CHAPTER 2

A Simple Yet Complex Point
V.S._Calamity .

1

“I see.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was wearing a powered suit.

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

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Shiokishi saw it differently.

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

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

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

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

“…”

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

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

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

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

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

Their associates.

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

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

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

“…Ever heard the word dragon before?”

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

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

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

2

Tonight was Rikou Takitsubo’s welcome-home party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… What? The map behind that noble girl…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.

He felt someone’s eyes on him.

Nervously, he turned around…

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

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

After the screenings ended…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eh?”

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

3

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, but listen to this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Huh?” The boy’s eyes went wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4

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

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

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

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

“…”

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

Accelerator sucked his teeth in annoyance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…I’m sorry?”

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

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

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

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

“Tsk.”

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

At that point, the camper stopped moving.

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

5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tsuchimikado hung up and gripped his handgun in both hands.

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

Exactly five seconds after hanging up:

Tap.

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

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

A scream rang out.

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

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

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

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

And Tsuchimikado didn’t let that slip.

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

Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

Bang!!

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

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

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

But then:

“(…Crap, the grenades!!)”

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

But they got the better of him.

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

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

But Unabara didn’t follow.

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

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

It blocked the explosives.

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

“You idiot!!”

However, Tsuchimikado was furious.

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

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

Whoom!! A new blast split the air.

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

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

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

They’d made a clean getaway.

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

6

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

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

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

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

Was that girl crouching and holding her head…bleeding?

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

The Spark Signal troops must have already fled.

“(…Villains.)”

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

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

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

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

A much louder wail drifted to him.

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

“…?”

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

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

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

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

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

“She’s…She’s pregnant.”

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

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

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

“That’s…I…”

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

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

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

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

For a moment, he fell quiet.

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

“I don’t want to lose her…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But…!!”

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

“Move.”

It was Accelerator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait!!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ … Uughn … ”

They heard a quiet groan.

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

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

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

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

Finished, Accelerator turned his back to them.

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

But—

“Hey!! Wait up— Hey!!”

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

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

“…Get lost already.”

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

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

The boy’s words cut off.

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

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

“Get lost,” he repeated.

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

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

“…”

He mumbled something.

But no one heard it.

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

Gra-bam!! An explosion rang out.

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

However.

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

7

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

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

No one could really blame him, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reason: the road flare.

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

“Hawt,” noted Kinuhata casually.

The threat, though, wasn’t gone yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hhnnnn!!”

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the big idea?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, Kinuhata, are we—? Pfft?!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes ma’am!! But panties!!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However.

This point came with an important footnote.

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

“Freaking sweet—I did it!!”

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

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

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

“Wait, what about—?”

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

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

“Guh…”

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

Where’s Kinuhata … ?

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

Could this day get any worse?

He sat up and checked his limbs. None seemed to be broken.

From what he could tell from a nearby sign, they’d gotten into District 3 while fleeing from the helicopter by car.

Should he search for Kinuhata and keep helping her or meet up with Takitsubo first? He began considering his next move, but soon it would be in vain.

Because his cell phone went off.

The number was suspiciously listed as private, but Hamazura felt a chill at someone contacting him with this timing. On a hunch, he picked up.

“Oh, hello there. If I said Heart Measure, would you remember my face, at least?”

“…How do you know my number…?”

“You want me to explain everything? No, that would be a pain, sorry. More importantly, I have a question. Is Saiai Kinuhata with you? I tried to call her, but she won’t pick up.”

“…” Shiage Hamazura looked at the shot-down Hexawing. “I thought so. You guys were behind that, hmm?”

“?” Rather than words, he heard a strange intake of breath. It sounded like the caller was surprised at something. “I’m not sure what you mean, but whatever the case, tell her to get in touch with me. She should know that we left her alone since she said she’d do it herself, but now the Spark Signal terrorists have taken over a private salon facility in District 3. Could you get her to give up and leave it to us?”

“A private salon…in District 3…?” groaned Shiage Hamazura.

That…

Wasn’t that the place where Rikou Takitsubo was waiting after just having gotten out of the hospital?

8

Shiage Hamazura was running through District 3 that night.

While praying, over and over, that it had to be a lie.

But the situation was severe.

All around the high-rise Takitsubo waited within were Anti-Skill officers. He couldn’t get inside. The yellow tape marking the scene was a warning signal that beat at Hamazura’s heart.

Bang!! A dry crack echoed.

When he heard it from the upper floors of the high-rise, sounding like a gunshot…Shiage Hamazura took a deep breath and made up his mind.

The terrorists were occupying the building that held the rentable salons, which meant Takitsubo probably couldn’t get out, either.

Which meant there was only one thing to do.

