CHAPTER 3

In a Land Where Abilities Are Forbidden
Reformatory.

1

A cold sweat broke out all over Yoshio Baba.

He was in Member, just like the professor. He’d been remotely controlling a quadrupedal walking robot to support said professor, but…

“That bastard…Damn you! How could you die so quickly?!” he swore.

But a dead man wasn’t going to help him. He tsked, then began preparing to withdraw. He was in School District ­23—­in an underground town under development hundreds of meters belowground, a nuclear shelter for VIPs called Summer Resort. Originally, it was the private property of one of the General Board members, but they almost never used it, so Baba had taken it upon himself to disable the security systems and make himself at home. The “resort” had grand, ­villa-­like furnishings, and even a special line for Net conferencing. It was a wonderful environment for Baba, a hacker. He’d had his eyes on it for a while, but getting to actually experience it that day was really something else.

But this wasn’t a perfectly safe place, either.

The enemy’s ability was unknown, but if it was a form of teleportation, the walls’ thickness wouldn’t do him much good. The person to easily kill the professor had been one of only seven Level Five espers in Academy City. Someone like that could tear open the shelter door with brute force. Plus, it was possible they’d bring some ­brand-­new equipment, like an ­anti-­bulkhead shotgun.

They’ll notice this place soon. All I can do is get out before that happens!!

He stuffed several devices, most importantly a laptop computer, into his bag. Then, after grabbing a sheaf of papers preserved inside the Summer Resort on the way, he headed for the exit elevator.

But when he pushed the button, there was no response.

“…?”

He headed for the door to the staircase instead, but that was locked, too, and wouldn’t open.

Then the lighting in the shelter changed to bright red. Dumbfounded, Baba looked at the control monitor for shelter safety. On it was displayed “For safety reasons, all locks have been set.”

When Baba’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, he began to hear something strange:

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh…It sounded almost like a waterfall.

It was considerably loud. After all, it was coming through the shelter’s thick walls.

“Water…?!”

Terrible images raced through Yoshio Baba’s mind.

If someone had used a fire hose or something and was pouring tons of water into the elevator shaft or underground stairs…

With such an immense water pressure against every door in the shelter, neither human hands nor the monitor’s automatic controls could make them move again. And even if they did open, an overwhelming devastation from terrible quantities of water would be waiting for him.

There had been a ­teleport-­type esper in Member, ­Saraku—­whom Accelerator called Kill ­Point—­but he’d been taken down in District 23 already, too. He wouldn’t save him from this situation.

“Damn!!”

Baba frantically took the laptop out of his bag and booted it up, before connecting to the Net conference line and contacting another person in Member. Now that the professor and Kill Point were gone, he only had one ally ­left—­a girl the professor had dubbed a sorcerer.

But the answer from his ally, who had learned of things through text messages, was very simple.

“The data you were collecting on the other organizations was saved on another server, right? I just need that, not you. I’m chasing down my own ­enemies—­I don’t have time to wipe your ass for you.”

“You piece of shit!!” exclaimed Baba out of reflex. He considered abandoning all shame and reputation and calling their ancillary organization or the “voice on the telephone” for help, but then his laptop screen suddenly froze. A bad premonition began to set in as he tried to get it working again, but the cable for the line must have been physically cut. That was why the information stopped updating.

He pulled the cord out of the laptop and wailed. He tried to force himself to think optimistically, but no matter how he tried, he always returned to the same answer.

He was trapped.

As Baba admitted that fact to himself, the thick walls, which had seemed reliable before, came at him from all directions with a dark pressure. How many rations were down here? Was there enough oxygen? When would help arrive? Would help ever arrive?

With his panic accelerating just from the whirling images in his mind, he eventually slammed his bag on the floor, tore at his hair with his hands, and screamed like an animal.

In the safest place in the world, which actually had enough oxygen and food to last him another year without trouble, Yoshio Baba’s mind began to disintegrate, eaten alive by the beast called imagination.

2

School District 11.

Since Academy City wasn’t on the sea, goods could only come to it two ways: by land or air. And District 11, which was on the outer wall, served as a front door to the largest of those land routes.

That was where the members of Block, including Mitsuki Unabara, were.

­Squared-­off buildings were lined up around him. Unlike normal buildings, these had no walls, which made them look like parking garages. Academy ­City–­made ­self-­driving electric cars waited inside for shipments.

District 11 exchanged over seven thousand metric tons of goods per day, and its “town of warehouses” was immense.

Control near the gates directly managing entry and exit was very strict, but they couldn’t keep an eye on every nook and cranny of the warehouse town. This district probably closely resembled a pier at a normal port. Just like the fondly remembered mafia movies of old, it was quite often used as a spot for shady deals, night after night.

And…

So that’s the outer wall…

Unabara directed his gaze at it.

Despite being easily over five hundred meters away, the wall was giant, palpably displaying its grandeur. Like the Great Wall of China, there was a path on top of the wall, and if you checked with binoculars, you’d see oil ­drum–­shaped security robots going back and forth.

Certain sorcerers had climbed over the outer wall. However, that was because the wall’s security was protected by scientific sensors, and tended to be weak to magical ploys (…or, at least, Unabara wanted to believe that. He didn’t want to think Aleister’s calculations went that far, and that he was toying with them).

Presently, though, because their ­satellite-­based surveillance was gone, the security had grown incredibly weak. Now, even regular people who didn’t use magical means would have a chance.

Five thousand mercenaries, summoned by Saku, would be waiting on the other side.

They’d probably been waiting for Academy City’s satellite security to cut out, hiding in nearby buildings or scattered cars.

Yet despite knowing that, Unabara was never blessed with the chance to relay that information.

Those in Group didn’t know of this place. Even the city’s higher echelons might not have figured it out. They’d personally resolved the immediate threat of attack from the satellite, so it was likely they felt relieved.

Block’s objective is to let those mercenaries in and do…what? Where on earth do they plan to attack…?

“Yamate. Are you, worried about something?” asked Megumi Teshio suddenly from nearby.

Yamate was the name of the man Unabara was disguised as. “No…,” he answered shortly.

Normally, he did at least a ­week-­long investigation of the person he would impersonate. He couldn’t make any careless remarks before he knew more about his model’s personality.

Teshio didn’t seem to think much of Unabara’s attitude, either.

She’d probably decided he was nervous, since they were in the middle of a huge operation.

“Sure, we got rid of the satellites, but those security robots are still up and rolling around,” said Tatsuhiko Saku.

Teshio turned to face the ­bearlike man. “Is there, a problem?”

“Nah. Those bots don’t have any firearms, so they won’t be an obstacle. We just have to get the timing right, and they can cross the wall.”

“Why aren’t they armed?” asked Unabara, deciding to get into the conversation.

Saku glanced at him. “Bunch of reasons. The robots up there are always protecting the periphery. They can’t risk malfunctions causing them to shoot people walking around outside the wall. Then there’s the ammunition issue. That type of robot isn’t designed to swap out magazines, so once it runs out, that’s it.”

“Then even if they are spotted, they would only, trigger an alarm?” said Megumi Teshio, sounding deflated. “In that case, instead of going through the work, couldn’t we have just, staged a ­brute-­force breakthrough?”

“Nope. Those outer wall security bots have a special comm line. Once the warning comes in, they’ll send a message directly to District 23 control and call in their unmanned attack helicopters. Right now, the main one being the Hexawing, a ­brand-­new model that showed up at the interception weaponry show. If they get spotted, we’ll have problems.”

Saku glanced at the watch around his thick arm. “In ten minutes, the security robots on the wall will rotate out.”

“…”

“They run on electricity, after all. They can’t operate ­twenty-­four hours a day, so they’ve gotta recharge somewhere. Which means the ones currently operating will naturally split away from the ones recharging.”

Because of this guard rotation, once per day, a ­twenty- to ­thirty-­minute gap would open up in the ­robot-­based wall security.

Typically, that wouldn’t be a problem.

Because normally, Academy City’s satellites kept a ­never-­ending watch over the city and its periphery.

But not right then.

Those twenty minutes would turn into a ­full-­blown blackout.

