad. A lot of grunts showing up at a time like this is really bad.
Even if the enemy went all out and had everyone charge inside at once, it would be pointless, since the apartment had limited space, thanks to the doors and hallways. They’d end up packing inside and getting into a jam.
Instead, by keeping their invading team as small as they could and having most of their men surround the apartment complex, they eliminated the possibility that their target could escape. Even if he did wipe out their smaller team, they would either send in a new one or decide that if a rocket launcher couldn’t take the enemy out, they’d simply have to blow up the entire building.
…They’re experienced. Even if I slip out, I might not be able to get through their encirclement. I’m stuck here…
He adjusted his grip on the obsidian knife.
Sweat had broken out on his palms without him realizing it.
Now, what to do?
3
“Fires in District 7. Five instances confirmed. Relevant buildings’ security systems, including automatic fire extinguishers, are inactive. Begin firefighting at once.”
In an emergency correspondence center for connecting civilian reports to groups such as Anti-Skill and Judgment, a female operator continued to convey the information coming up on her monitor to the appropriate authorities.
“Requesting criminal identifier dispatch from Anti-Skill to be a witness to the fire brigade’s inspections. In addition—”
The operator took up a fire manual, which was propped up against the wall of her communication booth, thus taking her eyes off the monitor for just a few seconds.
During that time, a rep from the team waiting on-site for specific instructions said “Understood,” and the call abruptly ended.
“…What?” wondered the female operator.
On her monitor, it said she’d already given them everything they needed.
4
It was fifteen minutes after the rocket had fired into the complex.
Motoharu Tsuchimikado and Awaki Musujime were in one of the apartments of Family Side’s second building.
There were no fire brigade or Anti-Skill officers. They spotted a few curious onlookers near the building, but nobody came inside; there had been an explosion, after all. They wouldn’t do that, considering the danger of being caught in a fire or building collapse.
The apartments had been built for families, but most of its residents apparently lived alone. Plus, far more teachers and faculty used apartments than students. After Academy City had sent out Anti-Skill to prepare for “war,” the strain of making papers and other teaching materials had fallen to the rest of the faculty, so even on a holiday like this they’d be out at work.
“This the place?”
It probably used to be a high-class apartment with four bedrooms plus an open area serving as a kitchen, living room, and dining room, but it was like an explosion had gone off right in the middle of it. Furniture and wallboard had come apart and was scattered everywhere, reducing the unit to only a couple of rooms. They could see the bathroom right after stepping through the front door.
“They cleaned up all the evidence. Even a mind-reading esper might not be able to get anything out of this,” muttered Musujime as she gazed at the charred floor.
Accelerator arrived a moment later on his cane. “Damn. Thought you called me for something important. Just some fun little leftovers again?”
“Did you finish your errand?” Tsuchimikado asked without looking at him.
“Shut up,” said Accelerator flatly, looking around. “This it? The place where that moron Unabara vanished?”
“Yeah,” said Tsuchimikado. “For now, we’ve captured Management, and we got the guys from our ancillary transporting him in an escort car. But whatever info comes from his mouth won’t be trustworthy. And if he starts going on about all the information being stored up in his head, we won’t get anywhere with him. We wanted hard data to back up what he’s saying, which is why I sent Unabara here.”
His tone grew weary. “While he was here, he came under attack by a third party. We don’t know whether they were after Unabara in particular or just anyone who wanted information on Management, but it’s looking like the latter. From his initial report, we knew there was a computer, an HD recorder, and a few other things, but they’re all totally gone. Any appliances with AI in them are gone, too—the whole lot of ’em.”
“It does seem like there are a few appliances left, though…,” said Musujime, using her foot to point at a scorched microwave oven. “They’re probably all products without onboard AI. They left behind the stuff you can’t put info into.”
After more searching, they found a few other things, like a TV with a broken screen and an iron. However, everything important indeed seemed to have been stolen.
Accelerator took a seat on a bed with cotton sticking out and sighed in annoyance. “Damn it, what a pain. Don’t know anything about that shithead Management. Don’t know what happened to Unabara. Seriously, can’t you people do your jobs?” He jabbed his foot at the broken microwave on the floor.
Just then, its plastic door opened up and something came out.
“…Eh?”