“Shit…”

Hamazura, who didn’t much want to get involved in this kind of incident, swore, angry from the bottom of his heart.

Eventually, he said the same word, over and over, shouting it.

“Shit! Shit!! Shit!!!!!! Why, why, of all the buildings you could have chosen! Why’d you have to pick this exact one?!”

After shouting himself hoarse, Hamazura turned his back to the private salon building once. He looked around, then spotted an unnatural cleaning van. He drew up to it without hesitation, then pulled the passenger door open and climbed inside.

The driver was the surprised one.

“Uwaaaah?! Wh-who are you? A carjacker?!”

“Let’s cut to the chase. You’re a peon for some shady side business, just like me, yeah?” asked Hamazura in a low voice, keeping his hand in his pants pocket. As the uniformed cleaning worker’s face drew back, he continued. “Doing some early preparations to help out the big boss, understand? …Take out any spare guns you have. Or I could just kill you and take them.”

Thinking about it calmly, someone who already had a weapon wouldn’t demand one. But the cleaner hadn’t realized that. He reached into his cheap bag and took out a small handgun and several magazines, then gave them to Hamazura.

“Wh-which department are you with anyway? If you wanted a weapon, you should go through the proper routes—”

The man was off the mark, but Hamazura averted his face slightly.

What was he doing?

He was nothing but a Level Zero. He couldn’t mow down all the enemies in his path with a crazy special power like Saiai Kinuhata could. He was a weakling. He could easily die in fights with other delinquents if he messed up.

“Not with any of them. I’m retired,” he said after a short moment’s thought.

But there were things he knew specifically because he was weak. This world wasn’t kind. Even the leader of a delinquent gang like Ritoku Komaba had died easily. He didn’t want to think about it, but the same probably applied to Rikou Takitsubo as well. That was why Hamazura took up a weapon. It didn’t matter whether he was a Level Zero or not.

“…But a friend of mine is captive in that building. I have to go, don’t I?”

After saying his piece, Hamazura got out of the cleaning van’s passenger seat. He’d obtained a weapon, but he couldn’t charge into the private salon like this. No matter what his angle was, the Anti-Skill officers on the perimeter would grab him.

… No blind spots in any direction, he thought. Anti-Skill isn’t stupid enough to leave any obvious routes the criminals could escape by. Which also means there’s no way for me to get past them, either.

He looked up into the starry sky.

… If I can’t go by ground, I’ll have to go by air.

Yes.

Even though Shiage Hamazura had just been attacked by a helicopter moments ago.

After a look around, he went not to the private salon, but to the high-rise hotel right next to it. Using the elevator, he moved to its roof, and as he predicted, there was a heliport. It was probably waiting for someone who wanted to enjoy the nightscape. A small helicopter was parked there as well, round like an egg.

He went straight for it and opened the door.

Thrusting his gun at the female pilot doing instrument checks, he said, “Sorry, but you’re taking off now. Three streets over, to the private salon.”

The pilot, gun aimed at her head, was silent for a few seconds.

Eventually, without removing her headset, she said, “Unfortunately, I used to be part of the department overseeing air defense for Academy City.”

When Hamazura frowned at her quiet words, he noticed it.

At some point, the female pilot was holding a box cutter in her hand.

“Did you think a pilot wouldn’t be skilled at using weapons? If we’re shot down over enemy territory, we have to take independent action. We train far more rigorously than the army grunts who always have ample access to firearms and move together in large groups.”

… Wait a minute. When did she grab that thing?

If he remembered right, when he got into the cockpit, the woman had been using all her svelte fingers on both hands to check her instruments. Without him noticing, she’d grabbed a hidden blade. He understood that, but he couldn’t get anything close to a concrete image of her doing it.

If he didn’t focus, it would turn out badly.

Despite the gun in his hand, it was his turn to feel a chill down his spine.

But then it happened.

His cell phone, in his pocket, suddenly rang. He scowled. At a time like this? In contrast, the female pilot remained seated. She gave a thin smile and provoked him. “Shouldn’t you answer? You can still use your phone before liftoff.”

“…”

Without moving his head, he used his hand not holding the gun and reached slowly for his pocket. Carefully, taking almost thirty whole seconds. The scariest moment would be the one where he glanced at the phone screen…but as soon as he saw the name there, it was like he’d been struck by lightning. He hit the call button and put it to his ear.

“…Hama…zura…”

“Takitsubo, are you safe?! Where are you?!”

“…The meeting…place. The private salon…”

The fond voice almost let him feel relieved, but his doubts quickly stole away the warmth. Why did her voice sound so raspy?

“I heard what happened. Terrorists busted into the private salon. Are you all right? You didn’t get hit by any stray bullets or anything, did you?!”

