Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament-Volume 5, Chapter 3: Welcome to a World Without the Goddess’s Protection – Difficulty_the_ABYSS.

Part 1

Kamijou Touma forgot to breathe.

“Gah…”

Nothing felt real for a while.

The world came into view tilted on its side and that world was not the truck container lab. Alice, Shirai Kuroko, and Hanatsuyu Youen were nowhere to be found. The floor was littered with shards of glass and the jagged remnants of a colorful plastic jungle gym. He was apparently inside the Delivery Go Round shopping train.

(Good. Shirai teleporting Alice off the train wasn’t a favor granted by Wonderland.)

But what had happened?

When he tried to get up off his side, a storm of agony assaulted his body.

“Gahh!? Cough, dammit, what is this? Ow, is something stabbing into me!?”

Trying to move brought on a weird stiff feeling. He initially thought a broken bone was obstructing the movement of his muscles or joints, but that wasn’t it.

It was the plastic jungle gym from the play area.

When the trains had crashed, he had been flung from the café to the next car, where he crashed into the jungle gym, breaking off a few jagged plastic rods that had pierced his flesh.

But in all likelihood, it could have been far worse.

Without breaking through that “cushioning” to slow himself down, the impact with the wall probably would have killed him instantly.

(Ugh…a-a real train crash really is a disaster, isn’t it?)

His head spun within the crashed Delivery Go Round’s play area. He was at least thankful there hadn’t still been any children in here.

The plastic jungle gym had been smashed to pieces.

The bright colors had become a pile of deadly weapons.

He searched the unusual sensations in his body, grabbed one of the jagged edges that was duller than a bamboo spear, and clenched his teeth. He pulled as hard as he could. The pain when it came out was much less than he had feared, but he didn’t have time to think about that. With the plastic plug removed, he was now bleeding much more rapidly.

He was glad he had been returned to the starting point, but he had to stop this bleeding or he would die.

“Pant, pant.”

After removing the jungle gym shards from his arm, gut, and thigh, he didn’t even have the energy to writhe in agony. He crawled along the gritty floor. He hated how the metal box on the wall was all the way up at hip height. His fingers kept slipping on his own blood, but he finally managed to get a grip. He forced the box’s door open, pulled out a thick synthetic bag, and collapsed onto the floor with a wet splat.

He now had the AED and first aid kit.

He pulled out some disinfectant, removed the cap with trembling hands, and rubbed it on his arm wound. Burning pain immediately exploded in him. It was so bad he initially thought some static had ignited the ethanol. But he couldn’t hesitate. He moved on to the wounds on his gut and thigh.

“Gahhh!! Ahhh!?”

He was dripping with sweat.

But completing the hellish disinfection process wasn’t the end of it.

His real task was stopping the bleeding. But these wounds were too bad for bandages to suffice. His vision was flashing in and out, so he mostly relied on his sense of touch to pull out a device wrapped in plastic. The gadget was shaped something like a small submachinegun, but it was in fact a handheld sewing machine. He couldn’t think straight from the blood loss, so he didn’t have it in him to read through the small text. He relied entirely on the illustrations printed on the side as he pressed it against the wound in his side and pulled the trigger.

The series of “thunks” sounded more like construction work than a medical procedure, but in just a few seconds, a sturdy silk thread had closed up the dark red wound. He couldn’t fully control the full-auto compressed gas device, so he ended up overshooting the end of the wound and sewing up intact skin.

He was scared.

The whole concept terrified him, but he would die if he couldn’t close up all his wounds.

Only after the first one did it occur to him to hold a handkerchief in his mouth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue in shock. Then he sewed up the wounds on his arm and leg too.

“Damn, I really want to tap out already. Ugh. I’ll go through with this, but I’m at least allowed to cry about it, right, Alice?”

He threw the gun-like sewing machine to the floor.

He had forcibly stopped the bleeding, but his head still felt just as heavy. Closing the wounds did not return the blood he had already lost. Finding the only correct answer and taking the optimal course of action did not mean everything would go his way. When your life was at risk, there was no guarantee a cute girl with highly-specialized knowledge was going to show up and fix everything for you. He smiled at the reminder he was back in the real world.

A first-aid kit would not contain a blood transfusion kit that included a pack of blood or a hematinic drug.

He would have to attempt the rest of this as he was.

(Damn, and I’m back down to 49 yen. I’m right back in the New Year’s Tokyo survival life. You really don’t just find money in the real world, huh?)

Where was Alice anyway? He doubted she was going to help him anymore.

It took him a full minute to get up on his feet with quite a bit of groaning.

The sweat on his brow was unusually chilly. He had lost so much blood he was having trouble keeping his body temperature up. He appreciated how it also dulled the pain, but the intermittent nature of his vision was disturbing. He was afraid he would pass out altogether if he let his guard down.

The situation was already on the move.

He was no longer playing on easy mode with Alice to help him along.

He doubted getting Hanatsuyu Youen or Shirai Kuroko’s help would be so easy this time. Rakuoka Houfu’s violence had been on another level and Benizome Jellyfish wouldn’t fall for a trap so easily. Even Frillsand #G would probably be even more deadly then she had seemed before.

And above all, the dead could no longer be resurrected.

Human lives did not get a continue.

“…”

He bit his lip. Everyone had just the one life, so instead of carelessly jumping out of the window, he carefully and unsteadily walked through the crashed train. He found a surviving spiral staircase, descended to the 1st floor while making sure his feet didn’t slip, checked through the bent and dislodged automatic door that the platform was safe, and only then took a step outside. He had escaped the train.

He would not push himself too hard. He could not afford to neglect the standard safety measures.

Part 2

A boy lay on his back within the ICU of a large District 7 hospital.

Four days had passed, but he was still hooked up to several tubes and electrodes. He wore a clear mask over his mouth and his blood and nutrients were circulated with the help of a machine. If just one of the many machines around him were removed or just one of the switches were flipped, it would likely begin a chain reaction of organ failure resulting in his death.

“Hamazura.”

A girl sat in a round stool next to his machine-covered bed. She was known for her shoulder length black hair and her pink track suit. But not even Takitsubo Rikou’s voice got any response out of the boy.

The air purification system and UV lights left the air sterile to the point of feeling toxic and the only sounds were the steady beeps and the rhythm of a pump.

No one would tell her anything. The doctors and nurses all gave her harmless smiles and insisted he would be all right. But she knew that too steady a reading was in fact a bad sign in cases like this.

“?”

She suddenly looked up after noticing something. But not any kind of sound or a flashing light. Still, she had detected a presence of some sort on the other side of the thick glass door.

Her esper power was AIM Stalker, which let her accurately perceive AIM diffusion fields emitted by espers.

But that did not mean this was an esper.

The pink track suit girl stood from her stool and approached the glass door. She stepped on the floor pad and the door slid aside while a flat buzzer sounded.

A bouquet of flowers sat on the bench just outside the door.

The ICU was tucked away so ordinary patients and visitors would not see it, so no one would have just been passing by on their way to somewhere else. The presence of the flowers meant someone had been here to visit the ICU.

They had come all this way and then left without opening the glass door.

Had the sight of Hamazura Shiage hooked up to the bed and Takitsubo Rikou by his side brought on too much emotion for them to continue?

Takitsubo tilted her head.

The flowers had a card with them. Had they carelessly left that behind after getting cold feet about visiting? Or had it come from a subconscious desire to leave some sign that they had been here?

The name on the card was Yomikawa Aiho.

“…?”

Part 3

After leaving through the bent platform door and setting foot on the elevated station platform, Kamijou took a deep breath and focused his mind. When his life was on the line, there was no need to take a risky gamble by rushing in shouting threats. He glanced to the side and saw a large hole the color of rotten vegetables in the platform made of concrete and steel. A few people were gathered nearby. Were they prison guards?

(Now, then.)

He grimaced as the simple act of breathing triggered dull aches all across his body.

(I fell down that hole in Alice’s world, but what happens if I don’t do that?)

A dull creaking sound passed by overhead. He looked up and could make out a few footsteps passing by on the roof covering the entire platform.

“What do you mean this wasn’t a problem with the train!?”

“I mean exactly that. This wasn’t a simple brake malfunction. It could never crash at full speed unless there was some conflict between the train’s own controls and the track’s automatic brakes!”

“Hee hee. Yay! The girl is in the lead! Follow her, everyone!☆”

“Alice!! Do not run off in random directions, you short-sleeve animal ears girl!!”

While looking up toward the voices, Kamijou saw some underwear pass by above the clear panel used to let sunlight in.

“Bff!?”

He saw a leather belt around thighs, some fancy lace, and thick white tights. He got more than a glimpse too, since it was a lot like looking up from below an open umbrella.

(O-oh, I get it. With one hole in the floor, it might break through elsewhere too. Until they know what caused the first hole, they can’t know which way is safe and sending them to the roof is easy for that Judgment teleporter.)

“Hey, Al-!”

He started to call out to her but froze.

If he stopped Alice here, she might start helping him again. And he was the one who had decided he wasn’t accepting her help.

Meanwhile, a few more shadows passed by overhead.

He was still unsure if he had made the right decision.

This was the elevated platform on the 2nd floor of the train station. On the concourse below, he would probably find Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier, Frillsand #G the Artificial Ghost, and Rakuoka the Mass of Muscles. He wouldn’t make any new discoveries there and the difficulty level would be set much higher without Alice’s mysterious adjustments. If he thoughtlessly rushed down there, he was pretty sure he would fail to get anyone’s assistance and just get himself killed.

You only live once, so when you knew somewhere was dangerous, it was best to stay as far away as possible. He needed to instead focus on going places, seeing things, and trying things he hadn’t back in Alice’s world.

He ignored the wandering footsteps and ran straight across the platform.

Even so, something felt off to him about all this.

(Huh? Something isn’t right.)

Fortunately, the platform didn’t collapse like wet cardboard the way Shirai’s group had feared it might. He ran across it just fine. He moved from the Delivery Go Round side of things to the Overhunting side. He reached the crushed first car and worked his way back from there. He didn’t consider the possibility that the criminals remained locked up inside the train. That kind of optimism had no place in reality.

Whoever was talking to Shirai had said this “wasn’t a problem with the train”, so the cause had to be located further back.

He was fairly certain all the trains would have been stopped after the accident, but climbing over the platform door barrier and descending onto the tracks was still nerve-racking.

This was a straight-line path with nowhere to run.

He stared off into the distance from the elevated railway while he started walking down it.

(But will this problem really be something an amateur high schooler would notice?)

He was still figuring out how his old folks smartphone worked, but he managed to use its LED backlight to shine alternately between the power lines overhead and the metal rail below his feet. The railway had powered rails and overhead powerlines, probably a sign of how many different trains were researched and experimented on in this city.

Just as the track grew a lot more complex, he found he had crossed a railroad switch.

He didn’t think he had traveled more than 300m. For a high-speed train that didn’t stop at the intermediary stations, applying the brakes there wouldn’t stop it in time for the station.

“Is this it?”

Kamijou crouched and viewed something at his feet.

He did not know all that much about trains and railroads, but something here was unusual even to his eye. Some white plastic boxes were installed at a set interval in the space between the rails, but one of them had been smashed by a hammer or something.

He recalled the voices he had heard passing by on the roof.

“What do you mean this wasn’t a problem with the train!?”

“I mean exactly that. This wasn’t a simple brake malfunction. It could never crash at full speed unless there was some conflict between the train’s own controls and the track’s automatic brakes!”

(Could this be the track’s automatic brakes?)

An ATS was a large system of sensors that measured a train’s speed and automatically sent a stop signal if necessary.

This wasn’t just destroyed.

The color inside wasn’t right. He could tell a few of the cords below the smashed cover had been rewired.

“But wait…”

This was odd.

(Huh? Huh??? This isn’t right at all. An electric being like Frillsand #G could probably destroy the train’s brakes, but was she really behind this mechanical sabotage? She could just blast the train from a distance and fry its systems, so why would she even need to mess with the track at all?)

An alarm was blaring inside his mind. Was this the only piece of sabotage? He had a feeling it wasn’t.

A moment later, he felt a heavy blow like someone had swung a metal bat into the side of his head. He didn’t just lose his balance. He was launched to the side from his crouched position. By the time he realized how bad this really was, he had already broken free of gravity. He could feel himself leaving the elevated railway and soaring toward the empty air beyond. He was about to cross the pivotal line. He would soon be past the edge.

But intense confusion hit him before the pain did.

“Gh, bh?”

(Why? Why wasn’t it electricity? That artificial ghost’s attacks didn’t feel like being hit by heavy metal. Then what is going on here?)

He had been attacked.

Attacked by someone deadly enough to put his life at risk with just the one blow.

However…

(Was Frillsand #G not the one who caused the crash!?)

He was not viewing the same incident as before, just from a different vantage point.

The actual answer was different than in Alice’s world.

As soon as he realized that, he flew over the edge of the elevated railway and plunged toward the city 7m below.

Part 4

Kamijou Touma fell.

His body landed on a light truck. He thought the parked truck was loaded with scraps, but apparently it itself was considered scrap. Some inconsiderate people had dumped their garbage in the back of someone else’s truck. The scraps weren’t enough to absorb the impact, so he rolled off to the side.

His body slammed into the asphalt.

“Gahh…”

Every part of him felt weirdly hot. Just as he realized his forcibly-closed wounds had reopened, his vision blurred.

Reality was not so kind.

Humans would die if they lost just two liters of blood. They were so fragile it was hard to believe they could live for a hundred years without spilling all of that. And if the conditions allowing their survival ever collapsed, death would reach them soon enough. The grim reaper wouldn’t sit and wait long enough for the human to find the solution to a mystery or to settle things in a final showdown with their true enemy.

When it was time to die, it was time to die.

They would lose their life without finding any answers and without leaving anything behind.

The special rules of Handcuffs applied today, so the rules were different from the back alley brawls Kamijou was accustomed to.

He heard a solid footstep.

“!?”

The extreme tension allowed him to quickly regather his hazy and scattered mind.

Who was this and what were they up to?

Had the attacker descended from the elevated railway to finish him off? Or had some other dangerous person discovered someone close to death they could prey on? Anything was possible today. This was a world where death was meaningless and lives were taken as no more than a handy consumable item. Handcuffs was thought to have ended, but it had returned today to corrupt Academy City once more.

His cries for help hadn’t reached anyone, but he was sure the same had been true of so many people during Handcuffs.

“Hello, hello.”

Kamijou Touma couldn’t get up, so he simply stared into the shadows.

The person who casually stepped out below a streetlight was accompanied by a large dog.

“You have a way of getting yourself beaten up, don’t you? That was a piece of tungsten steel this time, wasn’t it? There was something strange about the makeup of that housewife’s body, though. Isn’t it funny how you seem so at home in this world of bloodshed even though you claim to want peace and love more than anyone?”

The city decided to hit Kamijou with another surprise.

This person looked nothing like the one he knew. She was a woman with blonde hair cut to shoulder length, blue eyes that carried both a rational look and the look of a mischievous cat, and feminine curves that pushed out her plain beige habit so much it looked sinful. Wasn’t she the one known as a great demon? But Kamijou Touma spoke another name after she came into view.

“Alei…ster?”

“Ha ha.”

He was answered by sarcastic but intensely dry laughter. The face and body were different. Even the sex was different from what you would find in the history books. But Kamijou was certain of it.

Even though the dead weren’t supposed to come back to life.

“Ah, ahh…”

The boy’s emotions swelled before he could wonder why or how. He got up from the filthy asphalt and staggered forward.

The magician smiled thinly at being identified so easily.

“Perhaps it is my inability to stay dead that makes the world despise me so. And I suppose seeing Aleister Crowley change form again isn’t going to surprise you too much when you already saw me change sex once. …Wait, what?”

“Ahhhh!! Ahhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

The beige habit woman(?) reacted first with surprise and then with an exasperated sigh when Kamijou wrapped his arms around her.

The great villain sounded legitimately uncertain while asking a basic question.