Paper bills.
About five, marked with soot, had been in the microwave for some reason.
“Unabara reported these—he was interested in them.” With a thin smile, Musujime crouched and picked them up. “There should be microchips in these bills to prevent counterfeiting. Maybe something’s written on them. Putting them in the microwave would shut out electromagnetic waves and stuff. This might have been enough to fool the attackers even if they had a way to detect the chips.”
“…So our shithead was the one who hid them here?” asked Accelerator.
Then Tsuchimikado, a short distance away, announced, “Hmm?”
They looked over to see that he’d opened a closet, and inside it was a man’s corpse. A closer inspection revealed that all the skin around his right calf had been torn off.
Tsuchimikado said, “This is Unabara’s doing.”
“What’s with the foot? Hobby of his?” replied Musujime, put off. Her foot had once been injured in an accident during class. The trauma from the incident hadn’t completely left her. It was so bad she had to use a low-frequency oscillation treatment instrument to alleviate the stress whenever she used her ability.
Tsuchimikado shook his head. “He uses human skin to make a certain kind of tag. I’ll cut out the explanation, since you two don’t know anything about sorcery, but…Basically, he’s got a skill where he can switch places with someone,” he said, looking at the scar on the corpse’s foot. “He probably looks just like this guy at the moment. I bet he’s waiting among the people who attacked this place, biding his time.
“In other words,” he said, pausing, “that chameleon is still alive and smiling. Don’t know where, though.”
5
What is she doing? wondered Kazari Uiharu, cocking her head to the side.
She saw a girl of about ten, who was inside a stopped taxi—presumably at a light—arguing with the driver…Well, actually, it looked like the girl was one-sidedly biting his head off.
Uiharu didn’t have to get any closer to hear their loud voices.
“‘I keep saying let me off, let me off, so why won’t you let Misaka go?!’ argues Misaka argues Misaka, putting her hands on her hips and puffing out her cheek!!”
“Look, miss, I’ve been paid to drive you to your destination, so I can’t let you—”
“‘While he’s making excuses, Misaka will look for an escape!!’ says Misaka says Misaka, quickly getting out of the car and running into a back alley!!”
After shouting that, the little girl disappeared into an alley so narrow you probably couldn’t even fit a bicycle through.
The driver scratched his head, at a loss. Uiharu walked up to him.
“Hmm? Oh, are you with Judgment?” asked the driver, looking at Uiharu’s armband.
Judgment was a student organization created to help keep the peace in Academy City. Their jurisdiction was mainly limited to school, but apparently, most people weren’t aware of the difference.
Uiharu gave him a blank look. “Um, was there some kind of trouble, sir? Did that girl leave without paying?”
“No, just the opposite,” said the driver, at his wit’s end. “Her, er, guardian gave me the money beforehand, and I was supposed to take her to an apartment complex. But now she’s left, and I haven’t given her back the money.”
“Oh. Well, that’s up to the passenger, sir. Couldn’t you just accept it as a tip?”
“The taxi fare was twelve hundred yen. I got five thousand to begin with. I’d feel bad if I treated it as a tip.”
What a nice person, she thought.
The driver glanced at the alley, which he clearly couldn’t bring his car into. “…Still, I can’t get out of the car and chase her.”
“Should I look for her?”
“Yes…yes, if you could, I would greatly appreciate it. Hold on one moment.”
The driver had a machine in the car print out a receipt, then handed it, along with the change on top, to Uiharu. Since she was wearing the Judgment armband, he didn’t seem particularly cautious when it came to handing the money over to her. “Please, give this back to her.”
“I will, sir.” Uiharu put them in her skirt pocket. After exchanging contact information with the driver just in case, she set off into the narrow alleyway.
In that dark space where the sun’s light couldn’t enter, she called out, “Um, what was her name? Hmm…Miss Odd Haaair?!”
“‘Hey! Misaka’s identifier is Last Order!!’ says Misaka says Misa…huh?!”
For the time being, she’d gotten an answer, so Uiharu walked that way in search of the girl.
6
Black smoke billowed.
A boxy escort car had stopped on the road, apparently after crashing into a guardrail. Only the front half, though—something had torn apart the car’s frame, and its back half was in the middle of the road.