“I’m…okay…”

Just as she said the word okay, there was a bang over the phone, interrupting her. Then he heard what sounded like hasty pattering footsteps.

“Takitsubo!!”

“I’m really…okay…I’m hiding right now. I don’t think…they noticed me yet.”

He heard a soft bump over the line.

It sounded like her leaning against the wall.

“Wait. Then why are you on the floor like that?!”

“I just…started not feeling so good. It’s not…enough to worry about.”

“Shit!!” he swore without thinking.

Rikou Takitsubo had just gotten out of the hospital. She could lead a normal life, but she might harm her body if she attempted any heavy labor or came under extreme strain. Plus, the whole reason she was in the hospital was because of those Crystal things he didn’t understand. He couldn’t imagine how much damage had built up.

“Hama … zura … ”

“All right. It’s fine. Let me do the talking. You’ll be fine, all right? I’m on my way there. I’m going to save you. Just hold out a little longer. Can you do that?”

“No, that’s not … ”

Hamazura worked his lips frantically, but Takitsubo’s reaction was the direct opposite.

“Hamazura, don’t come. Don’t come here. There are ten terrorists. I think they all have automatic weapons and grenades. Hamazura, you might know how to use handguns, but not rifles, right? If you jump in and they focus on you, you won’t be able to deal with them. So don’t come here.”

“…Don’t give me that…,” said Hamazura in spite of himself, trembling.

It was a different trembling than before. It wasn’t fear—it was anger.

“I’m going. Why the hell shouldn’t I?! I can’t leave you there! I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to rescue you. Wait for me. And don’t give up!! Maybe this is all totally beyond me, but I’m going anyway!!”

There was no answer from Takitsubo.

The call had suddenly ended. Maybe they’d destroyed the private salon’s cell phone relay antenna. For a few moments, Hamazura gazed at his disconnected cell phone, and then his trembling reached a peak. A cry exploded from his throat.

The pilot sitting in the cockpit watched him, one eyebrow moving slightly.

“Please…” While holding her at gunpoint with a trembling hand, while she toyed with the box cutter in her hand that she could attack with at any time, he spoke, his face broken down into tears and snot. “You can charge me with whatever you want. Drop me into the bottom of hell if you need to, I won’t complain. So please, just this once, help me rescue her…”

Only his wrung-out words resounded in the helicopter.

A few seconds passed.

All that continued was the silence, but eventually, the woman heaved a sigh. Then, in an almost inaudible voice, she said, “Say something next time.”

“?” Hamazura, not hearing her, was about to tilt his head when a roaring noise pounded on his eardrums. The helicopter’s rotor had rapidly increased its rotation frequency. Looking overhead, toward where the noise came from, he felt the sensation at his feet suddenly disappear. They were in the air.

The pilot tossed her box cutter aside and grabbed her can of coffee, which apparently still had some left in it. She keyed in some numbers on a number pad, and after what looked like a small door right next to the flight yoke popped open, she dumped the coffee into it.

… The flight recorder…?

The device recorded conversations inside the helicopter in order to find out what happened during crashes. By pouring coffee inside its heatproof, waterproof, shockproof casing, she’d erased everything they’d said—everything that could incriminate Hamazura or Takitsubo.

The woman sped the helicopter up and spoke through her headset microphone without looking at him.

“Hijack on flight H3389. I repeat, hijack on flight H3389!! The culprit has a gun and a small canister of liquid. Its volume appears to be ten liters! If his words are to be believed, it’s liquid explosive, and he’s threatening to pour it all out of the helicopter along with igniters. I will follow his instructions for now to prioritize the lives of local citizens!!”

A frantic man’s voice, probably the airport controller, came back over the headset’s earpieces. Then, the pilot proceeded to speak to him in code:

“Tee-ay, tee-ay. Code black. Direction two zero two, cruising speed eighty, your permission! Bee-eye-elle, time unit thirty-five to forty. Large. I’m going now, do you understand?!”

At first, Hamazura thought it was special air radio lingo or something. But when he thought about it, he realized it didn’t mean anything. She was listing the criminal’s characteristics. She was probably saying he was somewhere from thirty-five to forty years old, 202 centimeters tall, about eighty kilograms, and his skin color was black…That’s probably what she wanted to tell them.

Of course, none was anywhere near Hamazura’s physical traits.

The woman hung up completely, then looked at her surprised passenger. “Can’t exactly launch because a kid’s being selfish. Sorry, but I’ll have to make it big.”

“You…”

Hamazura didn’t know what to say, and as he was thinking about it, the helicopter flew on. The private salon building was a mere three streets away from the high-rise hotel they’d taken off from. They reached it very quickly.