“Is this really worth bawling your eyes out over? I can imagine the Anglicans hid the details of the message I left in LA, but even without that, I am the human who ruined your life to use a certain aspect of your nature.”

“I don’t care. And no, I can’t explain why I feel this way!!!!!!”

The boy squeezed his arms so tight he thought he might break that delicate body.

And despite what he said, the magician did not push Kamijou away. He even patted Kamijou’s trembling back like he was consoling a young child. The originator of all modern magicians simply let the boy sob into his chest.

Kamijou wept at this human’s survival.

As a small child, the human had butted heads with his schoolteachers and his parents had accepted the teachers’ malicious view and refused to believe their son. He had grown to loathe that family and the god they worshiped, but he had been denied the chance to build a warm family of his own and continued on in constant loneliness. No matter how many victories he accomplished, he was never satisfied and so judged them all to be failures. His had been a life of needless cruelty, so how many people had shed tears for him not out of anger or humiliation but out of joy? That thought may have crossed his mind for just a moment there.

“Are you ready to hand this off to me?”

“…”

“You should know all too well now that your methods are useless against the dark side. Letting Aleister Crowley take over seems like a valid choice to me.”

“Not happening.”

“You will die. Or someone you know very well will.”

Kamijou clenched his hands tight with his arms still around that human.

Alice Anotherbible had distanced him from the harsh reality. And Aleister Crowley, who knew Academy City’s darkness better than anyone, had also concluded Kamijou could not do it. That meant it was probably true. If he strayed beyond the expectations of those monsters, he would lose his life.

“But it’s still not happening.”

“Why not?”

“The victory you would bring…” Kamijou Touma spat the words out weakly. It took him a full minute before he could pull away from Aleister’s warmth. “Is not the path the next Board Chairman wants to follow. Handcuffs ended on the 25th. Maybe it was a failure, but that doesn’t mean we can trample on its corpses now. If anything can be salvaged, I have to salvage it now. All you would do is pour cement into the path toward salvation and seal it up tight. Along with all the still-breathing people collapsed down there too weak to move.”

“Your point?”

“I’m not letting that happen. I’ll clean up my own blood. I really am happy to find you’re alive, but you chose to leave this city, so you don’t get a say in what happens here anymore.”

“…”

“You created Academy City. It’s true. But it isn’t your city anymore. Maybe you only did it on a whim, but that’s the decision you made. Don’t come back and start pushing for more tragedies here with a grin on your face, Aleister. There isn’t a single life in this city you can control anymore. If you think you can ignore the rules and get away with it because you’re special, then you’re no different from the rest of the dark side.”

This might be the only option that would let Kamijou safely back out.

It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would let him escape the darkness without losing any more blood.

But he refused, even though he couldn’t even support his own weight.

Kamijou Touma didn’t know Hanatsuyu Youen.

Kamijou Touma didn’t know Rakuoka Houfu.

Kamijou Touma didn’t know Benizome Jellyfish.

Kamijou Touma didn’t know Frillsand #G.

He didn’t know anything about Handcuffs where so many people had risked their lives to fight.

He couldn’t rely on what Alice had shown him before. He doubted the real Handcuffs had room for the love, tears, and laughter he had seen there. That meant he couldn’t say he actually knew those people.

However.

Was not knowing them really enough of a reason to refuse to save them?

Someone was trying to take the lives those people had somehow managed to preserve after so much unspeakable suffering and humiliation. Wasn’t that reason enough to stand up and fight for them?

(You don’t need any special rights or qualifications for this.)

He had been bloodied from the starting line.

Gritting his teeth wouldn’t close up his reopened wounds.

But…

(People’s lives are on the line here, so I can’t sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity. I need to figure out what I can do and then do it, even if it means sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong!!)

“Move, Aleister. Whatever happened on the 25th, the 29th belongs to me. I won’t let Handcuffs end in failure again. I’ll give it a happy ending this time.”

That was all Kamijou Touma could do while wearing down his very life.

He was so battered he couldn’t even stand up without leaning against Aleister’s chest. The beige habit woman(?) stared coldly down at him and snorted with laughter at his decision.

“Hmph. You can dream all you like, but what do you think you can do when you’re in such bad shape here in reality? What can you do against me? I am Aleister Crowley, the human who conquered history’s most intense magical battle, destroyed the world’s largest magic cabal from within, divided the world between magic and science, created the very concept of the science side, built Academy City during the confusion of postwar rebuilding, and manipulated the entire world to my own selfish ends.”

Kamijou fell silent, tasting a rusty flavor on his breath.

The culprit behind the crash was still at large.

Aleister’s solution would be indiscriminate. Anyone even tangentially involved in the Handcuffs-related events of the 29th would be sealed away below the concrete if he got his way. And he could almost certainly pull it off since he had single-handedly won the Battle of Blythe Road.

(What can I do?)

Whether he went for a direct confrontation, a surprise attack, or set them up to defeat each other, he would not just aim to be the reigning champion of the dark side. He was the one who had designed and managed the city’s dark side. He was on another level entirely, so if he used his power, he would slaughter everyone in his way.

That would mean Shirai Kuroko, Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, Benizome Jellyfish, Frillsand #G, and anyone else Kamijou hadn’t encountered yet.

Aleister would mercilessly bury them all before even hearing them out or battling them.

(You want to know what I can do after being shown this nightmare?)

For a brief moment, Kamijou’s mind came into sharp focus on this single point.

The bloody boy slowly raised his head.

He stared straight into that fearsome monster’s eyes at close range.

He was still woozy, but the kind of normal high school boy you can find anywhere gave his answer in a low voice.

“I’ll get mad.”

Aleister Crowley smiled.

Still smiling, the human took a step back, leaving Kamijou to fend for himself.

“I would readily get into a physical battle with William Wynn Westcott who was rumored to be immortal. I would have no problem with killing that clown Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers who had the nerve to name himself the originator of modern magic.”

Aleister slowly raised both hands.

He didn’t turn his head, but he didn’t seem able to look Kamijou directly in the eye either.

Almost like a small child whose mischief had come to light.

“But the one thing I never want to do is get into a verbal argument with you.”

“I know reality isn’t going to play nice,” spat Kamijou Touma, surrounded by terrifyingly dark shadows.

Aleister had taken a step back, so he couldn’t use the human for support anymore.

But he managed to stay on his feet with the bestial gleam found in the eyes of any challenger.

“But that’s why I need to overexert myself and stretch out my hand as far as it can go if I hope to grab anyone’s hand. Are you kidding me, Aleister? Yeah, they’re hopeless villains. Sure, they’re criminals who harm everyone they come into contact with. But so what? Don’t just give up on people’s lives. That should be all the more reason to make a real effort to save them. What if I can prove everyone wrong and save them? What if I can pull off a happy ending after the rest of the world threw in the towel and pretended they couldn’t see what was happening anymore? It’ll feel pretty damn good, don’t you think? You’re supposed to see this as a chance to point and laugh at the god in heaven who claims to be all-powerful and all-knowing but still lets these tragedies happen. Am I wrong?”

“…”

“I don’t know how many Handcuffs survivors there are in all. There might be someone everyone’s forgot who’s still out there struggling in the depths of the darkness. They might be shouting - screaming - for help, but we just can’t hear them. And as long as that chance exists, I’ve got to plunge into this godforsaken darkness and search for them. I won’t settle for a partial solution with Alice’s help. I’m not burying it all under cement and going home when there might still be someone down there. That’s why I refused her help and came back here, knowing it would hurt like hell. So don’t waltz in here and try to do the same damn thing like you’d be any better.”

His head wobbled on his neck.

He had lost too much blood.

But he clenched his teeth, held his ground, and got out the words.

“Don’t cement over it all and call it fixed. The all-knowing god in heaven might be able to accept an answer like that since he can see all the right answers, but you’re only human. So don’t you want to see a future that tears down that coldhearted conclusion, Aleister?”

“I can’t believe it.” Aleister sighed with an indescribable look on his face. “To think I would find a glimpse - however small - of the Thelema leading to the 21st Aeon in the very home I have already abandoned. This part really is frustrating. This always seems to happen to me. The things I pursue flee me and the things I discard turn out to be treasures.”

“…?”

“Just speaking to myself,” whispered the beige habit woman(?). “Now, I have a simple question for you: how do you intend to turn this around?”

“First, promise me an overpowered joker like you won’t get involved in this. If you can’t promise me that, then I’ll punch you right in the face until you cry and change your mind.”

“Why does justice always side with you when what you’re saying isn’t much different from a tyrant’s criminal code?” Aleister sounded somehow exasperated, but he had turned his back on goodness and justice for so long he wasn’t about to change his mind on the matter at this point. “I get that you intend to turn down my generous offer and settle this on your own, but how exactly are you planning to do that? You don’t understand what is really going on today, not to mention how the original Operation Handcuffs ended.”

“Personally, I find it strange that you would know so much more about it when you were supposed to have left the city.”

Kamijou poked at his temple. This was not like when he had Alice’s strange adjustments to protect him. He had a bruise there where some kind of blunt weapon had hit him.

(Really, Alice’s intervention has only complicated things. The real culprit wasn’t Frillsand #G. I’m betting Alice switched the real one out for a powerful enemy she thought I could actually defeat, but that false information got in my way here.)

He could use his knowledge from Alice’s world as a reference, but he couldn’t rely on it too much. The number of people involved didn’t match up and everyone’s plans and situations were different. After all, he didn’t even know if Youen, Rakuoka, and Benizome had really wanted to escape the crashed train of their own free will.

He exhaled, focused on his aching temple, and gave his answer.

The wounds on his body were the one thing he knew to be real.

“I start by figuring out who did this. I might not like the answer, but I can never find the path to a solution if I don’t know who my real enemy is.”

“Then the girl will help you, teacher☆”

“Gweh!?”

His senses were taken over by something soft, warm, and sweet.

An incautious blonde girl had apparently jumped right toward his head from the side. She had taken a running start and then buried his head in her flat chest. When she wrapped her arms and her legs around him, he couldn’t help but focus on her body heat. Her arms were latched onto his shoulders and her legs onto his hips. There was only one person this could be:

“A-Alice!?”

“Yes, the girl’s name is Alice.”

He tore her from him and then held her under the arms like a cat. She tilted her head, demonstrating the same otherworldly and gentle fairy tale aura she had shown in her world.

The beige habit and golden retriever were nowhere to be found anymore.

He briefly wondered if he had wandered back into Alice’s world, but that wasn’t it. Aleister could pull off a miracle of that level on his own.

“Where did you come from?”

“From there☆”

Her little finger did not point north, east, south, or west.

It pointed up.

That came as a surprise. Firstly, because it meant she had recklessly jumped down from the elevated railway like he had. It did sound like her to ignore the defined path like that. And secondly, because if she had jumped down with no concern for her skirt, she may have had a good reason to leave the railway in a hurry.

(That’s right. What happened to whoever hit me in the temple!? The culprit who destroyed the ATS sensor is up there. If someone else tries to investigate the track, they’ll run right into the culprit too!!)

He heard an impact of heavy metal.

Then someone flew over the elevated railway’s wall and fell toward him.

“Shirai!!”

Part 5

Earlier, Shirai Kuroko teleported from the platform roof to the elevated railway. She could use a series of teleports to travel at a speed equivalent to a sports car, but she instead chose to travel on foot this time. Not even she was sure why she avoided high-speed travel and instead chose to walk slowly along the track.

The train tracks were a dangerous area you weren’t meant to walk through in the first place. Plus, the gathered darkness keeping her from seeing very far ahead may have triggered an instinctual fear within her.

At any rate, Shirai Kuroko walked along the elevated railway with Matsuriba, the young driver of the Overhunting, and Alice, the girl left in her care. She didn’t like getting the driver involved, but she knew nothing about railroads and needed assistance from someone with the appropriate knowledge. Alice came too. No one knew why.

(Wait, I only teleported myself and the driver from the platform to the roof. When and how did she follow me onto the roof and then onto the railway?)

Shirai wanted to get to the bottom of this case, so she was headed to the likely center of the action. The escaped prisoners were unlikely to return to the train, so leaving Alice at the platform should have been the safest option, so what was she doing here?

Alice looked perfectly harmless smiling up at Shirai, but that just made everything about her more confusing.

The fairy tale dress was also curious. Not to mention the short sleeves. Clothing that didn’t match the season was a sign of someone on the run for a long period of time, but could that really be the case here?

Eventually, they heard a voice. They hadn’t even traveled 300m by that point.

“Yes, yes.”

Shirai immediately grabbed Matsuriba and Alice’s hands and teleported. The elevated railway traveled in a straight line, but it stuck out a bit from its meter-high concrete walls. The drop from there was about 7 meters, but she could approach whoever-this-was if she traveled along the outside of that wall.

She held a finger to her lips to tell the other two to stay quiet.

“…”

The lack of noticeable obstacles along the track gave a clear view in both directions and it was easy to overlook the walkable section past the walls, so they had managed to get in a blind spot.

The voice coming from the other side of the thick wall belonged to an adult woman.

“I’ve had a realization, Yomikawa-senpai. I’ve realized the truth. Operation Handcuffs was an obvious failure. Attempting to clear out the dark side while keeping our hands clean triggered a powerful backlash. That’s what brought down Handcuffs, right? So we need to make some adjustments to keep that from happening. Anti-Skill needs to adapt more flexibly to the state of the city if it hopes to keep the peace.”

(Who is she talking to? Is she on the phone?)

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

“Of course I do. We need to be more openminded. Cal it a plea bargain or a witness protection program if you must, but we’ve decided to call ourselves Anti-Skill Negotiators and we actively negotiate with the criminals. We can use that to make the technology seen in Operation Handcuffs our own and use that to defeat even more powerful criminals. From there, we just have to repeat the process, our power growing each time. The power scattered by Handcuffs will be absorbed by Handcuffs and used to end it once and for all. Anti-Skill doesn’t need to suffer any more damages tonight.”

“Anti-Skill only has the right to arrest. We have no right to determine a suspect’s guilt or reduce their punishment. You lack the power to keep the promises you’re making!”

“Yes, and?”

“First of all, some of the criminals you’re talking about using are minor students and they will come to harm using your methods. What do you do if they end up hurt or worse!?”

“Why should I have to do anything? They’re criminals, so why should I care what happens to them?”

“Tessou…Tessou Tsuzuri!!”

That name came as a shock.

Shirai knew her.

(Are you kidding? She’s changed so much I didn’t even recognize her. Is this really the same timid Tessou-san?)

Surviving Handcuffs may have acted as a baptism for her.

December 25 had been a nightmare for everyone involved. That bloody night had been so horrific it was a miracle anyone had survived. It may have been a radicalizing event for some.

“Oh, please, Yomikawa-senpai. Did you learn nothing after surviving Handcuffs and crawling out of the hell that was South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station?”

“Kh.”

“The nightmares plague me every time I try to sleep. Now I know there are people who don’t see the world the way we do and can’t possibly be saved. Criminals can be useful, but they are too dangerous to let loose. If you insist on denying these simple truths, then you’re making a mockery of all our colleagues who died helpless and in vain while trying to the end to be the good teachers serving to protect the city’s children. Also…”

The speaker paused there.

(Oh, no.)

Shirai Kuroko’s hand wandered through empty space until it found the driver and she teleported him to the ground. Alice had already disappeared of her own accord, but Shirai didn’t have time to question that.

“I can see you,” said the voice beyond the wall.

“Dammit!!”

The meter-tall concrete wall was mercilessly blown away. If Shirai hadn’t teleported away a moment before, the scattershot of fragments would have knocked her from the elevated railway.

She teleported to the center of the track.

The person who ended the call and stored the phone in her chest was an adult woman with glasses and curly black hair blowing in the night breeze. Shirai knew her to be the timid type, but no sign of that remained.

She wore a black jacket and tight skirt, but the outfit would never have fit in at an ordinary office. The belts around her hips and shoulder looked more military than anything. For some reason, the Anti-Skill emblem stitched onto the shoulder belt was upside down. Instead of a gun on her hip, she wore a large whip, a stun baton, pepper spray, an LED strobe light, a spherical wireless speaker, and more gadgets. It initially seemed like a motley collection of SM gear, self-defense tools, and A/V equipment, but Shirai realized what they all had in common.