“Get as many cars as possible. And don’t forget to swap their license plates,” instructed Tatsuhiko Saku to Block’s underlings. “The electric ­self-­driving cars for planned shipment parked in the ­garages—­we need to transport five thousand people in them, after all.”

3

The twenty minutes of blackout began.

In the District 11 warehouse town, surrounded by squarish parking garage buildings, Mitsuki Unabara directed his attention to the obsidian knife in his inside pocket.

He wouldn’t get the chance to contact Accelerator and Group.

Even if he did so right now, there was no guarantee they’d come running here right away.

From what he’d gleaned by eavesdropping on Tatsuhiko Saku’s radio chatter, the mercenaries were throwing ropes up the wall to secure a path. And Unabara could already see several scaling the wall by peering through binoculars an “ally” had handed him.

…I have to do it, he thought.

The Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli reflected Venus’s light, then dismantled whatever that light touched. It was a projectile spell. As long as the light directly hit, it would break apart any kind of matter, but he couldn’t aim for multiple targets at the same time.

The problem is finding where to aim that one attack.

There were five thousand mercenaries in total.

Aiming the Spear at them wouldn’t mean much. It would just reduce the number of perpetrators to 4,999.

He could aim at Block’s official members.

…Taking down Saku, the commander, would have some effect, but now that their plan had already progressed this far, losing their leader probably wouldn’t completely stop them.

I need a more effective point…, thought Unabara, taking his eyes from the binoculars. A target that would bring this all to a halt in one strike…

He then averted his gaze from the climbing mercenaries and set it in a completely different direction.

An intense tremble ran through him, but he didn’t have the time to hesitate.

…It’s there!!

He slipped his obsidian knife out.

The light of Venus reflected toward…

…the parking garage right next to them.

Although Tatsuhiko Saku and Megumi Teshio saw him bring out the obsidian knife, they just stared blankly. They had no knowledge of sorcery, so they didn’t understand what he was doing.

But when Unabara suddenly broke out into a run toward the building, and then the parking garage began to collapse without warning, they put two and two together.

A sharp ba-keen rang out.

The reinforced concrete parking garage in Unabara’s path began to break into pieces, as though the pillars supporting it were being pulled out one by one. Every time one of the building fragments collided with the ground, it smashed the asphalt and whipped up clouds of dust.

“What…? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaamate!!”

Unabara heard Saku’s scream from behind.

The sound of several guns being leveled at him followed.

Unabara ignored them and ran.

With clatters and rumbles, the giant concrete fell at him like a cave-in. The pieces actually shielded Unabara’s back from the rain of gunfire. A ­self-­driving electric car, crushed in midair, stabbed into the ground with its sharp cross section. The only good thing was the lack of an explosion, since it didn’t use gasoline.

Unabara pointed the obsidian knife down.

Venus’s light destroyed the ground. He jumped down into a sewer to try to protect himself from the concrete falling above.

However, there were so many fragments that they began to crush the sewer itself, quickly approaching Unabara.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

He ran, tumbling, then actually tripped and fell, but still got up and crawled forward.

Eventually, the rumble of the parking garage’s collapse ended.

The impact had damaged every part of this sewer; the area behind him was blocked, of course, but even in front of him was collapsed, too.

The ceiling had crumbled, and bright light shone in from above.

Unabara looked up at the ­dusty-­blue sky as he grabbed a ruined wall with his hands and climbed up.

There, he saw…

4

District 23’s air control center received an emergency signal from District 11 near the outer wall.

But the unmanned helicopters wouldn’t immediately launch from there. It was possible the signal was incorrect. Final judgment was left to an operator, who would personally connect the line’s plug and input the command. Only then would the helicopters take defensive action.

Normally, there was a complicated manual, dozens of pages long, waiting.

But the control center, having temporarily lost hold of the satellites, had taken up a special security status. The operator didn’t do a single check against the manual before promptly pushing the plug in and issuing the dispatch order.

Three unmanned attack helicopters were standing by on the vast asphalt ground.

They were ­HsAFH-­11s, ­code-­named Hexawings.

When they got the order, they increased the rotational frequency of their blades and slowly lifted off.

5

The unmanned Hexawings flew through the air above District 11.

They were similar to AH-64 Apaches, with “wings” along either side of the fuselage for loading machine guns and missiles.

The definition of a helicopter is an aircraft that generates lift using rotors attached on its vertical axis and uses the angle of those “wings” to move.

By that definition, you could certainly call the Hexawing a helicopter.

However, whether or not you could really call the Hexawing a ­helicopter—­when it contained two rocket engines as auxiliary power sources and could, at max speed, reach Mach 2.­5—­was up for debate.

The unmanned attack helicopters’ arithmetic processors first confirmed the collapse of the parking garage, and then the group of suspicious persons scaling the outer wall of Academy City just a few hundred meters away.

There were about five thousand.

Acknowledging them as hostiles, their processors quickly and automatically began to attack.

“Damn that Yamate bastard…!!” shouted Tatsuhiko Saku bitterly as the Hexawings moved.

With a metallic ga-shoo, the wings on either side of the machines split into three. They were indeed ­six-­winged, and the slender wings even had joints in them. They pointed their weapons in six different directions with movements like human arms.

“Here they come!!” shouted Megumi Teshio.

The Hexawings’ machine guns began to wail.

It was less a rake of gunfire and more a series of blasts.

Megumi Teshio dove behind the station wagon they’d been using, but then the shield took the machine gun fire, becoming dented and misshapen. An orange glow engulfed the vehicle, and a moment later, the whole thing blew. Teshio was sent flying meters back, but after hitting the ground, she ran off to look for another shield.

“Frictional bullet tips?!”

­Super-­heat-­resistant metallic bullets, with special grooves in them so they could use air resistance to heat up to 2,500 degrees Celsius. When one hit armor, it would quickly burn up circuitry and fuel from within.

Hundreds of meters in front of her, the helicopters had begun their attack on the mercenaries scaling the outer wall as well.

Whole groups blasted apart like popped balloons. It was so terrible that she could see the crimson splashes even from her distance. Other mercenaries who were safe were pushed by the force of the blasts and starting falling off. They were strafing the ones who could counterattack first.

At this rate, they’d kill everyone.

Megumi Teshio shouted over to Tatsuhiko Saku, who was some distance away. “The mercenaries, should give up!! They may be moving, as a large group, but from above, they’re nothing but a giant target!!”

“There’s five thousand of them! How hard do you think we worked for this single moment?! Are you telling us to let it go to waste?!”

“They mistakenly think, they’ve been betrayed, anyway. The ones, on the other side of the wall, won’t be coming now. We’re getting, the ones who fell inside, and leaving!!”

“Yamate, you bastard…I’ll kill you, I swear it!!” bellowed Saku from his thick throat.

“Ha-ha…I should have expected as much from lethal weapons that cost two hundred fifty billion yen each…,” muttered Unabara to himself, having crawled out of the sewers and behind some rubble. He was the one who’d done it, but the scene was still ­spine-­chilling.

He looked into the distance and saw several groups hoisting ­anti-­air missiles on their shoulders and firing them.

But the Hexawings fired things that looked like softballs at the missiles. Iron sand exploded from them, and a ­high-­tension current went through. An entire area, twenty meters square, turned into an electrical current zone, the missiles flying into it exploded of their own accord.

In response to the attack, the Hexawings fired a barrage of ­anti-­surface missiles, transforming the entire plane into a sea of crimson flames.

For now, it looks like I prevented the mercenaries’ entrance as much as I could, but…

Unabara pressed his back to a giant concrete chunk and covered his face with his hands.

He ripped away the protective skin talisman he’d used to create the false countenance of Yamate and pulled his Mitsuki Unabara face back on. A moment later, his entire physique and voice, not just his face, had switched to a different person.

He didn’t need the Block’s face anymore.

The problem is how to survive this. Those Hexawings’ arithmetic processors probably won’t object to labeling me an enemy, too.

For now, the Hexawings’ objective was the elimination of the soldiers scaling the outer wall.