This building was extravagantly constructed, its style rivaling the hotel they had taken off from.

Several figures were standing in the lit-up heliport. They weren’t customers seeking aid. Submachine guns rested in their hands.

Hamazura felt as though someone had clutched his heart, but they didn’t attack when they saw the helicopter flying overhead.

He bent his head to the side. “What’s going on?”

“…I don’t know who they’re in contact with, but maybe one of their demands was a way to escape. They might be mistaking our helicopter for us giving in to their demands,” she said, circling around the building. “…But that doesn’t mean they’re not still cautious of us. We still won’t be able to land on the heliport. We want to avoid the terrorists actually seizing this helicopter.”

“I got it. I don’t want to make you do all that anyway.” Hamazura glared at the heliport spread out below them, then pointed at something. “What’s that?”

“…An artificial tree, I assume. A little early for that. They pull a bunch of white cloths taut like a yacht sail, then overlap them into a tree shape and decorate it with multicolored lights. If they used a real tree, the wind could break branches off and cause problems for helicopters trying to land.”

“Oh.”

Hamazura thought for a moment.

Then, without hesitation, he opened the helicopter door.

“Thanks for the good info.”

“?!”

Even the female pilot had to gasp.

Shiage Hamazura had just leaped out into the night sky.

It was around twenty meters down to the heliport. His body fell freely before smashing into the tree formed by overlapping cloths. The sail-like decorations cracked and broke, but they softened the impact enough so it wasn’t fatal, and then Hamazura was on his feet on the heliport floor.

At first, the three terrorists, armed like the others, were shocked. They’d thought the helicopter had arrived in accordance with their demands, but then a strange man had fallen on them.

And Hamazura didn’t wait for them to catch up.

Without mercy, he pointed his gun and pulled the trigger in succession.

Bang-bang-bam!! Dry gunshots ripped through the sky, mowing down the terrorists before they had a chance to show their real power.

He gave a wave to the helicopter circling overhead, then gestured for it to leave the area before turning back to face the door leading inside the building.

His lips moved slightly.

“…I’ve arrived, partner. All the way to the pit of hell.”

Even Shiage Hamazura himself probably didn’t realize it.

He may have been a worthless, third-rate minion. There wouldn’t be any surprise twists, like he actually had a crazy hidden power all along or anything. He really was, as his appearance implied, nothing more than a frail Level Zero.

However.

At this time alone, as he risked his life to protect a certain girl, he’d become a true protagonist.

9

Those among the terrorists formerly known as Spark Signal occupying the private salon looked up unconsciously.

Gunshots.

But the crack and report didn’t sound like the bullets they’d prepared. The caliber was probably the same, but the type of gunpowder was different.

“Wasn’t there a team who went to the roof to see if they gave us that helicopter we demanded?”

“When do we meet up with Stephanie? Depending on how she made her move—”

“Or maybe we should consider a teleport-type esper?”

But they weren’t simpleminded enough to all go up to where they heard the sound right away. They’d brought almost everyone in the building under their control, but they continued to require a certain amount of people to still be able to act as needed.

Plus, if the gunshots themselves were a trap, if there were bombs or something set up for anyone who rushed to respond, they ran the risk of everyone getting taken out in one fell swoop.

The seven former Spark Signal members considered all this in an instant, then decided to split into three teams.

They probably thought theirs had been a swift decision.

However.

Calamity always ignores such rules. It simply comes out of the blue.

And this calamity came to them from the window.

Wham!!

A deep bursting sound, like the main guns of a battleship firing, rang out. The windows covering one wall, a panorama of the nighttime cityscape beyond them, shattered all at once. But what flew in was not a fireball or anything of the sort.

It was a person.

Someone with white hair, red eyes, and a smile that split his face.

It was Academy City’s strongest Level Five: Accelerator.

… This…This is the twenty-eighth floor!!

Despite how out of the ordinary this was, the thoughts of Spark Signal still turned into something cliché. And when facing Accelerator, that little loss of time would be fatal.

The Level Five’s action was simple.

He grabbed the nearest Spark Signal member with one hand, then threw him toward another. He moved like a child throwing a tantrum, but when it involved his ability to focus control of every possible vector, it created destructive force comparable to a cannonball.

Whomp!! came the blast.

Three former Spark Signal members were caught in it, blown away without much of a say in the matter.

Without stopping to listen to the sounds of tearing flesh and bone, Accelerator turned his red eyes to the next target.

The terrorists had finally found cover and were starting to position their weapons.

However.

Gunshots suddenly rang out, one after another, from an unexpected place.

“…!”