(Those are all used in nature parks and circuses to get large animals to obey.)

The hooked pole she held was used by animal tamers.

The Anti-Skill Negotiator grinned and scraped that along the ground.

Shirai had heard that loud noises and strong smells could be as effective as direct pain against an animal with sharp senses. Although in those cases, it might be referred to as a repellant instead of pepper spray.

Someone else stood alongside her.

The woman was cowering nervously and looked to be college aged - no, probably a bit older than that. Her long chestnut hair was tied back with a simple hair tie. She wore an apron over a sweater and skinny jeans, giving her the look of a homemaker. Light gleamed from her left hand’s ring finger. It could always be fake, but that suggested she was married and had a family.

But something else clashed with the rest of her look.

A neon color shined atop her head. She wore a pair of triangular devices resembling cat ears. They were attached like headphones and they made constant subtle adjustments in response to the wearer’s thoughts.

That was clearly a next-gen weapon.

And if what Tessou Tsuzuri had said was accurate…

(Is she a criminal who made a deal with this so-called Anti-Skill Negotiator? But wait. I don’t remember anyone like her during Handcuffs.)

Shirai was suspicious, but she couldn’t deny the possibility either. Too many people had died during Operation Handcuffs to keep track of everything.

But now was not the time to frown in thought.

The apron woman may not have been the belligerent type. She was stooped over and cowering with tears in her eyes as she asked a nervous question of the woman in a black military uniform.

“E-excuse me, but is what you just said, um, true?”

“Oh? Ohh? Ohhhhh???”

The Anti-Skill Negotiator on the other hand sounded amused. She moved her legs adorned with garter belts and black stockings, clacked her sharp heels against the ground, moved her lips over to the apron woman’s ear, and tore into the other woman’s heart with a voice loud enough that even Shirai could hear it.

“What makes you think a criminal’s family deserves an ordinary life? Would you prefer I spread some rumors around your neighborhood so you can never go back to the life you had?”

“!?”

It was Shirai Kuroko of Judgment who gasped, not the apron woman herself.

Did that woman not realize she was violating an unforgivable taboo for anyone with the ability to search people’s personal information at a deeper level than the average person!?

“Ah ha ha! I hope you’re ready to deal with graffiti on your house, stones thrown through your windows, and raw garbage left at your front door. Your name will be on all the trending search lists. You see, people don’t give a crap about the rights of bad people, especially when they’re strangers. And people with too much time on their hands will do just about anything to feel self-righteous. I wouldn’t go outside at night if I were you. A van might pull up and snatch you off the street. You and your family!!”

This was pure malice.

It was the ultimate cruelty where you stripped all other options from someone until they had no choice but to continue toward the precipice. The scum who tamed humans like animals used her whispered words more than her whip or stun baton.

She made a show of driving the verbal blade into the soul found deep in the apron woman’s chest.

“Do you get it now, Rakuoka Nodoka-chan?”

That name was enough for Shirai Kuroko to sense something snap in her mind.

Maybe he hadn’t been a good person. Maybe Operation Handcuffs had revealed him to be a harmful villain.

But.

“Tessouuuuu!!!!!!”

Shirai’s shout was repelled by a deep metallic noise.

The apron woman stepped forward to shield the black military uniform woman.

Rakuoka Nodoka’s weapon was neon-colored metal that protectively surrounded her hands. She held them in her hands and passed her fingers through them to enhance her fists like high-tech brass knuckles. She scraped them together before spreading them to either side.

“We’ve found your second target, Nodoka-chan. C’mon, hurry it up. I don’t want to dirty my own hands. I can’t let my involvement get out until we’ve managed to build ourselves a solid enough foundation within Anti-Skill.”

(Did she punch through the concrete wall with that? No, enhancing an ordinary fist couldn’t accomplish that. And at her age, I doubt she’s an esper.)

Shirai Kuroko pulled a few metal darts from her thigh belts, but Rakuoka Nodoka was more afraid of someone other than the enemy in front of her.

“Wh-what are you going to do? This girl looks like ordinary Judgment. Eek, eek. Can you really trap someone who hasn’t done anything wrong?”

“Kh.”

“Nodoka-chaaan. Don’t phrase it like that. Are you doing this on purpose?”

(Whatever the case, she isn’t an esper. If only these darts weren’t so powerful. And I can’t use them for defense either!!)

This woman wasn’t even a criminal.

The government workers in charge of rehabilitating criminals had a duty to protect not just the victim but the perpetrator’s family from any social backlash. But a public agency’s network was being used to threaten this woman and force her to commit crimes against her will. What was she if not a victim?

With all the pain and suffering, it was unclear if she even knew what she was doing, so it was possible she could not be held legally responsible here. And Shirai personally hoped it would turn out that way.

She only wanted to take down this villain using justice as a disguise.

More and more brutal words were used like a whip against the puppet’s ass.

“Get going!! Make yourself useful or I’m posting photos of your home on social media. Ah ha ha hee hee. Do you want your lovely and comfortable family torn apart because you’re the sister of some criminal scum!?”

“Uhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“Don’t listen to her, Rakuoka Nodoka-san! Dammit!!”

Rakuoka Nodoka approached with greater strength than expected.

Her skinny arms suggested she had never worked out a day in her life, but a punch from those metal fists could easily be fatal.

“!!”

Shirai Kuroko escaped outside of her punching range.

She couldn’t attack either, so she kept teleporting away, focusing on Rakuoka Nodoka’s feet. Specifically, on her short-heeled pumps.

(If I can break one of her shoe’s heels to knock her off balance, she won’t be able to rush toward me in that moment. But that’s all the opening I need. I can use that moment to end this by defeating that Anti-Skill Negotiator grinning behind her!!)

Shirai Kuroko did not see Rakuoka Nodoka as an enemy. It didn’t matter where she came from. When she was so blatantly being threatened by a third party, she was a victim needing protection. More than that, it made this a battle she could not afford to lose for the sake of the Anti-Skill man she had fought alongside.

She would not harm her.

Killing her was entirely out of the question.

She was sick of the cruelty seen in Operation Handcuffs.

But she didn’t know the full truth.

Shirai Kuroko had not seen the end of Operation Handcuffs after it was so distorted by the Coins of Nicholas, so she didn’t know how this particular case had begun.

She did not know that Rakuoka Houfu and his family had gotten away with murder in the past. She did not know he had strayed from the straight and narrow to dispose of the body of a malicious stalker who wouldn’t leave his sister alone.

So a question.

Rakuoka Houfu had disposed of the body, but who had that body belonged to? Kihara Heikin. That specialist in psychological research had belonged to a family infamous in a certain field and he had a bad habit of mixing his personal and professional lives. But who was it that managed to locate that monster hidden nearby, attack him, and end his life without giving him a chance to fight back?

The answer stood before Shirai now.

An impossible impact struck her in the forehead.

No amount of external boosting should have brought such a slender fist to this level and Shirai had been out of punching range regardless, yet her brain was rattled all the same.

Woozy, she heard something slicing through the air and hallucinated a great flying serpent.

Only then did she realize what was happening.

(So…that’s it.)

Once you noticed it, it seemed silly.

But if you failed to notice until it hit, even the cheapest of tricks could be very effective.

Shirai was a Level 4 Teleporter. She could ignore the three-dimensional restrictions and warp to whatever coordinate she wanted, but this apron-wearing homemaker was holding her own against that high-level esper.

In other words…

(I don’t know if it’s to extend her reach or boost her power, but is she swinging the brass knuckles around on some kind of rope.!?)

The rope was cheap. It looked like she had a sturdy cardboard tube around it to protect her hands from the friction.

It was less like a Western flail or morning star and more like the flying claw developed in China during the Ming dynasty. That weapon swung some finger-like claws at the end of a long rope. It was unlikely Rakuoka Nodoka had dug that deep into history, though.

It wasn’t that this was all Rakuoka Nodoka could do.

Just think back to her first move. With nothing more than the cat’s paw brass knuckles on her hands, she had easily broken through a concrete wall.

That suggested she was more destructive at closer range.

The really scary part was the incredible luck involved in sensing her disadvantage, immediately coming up with a clever solution, creating it on the spot, and proving it to be effective.

This ordinary homemaker could convert a discount store into a collection of weapons more deadly than a military armory. Those deadly crafting skills were here true essence.

“Bff?”

Shirai didn’t have time to shout.

With her head so rattled, she couldn’t teleport even when she noticed the threat approaching.

The apron woman tugged on the rope to retrieve the blunt weapon and then moved in close while readying her other fist. Maybe she had thick springs at her armpits and elbows because the body blow that hit Shirai’s gut from below felt like it was rocket powered and even lifted her feet from the ground. More than that, it sent her soaring through the air.

Rakuoka Nodoka could draw on as much deadly force as she needed and she was being threatened into doing precisely that.

The Anti-Skill Negotiator would negotiate with anyone involved in this case and make use of them even if it meant their deaths.

It was an extremely dangerous combination. They had more than enough power already, but the threat level could grow endlessly if Hanatsuyu Youen, Benizome Jellyfish, or someone else was convinced to obey as well.

Tessou Tsuzuri.

That woman’s own physical abilities were an unknown, but she was definitely dangerous enough to make use of Operation Handcuffs and all the human desire and violence packed into it.

Whether it was the Carrier or the artificial ghost, she could squeeze out all the bizarre technology anyone was hiding.

Shirai Kuroko understood all this, but she couldn’t find a solution.

She could considerably reduce the chance of being hit by teleporting around, but her physical endurance was the same as any middle school 1st year. Her head was rattled and it was a struggle to breath. She could not recover right away, so she was helplessly dumped off of the elevated railway.

Her badly blurring vision caught sight of a tearful smile.

Now she understood.

If she had collapsed atop the railway, Rakuoka Nodoka feared the Anti-Skill Negotiator would laugh and crush her head under her sharp heel. Whether it was warranted or not, someone who felt no guilt could not be threatened into obeying. That meant the corrupt Anti-Skill officer would have no choice but to physically eliminate her. To avoid that, the kind homemaker had intentionally sent the pitiful loser over the edge.

Shirai was again saved by someone with the name Rakuoka.

She bit her lip, still unable to clear her vision.

But the 29th threatened to transform Rakuoka’s kindness and compassion into something deadly.

Part 6

Kamijou Touma had no choice but to spread his arms and catch her.

“Gwah!!”

He had chosen to do it himself, but he nearly lost all awareness of where he was. The breath caught in his throat. As soon as the impact hit him, his upper body was pushed straight down. His feet nearly slipped from the ground and his hips bent more than 90 degrees. He had taken the impact on the arms, yet he felt an intense pain in his neck and back more than his shoulders.

What was the average weight of a 1st year middle school girl? 40kg? 50kg? It felt more like a small meteor had hit him. Never again would he dream of a heroine falling from the sky. If one of those actually landed on you, you’d be dead.

Nevertheless, he managed to catch her.

He just barely kept her from hitting the asphalt after falling more than 7m. Once the numbness wore off, he could finally feel her warmth. She was still alive.

“Ow… Wow, I can’t believe I did it. That was pretty badass, right? If I don’t praise myself and drown my brain in endorphins over this one, I’m pretty sure I’ll keel over from blood loss.”

“Teacher☆”

Innocent Alice spread her arms and hugged him with her higher body temperature.

She rubbed her face side to side on his stomach, poking him with the pointy animal ear curls. She gave him an endorphin-fueled smile and pointed up.

“There’s more coming down.”

“Hm!? Eek!!”

Kamijou quickly adjusted his grip on limp Shirai Kuroko and fled below the railway overpass where some rundown food carts were set up. Smiling Alice clung to the side of his hip the entire time.

He heard some heavy crashing noises as metal pieces of something rained down. Had the rails been torn up, or were those the poles holding up the power lines? Not only were they heavy, but they scattered bluish-white sparks.

“What the hell!? Is there a mountain gorilla or a dinosaur going nuts up there!?”

He so hoped the unidentified monster didn’t jump down here. He shifted the twintailed middle school 1st year into a princess carry and stepped out from the other side of the railway overpass. They needed to avoid this foe’s attention while getting as far away as possible. Alice ran alongside him staring jealously at the girl being princess carried like something from a picture book, but he didn’t have time to focus on that. Making any promises now might just lead her to leap onto his back with a smile, so just like a stray dog you can’t take home with you, showing kindness would actually be crueler in the end.

He felt a dull pain throbbing in his temple. He too had been attacked by someone up there.

“Wait, wait, wait. What happened to Frillsand #G? Death is coming on so much stronger than in Alice’s world. My skin is still tingling after making it this far away.”

“Hmm.”

What happened next went well beyond a pink bat and some hedgehog balls emerging from below her apron.

He heard a straining sound.

He looked over to see Alice’s fairy tale dress pulling to either side so hard it was about to tear. The sturdiness of the actual materials and stitches didn’t matter. It was going to tear as easily as a thin stocking. It was all too obvious that the stagnant warmth gathered inside was trying to escape.

If that burst open, the world would be destroyed.

“It’s not too late to use the girl.”

“Please, Alice. Anything but that!!”

Alice genuinely puffed out her cheeks and pouted her small lips. That was the look of a girl whose thoughtful suggestion had been rebuffed as a nuisance. The apparent innocence only made him more concerned she might explode without warning.

“Keep that hidden and don’t let it out at the drop of a hat. Please!!”

“So it’s a secret? A secret for just the girl and her teacher!? Kyah, kyah☆”

It transformed into a smile an instant later. She even held her hands to her cheeks in an extremely bashful way. That was a relief, but he had to hope the things he said now weren’t going to come back to bite him later. Saying whatever saved his skin in the moment could end up teaching her the wrong lesson.

That was when Shirai Kuroko groaned in his arms.

“Ugh.”

No matter how weak she was, he was afraid she might suddenly move her limbs and unbalance herself enough for him to drop her. He gave up on moving and stopped below the roof of a deserted bus stop.

Even stopping to ask her what had happened up on the elevated railway was taking a risk. If he didn’t keep a close eye on their surroundings, the unidentified monster could catch up and tear him in two.

But Shirai brought up some unusual points.

“Hold on. So you’re saying this Anti-Skill Negotiator is trying to bring the Handcuffs criminals onto her side to boost her power enough to fight even more powerful criminals?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“But she was directly involved in the Overhunting’s crash. She was the one who messed with the ATS brake sensor on the track.”

Shirai Kuroko was very insistent that he put her down, so he carefully lowered her onto the simple bench.

“That doesn’t make sense if she’s part of some secret special forces mobilized to capture the Handcuffs criminals who escaped the prisoner transport train. Why would the Anti-Skill Negotiator cause the crash that let the criminals escape in the first place? For that matter, when did she find the time to contact Rakuoka Nodoka and turn her into a puppet?”

There was of course another possibility.

Maybe that Anti-Skill Negotiator named Tessou Tsuzuri had arrived after the fact to solve the case and the crash had been caused by some third party like Frillsand #G.

But Kamijou Touma shook his head even as he described the possibility.

“No, that couldn’t be.”

“Why not, teacher?”

“Then she would have no reason to attack me to hide the cause of the crash. If it was just me, fine - maybe she got confused. But she did the same thing to Shirai. And Shirai was wearing a Judgment armband. It doesn’t make sense to assume she’s a criminal just because she’s approaching the scene of a crime on the off-limits elevated railway. That wasn’t a mistake. She’s attacking anyone who comes by to investigate the crash. To hide her own guilt.”

“You mean?”

“Her plan was to let the criminals escape so she can kill them while they ‘resist arrest’ or whatever excuse she comes up with. If they end up in prison, they’ll be out again eventually. So what’s the only way to ensure they never commit another crime? She may feel the need to settle this once and for all since it was Anti-Skill that risked their lives arresting these criminals in the first place.”