If he stayed hidden until they left, the helicopters would leave on their own, but…

A ­brat-­rat-­rat-­rat-­rat sound splitting the air squeezed Unabara’s heart.

He looked out from behind the rubble and saw a Hexawing taking aim at him.

“I suppose it won’t be…that easy!!” he shouted, no sooner than jumping out and swinging his obsidian knife.

It reflected Venus’s light, triggered the Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, and broke apart the Hexawing in a surprise attack.

Another Hexawing, notified of what happened, pointed one of its ­wing-­mounted machine guns at him. It was positioned so that its flank was facing him, but that didn’t pose an issue. Its ­six-­jointed guns aimed at Unabara.

The Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli could break any object apart.

However, it couldn’t aim for multiple targets at once.

“Argh!!”

He quickly tried to dive behind cover, but the helicopter was far, far faster.

The Hexawings he’d called here were trying to blow him to bits.

So this is the end…!!

Unabara brought up his obsidian knife, knowing it was futile, but before he could do ­anything—

Bang!!

A ­white-­haired Level Five dropped down hard on top of the unmanned helicopter. He grabbed the ­fast-­spinning rotors and stopped them. The Hexawing couldn’t deal with such an insane action, and it fell to the ground and exploded everywhere.

“He” came walking slowly out of the flames.

The tension finally left Mitsuki Unabara’s body. “Accelerator…”

“Heard something was goin’ on near the outer wall, so I came. Man, what a shit show,” said Accelerator, sounding bored, returning his electrode switch to normal and leaning on his cane. “Looks like Tsuchimikado and Musujime cleaned things up at the external connection terminal, and I thought busting their satellite antenna would put an end to things. And now control is crying there’s some invaders making a mess of things on the outskirts.”

“Ha-ha. I suppose you realized they were using you, too.”

“You didn’t call the Hexawings for no reason, yeah? Where’s Block?”

“They got away,” said Unabara, wiping his sweat. “I think they brought about a hundred of the mercenaries from outside.”

“From outside…Damn it, that’s what the satellite thing was for? Block, Member, mercenaries…Too many shitheads running around,” grumbled Accelerator, realizing he’d been played. “Still, didn’t think we’d let people break in. What a bunch of useless idiots.”

“To be fair, they said they had about five thousand at first.”

“Here’s a neat little expression. A miss is as good as a mile.”

A Hexawing sliced through the sky, interrupting him.

This time, though, it wasn’t aiming at them.

After a general scan of the area, the last remaining helicopter began to fly back toward District 23.

“Looks like they’re done cleaning up.”

“They probably don’t want their allies breaking another one,” said Unabara, shrugging. “They apparently cost two hundred fifty billion each.”

6

Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Accelerator, Awaki Musujime, and Mitsuki Unabara all met up in the District 11 warehouse town. Mitsuki Unabara, who had been out of the loop until now, asked Tsuchimikado, “What’s an ‘external connection terminal’?”

“Just some building. The paperwork would have been a pain, and they wouldn’t answer us, so Musujime and I blew up their core. Anyway, there’s three more terminals, so there shouldn’t be any issues with the access situation.”

Musujime, who had been with Tsuchimikado, asked Unabara, “Should I take this to mean Block were the masterminds behind these incidents? I think I remember School being the ones behind the attempted Monaka Oyafune assassination.”

“It doesn’t seem like Block and School were directly cooperating,” he replied. “The two organizations were acting on their own, causing those incidents independently. Although, they probably had some contact due to Management’s introductions and such.”

“Shit. Member’s been crawling around, too. This is getting out of hand.”

As Tsuchimikado listened to Unabara and Accelerator, he moved his gaze elsewhere.

Blood and flesh were sprayed around the outer wall, but survivors still remained. Mercenaries unable to die, unable to ­run—­and not recovered by Block, either.

“All right, question time,” said Tsuchimikado bluntly. “What were you five thousand mercenaries going to attack?”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Five thousand may sound like a lot, but it’s not enough to take down Academy City. Tell us your business here, mercenary. What was this plan of yours that needed so many people?”

“…” The mercenary looked at the four members of Group in turn. He seemed to be mentally at a loss. He hesitated, looking at this disaster, wondering if his Block allies had failed or if they’d been planning on betraying them all along. Eventually, he opened his mouth and spoke.

“…School District 10.”

“District 10?”

With the cheapest land prices in the city, it was home to all sorts of unsavory facilities, like abandoned animal testing sites and nuclear ­power-­related laboratories.

The mercenary continued, “We planned to attack the juvenile reformatory there.”

“!!” Awaki Musujime grabbed the mercenary’s collar. “Why attack a place like that…? Trying to save some VIP criminals, were you?!”

Accelerator, staring at Musujime being driven by impatience, took the time to think.

Academy City’s juvenile reformatory was a facility for holding criminals who had used abilities during their crime. Nobody knew the details, but he’d heard stories that they had ­anti-­esper measures there. That meant a regular military combat force would have a much higher success rate for an assault.

The mercenary Musujime was holding by the collar eventually said, “Our target…was Move Point.”

Her eyebrow twitched.

The mercenary didn’t seem to have any idea who the girl in front of him was.

“We heard…that Move Point’s allies are being held there. We wanted to capture them…and use them to negotiate with Move Point.”

Why did they bring up that name in particular? thought Musujime to herself. She soon realized the answer. “The guide…to the Windowless Building where Aleister is…”

“Yeah. The guide’s identity is top secret. They’re directly linked to Aleister, after all. But Block found out that Move Point was the guide. So we decided to investigate her, then get resources we could use to bargain.”

“What did you want to bargain with the guide for?” asked Tsuchimikado.

“For info on how goods get ­inside—­the Windowless Building, that is,” the mercenary answered. “Even nukes can’t destroy it from the outside, but what about from the inside? They say it has no entrance or exit, but they have to be bringing goods in and out somehow. We were going to use that and blow the Windowless Building apart from within.”

“Blow it apart?”

“Block said they had procured ­multi-­synchronous bombs. You’re all tactical weapons made by Academy City, right?”

­Multi-­synchronous bombs were ­large-­scale bombs where you systematically set up multiple high explosives. While normal tactical weapons tried to make ever more massive blasts that would spread out farther, ­multi-­synchronous bombs aimed to focus the ­high-­energy blasts on a single, extremely small target and destroy it thoroughly. They were devised to blow up enemy fortresses in urban areas without causing civilian casualties.

“We had to stop the worldwide chaos. I’m a mercenary by trade, so I understand: The world is on the brink. Strife is going to start all over soon. Wars have to be stopped before they happen.”

The mercenary looked at each of the faces in Group in turn.

“It would have been too much to ask for Move Point herself to join us. Anyone you can’t ­trust—­well, you can never trust them in the future, either. We wouldn’t pursue that very far. If the info is right about Move Point’s ability, things would have gone much easier with her cooperation, but it’s one thing we couldn’t do anything about. We assumed we wouldn’t get her cooperation to begin ­with—”

“You’re right about that,” interrupted Musujime. “By the way, do you know who’s standing in front of you right now?”

“What?” said the mercenary, ­frowning—­before his face went ­beet-­red a moment later. “N-no, that can’t be, that’s not…!!”

Before he could finish speaking, there were almost ten iron ­nail-­like objects pierced through his body.

He lost consciousness because of the shock from the pain, but he still seemed to be alive. Musujime let go of the ragged mercenary and stood there, head down, clenching her teeth.

That which she wanted to protect ­most—­that which she had to protect no matter the ­cost—­was being stolen away at this very moment. In the face of that, the other three were silent. Each carried something similar, so they said nothing.

Aleister was probably using some unknown tech to watch all this from on high. And though he watched, he wouldn’t want to intervene. He was, without a doubt, watching and laughing at the little people floundering in the miniature garden he’d created.

“Let’s go.”

Eventually, Tsuchimikado prompted the group onward.

Everything to come wouldn’t be a Group problem but an Awaki Musujime problem. But nobody was willing to point that out. The situation had changed from each Group individual having to overcome the hardships that came with their own assignments by themselves, like it had been for Unabara when he was within Block’s ranks.