Rat-tat-tat-tat!! Gunshots echoed from the floor’s exit. The terrorists, preoccupied with Accelerator, weren’t able to respond to the flurry of shots. Blood splattered over the floor, and they fell in turn. Each received a single bullet right to the middle of the gut. There was no doubt they’d died instantly. Not one of them even cried out.

Accelerator turned around to where the gunshots came from.

A man he’d never seen before was standing there in a suit. He looked around thirty or so. Judging by the column of smoke coming from the gun in his hand, he must have been the shooter.

“Who’re you?!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the man in the suit, aiming the pistol elsewhere. He fired at the terrorists who Accelerator had already mowed down using his vector ability, right in the gut, just in case. The shots were loud, as if in proportion to the barrel’s size. It probably wasn’t a standard 9mm. He was using bullets of a larger caliber.

As he exchanged magazines, the man in the suit said to Accelerator, “If you really want to protect this city, you should do things more cleanly.”

“Who do you think you are? You wanna die right now?”

“I’m Sugitani,” said the man casually without batting an eyebrow. He kicked at each of the corpses, making sure they didn’t respond. “I pray we never meet again. Do your best to make sure of it.”

With only that, the man in the suit put his gun away and headed for the floor exit. Accelerator, after glaring at his receding back, eventually switched his electrode back to normal mode as well. However it happened, the threat to the private salon was gone for now.

Accelerator took out his cell phone.

He detested having to seek help from people who had messed up so badly, but doing the more trivial parts himself would be painful.

“…Hey, Tsuchimikado. I cleaned up the guys you let escape in the private salon building. Get up here and check for injured people and traps. And if you say you can’t do that, I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes for real this time.”

He put away his phone and walked through the rooms on this floor.

There was an open door, and inside was a large space, like the kind used for parties. People were gathered there, probably hostages, around three hundred at a glance. A few eerie cries came from within the group, but not the kind that would imply anyone was dying.

Then he heard a thump from another direction.

Accelerator stopped right before entering the large hall. On his modern-design crutch, he walked down the hallway, then found something lying there behind a pillar.

It was a girl who looked high school age, wearing a pink tracksuit.

She seemed to have no energy, and she was sweating all over. It made Accelerator inadvertently think of Last Order, whose mind had once been violated by a virus.

The girl in the tracksuit seemed to be barely conscious, and despite her eyelids opening and closing faintly, she didn’t try to get up even when she saw Accelerator approaching.

He stooped down to check on her, then arched an eyebrow.

No noticeable loss of blood. She must not have been shot. A sudden illness or something? he wondered. Don’t tell me she’s pregnant, too … ?

For now, though, he decided he’d better get her to the hospital right away and took out his cell phone.

That was when it happened:

“…What the hell are you doing?”

He heard a young man growl.

Accelerator immediately looked and found one man walking toward him from farther down the hallway.

And it was—

Shiage Hamazura.

He was glaring at Accelerator and the limp, unmoving girl in the tracksuit, squeezing the words from his throat as he spoke.

“I asked you what the hell you’re doing to Takitsubo!”

10

Hamazura had lost his cool.

He’d come from the roof to slip into the building but, obviously, he couldn’t use something as simple as the elevator; that would be idiotic. Instead, he’d climbed down and down the fire escape, but even those stairs were basically a straight line. If he encountered any hostile terrorists, he wouldn’t be able to avoid a disadvantageous shoot-out.

His tension was maxed out the entire time. Once he’d descended to a certain floor, he’d heard gunshots. He’d shot down the rest of the way to the twenty-eighth floor, and there, he had witnessed it:

Academy City’s strongest Level Five, Accelerator, crouched right next to an unconscious Rikou Takitsubo, trying to do something to her.

If he’d been able to examine the situation from an objective, impartial perspective, maybe he could’ve concluded that Accelerator was trying to do some sort of first aid.

But he couldn’t.

The reason was simple.

Shiage Hamazura had once belonged to a gang of delinquents called Skill-Out. At the time, someone named Ritoku Komaba had been its leader. But then the city’s leaders decided they were inexpedient for the city.

As a result, they’d dispatched Accelerator.

He’d shot their leader, Ritoku Komaba, temporarily driving Skill-Out to the brink of destruction.

“…You were behind this, too?”

That person, that General Board’s lapdog, had appeared before him once again—and not only that, he had made contact with Rikou Takitsubo and was attempting to do something to her.

“Are you the head of these terrorists—and survived on your own? Or did you have a falling-out and kill all the rest? You know what— it doesn’t matter. You’re still plotting evil in the darkness.”

If you considered how this was right after he’d been attacked by an Academy City Hexawing, you’d probably understand right away what conclusion Hamazura had reached.