The car was the same model Anti-Skill used, but it wasn’t one of theirs. Instead, Group’s ancillary was using it. At Tsuchimikado’s command, it was secretly transporting an important witness.
“Ow, damn it…”
A college-aged man came out from the part that was cut away—Management. Handcuffed, he stepped down onto the asphalt, then looked at his side and scowled. The gunshot wound had reopened, and fresh red liquid was starting to spread out on top of the dark-red stain that had already dried.
Nevertheless, after spotting a boy nearby, he gave him a mild smile. “Sorry. I flubbed the job.”
“Don’t be.”
The boy was wearing a pair of metal goggles on his head. No, not goggles—his eyes weren’t covered. It was a ring, wrapped around his head like Jupiter. Countless cables plugged into it from all directions, and they connected to a device at his waist.
Management offered his hands to the strangely dressed boy. “Sorry, but could you cut these, too? I can’t do first aid like this, but it’ll be a pain to find the key, too. I’m pretty sure it would be best to leave here immediately.”
“All right,” the boy said, moving his fingers as though swiping a card.
A moment later, Management’s wrists were shattered.
“Ah, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”
Management writhed in agony, eyes filled with pain and surprise as he looked up at the boy. The boy, taking aim once again—this time at his vitals—spoke simply, without much change in his voice.
“That’s too bad.”
7
Group was a cruel organization.
The remaining three members took a wait-and-see stance with Unabara, whose whereabouts were still completely unknown. However, they still might not have gone to help him even if they had a hint about his location. Their fundamental policy was that if any of them mismanaged something, they had to fix it themselves.
Therefore:
“Got a call from our ancillary. The escort car with Management on board has been attacked.”
“Everyone dead?” Accelerator asked.
“No. They were nice and left everyone but Management unconscious. Either way, there goes our option of getting the man himself to talk.”
“Do you think they left a clue as to who did it?” Musujime added.
“Again, it’s probably in these bills.”
For now, they had the five paper bills.
After leaving the Family Side II apartment complex, Group had decided to return to their hideout and investigate the electronic information contained on the bills’ IC chips.
“Man, didn’t think our secret hideout would be some empty store in an underground mall. What if some hopeful corporate dropout wanders in for a peek?”
“Then we’ll leave,” said Tsuchimikado distractedly. “There’s hideouts all over the place, and this one was meant for them originally anyway.” He put a device for reading the bills on the floor. It was connected to a laptop via cables.
“…What is that?” asked Musujime, surprised.
Tsuchimikado gave a small smile. It was a cell phone wallet sensor, the kind next to cash registers in convenience stores. “Ugh…It was gonna be a pain in the ass, so I asked someone in the industry and just brought the whole reader here.”
“Doesn’t matter what we use,” said Accelerator, sitting in a pipe chair and cleaning off his handgun. “Just get started already.”
“Right,” answered Tsuchimikado simply, picking one bill from the stack of five and holding it up to the device.
No discernible language came up on the display. Only a jumble of numbers. Tsuchimikado fiddled with the screen, eventually starting to change them into sentences that made sense.
“That didn’t take long. We got a hit.” He followed the lines of characters on the screen with his eyes. “…It looks like Management’s product listing. There was a deal on a professional sniper. He was handling the sniper’s weapons, too, apparently.”
He ran the second bill over the sensor.
“The sniper’s name is Chimitsu Sunazara…though we can’t confirm its validity. It has his history and abilities here, too, but we can’t trust that, either. But the introduction fee was seven hundred thousand yen, which makes him one of the best ‘products’ on Management’s lineup.”
He ran a third bill over the sensor.
“This one has his weapons on it. He’s got…an MSR-001, a magnetic sniper rifle,” he finished with a foreboding hum.
“Magnetic?” repeated Musujime.
“Just what it sounds like. It uses an electromagnet to launch a steel bullet. Made by Academy City, of course. It’s simpler than a railgun on the inside. The bullet’s initial speed is two hundred ninety meters per second—not quite supersonic.”
“…Does that mean something?” she asked. “It sounds to me like a normal sniper rifle would be better.”