Anti-Skill only had the right to arrest. They couldn’t convict a suspect or adjust the severity of their sentence. According to Shirai, Tessou’s colleague had brought that up over the phone and Tessou had said she didn’t care about the criminals’ rights.

That was the answer right there.

She wasn’t satisfied with the sentence the courts had given and decided to carry out a capital punishment herself. And she was willing to destroy a strictly-defended prisoner transport train to do it.

She had taken it upon herself to determine the weight of their sentence.

She felt Anti-Skill deserved to redefine those criminals’ punishment.

(Was it that bad? Can she not bear to go on if she doesn’t cling to her hatred of Handcuffs?)

Kamijou had not directly experienced the hellish night of the 25th, so it was hard for him to say.

The metal rails or poles falling from the railway suggested it was an absolute mess up there. Perhaps Tessou was physically eliminating all evidence of her sabotage. She and Rakuoka Nodoka had come from elsewhere, so they may have been going around destroying each piece of sabotage in turn. So even if a forensics team went over the place with an electron microscope, they would only find the scars left by Rakuoka Nodoka’s rampage. And that was no skin off Tessou’s nose when she only saw the other woman as a useful tool.

Tessou Tsuzuri, the mastermind behind it all, could walk away unchallenged and find someone else to capture and threaten. She didn’t feel an ounce of camaraderie with Rakuoka Nodoka, so she would use up a human being like a bullet. She would repeat that process until all of the infamous Handcuffs criminals were wiped out. So she would proactively gather anyone related to that event and set them up to destroy each other.

She was joining forces with the criminals on the other side so she could gather together all the technology seen at Handcuffs.

Kamijou had chosen that same path in Alice’s world. All while that small girl guided him around by the hand. Did that choice really look so twisted and ugly from the outside?

“It won’t be that easy, Tessou Tsuzuri.”

Before, Kamijou had assumed he only had to hand the captured criminals over to the adults in Anti-Skill, but this proved that idea wrong. He had to protect the prisoners from the sinister scheme set up by some of the adults.

“This greatly changes how we have to go about this,” whispered Shirai Kuroko, holding a hand to her swollen forehead that had to ache pretty bad. “This Anti-Skill Negotiator only sees the escaped prisoners as a means to expand her power. She seems to be doing fairly well with Rakuoka Nodoka so far, but if Tessou Tsuzuri was planning to deal with the Handcuffs criminals from the beginning, would she really assume she only needed verbal threats to get them to obey? She already knows how far those villains are willing to go.”

“Are you suggesting she has something else set up?” asked Kamijou.

“It’s too soon to say anything for certain, but her plan seems to be to actively bring criminals onto her side and use them as efficiently as possible to defeat and threaten even more powerful prey. We need to protect them before she can capture them and use them as a disposable tool. Who knows how far the harm will spread if we don’t.”

Kamijou smiled a little at that.

She gave him a puzzled look.

“What? This is no laughing matter.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She had said they needed to protect them.

Belonging to Anti-Skill or Judgment did not mean you had to blindly hate the criminals and view them as an enemy.

People were too delicate and complex to be described with simple, named emotions. They would make seemingly contradictory or incomprehensible choices all the time.

And this unexpected choice felt really nice.

Not everything was permissible simply because it was considered “just”.

This was not the convenient world Alice had created for him. Good was not guaranteed to prevail and evil was not guaranteed to be punished in this version of the 29th. The prisoners didn’t stay in the train station forever, someone not even on his mental cast of characters had attacked him, and the dead would not come back to life. If you declared it unfair and came to a stop, you would be the next one to be mercilessly destroyed. This world could only be described as harsh and unforgiving.

But it meant so much to hear those words here in the real world.

Kamijou Touma had finally found something that made him glad he had chosen this more difficult path.

Part 7

Low tremors intermittently shook the asphalt.

However, this wasn’t necessarily the handiwork of the Tessou Tsuzuri and Rakuoka Nodoka team.

“Hee hee hee. Off, off, off with their heads?”

Alice smiled and sang a disconcerting song with the white fluffball on the back of her apron wiggling to the beat. Is this the unique cruelty of small children? wondered Kamijou, staring out from the bus station.

“So how do you suggest we end this commotion?” he asked.

“I doubt we would find any of the criminals if we returned to the station now,” answered Shirai. “If they hope to escape, they wouldn’t remain anywhere near the Overhunting.”

That meant they now had to search the entirety of Academy City for Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish. Not to mention Frillsand #G who hadn’t been on the Overhunting. Even with several options, it was unlikely they would encounter anyone if they ran around at random.

So…

(This might not apply since things are so different from in Alice’s world, but it’s worth a shot.)

“We find Youen.”

“What?”

Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure what he meant, so he clarified.

(Youen helped me in Alice’s world, but things are different now. So where would she have gone and what does she hope to accomplish here?)

“Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. We need to capture all of the criminals before that Anti-Skill Negotiator does, but we need a starting point. I might be able to just barely predict what she’ll do.”

That girl had the technology to manipulate any urban pest or vermin in order to send out microbes and chemicals at will. Her skills could be used to help people, but she chose not to. She would not join forces with an ordinary person, treat their wound, or make jokes with a gloomy smile.

But like a game of concentration, enough wrong answers could lead to the correct answer.

(What is Hanatsuyu Youen’s goal? Is she really the type to run away without a plan just because the adults are closing in on her?)

He didn’t think so.

He had a feeling she had some goal no ordinary person could understand.

Whether she would cause a citywide panic to distract Anti-Skill while she escaped the city or she chose not to escape and instead slaughtered Anti-Skill to ensure her own safety, he felt like the Carrier would think up and act on an idea so destructive it made him feel faint.

Academy City was a big place.

But what facility would let her use her trait as a Carrier most efficiently and spread harm farther than anyone else?

“We have to secure all of them regardless, so I don’t particularly care who we start with,” said Shirai. “I don’t see why that couldn’t be Hanatsuyu Youen like you want. And once we start collecting the prisoners, we will inevitably encounter that Anti-Skill Negotiator who wants their power. Once that happens, we need to rescue Rakuoka Nodoka from the scum who has her trapped.”

With that, Shirai started to stand from the bench.

That was when it happened.

“…is…still…”

Kamijou Touma’s view dropped straight down. No, all his strength had drained from him and he fell to his knees.

“Kah…”

He didn’t even have time to shout.

An unpleasant sound came from within his body. He thought he maybe had a nosebleed, but the stickiness he felt while blinking told him there was blood below his eyelids.

He saw a doll-like blue dress and long blonde twintails blowing in a way unrelated to the night breeze. She was right there in front of him, but she looked less real than a mirage.

(Frillsand #G!? Why does she have to show up now!?)

She hadn’t laid a finger on him.

She had not shot a horrific beam of light through his chest and she hadn’t caused a massive explosion.

She had simply appeared before him.

That was enough for a wet and sticky sensation to flow from his eye and ears. After falling to his knees, he was helpless to do anything but slowly collapse forward.

He was experiencing unexplained bleeding, a headache, chills, and a fever.

Death was approaching little by little - step by step.

“What? Bh…ah!!!???”

(Damn…it. I can’t even raise my right hand. This attack…makes no sense. Agh, what am I even supposed to punch with Imagine Breaker!?)

“…still…inside…”

This was absurdly dangerous.

That monotone female voice was simply too dangerous.

His vision was tilted on its side and growing red starting from one side, but he managed to see Shirai Kuroko collapsing from the bench to the ground. His brain was hallucinating cracking and straining noises. The confusion of all his senses was worse than any pain and it felt like having an invisible hand squeezing him in its grasp.

This was Frillsand #G the artificial ghost.

Unlike in Alice’s world, she did not just launch powerful electricity and use her scientific nature to resist Imagine Breaker.

This was not a visible, physical threat like that. He didn’t understand any of it, but was she a much more dangerous being who would kill you if you carelessly looked in her direction when she spoke to you!?

At the same time…

“Yawwwn?”

He heard an odd voice.

It was cheerful, carefree, and cutely sweet. Apparently she had trouble staying up late in the real world too. She was nodding off in the middle of the crisis playing out around her.

Alice Anotherbible looked like she had stepped out of a picture book and she alone remained standing. After holding a small hand to her mouth and yawning, she placed her index finger on her chin and tilted her head to ask a question.

Yes.

The fundamental question of why was everyone around her collapsing?

“Ri…still…inside…”

“That won’t work on the girl,” interrupted Alice with a sleepily clueless smile.

This time, no cricket bat or hedgehog balls emerged from below her apron. This was a formless curse, after all. But Alice was still entirely unaffected by the invisible attack.

Was she built differently from the others on the inside?

Was this like how carbon monoxide was deadly to humans but harmless to insects because their blood was different? This didn’t seem like she simply didn’t feel any pain because she was that much stronger than the average person. It was a lot more like the conditions of the attack didn’t apply to her in the first place. Kamijou even had a meaningless fantasy about someone continually giving animal carcasses to a vulture in the hopes of giving it food poisoning.

Which was more unnatural here: Frillsand #G for causing fatal wounds without laying a finger on anyone or Alice for being exposed to that and smiling like it was nothing?

“A ghost can’t match the girl’s level of mystery☆”

“…”

A few solid impacts rang out.

They came from Frillsand #G, not Alice. Her neck kept bending unnaturally to the right or the left. At times, it bent more than 90 degrees.

The shadow extending from young Alice’s little feet had grown unnaturally long.

It slid out past Frillsand #G and a strange silhouette stood up from it. The emaciated and bony silhouette was far creepier than the flamingo or hedgehogs. But instead of white bones, these were clear as crystal.

It held a one-sided axe with a sharp sword blade extending from the butt end of the staff.

This was the horrifying side of fairy tales - the polar opposite of the candy and the stuffed animals.

(What is that?)

Kamijou had no advance knowledge and no one gave him the answer, but when he saw the bony creature wrapped in a tattered black cloak, he was strangely certain of the answer. Like the answer had been inserted into his mind.

(An executioner?)

The ominous silhouette seemed puzzled by its failure to lop off its target’s head in a single attack.

Its skull-like head tilted disconcertingly far while it spun the shaft around in its hand. It switched to the sword blade and sliced sharply at the air. Whenever it spun the shaft like a baton and aimed the point at its target, the artificial ghost’s head was mysteriously knocked aside, causing it to bend directly sideways.

Kamijou honestly couldn’t even see the axe, the sword, or even the blur of the blades in motion.

Most likely, the conditions it used to cut had nothing to do with that motion.

Maybe it was the arrangement of the fingers gripping the weapon, maybe it automatically sliced at the weak points the target reflexively tried to protect, and maybe the baton-like weapon was a spool for the threads of life and destiny and it would cut those threads, killing you instantly, if you failed to defeat it before it spun a certain number of times.

Frillsand #G was only still intact because she was an artificial ghost, but Kamijou was willing to bet he would have been decapitated before he could even try to react. He couldn’t even guess when he would need to use his right fist.

“Oops.” Alice noticed something and quickly pressed her small foot against the ground and rubbed forward with the sole. “Teacher would be mad if the girl actually killed you. Come on back, Executioner. You can’t cut the Cheshire Cat who vanishes into thin air.”

That was all it took for that powerful silhouette to collapse and disappear.

Kamijou only now realized something.

Both in Alice’s world and the real world, the pink bat and hedgehog balls would emerge and block any attack that Alice couldn’t avoid herself.

But it wasn’t about protecting her.

It wasn’t motivated by a fear of injury.

If she was hit by an attack that obstructed her movements, it would piss her off so much she would kill her opponent without even meaning to. So Alice made sure to block the attacks so that wouldn’t happen.

Not even the Executioner was Alice’s own power. Anything that slipped past the cricket defense and escape the Executioner’s blade would probably find Alice herself waiting for them.

“…”

Even after taking several lethal slashes to the head, the artificial ghost was still functioning.

Didn’t an old children’s story say you couldn’t behead a bodiless cat?

Frillsand #G silently pointed a finger up with her head still bent unnaturally far to the side.

A deep boom echoed from overhead.

It came from one of the photography or delivery drones that were common enough nowadays. She must have messed with its large battery, causing it to explode above Alice’s head. Even a single screw could become a deadly weapon when dropped from sufficient height. This was like creating a falling ceiling from the many fragments.

The artificial ghost’s formless attack had not let up.

Kamijou still suffered from the inexplicable fever and bleeding while he did his best to roll along the ground.

“Gah…ah!?”

(That ghost woman doesn’t just harm anyone she meets. Can she also make machines malfunction!? I-is there anything she can’t do!?)

“Hmm.”

It was Alice’s turn to act.

She removed the finger from her chin and directed her small palm toward empty air.

She had the look of a child when the stone they were kicking down the road on the way to school fell into the ditch. It was the look of someone abandoning some meaningless, self-imposed restriction and preparing to unleash whatever they were holding back.

Most likely, this wasn’t due to the electric ghost’s approach. It was something else that made Alice spread her long blonde hair to the sides.

All the assumptions were breaking down.

The cricket defense had been slipped past and the Executioner’s blade had been escaped, so it was time for Alice herself to make her move.

“The girl kind of has to now, doesn’t she?”

“Alice!!!!!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth like he was about to cough up blood and gathered all his remaining strength in his legs.

(I can’t do anything for Shirai. I’ll just have to hope the bus stop’s roof is solid enough!!)

He leaped to the side, grabbed Alice around the hips, and rolled into a nearby alley with her.

He heard hundreds of solid objects striking the ground outside the alley. It sounded a lot like a sudden downpour.

He kept the small girl pinned to the ground, pressed his forehead against hers, and shouted down at her.

“I told you I didn’t want any of that'!!”

“Mh! Well, the girl doesn’t want you mad at her.”

The way she shook her fine blonde hair side to side was as innocent as ever.

When he saw her smile and noticed he could actually see it clearly, he realized his red and distorted vision had already returned to normal.

Was that because he had moved a few meters away from Frillsand #G?

Or…

(No, this alley isn’t that far away. So is it seeing and hearing the ghost I need to avoid?)

That did sound like in ghost photos where it was the photographer or someone else in the photo who was cursed just because a ghost appeared in the photo.

He heard a windy sound and then woozy Shirai Kuroko appeared in the back alley. She leaned against the filthy wall from the side and cleaned up her bloody nose with a fancy-looking handkerchief.

“I’m impressed you could teleport in that state.”

“And I’m impressed you could get up at all. Also, you’ll feel better if you cough that up.”

He hit his limit as soon as she mentioned it.

Leaving Alice with Shirai and turning the other way was the most he could manage. Something warm rushed up from his stomach, but this wasn’t vomit. He spewed a red liquid onto the alley wall. What had happened to his organs during that encounter with the artificial ghost? She was an unreasonably deadly being.

It was terrifying finding himself unable to analyze what had happened even after it happened to him, but it was also creepy not knowing why she had appeared and attacked them here and now.

Yes.

(Hold on. Damn, I didn’t even consider this. If she wasn’t behind the Overhunting’s crash, then why is she involved in this at all?)

“I have no idea what makes her attack, but we won’t survive again if she passes through the wall and peers into this alley. We need to leave.”

“Agreed.” Kamijou wiped the blood from his mouth. “Hanatsuyu Youen will be the easiest one to predict. Let’s start with her.”

“Sure. I just hope the other prisoners are still safe and sound.”

Part 8

Metal clangs and orange sparks burst through the city night. A woman in a red China dress and a cowboy hat lay collapsed face down on the roof of one of the many skyscrapers.

Her dominant hand was pulled behind her back and a knee was pressed against her back to pin her center of gravity. The culprit was an apron woman wearing thick brass knuckles resembling cat paws.

This wasn’t just an issue of range. The pinned woman was a skilled cameraman and sniper, but she wasn’t only effective at long range.

The housewife with her long chestnut hair tied back with a hair tie seemed like a complete monster by this point.

Rakuoka Nodoka’s ability to cause harm was extraordinary. The fact that she had still managed to maintain a normal life without falling to the dark side only made her seem more dangerous.

“Gah!?”