“When Skill-Out went down, part of that was our fault. Even our leader Komaba knew his fight against you would be his last, so I won’t say anything more about that. I really, really want to, but for his sake, I’ll stay quiet.”

An impartial observer likely wouldn’t have understood him.

But Hamazura wasn’t speaking in the hope that someone would understand.

His mouth was simply moving on its own.

“…But if you’re gonna try to take something important away from me again, if you’re going to take Takitsubo’s life even though she’s not prepared like Komaba, when all she wanted to do was live a normal life from now on…”

Tremble.

Without caring a single iota about tiny differences like Level Zeroes and Level Fives, in order to protect the incapacitated girl, Shiage Hamazura pointed his handgun at Accelerator.

“It’s time to accept your fate, Number One!!”

In contrast:

Accelerator had already realized what was happening, essentially.

But even knowing he was being misunderstood, he didn’t try to deny it.

“…I like you.” He grinned, a face-splitting smirk, as he stood up slowly and reached for his choker.

And then, Accelerator gave the most evil smile as he made a declaration.

“You’re a good villain.”

The line wouldn’t have made any sense at first, but he almost never rated anyone this highly.

And yet, before Hamazura could realize that fact, Accelerator controlled the vectors of his legs and rushed straight up to him.

Whoom!! echoed the roar a moment later.

As Accelerator flew at him in a super-low arc, Shiage Hamazura tried to back away, his gun still raised.

… He might be a Level Five, but he’s still human!! I should be able to kill him with one bullet. Come to think of it, he uses a trick to make sure the bullet doesn’t hit him. If I start by lowering him to a situation where that one bullet has to hit…!

The answer he came to was a direct result of having shot and killed the fourth-ranked Level Five, Shizuri Mugino, the Meltdown.

Except—

Hamazura knew of one other Level Zero who could think that way. Once, his leader Ritoku Komaba had observed Accelerator’s actions and, by studying their characteristics, had arrived at the answer by himself: that by causing electromagnetic interference, he could temporarily shut his ability down.

In that case.

… I’ll make that choker malfunction. But how?! Leader used a chaff to cause interference, but…?!

Hamazura knew where he needed to go, but didn’t know how to get there.

And in the meantime, Accelerator spun himself and whipped around his clenched fist.

Using his arm, which was rumored to kill people just by touching them.

“???!!!”

Hamazura instantly swung to the side in an effort to evade.

The arm didn’t end up making contact. However, there was a strange blast of hot wind, and the wake of its passing alone was enough to send Hamazura flying. He flew over two meters clear through the air, then slammed into the hallway’s wall. An unnatural strength activated in his trigger finger, and he shot a meaningless bullet into the ceiling.

Accelerator’s head turned his way again.

Hamazura knew he’d be killed at this rate.

Then he saw a security robot trailing down the hallway toward them. The terrorists had probably locked them all in one room, and now that they were liberated, they’d begun tracking their normal routes.

He put everything into that bullet he shot in the robot.

Despite all its durability, the armor shattered, and the bullet made a complete mess of its internals. Hamazura shoved a hand inside. The awful numbing sensation from an electric shock went up from his fingers to his shoulder, then to his chest, but he ignored it and tore the thing out.

It was the giant motor piece the robot used to move.

Having torn the cord off, Hamazura took the permanent magnet used in the motor and hurled it at Accelerator.

Security and cleaning robots were designed to be heavy on purpose to prevent theft. To let the machines climb smoothly up hills, their motor had to be equally large, with output to match.

Certainly large enough to induce malfunctions when he pushed one’s permanent magnet against an electronic device.

… Will this work?!

He had two bullets left in his gun and no time to replace magazines. But if he could weaken Accelerator to the point where he’d die if bullets struck him, he could end it right now.

However.

There was never any panic on Accelerator’s face.

A strange wave shoved the giant magnet in a different direction.

“Crap…?!”

He tried to avoid it, but his legs hadn’t completely recovered from slamming against the wall. He was late to react—and Accelerator grabbed his collar ruthlessly.

With his arm that spread death and fresh blood.

Victory had been determined.

Accelerator pulled him in by his collar, then tossed him to the side almost lazily. It was an incredibly casual act, but Hamazura’s body shot away like a cannonball. He hit the hard floor several times before finally coming to a stop. The dull agony permeated the gaps between his bones and dove down to the core of his innards. He couldn’t get up anymore. He’d never thought it so unnatural that he wasn’t coughing up blood.

“Gah … hah … !!”

He clenched his teeth against the intense pain but still clutched at the floor with his fingertips.

Accelerator watched, switching off his electrode. He didn’t drop his guard, and as he extended his crutch, he took aim with his gun.

To kill Hamazura instantly, in one shot.