But Tsuchimikado grinned and said, “In terms of pure force, sure. But this one doesn’t use gunpowder, so it has no recoil. It doesn’t have the ‘sway’ sniper rifles tend to have, so you can attach a delicate, super-precise sighting device to it—if you used gunpowder, you’d need the whole thing to be sturdy enough to handle the recoil from firing. And…”
“And what?”
“If it doesn’t use gunpowder, it doesn’t make noise. Perfect for doing things in secret.”
Tsuchimikado continued, holding a fourth bill up to the sensor.
But this one only put up an error on the screen.
They couldn’t read the all-important data.
“Damn. The chip must have gotten hit by the heat or the impact…Just based on the fragments of the header, this one has concrete details on the other end of the deal, the guys who employed him.”
Tsuchimikado passed it over the sensor a few more times, but he never got the data inside to show up. He gave up on that one for the time being and held the fifth and final bill to the sensor.
A rough map of somewhere came up on the screen.
It was a simplified map that cut out everything except what was important. A red dot was displayed in the center, with numbers written next to the buildings nearby. But as to what story, or how many meters in length—all of that was unreadable from a top-down map.
Tsuchimikado laughed. “It’s a sniper plan. Management was even dealing in these things?”
“Hah,” snorted Accelerator. “What, did he run a general store or something?”
“It’s showing the plaza in front of District 7’s concert hall…,” said Musujime, looking up at the ceiling. “Right above us.”
“The plaza’s been rented out by someone on the General Board for a speech. They must be after the VIP. Name is Monaka Oyafune. Don’t know why they’re trying to put a hole in her head, but they must have a grand plan in mind if they’re trying to assassinate Oyafune. If we stop him, our job’s done…As for Unabara, well, you know. He got the lowest score on this job, so we’ll rescue him and make him play a penalty game.”
“Hah! We going to run over and play tag with a sniper now?” grumbled Accelerator in annoyance. “Sounds like a pain. I’m sure the speech will be boring anyway— Can’t we just stop the event?”
Tsuchimikado shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Why?”
“Simple—the speech has already started.”
8
Accelerator and Motoharu Tsuchimikado had left the underground mall and neared the plaza in front of the concert hall, which was directly below them.
They hadn’t taken a sane means of travel, like the stairs or elevator; instead, they’d used Musujime’s ability, Move Point. The ability was certainly convenient, but it had a flaw: It was hard for her to warp herself. So she’d remained at the hideout alone, continuing their microchip analysis.
Many students were in the plaza, probably because it was a holiday. They wouldn’t have thought an outdoor speech would be interesting, but just at a glance, there were two or three hundred people there.
Around a hundred meters separated Accelerator and the VIP, Monaka Oyafune.
A simple stage was set up in the middle of the plaza, the kind that might be used for a cultural festival, and a middle-aged woman was standing on it. Four escorts dressed in black were waiting around her, but…
“No motivation,” said Accelerator, cutting it down to two words. “It’s like they’re screaming for someone to come put a bullet through whatever organ of hers they want. It’s completely obvious that VIP bigshot isn’t wearing anything bulletproof when you look at how thin her clothes are, either.”
“Stop it. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“That Shiokishi guy is on the General Board, too, and he wears a powered suit around the clock. Apparently, he’s not scared of being attacked—it just makes him feel uncomfortable when he’s not in it.”
“He’s an extreme case,” muttered Tsuchimikado, standing next to him.
Accelerator glared at him. He jabbed his chin at Monaka Oyafune onstage. “You seriously wanna protect that woman?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t. The General Board is a bunch of shitheads. You think they deserve us risking our lives to protect them?”
Accelerator was referring to a man named Thomas Platinaburg. Like Oyafune, he was one of the General Board members. He’d never even talked to him before, but just looking at his furniture had told him right away that the man naturally looked down on everyone else and didn’t think anything of it.
“There are two kinds of people at the top of Academy City,” said Tsuchimikado quietly, slipping into the crowd in the plaza. “The assholes who deserve to die this instant, and the good people seen as assholes—the diligent ones. In most cases, those types don’t fit into the world well and always draw the short stick.”
Accelerator stared at Tsuchimikado and let out a quiet hum. Applause and cheering filled the area.