“To District 10. Block’s still got almost a hundred mercs with ’em. We don’t know what they’re armed with, but one thing’s certain: We can’t be optimistic about this.”

7

Accelerator and the rest of Group used a transport ambulance to get out of District 11. Their destination: a certain juvenile reformatory in District 10.

“This is the only juvenile reformatory in Academy City. Looks like it’s split half and half, with a boys’ block and a girls’ block,” said Tsuchimikado, pressing a few buttons on his laptop. “Academy City doesn’t consider treason a crime right now. That means Musujime’s allies can’t be legally sentenced. They wouldn’t put people like that into one of the normal houses.”

“Which means…there must be a hidden room?” Unabara looked at Musujime, but she didn’t seem to know.

“What a pain,” muttered Accelerator. “Don’t we have a map of the place? If we can’t hack their data, including hidden passages from their facility, can’t we just steal it from the construction company’s computer?”

“It’s not a normal building. I don’t think that sort of data would still be at the company.”

Tsuchimikado looked at the screen.

It showed several data points on the reformatory, but the map itself was designated secret. They wouldn’t be able to touch it from here.

Accelerator, who was also peering at the screen, noticed something. “This place doesn’t have a fire office.” He looked over the data again. “There wouldn’t be many fires in the facility, so they left it out to cut costs. But that means if there was a fire, the fire station would act. They would have gotten a rough map beforehand to be able to move cleanly through that maze.”

Tsuchimikado directed his hacking attempt elsewhere.

He got results quickly.

“Here we go. Part of the secret area is blotted out, but if we assume there’s a hidden staircase, then ­construction-­wise, it has to be here. Beyond that is the underground block for traitors.”

Judging from how there was only one predictable location for the hidden stairs, the traitors’ block must not have been separated between male and female. They were all individual cells, with no common spaces at all.

“Technically, it is hidden,” said Musujime. “From Block, too, who are attacking the place.”

“Hah. Group and Block have equal authority. Anything we can get our hands on is free game for them, too, right? You’re the one who said our secrecy levels in the data banks were the same, idiot.”

Musujime glared at Accelerator, but he didn’t budge.

“Tsuchimikado,” he said instead, “what about security?”

“The guards are using ­MPS-­79s—­an old ­powered-­suit model. ­Anti-­esper equipment, but we can’t expect much from them. They’re only using ­self-­defense tools to stop out-of-control espers, but Block has real lethal weapons. The mercenaries left in District 11 had the whole nine yards of outside ­equipment—­knives, guns, rifles, blasting powder, you name ­it—­but they probably have Block’s ­brand-­new stuff now. From what Unabara said, they’ve still got almost a hundred mercs with them. We don’t know how many people Block has, or their abilities. What’s important is whether or not they have lethal abilities. Powered suits are really just big, rugged targets, after all.”

“Not that,” interrupted Accelerator casually. “That reformatory holds brutal espers, right? What about their ­anti-­abilities setup?”

“Mostly IDF ­jammers—­around ­twenty-­five.”

“So, what? We can’t use our abilities inside?”

“No, it just ruins your focus or purposely leaves thoughts easy for psychometer espers to track. Your abilities will be somewhat weaker, but it won’t completely erase them. Those prison guards are apparently in one of the three professions most hated by insurance companies. It means they can’t fully neutralize everything, even though the facility is so large in scale.

“But,” warned Tsuchimikado, “using your abilities carelessly could make them go out of control. Especially ones that need complex calculations. It’s too dangerous for you and Musujime. Be careful. That would be a stupid way to kill yourself.”

8

When the ambulance stopped in front of the juvenile reformatory in School District 10, Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Mitsuki Unabara, and Awaki Musujime burst out of its back door.

From there, they couldn’t spy the actual reformatory. Walls almost fifteen meters high were in the way. But even from where they stood, the sickening scent of smoke reached their noses.

“…!!”

Musujime grated her teeth and immediately tried to dash in through the already destroyed gate, but Accelerator, leaning on his ­modern-­design cane, frowned.

“Does this seem odd to anyone else?”

“You noticed, too?” said Tsuchimikado slowly, pulling a military pistol from his inside pocket. “No noise. If Block is in combat with the reformatory guards, we should be able to hear gunfire, at least.”

The four passed through the gate, which also served as a checkpoint. Beyond it was a roundabout for police wagons. As they stepped toward the edge of the asphalt surface, twenty meters long per side, Accelerator felt a slight pain around his temples.

“…The IDF jammers, eh?”

He looked up and saw a net of thin wires drawn over the entire grounds, from one ­fifteen-­meter-­high wall to another. Were they emitting special EM waves or something?

They were probably causing espers to interfere with their own abilities by throwing their involuntary diffusion fields into chaos. He’d never heard of ­Anti-­Skill using them, so they likely needed immense electricity or processing instruments, making them usable only in limited spaces like this one.

Doesn’t look like I’m having a problem walking, at least…But I should probably stay away from ability usage mode, since it uses proxy calculations.

Still, Accelerator wasn’t under the impression he couldn’t use his ability here. They seemed to be stimulating abilities to run out of control instead, so he couldn’t use it carelessly. His arms and legs could fly off if he got caught in his own ability.

They’re using a bunch of other machines, too. Purposely getting them to interfere with one another.

If he could figure out what sort of devices they were manipulating, he might have been able to find a countermeasure, but there, Accelerator stopped thinking. He’d found the reason the whole reformatory seemed odd.

Corpses.

Probably the mercenaries Block had called in from outside. Close to fifty big men were lying in pools of their own blood. Some were shot through the temple, others were missing parts of their heads from close-­range shotgun blasts, and yet others had their necks cut with knives…There were many causes for death, but all had one thing in common.

“They…All of them were ended by their own weapons…,” muttered Tsuchimikado.

“Suicide…? No, wait, this ­is—”

Unabara didn’t get to finish.

“I’ve found you.”

They heard a voice behind them.

Accelerator turned around to see a girl standing in the destroyed gate. A small girl, wearing a red ­sailor-­style suit that looked like a school uniform. But there was a glint in her eyes. She wasn’t just any killer.

“If you’re here, does that make you one of Block’s shitheads?”

“No, I’m with Member. I was only using them, though, so I don’t care who I belong to,” she answered coolly. She was probably the one who’d attacked the mercenaries lying around. That would mean she took down fifty without a single wound, but she didn’t brag about it. She really didn’t seem to have any interest in either the mercenaries or Block.

Another from Member…

Accelerator had run into someone from Member a short while ago in District 23, too. They didn’t seem to be on friendly terms with Block. He didn’t quite know what their goals were, or which organizations they were hostile toward. Whatever the case, though, if they were hostile, their response wouldn’t change.

But one person overreacted to seeing her face.

“…Wait, could you be…”

Mitsuki ­Unabara—­an agent, whose name and face were known to none.

“You would ask me my identity at this point, Etzali?”

The girl looked at Mitsuki Unabara and called him a completely different name.

Or perhaps that was his true name.

As Unabara stood frozen in surprise, the girl wiped her face with a hand. Her face was no longer there. Her Asian features disappeared, leaving a girl with a dark complexion and sculpted features.

“I’ll have to thank Block. Esper powers are reduced here. I don’t have to worry as much about your allies or whatever getting in my way.”

After seeing her face and hearing her voice, Unabara’s face twisted.

“Xóchitl? What are you doing out here? You don’t have a spell like this, and even in the organization, nobody would ever give you the dirty jobs!!”

“I have only one reason,” stated the ­brown-­skinned girl named Xóchitl, face steady. “You turned coats to Academy City, you traitor. I abandoned everything to come here and destroy you.”

“So that’s it,” muttered Tsuchimikado, looking over at Unabara.

“…I’ll hold her here. You all go on ahead,” Unabara stated quietly, his voice strained. “She’s Xóchitl. An Aztecan sorcerer who belonged to the same organization as I did before I came here.”

The girl called Xóchitl didn’t change her expression even after hearing Unabara’s words. “I only have business with Etzali. I don’t care if the rest of you leave, but will they let you go?”

A gunshot rang out.