Once the paparazzo’s hands were tied behind her back with a cheap zip tie, a booted foot kicked her sniper rifle aside and a woman with glasses and a black military uniform crouched in front of her. Even kneeling, she was still looking down at the other woman.

Tessou Tsuzuri held a long, thin object between her thumb and forefinger.

“Hi there, Benizome-chan. I’ll need you to open your mouth indecently wide for me, okay?”

“Mghhh!?”

A metallic sensation suctioned to the underside of her tongue. It was about the size of the AAA batteries used in TV and air condition remotes. A rubbery flavor filled her mouth.

“That’s a Fishing Tongue. One remote signal from me and the motor rolls up your tongue until it tears that entire lying tongue right out of your mouth. Isn’t it cute? Now you and Nodoka-chan match☆”

Only when the timid housewife stuck out her tongue and slowly moved it around was Benizome able to see the device for herself. It was attached with a suction cup or an adhesive.

“…!?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend trying to force it off. I mean, unless you like the idea of the lithium ion battery detonating and blowing off your lower jaw.”

The China dress woman froze when she heard that. There were times when the threat of a slower death would restrain people better than a quick death.

Tessou Tsuzuri had pulled all this off without a single run in her stockings. She started the discussion with a smile.

“Let’s get negotiating, shall we?”

“Don’t give me that. I don’t even get to choose if I side with the good guys or the bad guys?”

“You never did.”

(This gives me a short-range and a long-range fighter. A pretty standard setup. But it isn’t enough to control the entire board. If I want a complete victory, I need some more bizarre tech. I only need one more person and victory is mine.)

That was when the usual flashbacks hit the Anti-Skill Negotiator.

Not even she could figure out what triggered it.

Anti-Skill officers melting into black goo.

A slaughter carried out by the very children they were supposed to be protecting.

More experienced officers holding their handgun to their temple and sobbing as they pulled the trigger.

“…”

Tessou Tsuzuri bit her lip as the images filled her mind.

The nightmare of Handcuffs on December 25 would not leave her.

The word “acupuncture” grew ever so tempting, but she shook it from her mind. The adrenaline and noradrenaline strongly linked to tension were produced in the adrenal glands, so shutting off the signals from there could forcibly free her from this. But she could not afford to fill her mind with meaningless optimism.

Rakuoka Nodoka asked a nervous question.

“U-um, uh. Wh-what…next?”

“Good question.”

The Anti-Skill Negotiator pondered the question in amusement.

It was too soon to make her next demand. Rakuoka Nodoka was not normally the kind of person to place a deadly roller below a stranger’s tongue and drag them into the same hell she was experiencing. Perhaps people could counteract their guilt as long as they were able to view themselves as a victim.

Tessou Tsuzuri chuckled as she turned her gaze elsewhere.

“Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. Yes, negotiating with her would be the safest option.”

Part 9

Kamijou’s group walked through the city to reach a neighboring district.

This would never end if they failed to rescue Youen before Anti-Skill Negotiator Tessou Tsuzuri reached her.

They arrived in District 10, but unlike in Alice’s world, they had no business with the abandoned leisure spa.

“The garbage incinerator? Oh, that’s the place next door, isn’t it? But why there!?”

“The Carrier wouldn’t get scared and skip town just because the law is after her,” said Shirai Kuroko. “I agree with your assessment there. During Handcuffs, she repeatedly attacked an Anti-Skill station and a forensic investigation facility to keep anyone from investigating further.”

She wasn’t sure why, but her teleportation didn’t work on Kamijou Touma. She had tried it herself, so now she was stuck traveling on foot with him.

“So we only need to work backwards from there. The garbage incinerator is not much of a threat itself, but many garbage trucks gather here, those trucks contact the garbage collection areas around the city, and those areas are accessed by the countless cleaning robots. So if a high-density contamination begins here, the microbe or chemical can spread to every part of the city.”

“This late at night? I thought garbage collection was done in the mornings.”

“It’s winter break. And close to New Year’s. The restaurants are packed, which means more garbage. They must have a special schedule in place for this time of year.”

“Damn. Why are the villains always so clever and calculating?”

“But that aside,” continued Shirai Kuroko. “The Carrier specializes in controlling urban pests and vermin. Even more than the garbage collection infrastructure, this place is like her home turf.”

“So what do you think Youen is trying to do? Cause a large enough panic to escape safely, or eliminate all of her enemies?”

“With her twin missing, I have to wonder if she even has a real goal in mind.”

“?”

They could see a boxy concrete building with several smokestacks on top.

Kamijou’s feet nearly stopped moving as soon as it came into view.

“This isn’t good.”

“What isn’t?” innocently asked Alice, wiggling the round fluffball on the back of her apron.

It wasn’t clear if she really didn’t understand. With that otherworldly storybook girl, it was possible she actually understood every little thing that was going on.

The large facility had more than just the one building. And it didn’t seem to just be split between the kinds of garbage. It was clearly linked to the adjacent facility beyond the concrete wall.

“The closed leisure spa. Hasn’t it been overrun by illegal homes? Man, those expand its silhouette more than you would think. Are there really that many people stuck living there?”

“You know an awful lot about this underground area,” noted Shirai. “Did you hear about it on a test of courage video? Anyway, there is definitely a large uncounted population here.”

“Does the Carrier see humans as no more than larger vermin she can convert into infection bombs?”

“I don’t know if she will use the water or air to spread the infection, but it could spread to the leisure facility through the ducts and pipes, leading to victims there. The place appears to be shut down, but the pipes are still connected. And at her small size, she might be able to travel directly through them herself instead of just sending bugs or microbes.”

The front gate was open and there was no sign of any guards.

No, that wasn’t accurate. The concrete wall surrounding the facility was unusually swollen in places due to the thin white threads covering it. The collections of threads took the shape of humans.

“Eek!?”

“That looks like the Carrier’s work all right,” said Shirai. “Uiharu, arrange to have backup and an ambulance sent to District 10’s garbage incinerator. Uiharu!?”

Shirai Kuroko called the name a few more times before giving her phone a puzzled look. She had apparently lost her connection. Was Youen responsible for that?

(Or was it someone else? Youen might not be the only threat here.)

The dark roadside trees rustled unnaturally nearby. They had no idea how many people were here. Kamijou had no real reason to do it, but he made sure to grab smiling Alice’s small hand and pull her forward. More than just let him do it, she innocently pressed against the side of his hip.

“What now? Should we go in on our own?” he asked.

“Yes.” Shirai Kuroko shook her uncooperative phone. “I would normally suggest we wait for backup, but if we are even a second too slow to prevent Hanatsuyu Youen’s distribution plan, Academy City really is doomed. Similarly, there isn’t much we can do if the Anti-Skill Negotiator gets the Carrier on her side.”

Kamijou was afraid to touch the clumps of white threads on the wall, but they had to do something if someone was trapped inside. He wasn’t sure how much it would help, but he covered his mouth and nose with his jacket’s sleeve and peeled away the clumps of threads with a stick he found on the ground nearby. It felt less like breaking through a spiderweb and more like splitting open a cocoon the size of a sleeping bag.

He worked to at least get the faces of the silhouettes open. None of the guards he uncovered were conscious, but he could at least hear them breathing.

“Good, they’re still alive,” he said.

“Are those moth scales?” asked Shirai.

“The girl knows about poisonous moths! They already have their pokey bits as caterpillars, so everyone says not to touch them. They can’t do anything to the girl, though.”

“These aren’t scales,” said Kamijou, staring at the Judgment girl, who shrugged.

“If you can’t tell just by looking, that sounds all the more dangerous to me. I can’t tell you what that specialist is using, but let’s hope the hospitals have a serum or antidote available.” She placed a handkerchief over her mouth and carefully observed it from a step away. “But laying them down or treating them with our bare hands would be too much of a risk. We can’t say what they were infected with like this and the threat might not be visible like scales. Since they’re unconscious, we can be certain the Carrier used something meant to knock them out. They should have airtight hazmat suits in a specialized garbage incinerator, so it would be best to help them after ensuring our own safety.”

“Are you serious?”

“With that Carrier, I find it odd she didn’t just kill them when they were in her way. That makes me suspect they are meant as infection mines.”

Kamijou couldn’t rely on what he knew from Alice’s world. The real villain named Hanatsuyu Youen wouldn’t open up to you so easily.

He had thought he understood that, but seeing the harm she caused still came as a shock.

“Damn, that’s one more reason we can’t die here.”

“Agreed. We need to stop Hanatsuyu Youen, acquire a hazmat suit, and get them medical care. We must not be taken out of the fight before then.”

They passed through the open front gate and entered the grounds.

It was a large place, probably because so many garbage trucks had to come and go. As they approached the service entrance to the large boxy building, they found the doorknob melted. That would be Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier’s handiwork. Kamijou and Shirai exchanged a nod before pushing open the stainless steel door with their foot to avoid touching the melted portion.

There was no one inside.

But once they stepped into the building, the air felt so much more tense.

It was like they had crossed a line with that step over the threshold.

“This is pretty big for a garbage incinerator. Where would Youen have gone?” asked Kamijou.

“Probably not the actual incinerator at the very core. She wants to infect the entire city by sending it back through the garbage collection route - from here to the trucks, to the garbage collection areas, and finally to the cleaning robots. I don’t know if she’s using a microbe or a chemical or what specific pest or vermin will be carrying it, but she doesn’t need to expose any of it to those temperatures above 1300 degrees for extended periods of time.”

“Then where?”

“Where the garbage trucks gather. She only has to infect the pit where the trucks dump their garbage. Then every truck that stops by will be infected.”

According to Shirai, most of the garbage was sent to be recycled, so there wasn’t really very much “fuel”. That meant most of the garbage gathered around the city was sent to sorting facilities.

The unnatural lack of people suggested the place was almost entirely automated. Or maybe everyone else had been neutralized like the guards out front.

“Anyway, I wonder where the hazmat suits are,” said Shirai. “Whether she is using microbes or a chemical, I want to be protected from the microscopic threat as soon as possible.”

On the way, Kamijou found an open door, checked inside, and looked puzzled.

Youen wasn’t there.

“Hey, Shirai. What’s this?”

“?”

The twintails girl gave him a curious look, so he tossed her what he had found in the small room. It was a cardboard box about half the size of a chocolate bar.

She caught it and checked the front and back.

“It is an ethanolamine drug.”

“Which is?”

In this case, his ignorance wasn’t due to being a failing student. That term wasn’t found in any high school textbooks. He initially wondered if it was used in esper development, but apparently not.

Shirai actually seemed surprised he didn’t know.

“Oh? Do you live a happy life free of seasonal allergies? It’s just an allergy medication. It works on pollen as well as some inflammation and bug bites, so it makes sense that they stock a stronger version at a garbage processing facility. The only problem is that the histamines involved in allergies exist within the body, so suppressing them too much makes you drowsy. What about it?”

Kamijou pointed toward a corner of the small room.

There was a clear gap there.

“At least two or three of the cardboard boxes of the stuff is missing. Maybe more.”

“There’s our answer then. Damn!! The over-the-counter stuff wouldn’t be a problem, but this is much stronger!!”

Shirai clicked her tongue and walked down the corridor. At a rapid pace.

Kamijou was afraid she would teleport away if he didn’t follow and call out to her.

“Hey! If the real Carrier is as bad as you say, then why is she sticking to something that only knocks people out? Just like striking with the back of the blade, safely knocking someone out is a lot harder than killing them!”

“The real Carrier? If you only look at its effects, this drug is no more than an allergy medicine. Even if this one is stronger than you can buy over the counter. So unlike dioxin and PCB, this won’t trip the cleaning robots’ toxin sensors. Can you think of an option more efficient than using the very drug they already have stockpiled here?”

“By any chance, do you have a non-efficiency-related reason in mind too?”

“It’s an irregular side effect and won’t happen to everyone, but even a small percentage collapsing is a problem. You should never take a drug you don’t need. And remember that the Carrier is an expert at using urban pests and vermin. I’m sure you can imagine what will happen to any victims who end up collapsed helplessly in their rooms or around the city. The creatures they usually crush underfoot without even noticing will swarm them while they can’t move a finger.”

“…”

Was Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier really that bad a person?

“Wait, Shirai! Look!!”

“?”

A plastic board hung on the wall. It displayed a simple map of the facility. The garbage dumping pit Shirai had mentioned was on the west end of the building. The map showed the entire outer wall as a metal shutter. With so many garbage trucks lining up to dump their trash in that pit, it made sense.

“So we take a left at the next intersection to reach the western outer wall. This means Youen wouldn’t have had difficulty reaching the goal either.”

“It isn’t that far, but just to be safe…”

Kamijou pulled out his old folk’s phone and took a photo of the map. Then a few more in case the first was blurry from his unsteady hand. He had to hold Alice back so she didn’t photobomb him with her smiling face.

At the same time, something dripped from the ceiling and the map started to grow dark. He initially thought the roof was leaking, but this was different. The board was made of plastic. Simple rainwater wouldn’t discolor it like this.

Plus, the dark stain was moving.

This wasn’t a liquid at all.

“Cr-”

He tried and failed to force his dried throat to operate.

Alice’s cheerful voice spoke for him.

“Crickets!”

They all looked up. A glistening light moved in waves along the corridor ceiling. As soon as they noticed, tens of thousands of crickets began vibrating their wings at once, creating an explosion of sound.

Part 10

Several heavy metallic sounds happened all at once. The incinerator facility had more than just the incinerator and conveyer belts. To sort between burnable and non-burnable trash, it also needed machines and chemicals to break apart large items, remove the metal pins from cardboard, and to remove the plastic paints from wood. Not to mention machines that determined if something could be recycled or not. For Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier, this place was a treasure trove.

Even in the noisy facility, she could just barely make out the explosion of noise.

(I caught someone. It’s not great that I can hear it myself, though.)

At a certain country’s embassy, some workers who complained off severe dizziness and a buzzing in the ear were thought to have suffered brain damage. It was likely a special form of sound wave attack. Rumors spread in the embassy that the attack was intentional and that it would develop into an international incident…but it was later theorized that the chirping of local crickets had caused it.

Crickets chirped by rubbing their wings together, so as long as you knew the dangerous frequency, you could subtly alter their wings with chemicals to reproduce the same phenomenon. It had helped that the heat-filled garbage incinerator facility had been full of creatures that couldn’t normally survive the winter.

(And it is still connected to the filthy slum with a thick pipe.)

“Now, then.”

Youen lowered the stack of cardboard boxes she held.

(Resisting too hard on the 25th was a mistake, but my Carrier trait may not be welcome outside of Academy City.)

She had never questioned any of this when Kaai was with her. She had never feared anything no matter who in the world hated her as long as they were holding hands. Even if it meant planting a tracking device in her sister’s stomach.

But things had changed.

She lightly kicked the side of the box stack with a sulky look on her face.

(So would it be best to go with Option 3 - playing dead? I can make them think I escaped the city while the citywide panic brought down their investigative abilities but then actually hide among all the bodies. As long as I change my face or ID later, I can escape them. Doing that requires overloading their ability to identify corpses, so more than 300 thousand deaths should do the trick.)

She froze in place after reaching that conclusion.

She was certain her answer was correct. She alone could take control of the 29th that way. But what did she really want to do?

She hadn’t cared what the rest of the world thought. She had been perfectly satisfied racing against her twin every day. They had worn the same clothing and eaten the same foods so their conditions were exactly the same. But Kaai had grown tired of it and left, leaving Youen all alone.

She was afraid of dying and she certainly didn’t want her life cruelly taken from her. That much was true. But what did she want to do beyond surviving? What was worth tearing down others and taking so many lives?

Hanatsuyu Youen was not like Kaai. Youen did not take lives for fun or on a whim. She might pretend to do so in order to paralyze an opponent with fear or anger, but deep down, she always manipulated her pests and vermin in the most effective and efficient way possible.

But not everyone would accept an answer just because the math proved it to be correct.

She always considered the shortest route to her destination, thought up the fastest method to achieve her goal, used every shortcut that would eliminate unnecessary steps, and received plenty of disapproving frowns from the people who only ever climbed the stairway one step at a time.