“I hear Monaka Oyafune is trying to give the children in Academy City the right to vote. Most of the city’s residents are minors who don’t have that. They can’t complain about policies adults decide for them. She says she wants to give them that right.” He laughed, his tone light. “If she’s not a thorn in their side, I don’t know what is. If the kids got voting rights, they could even stop this war.”
“Are you dumb? There’s no way it’ll be that easy. It’s a peaceful idea, but not a practical one. It’s like they don’t understand the meaning of the word violence.”
“The divides between races and the sexes were the same, too, at first. Special influential people weren’t the only ones fixing everything. Sure, they had a lot to do with it, since they were leading the masses. But the big reason was the people who had been thinking they were powerless—they changed their minds. Then they all got together, and history changed.”
Accelerator looked back at the plaza—the one with so many students in it, even though it was a holiday.
Tsuchimikado chuckled and said, “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think Monaka Oyafune is at least worth protecting. I would risk my life for her. I won’t tell you to do the same, but don’t think you can stop me.”
Accelerator clicked his tongue in frustration, then used his cane to take a step forward.
“What a pain in the ass. Let’s just crush that dumbass sniper already.”
9
Accelerator and Tsuchimikado were standing about a hundred meters from the stage Monaka Oyafune was on. They should have been closer—it certainly wasn’t what you’d call a good plan—but considering the crowd, this was what they had at the moment: checking the location with their cell phone GPS maps.
“Looks like there’s about thirty-two possible sniping positions,” said Tsuchimikado. “But with the stainless-steel board behind the stage, any point one hundred and eighty degrees behind it is actually a dead angle. Which means…”
“…It’s one of the fifteen spots one hundred and eighty degrees in front. We could probably get the sniper if we went to every single spot…”
“…But there’s nothing saying Chimitsu Sunazara is gonna wait around for us once he’s in firing position,” said Tsuchimikado, surveying the area.
He wasn’t looking at Oyafune, as she smiled softly on stage, or the youth, listening to her and applauding. He saw a vehicle—a specially permitted commercial one—parked a short distance from the plaza. Its body resembled a crane truck, but a giant fan-like machine was attached to the top.
“Looks like they do have a Wind Defense set up against sniping, at least.”
“Eh?”
“You know how much the wind affects sniping,” explained Tsuchimikado. “That machine purposely creates blasts of wind around a VIP to throw off their aim. They’re probably using four of them, making a whirlwind all around the plaza. They’re third generation, so they should be using a random number generator to make the air currents more chaotic.”
But something else seemed to have caught Accelerator’s eye, because, as he peered through the edge of the throng, he suddenly darted into the crowd to hide.
Tsuchimikado looked that way and saw, a few meters away, a middle school girl with a lot of flowers decorating her hair holding hands and walking with a girl who seemed around ten or so.
“‘I told you, Misaka is looking for a lost child,’ says Misaka says Misaka, announcing her intentions.”
“Yes, well, um, a lost child?”
“‘I don’t really know, but I think he’s somewhere around here,’ says Misaka says Misaka, offering a prediction. ‘My head feels like it’s getting nervous about something,’ says Misaka says Misaka, adding extra sense-based information.”
“Right…I knew that silly piece of hair was incredible!”
“It’s not silly!!” came the shout, and Accelerator’s hand went to his forehead.
“…Why would that brat show up here?! Is God fucking around with me or what?!” he hissed.
“…Ha-ha. That’s just how life is,” muttered Tsuchimikado offhandedly, but after noticing a girl in maid clothes in the crowd, he buried his own face in his hands.
For once, their opinions matched—they had to ensure no “stray bullets” flew in their direction.
“Anyway, things get complicated with the Wind Defense throwing off the hitman’s aim…”
“That truck. Says on the side it’s an air-cleaning truck.”
“Well, it’s not wrong. It uses the same principle as the air purifiers that smokers use in schools’ faculty rooms. Just on a totally different scale,” said Tsuchimikado with pride.
Accelerator’s eyes were cold, though. “That’s great and all, but it’s not on.”
“What?!”
Tsuchimikado, startled, checked it himself. Accelerator was right—the giant fan on the big cart truck wasn’t doing anything.
“I swear it was just on…” It was protecting a VIP. Could it have possibly had a malfunction?
Then Tsuchimikado heard an odd bkk sound ringing through the noisy crowd around him.
It sounded like a metal pot crumpling.