Accelerator and Tsuchimikado ducked behind a patrol wagon parked in the roundabout. Meanwhile, they heard several feet running out of the reformatory building.

“The Block mercs who were waiting…Don’t you have to deal with them?” said Tsuchimikado to Xóchitl. She ignored him. She really had only eliminated the ones in her way; she wasn’t interested in Block or their mercenaries.

But as the mercenaries stopped them there, Block was getting deeper and deeper into the ­reformatory—­to use Awaki Musujime’s allies as hostages.

Accelerator tsked in frustration. “Bullshit. Get going already.”

“But…,” began Musujime.

“I can’t walk without a cane. If we can’t use abilities, then I can’t expect anything from your Move Point, either. The slowest guy gets to hold them off,” said Accelerator quickly. “Tsuchimikado, you’re Musujime’s backup. We don’t know how many guys Block has. Go into it ready to fight a lot of them.”

As for Unabara, he didn’t need to give him any directions at this point.

Accelerator would intercept the mercenaries coming out of the building, Unabara would settle the score with Member’s Xóchitl, and Tsuchimikado and Musujime would rescue the kids in the special block.

With each of their own goals in mind, the four members of Group glanced at one another and nodded.

“Let’s go!!”

They all got started.

9

Tsuchimikado and Musujime went down the hidden staircase the map’s contradictions had shown them and headed to the special insurgent block which, on paper, didn’t exist.

They came across a few men on the way who appeared to be mercenaries, but Tsuchimikado used his gun to silence them. Xóchitl must have gotten a lot of them. Thanks to Accelerator taking on her job, they seemed to have mostly run out.

Then Musujime felt a cold, slight pain in her head.

“…IDF jammers. They’re getting stronger.”

“They’ve got machines outside, in the building, and in the rooms. Their effects are probably overlapping. This is the only juvenile reformatory in Academy City, and the only ­anti-­esper holding facility in the world. You can’t have normal security in a place like this.”

Tsuchimikado was probably feeling a similar pain.

She felt less like it was holding back her ability, restraining it, and more like it was throwing her aim off. If she used her ability without thinking, she could catch herself in it.

“Musujime. Your ability is extremely strong, but one misfire and you’ll die. You shouldn’t use it here.”

“You make it sound like my ability is the only thing I’m good for.”

“Shh!” Tsuchimikado held up his index finger to quiet her.

The passage stuck out the side of the stairwell, and from around the corner he heard a heavy clattering, like someone forcing open a bolted metal wall by driving a nail into the gaps between plates. Tsuchimikado silently brought his pistol back up. The completely ­ability-­reliant Musujime must not have had her normal throwing weapons with her, because she removed the ­flashlight-­slash-­nightstick from her waist.

They burst out into the passage.

It was narrow. Metal doors for solitary confinement cells lined the walls on either side, and a big, bearlike man had stuck some kind of clay on one. Next to him, a sinewy woman watched.

When they saw Tsuchimikado and Musujime, the bearlike man said, “Good timing…You must be Group.”

Musujime didn’t immediately move, probably due to the IDF jammers. Tsuchimikado, on the other hand, aimed his barrel right between the big man’s eyes. But before he could fire, the man stuck a long, ­needlelike object into the clay on the door.

“A plastic bomb, and this is the fuse.”

The muscly woman’s eyes sharpened. “Saku!!”

“We have to, Teshio. We have to use hostages here.”

The large man called Saku slowly removed his hand from the bomb with the fuse stuck in it. His hand held a wireless ­device—­the switch to set off the bomb.

“…If you use that now, it’ll blow you two to smithereens first.”

“I’ve already set the amount of gunpowder and direction. The blast will only go into the door.” Saku pointed to the bomb on the door with his index finger. “But the shockwave will rip through the cell. Along with the ­blown-­apart fragments of this metal door. Breaking the door is easy, but caring about those inside isn’t. We have to be hasty, thanks to the lot of you getting in the way.”

“…!!” Suddenly, there was a boom of wind.

Musujime had bared her fangs, and her ability had accidentally discharged. Several fluorescent lights on the ceiling went out, sticking to the walls and floor in a muddle.

Even then, Saku and Teshio didn’t look disturbed.

“…Awaki Musujime. The famous Move Point,” said Saku with a grin, reaffirming his grip on the device to blow the bomb. “That’s good. Less work for us. We have the hostages and the other party all right here. Let’s get straight to negotiations, shall we? You be the guide to the Windowless Building.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You can’t refuse. Would you rather your ability go berserk?”

That made Musujime clam up. If not for the ­anti-­esper setup, she’d have skewered Saku a long time ago.

“Still…Group, eh? What did you learn after experiencing the 09/30 incident?”

“What?”

“We learned something. We thought Aleister governed every last corner of this insane world, but he doesn’t. There are ways to escape his sway, places to flee his control. Isn’t that a fun little fact? Academy City restricting us almost seems absurd now. And with the disturbance in Avignon after the 09/30 incident, we have the chance of a lifetime. You can’t tell us to stay put.”

“A new world built on the backs of others? That isn’t something you can speak of so haughtily. All it makes me think of are the massacres during the Age of Discovery.”

“Really? It’s human nature to desire a heaven or a paradise that isn’t here for them right now.”

As he listened to their exchange, Tsuchimikado watched the device Saku held.

He was good enough to shoot it down. But he couldn’t deny the possibility that he’d fail, nor that falling to the floor would coincidentally hit the button and blow the door to bits. If that happened, it didn’t matter where in that small cell Musujime’s ally ­hid—­the hail of metal shards would get to them.

Musujime’s jaw was clenched so tightly she could have broken all her teeth.

The burly woman, Teshio, saw that and spoke to Saku next to her. “…Using hostages won’t make this better.”

“What are you saying, Teshio? This is where it gets real. This hostage’s worth has gone through the roof.”

“That was only something we needed, before negotiating with Move Point, before we knew where she was. Musujime is in, our hands now. The hostage, has served his purpose. If you use that bomb, she’ll be even more stubborn.” Teshio glared at the bomb on the door. “Come to think of it, I was against this from the start. I only agreed to the hostage plan, because it was absolutely necessary, to achieve our goals. Now that we know, that’s not true, we don’t have to keep them.”

“No, Teshio. We have ­thirty-­eight hostages right in front of us! Don’t you get it?! They’re our assets. We have so much capital that we can treat a few recklessly and it won’t even itch!! …Did you spend too long on the ­Anti-­Skill job? Did you start having feelings for these brats?!”

“…Saku.”

“Don’t get in my way!! I’m gonna fucking kill Aleister!! This is the first step. I can’t let it end here!! Like hell I’ll let you take up my precious time. If you hold me back, Teshio, I’ll kill you first!! If you don’t want that, ­then—”

Saku couldn’t finish his sentence.

Ga-thud!!

Teshio crashed her fist into Saku’s body with all her might.

They could discern the incredible force behind the punch just from hearing it. The man from Block probably had no idea what had just happened to his body. Suddenly, he’d slammed into the wall and slid down to the floor in a heap. That was the first time Awaki Musujime saw the spittle actually come out of someone’s mouth. That’s how merciless the strike had been.

“…Don’t waste time, on nonsense.”

The woman known as Teshio reached for the metal door. She pulled the fuse out of the plastic bomb stuck to it, removed the bomb itself, and casually tossed them to the floor.

“Is this, better?” she said slowly.

Her face grim, Musujime asked quietly, “…What’s your game?”

“I apologize, for our rudeness. Feel free, to beat me, until you’re satisfied.” Teshio’s eyes held steady, even after Tsuchimikado pointed his gun at her. “But I will not yield to you, until you win. I, too, have a reason, I need to kill Aleister. I won’t, use hostages. I will, however, inflict pain on you, and get the information I need.”

10

Mitsuki Unabara and Xóchitl stood in the reformatory gymnasium.

The ­brown-­skinned girl took a feather out of her pocket and held it to the side of her ear, saying, “Is looking at me with a false face your version of courtesy, Etzali?”

“…Unfortunately, I happen to rather like this face. You, on the other hand, have no right to use that face after leaving the organization.”