They all wondered how she could be so obsessed with something so gross.

Those questions always confused her. What did gross have to do with anything? Wasn’t the entire point to climb the treacherous mountain and reach the summit? None of them had the strength, equipment, or plan needed to reach the summit, so how could they criticize her for making all the necessary preparations to reach it faster than anyone else?

It was so strange and weird. It made no sense.

She only wanted to win first prize, to succeed, to receive praise, and to show everyone there was a perfectly safe and convenient route up the mountain.

All she had done was minimize the time and effort required to reach the summit.

Kaai was the only other person racing to the summit under the same conditions as her, so only she had been worth training against.

“…”

She shook her head.

She could ponder these philosophical questions after surviving and escaping to safety.

The bad kind of gifted child opened the top cardboard box and viewed the smaller boxes of drugs packed inside.

They were ethanolamine drugs. Industrial strength.

They were only allergy medication, but healthy people’s bodies could malfunction if they took enough of them. There was no such thing as a perfectly safe drug and the difference between poison and medicine was more about dosage and usage than substance.

(I need this to travel backwards from the incinerator facility to the garbage trucks, to the garbage collection areas, and to the cleaning robots, so I need something better at surviving the cold than crickets. Something with a resistance to the cold, something not afraid of people, and something that won’t be incapacitated when covered in the drug. Something that can also be used to carry pollen would be best. Let’s see…)

A low buzzing tickled her ear.

With no fear or disgust, she raised her skinny index finger to let a silver-glowing bug land on it. Then she winked.

“Drug resistant flies, perhaps?”

Part 11

In a vortex of noise too loud to hear his own shouting voice, Kamijou saw Shirai Kuroko stagger to the side. She couldn’t use her teleportation. And this was the girl who had just barely managed a jump when under attack by Frillsand #G.

Looking purely at simple damage, the chorus of tens of thousands of crickets was apparently worse than the ghost.

“Gah.”

Kamijou collapsed to the floor. There was nothing he could do. He saw a few crickets drop from the ceiling and then they all came down like a black waterfall. They didn’t bite or scratch, but he did feel the weight of the bugs - not something he was normally even aware of.

And within it all…

“Oh, dear.”

A small girl’s voice reached his eardrums with unexpected clarity.

It belonged to the storybook girl named Alice.

The noise was enough to rattle the mind and the bugs were cascading from above, but she had the same smile as ever and held both soft hands out toward him. She pulled his upper body out like she was rescuing the victim of an avalanche and then she dragged him away.

Neither the cricket defense nor the executioner made an appearance.

Tens of thousands of bugs apparently wasn’t enough for her to feel repulsed or disgusted. She had used the bat and balls before. Poison gas, curses, and other forms of internal damage never seemed to affect her. (It almost felt like trying to drown a fish in water.) But her soft skin could not deflect the macroscopic external damage of the crickets. Plus, she was wearing a skirt and short sleeves.

“Heave ho, heave ho. Hmm, you are heavy, teacher. Ah ha ha. Boys backs really are big☆”

“…lice, wai…second. Shirai…still…!?”

“The girl can’t carry you both at once.”

Did she drag him 10m or 20m?

Alice acted like the shiny bugs weren’t even there as she walked backwards down the corridor and stepped into another workroom. The swarm of crickets vanished entirely once they crossed the threshold. There was no way that was natural for them. An invisible maze must have been drawn out with a predator’s bodily fluid or some other chemical.

The high frequency wave continued to rattle his head, but it sounded more muffled, like hearing live music through a wall.

“Agh! Ahh!!”

“Kya ha ha. There’s still a cricket in your mouth, teacher. Don’t move, okay? There, got it!”

Kamijou still couldn’t get up from the floor as Alice shoved her small fingers in his mouth and pulled out a surprisingly large and squirmy bug, but he grabbed her wrist.

“Please, go save Shirai too. Hurry!”

“What will you do?”

The endlessly superhuman girl smiled and he glanced deeper inside the facility.

“I doubt I’d be any help just waiting here, so I’ll keep going and prevent that stuff from being spread across the city.”

‘The difficulty level is way higher that way.”

“Doesn’t matter. Really, that’s all the more reason I can’t make you or Shirai do it.”

Alice nodded and turned back so readily it actually worried him. In fact, she spread her little arms and toppled forward to do a bellyflop into the torrent of black bugs. Her definition of gross appeared to be different from his. He heard her laughter from beyond the thick black wall, like a child enjoying getting dirty in the mud. She really didn’t seem to have any hostility or malice inside her.

Meanwhile, Kamijou crawled deeper into the facility.

He got his trembling legs moving enough to stand up and slowly walked forward.

He chose to trust in the things he couldn’t see. When he had a bad feeling or sensed a mysterious pressure, he kept away from that room even if it meant going the long way around. He didn’t know if it had helped at all, but he wasn’t attacked by anymore bugs. It was possible he had noticed a faint dizziness or headache from the chemical smell or the change in room temperature or air pressure.

Regardless, he referenced the map photo on his old folk’s phone to take an S-shaped detour around the most direct route and finally reached the destination of that labyrinth.

He had found the dumping pit on the westernmost end of the facility.

The large hole there was used to hold all the garbage gathered by the trucks that lined up outside. It was longer and wider than a school pool and there was a drop of more than 10m just to reach the top of the trash piled up there now.

He saw someone small standing on the edge of that steel cliff.

The black-haired girl wore a white coat tightened around the hips with a medical corset and she wore a gasmask on the side of her head.

She was surrounded by opened cardboard boxes and she was crouched down shaking a test tube with a frown on her face.

She was already preparing to infect the pit.

“Youen!! Please wait!!”

“!? …Who are you?”

She looked back in surprise without standing up and her question filled Kamijou with an irrational feeling. It made sense. Nothing in Alice’s world had really happened, so this was her first time meeting him. Having a stranger use her given name out of nowhere may have come as a surprise.

Maybe it was cheating and maybe it made no sense, but he did already have some information on her.

(Hanatsuyu Youen is the Carrier. She can attack individuals or entire areas by distributing dangerous microbes or chemicals using urban pests and vermin.)

Once she got started, he would have no way of stopping her.

Her Carrier abilities were not an esper power, so Imagine Breaker wouldn’t work. If she used artificial pheromones and synthetic nectar to draw in tens of thousands of gross creatures, he would be swept away by the swarm.

However…

(So no matter how dangerous she is, she doesn’t use her poisons directly! She uses the nectar in her test tube to gather creatures, places the toxins on them, designates the target, and sends them in to attack. That’s a lot she needs to do. She’s a threat, but not an immediate threat like a gun! I can win this as long as I rush her before she can act!!)

“!!”

Kamijou Touma took his first step forward.

To repeat, the Carrier abilities were not an esper power. She only had some bizarre technology and she herself was only a girl of around 10. He could see her eyes widening and her legs locking up in the face of such primal violence. Kamijou didn’t actually need to punch her. She needed her test tubes to attack, so he could neutralize her by tackling her to the floor and pinning her arms against her body. Without her pests and harmful substances, she was only a 10-year-old girl.

On the other hand, he lost all chance of winning if she broke free of her surprise.

If that happened, Academy City was doomed. If she managed to spread that efficient industrial-strength drug, he couldn’t even imagine how many people would collapse and be gnawed on by rats and roaches.

(That makes this my one and only chance.)

Maybe Hanatsuyu Youen really was a horrific villain in the real world, but he was certain she could end up like the version in Alice’s world if she made the right choices. She wasn’t the worst of the worst and she wasn’t pure evil. Her preferences trended in a dangerous direction, but if she happened to switch paths just a bit, she might be able to find a future where she smiled like that.

So he wasn’t going to give up.

Kamijou Touma refused to give up on someone else’s life. Even if she wasn’t even aware that path existed!!

(I know your abilities can be used to save lives. And that’s enough of a reason to risk my life for you!!)

He stepped into arm’s reach of her. A height difference this great actually limited his possible arm movements, but it didn’t matter if she could predict his actions. He only had to tackle her and pin her arms to her hips to neutralize her. Then he could place his weight atop her.

But before he could do any of that, a dark red hole was blasted in the center of his gut.

Part 12

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, deary me☆”

(I was waiting for the Carrier to from that stack of boxes before I ordered her capture, but the ricochet hit someone else instead.)

The black uniformed woman viewing the scene through a pair of binoculars didn’t bother slapping her forehead as she made an objective assessment of her choices.

“Hm.”

Her top priority was Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. Once that girl was in her grasp, she could take complete control of the 29th. But if she screwed that up, Youen would finish her plan and make a mess of things.

That was why Tessou Tsuzuri whispered smoothly into her radio.

While toying with the hooked animal-taming rod in her other hand.

“Go, Nodoka-chan☆”

Part 13

Kamijou felt something hard and heavy inside his body.

Just beforehand, the color orange had burst from the plain metal pillar in front of him, so had it been a ricocheting bullet? And Hanatsuyu Youen didn’t have a gun.

(So is someone else here!?)

He had heard a ricochet would reduce the force of a bullet, but he had also heard the jagged edges of a crushed bullet made it more dangerous if it hit you.

Both ideas came from action movies he had seen, so neither one was worth gambling his life on.

He nearly collapsed to the floor, but…

(If it only hit me by accident after ricocheting, then it probably wasn’t aimed at me. If Youen hasn’t moved, she’ll be shot!)

“Nh, bh, gahhh!!”

“Kyah!?”

He had no choice but to use his bloody body. He forced himself forward and tackled Youen to the floor. He was surprised by how cute her shriek was.

Something outside broke through the metal shutter for the trucks and a jagged sheet of metal duller than a saw whizzed by just above his head.

He looked that way, but there was no one there. And he heard a creaking sound from overhead.

(That wasn’t a gun. Did they jump up to the ceiling and cross the pool-sized pit in the blink of an eye!?)

He didn’t have time to check.

He was in no state to even get up. The most he could manage was holding young Youen tight and rolling to the side before the black shape on the ceiling dropped down like a meteor.

A metallic roar followed.

Someone had landed in a curled-up pose where he and Youen had been a moment earlier. A fist protected by thick brass knuckles shaped like a cat paw needed to be slowly pulled out of the steel floor.

The woman wore an apron and her long chestnut hair was tied back with a simple hair tie. She looked to be college aged or maybe a bit older.

But her gentle homemaker look made it hard to believe the extreme violence playing about before his eyes. She probably wasn’t an esper since she was an adult, so was this some kind of bizarre Academy City tech!?

This was completely different from the muscular Rakuoka Houfu he had seen in Alice’s world. She wasn’t surrounded by thick muscle armor and she kept her slender and soft bodylines.

Something exploded right next to her without warning.

It was a work light that was probably a later addition. A piece of the shutter may have stabbed into the fuel tank for the generator below it.

She only shook her head to the side.

Unbelievably, she dodged the shrapnel soaring horizontally toward her.

With the whirr of small motors, the pair of neon triangles on her head turned toward Kamijou.

They moved just like cat ears.

Had they detected the explosion in advance or accurately located the flying shrapnel?

(A cat?)

That was when it hit him.

This all came down to nimbleness. A chemical or something had changed her tendons and cartilage to alter the movable range of her joints.

Cats could jump four or five times their height without a running start, which was how they managed to jump onto roadside walls or reach the knob to open a door. That required powerful muscles, but it had more to do with their nimble joints and cartilage. Expand that to human size and this was perfectly possible. She could jump to the ceiling, cling to it, cross a pit longer than a school pool, and drop back down on the other side.

(Hold on. Wouldn’t a 160cm cat be a jaguar? Or a cheetah? No, this is even worse. Isn’t this on the level of a small lion!?)

What would happen if she used that speed to swing her brass knuckle enhanced fists? He wasn’t liking what his imagination was suggesting. And what if she had boosted herself in other ways as well?

But Youen’s confusion was directed elsewhere.

She forgot to even pull a test tube from her white coat. The little villain girl kicked her young legs to struggle below bloody Kamijou’s weight.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“Shut…up!! Agh! I’m trying to save you!!!!!!”

“???”

That must not have been what Youen had expected to hear from the stranger who had attacked her out of nowhere. The confusion drew out her 10-year-old girl side more than her extreme villain side.

“Oh, dear. Oh, my☆”

Another voice reached them from elsewhere.

There was a third person here.

“Benizome-chan. I don’t need the boy. Just shoot him and tear him off of her.”

“!!”

(Oh, no!! They’re after her!!)

As soon as he realized where the previous ricochet had come from, Kamijou freed Youen below him and shoved her as far away from him as he could.

But she instead pulled him toward her with her small arms. Then the Carrier’s thumb popped the rubber cap off of a test tube.

A thick black wall rose from the ground. A disturbing number of bugs created a barrier more than a meter thick. Some hot and sharp scraping sounds came from the other side, but the countless obstacles appeared to be altering the ballistic paths. It may have been like sniper shots through an aquarium’s water tanks.

Bleeding and groaning, Kamijou couldn’t even get up from the floor. He only managed a weak question.

“What are you doing?”

“I have no idea!! You idiot! You freak!!!!!”

Hanatsuyu Youen looked perplexed as she snapped back at him.

To a violent villain, incomprehensible good apparently qualified you as a freak. That was a subtle difference from in Alice’s world. He had not been rewarded in the slightest for screwing up his courage, shaking off the fear, and risking his life to tackle the little villain to the ground. Reality was not so kind.

But that was what made it so much fun.

A heavy tearing sound flew by right in front of him.

How many tens of thousands of lives were taken in that single strike? The apron woman had used her brass knuckles to tear through the wall of bugs like it was tissue paper.

All that technology and they hadn’t even earned enough time to run away while hidden from view. The primitive violence rushed toward them.

However.

Kamijou had no idea what happened next.

He could only describe it as a tower. A tower of flesh.

The thick steel floor burst apart and something grew up from the hole. It was a mass of muscles. The muscles formed a tightly clenched fist at the end of an arm longer than Kamijou was tall.

The steel floor was torn up like aluminum foil and something like a picture book ogre emerged. Except he had the head of a middle-aged man with a combover and glasses.

“What the hell!?” shouted Youen. “Why is everyone showing off their brute strength here!? I’m not letting you turn this into a contest of muscles and body size!!”

She must have been afraid of anything that could force its way through all those bugs because she grabbed the collar of Kamijou’s jacket and struggled to get away.

“Ra-” muttered the pointy-haired boy in a daze. “Rakuoka Houfu?”

Yes.

This was him.

But Kamijou Touma had another question when he saw that great muscular back before him. This was a mystery he hadn’t solved even in Alice’s world. Since that former Anti-Skill Aggressor had escaped from the Overhunting prisoner transport train, he had to be one of the dark side’s villains.

But on a more fundamental level…

(He did this in Alice’s world too. He’s clearly on a rampage, but what is he fighting for?)

In that world, he had grappled with Frillsand #G. Even though a wielder of purely physical attacks could never really damage that ghost.

Fleeing the city as quickly as possible didn’t seem to be his goal. If so, he would have ignored Kamijou’s group when they were under attack and run off on his own.

On the other hand, he didn’t seem to have a grudge against Anti-Skill or Judgment for arresting him. If he did, he would have gone after Shirai Kuroko before Frillsand #G.

It didn’t fit. That couldn’t be it.

(What if?)

Kamijou gulped. He slowly backed away while tightly holding onto Youen who would try to escape and drop into the deep pit if he let her.

(What if he’s still trying to capture the criminals as an Anti-Skill officer!!!???)

Part 14

What he had done was wrong.

It had been an undeniable mistake.

Rakuoka Houfu clenched his teeth.

But there had been someone he wanted to be happy even if it meant leaving the straight and narrow. So when he had found his sister standing dazed in a pool of blood, he had hugged her, discussed it with the entire family, and decided to crush, smash, and chemically break down the malicious stalker’s dead body to leave no trace of him in the world.

The real tragedy had come from his talent.

He could have screwed it up at any step along the way, but he had found success at every turn.