“It’s over. Stay down, and I’ll let you go—try to get up, and you’re dead on the spot. But it’s your life. I’ll let you choose.”

“…You…know the answer…,” said Hamazura through coughs, still glaring at Accelerator. “…You don’t…even have any…reason to leave…”

“Guess not. I wouldn’t mind quietly adding a bullet to your body. Not like killing you’d give me a bad aftertaste. Don’t have an obligation to let you go knowing you could take revenge later, either. It would be easier just to kill you and get it over with.

“But,” added Accelerator, sounding fed up with the situation.

“Having the sick one stand up and protect you is breaking the rules, isn’t it?”

At those words, Hamazura looked away from Accelerator for the first time.

In surprise and still on the floor, he turned his head just as Rikou Takitsubo, consciousness hazy and sweating all over, one hand desperately clinging to the wall, approached him.

To protect him.

To save him.

Using every ounce of energy she could, with a body that was probably wrecked worse than his.

“What’re you gonna do? If you want to use this brat as a shield and come at me two on one, I’ll answer your request and turn you into a blood puddle. But if that brat is still gonna get in the way of the fight, then we’ll start over. I’ll leave for now, loath though I may be to say it. Think of it as a villain’s sense of aesthetics.”

The question caused Hamazura to finally relax the arm trying to reach for his gun that had fallen on the floor.

And finally, he asked himself why.

Why was Accelerator, who was trying to harm Takitsubo, apprehensive about getting her involved in their fight? If he wanted to, it would have been much easier to kill them both at once.

… Wait, he thought in his daze…Wait, have I … misunderstood something … ?

But before he could turn back toward Accelerator, he heard a soft tapping noise.

And then, Academy City’s number one, who Hamazura knew had him cornered, was suddenly nowhere to be found. He must have manipulated his leg-force vectors somehow. Now Hamazura only heard a soft, regular tapping from the other side of the floor.

“Hamazura…”

After looking on in a daze for a few moments, he heard a girl’s voice call his name.

Rikou Takitsubo.

The girl he most wanted to protect was dragging herself over to him. She lifted his unmoving body, every bit of it wounded, and embraced it.

“Hamazura!!”

“I’m so pathetic…,” he muttered thoughtlessly, still with no energy in his limbs. “I said all that about saving you, and in the end…this was all I could do. Hah, pathetic. And the worst part is I attacked the guy who might have been saving your life. Could I possibly be any more pathetic…?”

“That’s not true.”

Takitsubo shook her head vehemently, despite it likely causing her considerable pain.

Her lips trembling, she denied Hamazura’s statement.

“Hamazura, you came all this way by yourself. Even Anti-Skill didn’t know what to do, but you jumped right into the building. You’re not pathetic at all.”

“Really…?”

Hamazura smiled a little but, in the meantime, took a moment to think to himself, while trying not to let the girl near him notice he was clenching his teeth.

… In that case…

… In that case, why are you crying?

It wasn’t like Hamazura had been beaten up because Academy City’s strongest Level Five had shown up. Even if that monster hadn’t, even if he’d had to fight the terrorists like he’d planned—would he really have been able to rescue Rikou Takitsubo? No, on an even more basic level. Even if the enemy had been just a gang of delinquents, could he say for sure he’d have succeeded?

He couldn’t.

In fact, the chances were low. Hamazura was no professional, with all sorts of special training. He didn’t have a natural talent for fighting, and he didn’t wield rare, powerful abilities. If it came down to a large-scale brawl, a war between one gang and another, he was just the third-rate street thug who would suddenly collapse in a corner of the alley.

Even if he risked his life, if he sacrificed everything and challenged everything head-on, he couldn’t guarantee even something that simple. If he’d been a main character since birth, blessed with amazing abilities, then maybe he could have saved his friend more skillfully. He wouldn’t have needed to make her worry about him like this. Hamazura felt an acute sense of loss, then realized what it was and clenched his teeth, his body ruined.

It wasn’t that something he’d accumulated had fallen apart.

It was the opposite. He felt keenly now, once again, that even though he’d won against Shizuri Mugino in a fierce battle in the past, he hadn’t actually gained anything from it.

… So much for the man who beat a Level Five. The man who brought down Number Four by himself. What’s the point of getting so full of myself over a stroke of luck? In the end, I’m nothing but the same old Shiage Hamazura. My story didn’t dramatically change after that. Nothing’s that convenient.

He wanted to swear.

He didn’t want to worry Takitsubo anymore, but he still harbored intense feelings about this.

He didn’t have to turn into an evil, charismatic figure like Number One.

He could accept staying a third-rate street thug.

But at the very least…

As nothing but Shiage Hamazura, he wanted to become a man who could protect this girl’s smile.