“You’re wrong,” cut in Xóchitl quietly. “You don’t even have the right to live anymore.”

“!!” Feeling a peculiar bloodlust, Unabara immediately drew the obsidian knife from his inside pocket. He hadn’t been planning on using the Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli on his former ally.

“What have you been looking at this whole time?” asked Xóchitl, exasperated.

A moment later, everything from Unabara’s right wrist to his elbow stopped moving. Before he could grunt in surprise, the obsidian knife he gripped began to move toward his face without his command.

“Wh…what?!”

He wasted no time in grabbing his wrist with his other hand.

Little by little, the knife’s tip inched closer to his eyeball. It was his dominant hand, which might have been why he couldn’t keep it farther away.

Xóchitl’s face remained steady.

Not even joy for her advantageous position marked her expression. It felt like she was watching a boring play.

Argh…! At…this rate…!!

“Raaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!” shouted Unabara.

He forced his left hand to move and dislocate his right wrist joint. The pain of scraping bones tore through him before all feeling left his hand. Without any gripping force, the knife finally slid out and fell to the ground.

Holding his wrist, he took a big jump back.

Xóchitl pointed at the ground and said impassively, “You dropped something. Gonna pick it up?”

Her spell probably interfered with the weapons others held. It captured the weapon, then borrowed its force to cause the enemy to kill himself without her needing to get her hands dirty. To avoid that attack, he’d have to abandon all weapons and Soul Arms and fight either barehanded or with spells he could cast with only his body. Meanwhile, Xóchitl could use whatever weapon she wanted for her strikes.

It rejected human civilization itself, this overwhelming handicap.

However, thought Unabara.

The Xóchitl he remembered didn’t use spells like this. Though her nickname was ­ghastly—­the Corpse ­Artisan—­her actual job was to extract information leftover in corpses, determining whether their last words were true or consolidating burial methods. She was just an aftercare provider for the dead.

She’d studied all the world’s necromancy, but purely for a peaceful purpose. The ­brown-­skinned girl named Xóchitl shouldn’t have been accustomed to hurting others.

“…What happened? Or, rather, what on Earth is happening in the organization right now?!” demanded Unabara in spite of himself.

Xóchitl didn’t even answer. She swung her hand and produced a giant sword that, no matter how he looked at it, couldn’t fit in her hand. Unlike Unabara’s blade, this was a traditional sword made of white chalcedony. It was technically a ­double-­sided blade, but sharp grooves had been carved into the left and right like the back of a survival knife.

A macuahuitl…?!

It was a sword used by Aztecan warriors. In Aztecan civilization, which didn’t use metal in weapons, several small stone razors would be lined up on the sides of wooden blades, so instead of cutting by striking like katanas, it would cut by pulling across something, like a saw.

“I’ll hear what you have to say later. If you’re lucky, and the brain damage is minor.”

Xóchitl raised her macuahuitl and sprang into motion, dashing toward him.

Given that he had to fight barehanded, Unabara was at a severe disadvantage.

“Damn it!!”

But he couldn’t lose here.

He stepped back to create distance. When Xóchitl, her timing thrown off, tried to step in more deeply, Unabara dug his shoe into the dirt and flung it in front of him. Blinded, Xóchitl stopped moving. He tried to aim a second kick at her gut.

But with a vwoosh, Xóchitl’s macuahuitl swept to the side.

Unabara hastily pulled his foot back, but it left a mark on his leather shoe like a razor had cut it.

“That’s a traitor for you. Makeshift ploys suit you well.”

Xóchitl’s voice was calm. Even that struck Unabara as strange. Before, she would have hesitated to even pick up a weapon made for killing. Her job was to read the residual information from corpses, so she knew the terror of weapons like that far more than normal people did.

And yet…

“But no matter how much you struggle, you need to fight barehanded. I’ll give you the right to defend yourself, at least, but each time you do, it’ll tear up your body a little bit more.”

“…Weapons like that don’t suit you.”

“Then is this the real you? You, who abandoned the organization, went into hiding, and grew fat on the tranquility of Academy City?”

“Xóchitl…”

“If the answer is yes, then you are indeed a traitor. If not, then you’re lying to ­yourself—­and a liar has no place to criticize me. Either option means you have to die here!!”

Gripping her Aztecan sword, the macuahuitl, Xóchitl charged straight into range. He could sense no ­mercy—­not in her eyes, her face, her hands, or her movements.

She was serious about killing him.

Maybe he could avoid one or two attacks. But he couldn’t keep that up forever. And if she successfully landed even one clean hit, the grievous blood loss would end his life. He couldn’t retreat for now, either. He needed more leeway for that. He could only choose that option once he decided she wouldn’t kill him if he turned his back.

Still, so long as her ­weapon-­breaking spell was in effect, he also couldn’t use any tools to defend himself. If he tried, he’d end up attacking himself with it.

He was against the wall.

“Damn it!!” he swore, trying to back up.

A swing from the macuahuitl tore through his jacket, sending several cuttings of hair flying.

“It’s over.”

Thump!! Xóchitl stomped on the ground. Then, this time in range for a sure kill, she brought her macuahuitl ­up—­a strike with timing Unabara would never be able to dodge.

She had no emotional connection from Unabara being a former ally, someone from the same organization, or anything.

Roar!! She cleaved down the sword.

…?! Unabara thrust his right arm, its wrist dislocated, over his head. She saw it and laughed. She must not have thought it would provide any defense. The macuahuitl, with its sawlike blades, descended with all her body weight behind it at a terrible speed.

Shrripp!! It tore apart his jacket, and then the jagged blade dug into the flesh of his arm. The grating, sawing noise reached his bones. His face distorted in pain.

But…

…that was all.

Mitsuki Unabara’s arm was still attached.

In fact, with the macuahuitl buried in his arm, he rallied all his strength and tried to push it away.

“What…?!” exclaimed Xóchitl in surprise before he slammed her in the side with a kick. Her petite frame gave way to momentum and crashed to the ground.

“…The Aztecs had no way of processing metal into weapons, so their swords aren’t that sharp. Instead of having a single chunk of iron for a blade, it uses many small, jagged stones along the sides of a wooden club. Even an expert couldn’t cleave bone; it’s made so you have to sweep the whole thing across arteries. In short, I can stop your sword with my bones.”

With the Aztecan sword still lodged in his right arm, he coughed, then continued, “Why did you think I gave up on dodging and got my arm ready? If I thought it would get through my arm and cut me in half, I wouldn’t have tried to defend like that. I decided that if I kept on evading, I’d lose due to blood loss.”

His tactic was possible because of Xóchitl’s relatively small stature and lack of skill with the weapon. A true warrior would still have broken his arm even if she couldn’t cut the bone.

“That’s why I said that weapon doesn’t suit you.”

Unabara looked down at the immobilized, laboriously breathing Xóchitl.

He still couldn’t use weapons. But she had let go of her macuahuitl, too. In this state, he could win by strangling her, or hitting her hard enough. Given the differences in their physiques, it would be easy to straddle her to stop her from moving before she got her hands on another weapon.

Xóchitl…

But he couldn’t do that.

No matter how much he wanted to.

“I will not take your life. Disappear, and don’t come back,” he said bitterly, popping his wrist joint back into place and swinging his right hand to send the sword to the ground.

When Xóchitl heard that, a subtle smile came to her lips.

And a moment later, the ­brown-­skinned girl’s body began to crumble.

11

The underground passage was straight and narrow.

And inside the facility, the myriad of ­anti-­esper measures ­employed—­IDF jammers first and ­foremost—­made Musujime’s ability unreliable. If anything went wrong, things could get really bad, even to the point of killing everyone instantly.

That was why Tsuchimikado didn’t rely on her, nor did he attempt to approach Teshio when he didn’t know what sort of attacks she would use. Instead, he just brought up his gun, intending to fire bullets in a spread pattern that would leave her no room for escape.

In response, Teshio kicked something at her feet into the air.

It was a cloth bag with ammunition that Saku, now lying on the ground, had been holding. If he accidentally hit that, it would send a spray of bullets out into the narrow passage, ricocheting off the walls and quite possibly him. By the time he was startled into stopping his trigger finger, Teshio had begun running up the passage, her fist clenched tight.