But what if that unexpected success had in fact widened the cracks? What if those cracks had grown into a great maw that was now threatening to devour his family again? And what if his family troubles were putting so many other Academy City lives at risk?

He had to put an end to this himself.

Even if it meant becoming a big, bad ogre.

This was not his first time directly facing the malice that ruled the city’s darkness, so this pitiful loser was not going to get cold feet now.

He had already developed an immunity to these sticky shadows.

“Rakuoka Houfu is low priority. You only need to approach the one.”

He heard an amused voice.

Just like back then, these were the mocking words of a demon enjoying the act of bending people to her will.

“Your top priority is Hanatsuyu Youen. Benizome-chan, kill him if he gets in the way. Nodoka-chan, you stay where you are☆ That’s all you need to do to make him freeze up.”

A scorching heat stabbed into Rakuoka’s upper body at supersonic speed and exploded inside him. The lead had been crushed into a flower when it failed to punch through his powerful muscles, which actually worked against him.

His large body tilted to the side.

So what? His precious family was watching.

She wielded deadly violence supported by her crafting skills. But no matter how much anyone else feared her, her brother would always see her as his little sister, so he gently knocked her aside. That sniper was not the type to worry about where her ricochets ended up. If he sent Nodoka into the dumping pit, she would be outside the angular range of the sniper bullets.

He cared about his family more than his own life safe, so now that she was safe, he no longer needed to hold back.

He slowly changed direction.

His bloody muscles swelled out further, growing another size. The crushed bullet was forced back out from the wound.

He had a single target here.

The glasses woman in a black uniform. The Anti-Skill Negotiator. She was supposed to be one of those who prevented crimes by acting as a friendly confidante before things reached this point, not the one who punished the criminals after the fact.

The two foolish adults who had failed to fulfill that role stared directly into each other’s eyes.

Tessou Tsuzuri gave a light wave of her right hand. She was probably sending a signal to the distant sniper, but he ignored that. His muscular strength let him lift more than 70 tons. He could end this fountain of tragedy at the source by getting in a single punch before a bullet could break through his thick muscles and shut down a vital organ.

“Oh.”

He took a step.

From there, he exploded into a run.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He had lived a shameful life.

He had entered his 40s without accomplishing anything, he was now an unemployed criminal, and his little sister had gotten married and started a family before him. He was still a virgin, for that matter.

But surely he was still allowed to do one thing his family could be proud of, right?

Part 15

“Heh.”

A deep, artificial voice spoke from a transmission tower that gave a view of the entire facility.

The lit end of a cigar wobbled up and down.

This romance-loving golden retriever had once rejected this man in the depths of the earth.

“That’s a lot more like it, big brother.”

Part 16

When Kamijou heard fierce blows rattling the metal shutter, he grabbed struggling Hanatsuyu Youen with his bloody hands and rolled behind a nearby indoor wheel loader. A simple high schooler didn’t know how to locate a professional sniper and the random ricochets were still a threat, but it had to be better than staying put.

Rakuoka Houfu vs. Tessou Tsuzuri.

Ordinarily, it was hard to imagine the skinny woman defeating the 3m mass of muscles, but surprisingly, neither side had emerged victorious yet.

She blocked his attacks. The battle remained even while heavy straining sounds filled the room.

(Damn, that Anti-Skill Negotiator woman is using something too. I guess celebrating this convenient interruption won’t be enough to survive!!)

There was no saving Rakuoka Houfu if he was sniped from the side while dealing with Tessou. He was an Anti-Skill officer turned criminal, but he had put himself in harm’s way to let them escape. Shirai and Alice were not here and Kamijou’s right hand could not negate bullets. That left him with only one person to rely on. He spoke to the girl in his arms.

He spoke to the little villain who he had not abandoned even while encountering new surprises at every turn.

“Youen.”

“Wh-what?”

“I want your help. How much of your strength as the Carrier do you have left? Can you call all those crickets in here!? C’mon, please! I’m begging you!!”

“S-stop grabbing me and using my given name like we’re friends! Unless I screwed up mixing a drug and erased my memories with some kind of gas, I’ve never met you before in my life!” 𝐟𝚛e𝐞𝙬𝗲𝒃𝓷𝒐𝘃e𝒍.c𝑜m

“Just! Do! It! Now!” He was shaking her back and forth by the collar. “You’re the only one I can rely on!! I don’t want that guy to die after he chose to fight for us and you can prevent it with your Carrier stuff. So please!! I’ll do anything, so please save us with some trick only you can pull off!!!!!!”

“…”

For a while, she forgot to even blink as she tried to process what he had said.

She almost looked pleasantly surprised, like no ordinary person had ever come to her for help before.

“Ha.”

Finally, she broke out of her daze with a laugh. She pulled a bunch of industrial-strength drugs from her pocket, crushed them in her fist, and tossed the powdery result toward the garbage dumping pit. Was that the allergy medicine that caused drowsiness as a side effect? That likely reached Rakuoka Nodoka, knocking her out.

With a loud clink of glass on glass, she pulled several test tubes of colorful liquids from her white coat.

“You’re going to regret this.”

Was she summoning a swarm of crickets to act as an acoustic weapon, a swarm of hornets or spiders filled with deadly venom, or something so horrific a high schooler couldn’t even conceive of it?

With several dull sounds, she tore open the nearby pipe until white steam erupted from it. She may have wanted a secret ingredient for her test tubes, but the real surprise was how she tore the pipe open with her teeth.

“What? My teeth melted away during Handcuffs, so I replaced them with nonmetallic implants I made myself. It’s the same stuff they make airplane fuselages out of.”

Apparently she used more than just chemicals. And how had she managed to implant herself with that new equipment while restrained? He had been shot before it could happen, but if he had managed to tackle her and incapacitate her, would she have bitten into his chest or shoulder?

Also, what had his analysis of her abilities been again?

She was powerful. She used chemicals to control the urban pests and vermin to carry microbes or chemical weapons to her target. Once that process had begun, there was nothing you could do, but she lacked the immediacy of a handgun.

“Benizome-chan.”

That voice was the slightest bit faster.

Tessou Tsuzuri managed to speak while grappling with the mass of muscles.

“Your top priority is Hanatsuyu Youen, but if I can’t have her, no one can. If she is falling into another player’s hands, eliminate her.”

“Ah!? Youen!!”

Kamijou had to wonder what he hoped to do about the bullet that would soon be flying their way. He could barely even get up and Imagine Breaker wouldn’t work on it.

Nevertheless, he rushed out in front of her.

However, the flow of time felt distorted. His body moved so slowly and Youen felt terribly far away when she was right there next to him.

At the same time, a question occurred to him.

He knew why Anti-Skill Aggressor Rakuoka Houfu had come here, but why had he burst from underground to do so?

What possible reason was there for that?

The answer revealed itself.

A liquid erupted from underground.

The skin-colored syrup surrounded Hanatsuyu Youen and blocked the bullet as a thick liquid barrier.

Yes, skin.

That whitish cream color could have applied to so many other things, so why was that disturbing word the first thing that came to Kamijou Touma’s mind?

The answer was obvious.

It was so similar to the color of Hanatsuyu Youen’s skin while she stood there in a daze.

“Ka…?”

“Nee hee hee hee hee.”

After spiraling around the girl, the liquid swelled up in violation of gravity and finally formed a silhouette seemingly made of melted wax. Once the details formed, it looked exactly like Hanatsuyu Youen.

No, not quite.

Another girl was toying with the crushed rifle bullet held between her little fingers.

“I dissolved myself into the sewers to bathe in all the city’s filth forevermore, but I just couldn’t do it. Humans are great at adapting to their environment, but the Japanese spirit isn’t made to eat curry rice three days straight. Hmm, maybe I should’ve gone to train in India, the mystical curry capital of the world, before melting my body.”

“Kaai!? Is that you, Kaai?”

“Youen, I was honestly sick of your creepy dependence on me. Doing our hair and clothes exactly the same just cause we’re twins is so boring, so I wanted the freedom to be on my own and do whatever I wanted. But then I realized the filthiest part of this city was always right there by my side! Hello, my bluebird!! Hello, my defilement!!!!!! I want to see something really nasty from you, the only scum so filthy that even I have to doff my cap to you. Do that and I’ll play with this enemy of yours☆”

Youen the Carrier hung her head.

And she smiled a little.

“Heh.”

The strained atmosphere here was packed hopelessly full of malice, so it was the polar opposite of a comfortable household. But the little villain knew it had always been that way with them.

She could never be a good person, but now that something crucial had been restored to her, she pulled out a new test tube and poured its contents onto the floor.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

Both girls hummed while the one let her shape collapse and spiraled around the other. Kaai might have been called a water spirit if there was anything remotely pure about her. Together, the two wicked twins took the first step back into the city’s darkness.

“What do you think would make a good punishment? An indiscriminate slaughter?”

“What do you think would make a good punishment? An indiscriminate slaughter?”

The darkness really did suit them best.

So they used their forbidden techniques to clear their own way toward freedom.

Part 17

This isn’t good, calmly assessed Tessou Tsuzuri.

She could no longer simply beat down Rakuoka Houfu. A new player had entered the field and her options were growing more limited. The worst part was the great unknown of the Kaai-Youen twins pair. If they were working to fix everything like that boy wanted, she could ignore them and wait for the criminals to destroy each other, but if they had regained their original violence, waiting like that could be a critical mistake.

An Anti-Skill Negotiator’s tactics always came down to taking and using pawns.

It was a lot like chess except for the fact that she was on the board herself.

And no matter how unusual an example she was, she was still Anti-Skill deep down. She focused on the combined power of groups, not the overwhelming force of an individual. Her own specs were irrelevant.

“Un.”

“Un.”

She heard something like giant gas bubbles floating to the surface of a swamp and popping.

No, the popping bubbles were growing from the cream-colored slime surrounding Youen.

“Deux?”

“Deux?”

And Tessou’s original association had been accurate. These were giant gas bubbles.

“Trois☆”

“Trois☆”

“!? Tch!!”

A single spark of static electricity would trigger a massive explosion. Had they used their crazy microbes to rapidly turn the raw garbage into petroleum? Worse, this wasn’t just an indiscriminate gas explosion. It was directed in a single direction to accurately launch shards of metal like a sniper shot. And when the Decomposer and the Carrier were behind it, those “arrowheads” were likely coated with a horrific poison.

When you didn’t have the pawns necessary to accomplish anything, the only option was to retreat.

“Sh!!”

Tessou Tsuzuri kicked Rakuoka Houfu’s knee with her sharp heel to use him as a shield and then ran toward the exit. A second and third projectile tore through the air to reach her…and she doubted it would end there.

“Tch. We need a more creative way to boost our power.”

“Hey, hey, hey. I like the looks of that can of caviar you’ve got there. I’ll be borrowing that☆”

“Eek! Stop! That prize belongs to Alice!” shouted an out-of-place voice.

“?”

Confused, Tessou twisted around to look.

At that exact moment, a much more powerful shock hit her from behind. She immediately lowered her head, but that didn’t stop the sharp scratches from raking across her cheek.

Rotten gas had expanded inside the can until it exploded.

The attack had come from the can’s lid. She had just barely dodged that, but the scattershot of caviar had still broken her skin. It was like a needleless tranquilizer dart.

(Oh, no! The fish eggs burst inside the wound!)

The only pawn still available to her was Benizome Jellyfish. Rakuoka Nodoka had been mostly taken out of the fight with the drowsiness of an extra-strength allergy medicine and this place was crawling with the more bizarre side of the dark side: Rakuoka Houfu, Kaai, and Youen.

Tessou needed to get a fresh start.

She could imagine some kind of microbe or chemical was circulating through her body. There was no such thing as a panacea, so she couldn’t eliminate the risk without knowing what exactly was inside her. She used pure willpower to steady her shaky vision and pulled out the radio used to control her pawns.

(These dark side scumbags are all messed up in the head. It might look like they’re all working together now, but they’ll turn on each other in an instant if I sow some confusion!!)

“Goddammit! Nodoka-chan! Benizome too! If you don’t support me, I’m pulling your tongues out with the Fishing-!!”

Just as she clenched her teeth and rushed out of the building, something dropped toward her like a guillotine blade.

If she hadn’t rolled to the side, it might have functioned much like one too. Without her reflexes, she might have lost her head despite noticing it in advance.

It was a shield.

One of the clear shields Anti-Skill used for riot control.

She belatedly realized it had not in fact missed. Broken pieces of the radio she used to send commands to the Fishing Tongues were flying through the air.

Whoever this was had prioritized freeing the hostages over dealing a deadly blow to their enemy.

They had abandoned the option of a surprise attack and even introduced the possibility of being attacked in return.

“What?”

She knew who this had to be.

She knew an Anti-Skill officer who was especially fond of using a riot control shield. The woman excelled at using a shield instead of a weapon because she disliked aiming a gun at children, even if those children were rogue espers.

“Yomikawa…-senpai? What are you doing here?”

The bottom corner of the shield scraped against the ground as a low voice answered her - the voice of an Anti-Skill officer whose stance hadn’t changed one iota after being drenched in the sticky darkness during Operation Handcuffs.

“What, you need to hear from me why I’m here before you’ll accept it?”

No, not that.

This was nothing so cliché. She wanted to know how exactly this woman had appeared here now.

Yomikawa Aiho worked in District 7, so she wouldn’t show up at the District 10 garbage incinerator for no reason. That meant someone had told her what was happening. But who?

“Be-”

When the answer hit her, Tessou Tsuzuri entirely ignored the situation and gnashed her teeth.

“Benizome Jellyfish!! You damn scoop junkie!”

Part 18

Earlier she had said, “Don’t give me that. I don’t even get to choose if I side with the good guys or the bad guys?”

That was very true. The thing was, she didn’t care.

The woman in a red China dress and cowboy hat wasn’t interested in siding with either of those.

She was presently lying on the floor and munching on the Red Town fried rice sandwich and banana spring rolls she had acquired nearby.

“Ha ha☆”

She grabbed her weapon with a melting smile on her lips. Her sniper rifle was only used to set the stage.

Her true weapon was a single-lens reflex camera.

She was willing to throw out all chance of escape if she could snap this one photo.

Her lower jaw? Feel free to blow that away if she could capture the crucial moment.

“Did you know you can still get published from jail?”

Part 19

Something swished through the air.

Black-uniformed Tessou Tsuzuri had pulled out the whip coiled at her hip.

She carried a stun baton, pepper spray, an LED strobe light, a spherical wireless speaker, and other tools used to tame large animals in nature parks and circuses.

She used it all to “tame”, control, and efficiently defang dangerous criminals.

Because she believed it would reduce the number of victims as the chaos spread.

But Yomikawa Aiho sighed when she saw it.

She saw through the trick right away.

“Magnetic osmotic pressure cell membrane control. If you’re controlling the ion channels and sodium pumps too, I’m guessing you’re altering the signals sent to your muscles to overload their output. In a way, I suppose that makes you a new form of cyborg. Not all cyborgs replace their muscles and bones with metal.”

“…”

She was exactly right.

Even the most powerful weapon could never hit if its wielder lacked the necessary strength. And even if it did hit, it wouldn’t do any real damage. So Tessou had needed to reject her own weakness if she hoped to stand up to the city’s malice.

She could not make that decision unless she was prepared to abandon her own humanity.

“Tessou. Do you hate the dark side?”

“I do.” The whip woman nodded stiffly at the shield woman. There was no hesitation in her voice. “I want to save the people who have fallen into the darkness no matter what it takes. The city’s children were left in our care, so why would I ever hesitate, Senpai?”

Yomikawa Aiho and Tessou Tsuzuri.

The two Anti-Skill officers’ gazes clashed between them.

They both had enough of a reason to keep their gazes firm.

The emblem on Tessou’s shoulder belt was upside down, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was even a saint who had asked to have his cross upside down because it would have been too disrespectful to hang from the same sort of cross as his savior.

“People can be permanently broken. Once someone has gone bad, even if they’re a small child, they will continue fighting and taking lives unless they are stopped. Anyone who saw Operation Handcuffs on the 25th would reach the same conclusion.”