11

Looks like they’re really going at it …

Saiai Kinuhata was observing, from a slight distance, the building at the center of the incident. It seemed like the former Spark Signal members had been mopped up already; the Anti-Skill officers blockading the building had decided to head inside, despite their apprehension at the sudden change in the situation.

The Heart Measure girl had reported that Shiage Hamazura had charged into the private salon building with a gun in order to save Rikou Takitsubo.

Hamazura didn’t seem good enough to face almost ten Spark Signal members on his own, but apparently the two of them were safe. The problems, though, didn’t end there.

Hamazura and Takitsubo weren’t currently active in any shady side businesses. Academy City had several mechanisms to cover up incidents, but that service wouldn’t cover the two of them—which meant that if Anti-Skill discovered he possessed a weapon, things would be bad.

If it was going to come to this, I suppose I should have gotten moving, like, right away.

There was a simple reason Kinuhata hadn’t made it to the private salon building. She’d been looking into the Hexawing helicopter that had attacked their car. The voice on the phone, at least, had insisted she had nothing to do with it, but it was also difficult to imagine Spark Signal somehow being in control of it.

Her efforts had eventually proven fruitless.

… I’m totally gonna have to apologize for being late. And debts like this are best paid off superfast. Looks like I’ll give them a hand busting out of there.

That was what she thought anyway, but in reality, she would never execute that plan.

Ga-boom!!

All of a sudden, there was a shotgun blast from the side, and it knocked her small body flying.

The girl’s petite body, clad in a white woolen dress, bounced on the road twice, then a third time. The curious onlookers nearby began to panic after hearing the gunshot out of nowhere, but Kinuhata was calm even as she rolled along. The pellets had struck her from her right cheek to her chest, but thanks to her Nitrogen Armor, she wasn’t bleeding.

… A twenty-pellet buckshot from a single sound. Single shot size of over five millimeters. I totally don’t need to use my ability—I should be able to just hide behind that over there!!

Reverse calculating the attack’s power, Kinuhata bounded behind a car parked nearby on the road.

But her assailant kept precise aim with the muzzle.

The next shot was not the single discharge sound normally associated with shotguns.

Ba-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha!! It was the sound of automatic fire.

“What—? That’s no ordinary shotgun?!”

The car’s frame didn’t even last two seconds.

This was beyond opening a few air holes. Its metal body inflated from within like a popping balloon, and the torrent of pellets that pierced it slammed straight into Kinuhata’s body. Despite having made a thin wall of nitrogen, an overwhelming number of lethal weapons shot at her, meaning to tear through both her and her wall.

It knocked her over ten meters away.

When she quickly rose to her feet, she noticed a rivulet of blood trickling down her cheek.

It hadn’t been fatal, but her armor had certainly been penetrated.

As the thought made her shudder, a voice called out, its cheerfulness standing in stark contrast to the situation.

“Heya! You’re Saiai Kinuhata, right? Boy, I thought I’d have a hard time since your defenses looked relatively tough. Those unrelated Spark Signal guys happened to be moving at the same time as me, though. I seem to have made the right choice using them as decoys. While you were focused on them, I seized the chance to take a nice big chomp out of your soft flank.

“Still, these supernatural abilities of Academy City’s are quite the trouble, aren’t they?” she continued, moving her giant, beach parasol–sized gun.

Kinuhata heard a clanking of machinery.

The woman came closer, parting the gunpowder-smoke-laden air. She was tall and blond.

In her hands she held—a light machine gun with an incredibly high firing rate?

It was over a meter long. Assault rifles were designed to let infantry carry them on foot for long periods of time without causing issues, but this was different, an even larger gun. It had a box magazine attached that looked big enough to hold anywhere from fifty to two hundred rounds. Its intended usage appeared to be for suppressing entire areas, not individual targets.

The bullets she was using, though, were clearly custom shotgun shells. Real armies would rule out firearms of such bad taste right away. The combination was awful—shotguns were meant to be used up close, but its weight made it unsuited for melee combat. On the other hand, that probably meant this woman had the speed and technique to make it work anyway.

The woman wielding the automatic shotgun smiled sweetly at her. “If I said Chimitsu Sunazara, would you understand? You tried to kill him with explosives.” She made a cute pose to garner agreement, one which probably would have made someone like Hamazura break out in a nosebleed. “I’m Stephanie Gorgeouspalace. I came here to avenge Mr. Sunazara. I think you should prepare yourself, don’t you?”

She pointed her monstrously sized gun at Kinuhata and proclaimed her death with a smile.

INTERLUDE TWO

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

And then.

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

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

Their patchwork unit was annihilated that very day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe Sunazara was tired of the life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even knowing he hadn’t asked for it.

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