“!!”

Tsuchimikado squeezed the trigger, just barely before her fist was in range.

But Teshio assumed a ­boxer-­like stance, low enough to kiss his knees, in order to let the bullet go past.

Before Tsuchimikado could fix his aim, Teshio sprang out of her low stance and tackled him right in the stomach. The blow was strong enough to destroy doors, and even thin walls, and it sent his body flying several meters back.

A terrible sound rang out, and he almost stopped breathing. “Those movements…­Anti-­Skill arrest techniques…?”

“This is, my spin on it. If I used, something like this, on a child, it would kill them.”

Tsuchimikado fired his gun even as they spoke, but Teshio easily avoided it by swinging her upper body out of the way. The moment he was out of bullets, she sent out a kick that tore the gun from his hand.

Then she came in for another tackle.

With a dull thud, Teshio trapped Tsuchimikado between her shoulder and the wall. When she quietly stepped away, he slumped to the floor, limp.

“!!” That was when Awaki Musujime swung her flashlight down behind Teshio.

By simply raising her hand, Teshio caught the blunt weapon. “A professional needs, no eccentric abilities, nor any ­one-­shot skills.”

Returning the favor, she used her other hand to backhand Musujime across the face.

Thwop!! The blow sent her careening to the side, and she collided with one of the solitary confinement cell doors along the wall.

“We only need, an array of basic tactics, to defeat our enemies, in a logical manner.”

Teshio delivered a kick.

With a terrible ga-bam, Musujime tumbled into the cell along with the door, which should have been sturdily made. The extreme impact made her think her internal organs had been wrecked. Despite feeling a strange urge to vomit, nothing came ­out—­it was like her throat was plugged shut.

One of her allies must have been in this cell as well, because she heard them immediately call out her name. That alone gave her completely worn body a little bit of energy.

Ka-click. Teshio set her foot down in the broken cell entrance, blocking her path.

Musujime put a hand on the wall and wobbled to her feet, bringing her flashlight up. After telling her nearby ally to back up, she said, “…You were talking about forcing me to spit out the route they use to send goods into the ­nuke-­proof Windowless Building, then trying to destroy it from within with ­multi-­synchronous bombs, right?”

“Feel like, talking now?”

“You can’t possibly believe you can take down Aleister like that. If that was all it took, anyone with a teleportation ability could kill him in his sleep. You really don’t think Aleister has a plan for that?”

“You’re ­right—­perhaps I cannot, kill Aleister. He is, in the truest sense, a monster.

“However,” she said, “the life support machines, keeping him alive, are different.”

“…”

“Those are just, machines. The reason, a monster like Aleister, would be holed up, in a fortress sturdier than a nuclear shelter, is plain to see. I’ve heard, those machines, have no replacement. If they’re blown up, he would be in trouble.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” retorted Musujime, trying to catch what breath she could. “It’s not a windowless building in the first place. If you don’t even understand that, then you don’t have any useful information. Plan all you want, but nothing will work.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you realize it? A building without any doors or windows would never normally exist. But there are a bunch of hints connecting to the right answer. For example, being able to produce everything he needs to live, including oxygen, inside. The fact that it can withstand a nuclear attack also means it blocks radiation. All sorts of cosmic rays from the stars.”

“Cosmic rays? …Could that ­mean—?”

“No,” interrupted Musujime.

“It’s not like that.”

Feeling her own powerlessness, she smiled thinly. Her answer sure seemed to have caught Teshio ­off-­guard. “With these many hints, there’s a few possibilities. I have a couple theories of my own. But answers about Aleister himself aren’t part of them. My theories at this point in time are nothing more than guesses based on the information I’ve been shown up to the here and now. And I’m pretty sure Aleister hasn’t shown me all the information.”

“…”

“The only thing I can say is that his plan is far beyond what we can imagine. For Aleister, this entire planet is probably just a disposable tool. And you think your banal methods could possibly defeat him?”

Musujime had only been trying to buy a little time. She just wanted to let out some of the damage she’d accumulated.

But Teshio said, “That’s a great story, but my intentions, will not change.”

“…Why are you so intent on taking Aleister’s head?”

“I, too, have seen, my fair share of tragedy, in this city. And I wanted to ask Aleister, whether he was involved, or if he knew nothing at all. That’s it.”

Teshio’s tone was curt. It wasn’t a desire for revenge burning in her heart. Because of that, though, Musujime felt the truth behind her words. No unnecessary emotions were driving her actions.

“That’s a corny request.”

“Maybe so.”

“I was possessed by this ‘need for truth’ thing once, too. But going after something like that won’t get your peace of mind back.” Musujime’s voice was quiet. “If Aleister admitted he caused those tragedies, would you accept that? If he said he wasn’t involved, would you accept that? Whichever answer you get, you’ll probably think he’s lying. That there was something more to it. The question wouldn’t mean anything, and so there’s no point in asking it.”

“…I see.”

Teshio said no more. She’d probably decided on her answer by ­now—­so she didn’t waver one bit.

“Then what are you, going to do?”

Musujime couldn’t answer that.

Even inside this reformatory that held criminal espers, they were in a ­top-­secret area. The ­anti-­esper measures, including the IDF jammers, were probably firmly optimized for those specific people. Still, she couldn’t attack with her special ability, Move Point.

And without that, Awaki Musujime was just a girl. She didn’t have firing skills like Accelerator, and she wasn’t proficient in ­close-­quarter combat like Tsuchimikado.

After thinking it through, she smiled a little and said:

“…If I keep thinking like that, I’ll never be able to protect anyone.”

As her lips moved, her hand went around to her back. She grabbed the bundle of cords there and yanked.

A ­low-­frequency oscillation treatment device. They were electrodes, aids that measured the disorder in her brain waves and gave her mild shocks to induce ­stress-­relieving effects, and she tore them all off at once. She tossed the flashlight to the side, too.

Musujime, having lost everything, still didn’t stop smiling.

When Block’s Teshio saw that, she looked at her with interest. “You’re going to use it.”

“Yes,” answered Musujime clearly, without a moment’s pause.

“Sorry, but I’m going all out.”

Suddenly, a metal nail appeared in Musujime’s empty hand. It was probably from the sturdy bolt on the solitary confinement cell door. But her Move Point wasn’t precise enough. She felt it tearing up the skin of her clenched palm.

The trauma haunting the depths of her heart came on all at once.

She forced it down, then triggered Move Point again.

This time, her very body disappeared.

Using logical ­eleven-­dimensional vectors, she overcame her ­three-­dimensional limitations and snuck right up to the brawny woman. A crushing pressure assailed her stomach as she teleported, but she ignored it and tried to jam the nail into Teshio’s gut.

In response, Teshio backed up.

Musujime’s instincts told her that if she got away now, she wouldn’t be able to win. But when she tried to step forward, she realized her right leg wasn’t moving. It felt like it was stuck to the ground with superglue, but her memory had very clearly felt this sensation before.

The root of this terrible feeling was that, as a result of mistaking her teleport positioning, everything from halfway down her calf and below was buried inside the floor.

Suffering.

Terror.

Shock.

All those emotions she’s experienced before came surging up from her stomach at once, but…

I’ll overcome this…

With a creak, she squeezed the iron nail tight and bit her lips to hold everything in. Behind her was an ally she needed to protect. There was a life she needed to protect right now, and for that, Awaki Musujime crushed the past creeping out of her.

I’ll overcome this infuriating scar, damn it!!

She gritted her teeth, then moved her leg in one motion as if to yank it out of mud.

In that moment, she heard a ripping noise.

Awaki Musujime didn’t look away from any of it.

And she went forward.

Right up to the Block killer threatening her ally’s life she went, ignoring her mutilated foot, simply gripping that iron nail, shooting forward like a bullet.

Thud!

An explosively dull noise rattled the cell.

The power drained from Teshio’s body. As she tottered forward as if to lean on Musujime, she brought her lips to Musujime’s ear and muttered into it.

“…Awfully confident, of you.”