“…”
Accelerator and Tsuchimikado looked in the direction of the ringing at the same time.
There was another Wind Defense–equipped special vehicle parked elsewhere. Its giant fan wasn’t on, either. And there was a thumb-sized hole in the cylindrical outer wall around the fan.
“It was him—Chimitsu Sunazara.”
“Bastard…,” hissed Accelerator. “He’s trying to take out the Wind Defenses to give himself a clear shot at Oyafune!!”
“Shit!!” cursed Tsuchimikado, trying to plunge into the crowd to get closer to Oyafune. But there were too many people, and he couldn’t get as far as he wanted. Meanwhile, two more metal-pounding bkk sounds repeated in succession. Accelerator couldn’t see them from where he was, but the sniper was probably taking out the other Wind Defense machines, too, one at a time.
Damn it, thought Accelerator. Magnetic sniper rifles don’t use gunpowder, so nobody would even notice if their equipment was getting shot at!
The man-made gale barrier was gone now.
Tsuchimikado seemed to be trying to warn Monaka Oyafune of the danger, but it didn’t look like he’d make it.
“Great.”
Monaka Oyafune’s speech from atop the platform continued. The bodyguards in the vicinity were standing still, unaware of the threat.
If this went on much longer, it would be checkmate.
“What a goddamn pain!!”
10
The sniper, Chimitsu Sunazara, brought his magnetic sniper rifle up.
He was in a hotel room. He’d gone up to it without checking in, got its electronic lock open, and went inside. As for the window, in addition to disabling the security, he’d cut a square piece of it away to create a hole, out of which his rifle barrel extended.
A magnetic sniper rifle—although its form differed greatly from other existing guns, it was a metal cylinder as thick as an ankle with a steel box stuck onto it, almost haphazardly. Propped up on a tripod, the barrel was a strong solenoid coil.
A pair of suitcases sat next to him. One was for storing the magnetic sniper rifle after disassembling, while the other was for the rifle’s giant battery.
“…”
The range was about seven hundred meters.
He’d destroyed all the Wind Defense machines that were blocking him.
Monaka Oyafune, on the distant stage, seemed close enough to hug through the scope.
He would hit.
He thought so naturally, then relaxed and pulled the trigger.
That’s when it happened.
Ga-bam!!
All of a sudden, part of the plaza in front of the concert hall exploded, flinging flames and black smoke into the air.
His target, exposed to the blast, flinched, crouching down. Because she had moved, Sunazara’s bullet missed her.
“What was that…?”
Sunazara frowned. The timing was too good. Meanwhile, the big men stationed as guards around Oyafune came down to the platform to surround her.
He had a job to do.
He pulled the trigger again, but the steel bullet struck one of the bodyguards pressed against Oyafune. It flung his body down in spectacular fashion, but there was no blood, so he was probably wearing a bulletproof vest as a shield.
The guards changed positions. Oyafune ended up completely hidden behind the stocky men.
“Looks like that’s it for now.”
Long-range sniping was delicate. Even if you used a bullet that traveled at the speed of sound, sniping a target from seven hundred meters away would mean the bullet had to travel for almost two seconds before hitting the target. It was one thing if the person was standing still, unguarded, but with her running away—present tense—with multiple bodyguards, it would be very difficult to shoot her in a vital spot.
After thinking for a moment, Chimitsu Sunazara decided not to be stubborn and to withdraw.
“Still, what exploded?”
He looked through his scope, then saw the black smoke rising from one of the special Wind Defense vehicles. He’d shot them in order to stop them, but he was sure he hadn’t hit anywhere that would have made them explode.
“…”
A moment later, Sunazara’s breath caught in his throat.
Right next to the special vehicle in flames. A person with white hair, at the scene and yet blending in casually with the background, was looking straight at him—with a cane in one hand and flames and smoke at his back.
“I see.”
Sunazara looked away from the scope and immediately began taking apart the magnetic sniper rifle. As he put each part into the suitcase, he said to himself:
“I’ll remember that face.”
11
When Motoharu Tsuchimikado set foot in the hotel room, it had already been vacated.
But there was a square section of glass unnaturally missing from the window.