The iron nail was in Musujime’s hand. But right before impact, she’d spun it around in her hand and struck Teshio not with the sharp end, but with the middle of its flat back end.

“Unfortunately,” she answered indifferently, “this is the leadership they need from me.”

12

Mitsuki Unabara couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

He’d beaten Xóchitl in the reformatory gym. Now, her right arm had suddenly crumbled. It wasn’t biological decomposition.

It was like an invisible person taking off bandages.

The texture of the outside of her skin was incredibly human, but after the bandages came off, there was only a void. The change, which started from her fingertips, ate its way up to her elbows in the blink of an eye.

“Xóchitl…? What on Earth…?!”

“My body’s hit its limit, that’s all,” said the ­brown-­haired girl with a thin smile as she slowly came undone from the tips of her hands and feet. “Hope you learned something. When you try to compensate for a lack of ability with a grimoire, this is the result you get.”

“Wait…You read a grimoire?”

“Even more than that, actually. As an Aztecan sorcerer yourself, you’d know. In our rituals, we reach heaven by eating the flesh of man. Basically, a magical conduit connects me to any flesh cut from my body.”

Hearing those few words, Unabara was shocked. Now he knew the real meaning behind the spell, which used someone else’s weapon to make them kill themselves. She dried her own skin, made it into a powder, and scattered it around. Magically speaking, that powder was a part of Xóchitl’s body, so she could control them like limbs just by thinking at them. The same applied to things they stuck to tightly.

She made other people’s weapons part of her own body. That was the true identity of Xóchitl’s spell.

But…

“Any spell that gets rid of your own body like that is quick to fail! This is already past the point where Soul Arms could assist you! You must have at least known that much, Xóchitl!!”

“It doesn’t matter. The organization demanded disposal of the traitor, and I answered. If I can kill you before my expiration date, the organization’s goal will be achieved.”

“Damn!! The organization I knew was already terrible, but it wasn’t this bad! What the hell happened there while I was away?!” exclaimed Unabara.

Xóchitl only smiled mysteriously.

The ­brown-­skinned girl was swiftly crumbling. By Unabara’s estimation, there was only a third of her physical body left. Naturally, that wasn’t enough to preserve her life. It was leaving her flesh and organs out in the open air.

…I don’t think any ordinary spell or Soul Arm could have caused this bad of a situation.

Unabara watched the destruction, far past her limbs now and at her gut, and thought desperately:

If there’s anything more esoteric than those…all I can think of is an original copy!!

Via a fusion with an original grimoire, which was indestructible by anyone and could act entirely on its ­own—­or rather, by becoming one of its ­parts—­Xóchitl had attained power. Things made sense when he thought of it that way. Causing people who were holding weapons to kill themselves with those weapons was very much in the vein of the defenses original copies had. And the Aztecs had books called codices, which wrote characters in animal skin.

Animal skin…Wait!!

Unabara stared dumbly at the girl’s brown skin, which was literally coming apart at the seams.

And inside was ­written

“Guh, urgh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

When he carelessly peered inside, he screamed.

Just a few characters. He hadn’t even seen ­them—­they’d only gotten into his peripheral vision, and it almost broke his mind. It wasn’t a written, ­less-­pure copy, a reinterpretation for the average person. It was a bona fide original.

He grasped at his pounding temples and staggered, but he continued to think.

Ugh…A derivation of the calendar stone?

The calendar stone was an Aztecan calendar arranged in a circle. However, the Aztec empire used two different calendars at the same time. They also believed in the sun’s death and rebirth, among other things, so the calendars became incredibly complex. On the underside of Xóchitl’s skin, there was only an extraction of the time portions relating to life and death, themselves developed into a religious discourse.

Unabara couldn’t handle something like this. The very idea of fighting against it was a mistake. Even the index of forbidden books was said to be incapable of destroying these evil ­writings—­a mere sorcerer was helpless against one.

However,

even so,

I won’t…let you die…

Xóchitl was a noncombat personnel. How did she sneak all the way in? What was happening with the organization? He had a pile of questions to ask. He couldn’t let her die there.

Original grimoire copies were indestructible.

Even if they could be destroyed, Xóchitl’s life depended on this one, so she wouldn’t last.

With Mitsuki Unabara’s power alone, it was impossible to solve this problem.

Which meant…

If human power can’t realize it, then I just need to borrow this grimoire’s!!

Original copies defended all attacks, and nobody could damage them. But there was one exception: showing the knowledge contained within one to someone who wanted it. If they truly prevented any interference whatsoever, nobody would be able to flip through their pages, and the very reason for a grimoire’s existence would be lost. He didn’t know how, but original copies could differentiate between readers and everyone else, and tended to cooperate with those broadening their knowledge.

Which was why Unabara thought this: I’ll inherit this grimoire.

If he could obtain ownership of the grimoire, its automatic interception spells would cease to function. And by inheriting it, he could naturally tear the grimoire from Xóchitl’s body, too. It wasn’t cooperating with Xóchitl because it liked her personality or anything. It was just seeking those who would disseminate the knowledge within it.

On top of that…

I’ll fool the grimoire’s judgment. I can make it think that I can’t inherit it if Xóchitl dies! Then it should save her life on its own!!

Mitsuki Unabara wasn’t able to save Xóchitl. Because of that, he just had to make a stronger force act on her instead. There was no precedent, of course. If he couldn’t completely deceive a phenomenal original copy, his reward would rebound in the form of death.

But Mitsuki Unabara didn’t hesitate.

To save this ­brown-­skinned girl, he would accept everything.

13

Dragging her bloodied foot, Awaki Musujime slowly exited the cell.

The other cells were locked. Her allies wouldn’t be coming out. Even if they took more forceful measures, the higher powers in Academy City might still set to work erasing them.

She may have gotten Block out of the way, but she hadn’t resolved the fundamental problem. She hadn’t overturned the ­situation—­how their lives were in someone else’s hands.

But Musujime heard somebody say “I always believed in you.”

She heard her allies’ voices through a small window installed in the cells’ iron doors where food was passed through, like a mail slot. They said they believed in her. They said they knew they were right to believe in her. She could sense the relief in their voices. Relief that she’d saved their lives, of ­course—­but also that Musujime had come running here for them.

For a short while, Awaki Musujime couldn’t move a muscle.

Finally, she slowly opened her mouth. But no words would come out. Her lips were trembling harder than she thought. Even so, she began, little by little, to speak.

Over a long period of time, just two or three words eventually made it out.

But that was all they needed.

“Good now?” said Tsuchimikado.

Musujime pushed him out of the way with a hand and headed for the exit.

Accelerator and Mitsuki Unabara, too, were outside. They’d each been fighting their own ­battles—­nobody was unharmed. But the four members of Group had still come together again.

Musujime didn’t say anything.

Tsuchimikado looked at her and sighed.

“Then back to the dark we go.”

INTERLUDE THREE

She walked slowly down the street.

Considering the position she was in, being there was unthinkable. Anyone had free passage through the ­streets—­and she, without any bodyguards, simply blended in with the crowd. In her hand were five balloons filled with helium, which drew yearning stares from passing children.

She held a cell phone in her other hand.

“Hey, like, Item’s the one I’m in charge of, you know. Seriously…I’m not getting any overtime pay for this call.”

“What are you saying? I’ll admit they got the better of me with Block. But I can recover anything I need to with my strength. Take down the quarantine on Block’s position and info! If I can find them again, I can prevent damage to Academy ­City—”

“The damage thing is fine. It looks like the Group kids just disabled Block at the juvenile reformatory. They won’t be causing you trouble anymore.”

“O-oh.” The person on the phone sounded relieved. “In that case, I’ll…”

“Yes,” she continued, also relieved.

“The Block threat is gone, so we don’t need you controlling them anymore.”

She heard the person on the other end gasp.

He panicked and began to argue vehemently about something, but she wasn’t listening anymore. This was something they’d all decided on. She hung up, then walked back into the crowds.

She let go of one of the balloons in her hand. It flew high into the sky.

“Anyway,” she said, not watching it go, fingering the strings of the others. “I wonder what the person controlling School is named.”