“Shit.” Tsuchimikado took out his cell phone and called Accelerator. “Retrieval is a failure. But if Sunazara fled, he probably won’t be doing any more sniping today. Get Oyafune to stop her speech for now, get security to regroup, and get them out of there.”
“I’ve got a message from Musujime,” said Accelerator on the other end. “She managed to read the chip on the fourth bill we couldn’t get anything from. Like we thought, it’s got the name of the guys who hired Chimitsu Sunazara on it.”
“Who was it?” asked Tsuchimikado.
Accelerator answered with an annoyed voice. “…School.”
“What?”
“Same as our ‘Group’…An organization hiding in the shadows of Academy City.”
INTERLUDE ONE
A man was standing around in an open-air café at lunchtime.
Tables crammed with customers were covered with all sorts of food, but his table alone stood empty. Only a big hodgepodge of printer paper was stacked there, not a single coffee mug in sight.
The man was staring at the papers spread out on the table, his hands stuck in the pockets of his white coat. Printed on the dozens of sheets in this bundle was involuntary-diffusion field data on espers from the data banks.
A girl in a red sailor-style school uniform, sitting across from the man’s seat, looked at him dubiously. “What do you think you’re going to find by looking at them?”
“All sorts of things,” he answered without looking up. “You may not know this, given that you’re a sorcerer, but this has all kinds of information in it. It’s not just a weak power that vents from espers—it’s them unconsciously interfering with reality…By examining the infinite variety of types and strengths of powers, one can explore the minds of espers, too.”
“Unconscious interference…?” repeated the girl, not understanding.
“If we advance our understanding of involuntary diffusion fields, or IDFs, we can highlight the outline of espers’ personal realities and use them for data by investigating their personalities and behavioral patterns. Though, I think the resulting parameters would be much more utilitarian and easy to understand than psychological profiles.”
A silvery beast was next to the chair the man sat in.
It was a quadrupedal animal made of titanium alloy and synthetic resin. It had the basic form of a carnivore in the Felidae family, but its nose was unnaturally long, like an elephant’s. The metallic creature had a seeing-eye dog walking program installed, so it blended into human society with a surprising litheness.
The beast opened its mouth. “Professor.” The voice didn’t sound synthesized—it was the voice of a young man with rich enunciation. “It appears there has been activity within Group and School.”
The man called Professor looked over at the mechanical creature. Its speech functions weren’t produced with a robotic AI; someone in another place was simply speaking through it via a wireless network. One could think of it as a slightly more complicated telephone.
“Did they make contact?”
“No. Group appears to have failed to capture. In this situation, they may not be able to catch School’s tail.”
“Hmm.” The professor sighed just once. “Either way, the others will probably act, too.”
They were on a team directly under the jurisdiction of Aleister, the Academy City General Board chairperson.
They acted as “that person’s” limbs, uncaring of good and evil. That was all that was expected from the small outfit.
“From the outset, groups like ours have complicated reasons for acting, but various powers higher up the chain have pressured us and controlled us,” the professor said, his tone relaxed. “But after the violence that occurred during the 09/30 incident, most of the powered suits have been sent out to clean up in Avignon. That force makes for effective hands for the man on the telephone. They can’t use the suits freely now, which gives us a huge opportunity.”
“Then perhaps the time is ripe.”
Suddenly, a voice appeared from directly behind the girl in the red uniform.
Nobody had been there a moment ago, but now someone was there. It was a boy covered in a big, baggy down jacket.
It was like he’d appeared out of thin air.
“Yes,” the professor said languidly, placing a hand on his nearby creature’s head and stroking it lightly. He didn’t seem surprised at the boy’s appearance. The girl sitting across from him watched their exchange with a lack of interest.
Her expression suspicious, she asked, “How do we know exactly how they’re moving? The intel from higher up could be wrong.”
“They have tech that makes it possible to know with accuracy.”
The professor’s hand stopped petting the synthetic animal.
He was staring at the sidewalk across the street from the café. A girl, in what might colloquially be called maid clothing, was passing by. But the professor wasn’t looking at her. That girl was sitting atop an oil drum–shaped cleaning robot. He watched its very smooth procession down the sidewalk.
He nodded to himself.
He was honestly impressed.
“I never thought of an idea like that.”
“Professor, please keep your mind off strange ideas.”