That was why the city already had a self-cleaning system.

The villains would kill other villains.

That created a strange balance, like filthy water filling a cup. The contents of the cup would never overflow unless the good tried to dive in and “fix” things.

That was why so many would notice the people trapped and suffering there but would keep walking without interfering.

Handcuffs had forcibly tried to wash the cup clean, but that water purifier or chlorine tablet had only made things worse.

“Yes, yes. Those who call themselves villains, prefer violence, and risk their lives for momentary profits and pleasures might laugh and accept that destructive lifestyle, but I can’t just let this keep going. I want to be the kind of teacher who protects the children. Just like all the others who never managed to live up to that dream.”

“Tessou.”

“So.”

The Anti-Skill Negotiator had decided she would start speaking with evil, so there was one thing she would never say to those villains no matter what else she might do.

She would never play the all-powerful but despicable card of writing them off as incomprehensible.

She had remade herself so she would view them as human beings. And instead of timidly hiding behind her powerful colleague’s back as an inexperienced Anti-Skill rookie, she had chosen to stand out front to protect someone.

“Someone has to control them. Someone has to set an upper limit on their evil, direct their violence, and make sure they actually help the city. That way they can see they have a place here and that we aren’t just rejecting their power outright. At the same time, we show them the consequences of stepping out of line, allowing them to find the best position for themselves and limit themselves.”

Some children did not go straight home after school. Some students did not stay in line at the cafeteria. From a teacher’s viewpoint, the so-called dark side was just a more extreme version of that familiar phenomenon. And outside of school, they could get away with more savage solutions that had been eliminated from modern education.

“So you want to be the scary teacher?” asked Yomikawa Aiho.

“Yes. Maybe it won’t be pleasant right now. They can resent me as much as they want. But one day, they will look back on this and laugh. This has to be far better than letting them die here and never having another chance at all. Even if they’ve been driven to the verge of death and their heart stopped beating more than a minute ago.”

“But none of that has anything to do with Rakuoka Nodoka.”

“Oh? You didn’t know what she did a loooong time ago? Well, maybe that’s not a fair question. They did set things up so nothing could be proven in court.”

This wasn’t enough to shake Tessou Tsuzuri. Learning about the criminals’ horrific crimes wasn’t enough for her to seal them away. She wouldn’t hide them below the darkness.

She couldn’t forgive the people who would cover themselves in wounds and throw out their own future.

That was the thought on her mind when she thoroughly remade herself physically and mentally.

“Rescuing the criminals and their families is part of our job too. We construct and provide the objective evidence needed to make them productive members of society once more and to counteract any unfair criticism. At the very least, my negotiations will shift them from the position of hated criminals to poor victims. And if they capture an even worse criminal, that shuts up all the bored people online and in in their living rooms. Isn’t that the same idea as a plea bargain?”

“I see.” Yomikawa Aiho had only one thing to say. “But what about Kamijou Touma?”

“…”

“He’s just a normal kid. He has nothing to do with any of these criminals.”

Tessou Tsuzuri had no answer for that one.

Yomikawa shook her head softly.

But she didn’t hold back.

“You can’t answer that because you’re wrong and you know it.”

Yomikawa wasn’t going to be shaken by words any more than Tessou was.

She wouldn’t have accepted the burden of people’s lives if her feelings were half-baked.

“You chose this path because you envied the dark side. You only learned one thing from seeing hell on earth in the District 7 station, but it wasn’t a new method of reducing the number of victims and it wasn’t new values that let you reduce the number of criminals. You saw a predator who readily took the lives of people they didn’t like and you wished you could do the same.”

Tessou Tsuzuri didn’t nod. This didn’t matter. She had chosen to do whatever it took to protect the people of this city, but that very decision may have been when the darkness trapped her.

“So what are you saying?”

“…”

“If that’s what it takes to protect Academy City, then I’ll do it. They’re young, they’re powerful, and they have no remorse. So the instant they leave their cells, they’ll do it all again. And as long as they get what they want, they don’t care if they destroy themselves in the process. Their love of doing evil is a part of who they are, so you can’t just change them into good people. That’s as difficult as using the education system to turn a STEM person into a liberal arts person. For the vast majority of them, you will fail and fail until their sentence is over and they’re dumped out onto the streets unchanged. I will do anything to keep them from causing more deaths and destruction. I will do whatever it takes to teach them how to establish a healthy relationship with the darkness. Even if that means temporarily expanding their power through fabricated crimes.”

“So you’re going to stalk anyone who looks suspicious to you and use that hunch of yours as justification for sneaking up behind them, knocking them out with a stick, and placing a collar around their neck? Locking someone in a room isn’t the only way to commit kidnapping and imprisonment. You’ve already started down that path if you’ve created any kind of environment they can’t leave of their own free will. Lawless justice is just violence. I’m more worried about you causing more death and destruction than any of them.”

They didn’t have to see eye to eye. If Tessou had naively assumed everyone would agree with her, she would have invited her respected colleague to join her from the beginning. And she would have been stopped before she started.

She would have failed to even become a criminal to save anyone’s lives.

Now it was one-on-one.

This wasn’t how the Anti-Skill Negotiator was meant to fight, but this was only the beginning.

Maybe it would all fall apart, but the situation would dramatically improve if she could take out Yomikawa Aiho here. Maybe it wasn’t logical, but she was certain she could save more people this way.

“Yomikawa-senpai, your methods can’t change anything.”

“Maybe not, but I seriously doubt yours are any better in that regard.”

There was no signal.

They both took a step forward at the same time.

Then something swished through the air.

It was a lot like an iaido strike.

Tessou unleashed a full-power attack with a brutal whip capable of killing an elephant, but Yomikawa swung down her shield to catch the whip against the ground, severing it.

“Yomikawa-senpai!!”

“After everything you’ve done, I doubt destroying your weapon is going to stop you!!”

Tessou didn’t hesitate to throw away the whip grip and draw the hooked pole from her hip.

But that was only a distraction while her other hand pulled out the LED strobe light. She held it out and let it flash while she rushed in.

She ran right into Yomikawa’s shield.

She was knocked back and her hooked pole broke. The shield was like a shovel, so it could be used as a deadly weapon with an attack that focused the force on the edge or point.

But that was why Tessou sneered.

(She could have killed someone like me with that one!!)

The strobe light was working.

It flashed at a maximum of a million candelas, so it rivalled a stun grenade.

Yomikawa’s shield was made of clear plastic. That was meant to ensure she could see while protected by the shield, but that meant it failed to protect her eyes from bright lights. The only way to avoid being blinded was to turn her face away. And that would keep her from doing much else.

(Goodbye, Senpai.)

Still holding out the strobe light, Tessou tossed the hooked pole aside. Blinded by the light, Yomikawa would be reliant on sound.

Tessou had thrown out her hesitance toward hurting people when she decided to try and understand the villains.

(I can use that big shield as a weapon too! Even if you’re holding it with both hands, that’s still just two points on a single axis. I’ve boosted my muscles, so if I use my weight to kick it with the sole of my boot, I can slam it into your forehead like I’m knocking on a door!!)

Then something unexpected happened.

Yomikawa subtly altered the angle of the shield.

There was one thing you were never meant to do when searching an abandoned building wrapped in darkness. A powerful blinding light would also give your position away to the enemy, so you must never move around with it on. You were meant to flash it for just an instant and move based on the image burned into your mind. You also were supposed to avoid shining it directly at a window or any metallic parts. Why was that?

Because the light would blind you if it was reflected like a mirror.

“Gahhh!?”

“About what I expected. Do you have any idea how much time I’ve worked with you? When you realized you couldn’t defeat me from a distance with that whip, I knew you’d move in close and try to blind me. It wasn’t hard to trap you when you were eager to put your mind at ease by moving past your failure.”

Yomikawa Aiho’s voice was as cold as ice.

She was different. She could not bring herself to accept and cater to wicked hearts.

Nevertheless, she had gained the strange ability to place a limit on violence from a position of pure good. She must have learned that from dealing with a monster far more twisted than any of the Handcuffs villains.

She didn’t need any excuses about protecting lives, protecting students, or protecting the city.

“!!”

Don’t let this chill down your spine affect you, Tessou told herself.

Don’t let this temporarily blindness scare you. You can attack the shield by kicking at the source of the reflected light. Then you can hit her with the very shield meant to protect her.

She doubted that would be enough to win.

So she drew her stun baton with the hand not holding the strobe light.

She would be extra certain.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“By the way.”

Tessou’s heavy boot kept going after hitting the shield. It wasn’t just that Yomikawa had pulled the shield back as she hit it. Tension and panic grew inside Tessou and Yomikawa’s voice stabbed into her ears.

“You can stick the bottom of the shield into the ground so it stands on its own. Which means I don’t have to be holding it.”

“!?”

Yomikawa had escaped, but she had to be defenseless without her shield. The afterimage of the bright light still flashed in Tessou’s vision as she thumbed on the stun baton.

And after a loud “zap!!” it was Tessou who crumbled to the ground.

Her boosted muscles twitched uncontrollably and she could feel her black stockings tearing on their own, presumably because of the high-voltage current.

“Also, stun weapons - especially batons - don’t mix well with liquids,” said an exasperated voice. “That includes sprinklers, mist, and sweaty palms. I thought you would draw it at some point when you were feeling cornered, so all I had to do was push you around until you started to panic. Tessou, you can play the bad girl role all you want, but you haven’t changed your timid nature.”

Yes.

Yomikawa was right.

Tessou had to admit it to herself while clenching her teeth at her soaked palms and her ugly heart.

She was still an inexperienced member of Anti-Skill, so no matter how much she tried to remake herself and no matter how many pawns with strange talents she gathered, she could not win on a more fundamental level. In a direct confrontation between two Anti-Skill officers, she could not defeat the tougher and more experienced woman.

Or so it had been in the past.

But she had chosen to become the scary teacher.

She would give everyone a future even if it earned her their resentment and ensured she would never be invited to any kind of reunion held by the children. She would rescue people from the unfair criticism people got just for being a criminal or their family. Because in her glimpse of the hell that was the dark side, she had seen not just the slaughter of innocent people but children who were forced to rely on those techniques to survive. It wasn’t an issue of morality. So she needed to teach those people that things would get better as long as they survived. After seeing the hopelessness that was Handcuffs, she had sworn to herself she would become that kind of teacher!!

She would not let any villains treat their own lives as worthless.

She would give them a final chance to reject a ridiculous life where they cynically decided they were satisfied with dying. So she could not give up and be defeated here!!!!!!

“Gah.”

The teacher clenched her teeth, forced strength back into her falling body, and heard straining and cracking sounds from all over her body. Her boosted muscles were putting pressure on the bones within and even causing comminuted fractures. Just like a corpse stuffed into a metal drum and then solidified in concrete would have its bones shattered by the change in volume. But she could keep fighting as long as her abnormal muscles could support her.

Tessou Tsuzuri could remain the scary teacher for a little while longer.

It was all thanks to her magnetic osmotic pressure cell membrane control.

As long as she didn’t collapse and pass out, she could reach out a helping hand to the people who maligned themselves as villains and rushed toward their own doom. She had decided for herself to be the scary teacher, so she couldn’t let anyone see her falling to her knees in weakness.

She didn’t care how much she was feared or how many people tried not to remember her.

As long as she didn’t give up here, even the weakest person who couldn’t protect anyone could become the kind of teacher that could save people’s lives.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

She coughed up blood while swinging her fist around to the side.

She still couldn’t see and didn’t know where Yomikawa was. But that didn’t matter. She could judge the correct direction and distance based on the other woman’s voice. The air was as solid as clay and the frictional heat burned through her right sleeve. Tearing through the air with that much speed and mass would scatter the floating dust and dirt across a fan-like shape like wide-range birdshot.

(The effective range is 40m and the maximum angle is 150 degrees dead ahead. Yomikawa-senpai, this will knock you out no matter how you try to dodge it!!)

Tessou’s resolve popped like a bubble when her deadly fist was stopped prematurely. Without a full swing, she couldn’t produce the scattershot wall.

“?”

For a brief moment, she wondered if Yomikawa was using the same tech. Or did she have some new equipment Tessou wasn’t even aware of?

(It can’t be.)

“Are you not using anything at all? Did you sacrifice your own arm to stop my fist!?”

“Did you think I could carry the burden of so many people’s lives if I wasn’t willing to do that, Tessou?”

That had to be like stopping a large bus by sticking your arm into the rapidly-rotating wheel or axle.

But if that bus was loaded with children and headed toward a cliff, Yomikawa Aiho would not hesitate to sacrifice her arm.

She would do it. She would leap into a storm of bullets if it would save anyone, no matter who.

And she only needed one arm to finish this anyway.

Tessou felt a hand roughly grab her collar and a leg sweep her feet out from under her. A moment later, she lost track of up and down. Just as she realized she had been thrown, her back slammed into the ground and all the oxygen was squeezed from her lungs.

It knocked the breath out of her more than it hurt.

“Do you know what your first and biggest mistake was, Tessou?”

So she wasn’t entirely sure if she was really hearing this voice.

But she thought she heard it just before she passed out.

“You gave up on the children by thinking villains couldn’t become good people. I happen to know one monster who struggled and struggled through so much pain but ultimately escaped that life.”

Part 20

Finally.

It was finally over.

The Anti-Skill Negotiator had her hands cuffed behind her back and was loaded into a car by the adult Anti-Skill officers who had come running. The Anti-Skill woman who had cuffed her was not at all okay. After she confirmed the Anti-Skill Negotiator was restrained, Kamijou saw her collapse.

He couldn’t even get up while Hanatsuyu Youen expressed blatant displeasure with the flesh-colored liquid floating around her.

“That wasn’t enough. I only got to do it once and it only really hit that muscle guy.”

“What’s wrong with that? The less fighting the better.”

“You’re the one that got me all fired up! Don’t tell me you would say that kind of thing to just anyone!”

“O-ow!! Wait, I’m sorry! Don’t send that liquid toward me! I’m not sure if it’s alive or dead, but it’s made from a person, isn’t it!? It’s terrifying!!”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m pulling that bullet out of your gut!!”

“Gwah! Please treat me with more care than that!”

Kamijou desperately apologized while his limbs convulsed. It scared him that he felt so little pain yet his body wouldn’t do as he told it.

“Teacher☆”

The blonde girl ran over with a smile. She held her little hands out and mercilessly leapt at him, burying his face in the warmth of her flat chest, violently smothering him in relief. It was like drinking hot milk after a very long day. He was afraid he would fall asleep right then and there.

“Pwah. Wh-what happened to Shirai Kuroko?”

“The girl saved her. Because you told her to.”

He heard a windy sound and saw the twintails girl appear out of thin air with a modified China dress woman over her shoulder.

“That’s the last of the fugitives. Now I won’t have to work through the night on this.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of how casual she was about it. He was pretty sure Benizome Jellyfish had played an important role behind the scenes in the events of the 29th and that meant she might have played a direct role in whether they lived or died, but it was all so uncertain he didn’t have a real argument.

He was also pretty sure the crickets had moved elsewhere when Hanatsuyu Youen had gathered all of her forces to herself, which was before Alice had rescued Shirai.

“You aren’t going to run away, are you?” he asked.

“Why would I need to?” The Carrier rubbed her cheek against the flesh syrup floating in the air. “Hee hee hee. I’m happy as long as I have Kaai, so I don’t care where we end up living. In fact, an airtight cell sounds perfect. I wouldn’t even need to implant a tracker in her. Now I know she can never escape me. Hee hee hee hee hee hee.”

“Ew, gross. Why are you so clingy, Youen? Kya ha ha. You’re the creepiest person in the world☆”

By this point, even Kamijou Touma had learned that there was no point in trying to understand the dark side. You needed enough mental fortitude to classify these twins as “friendly”.

“Okay…that’s finally everything squared away. Yes!! I so want to get home and take a shower. I’ve only got 49 yen, but I can worry about that after getting some sleep!!”

“Hmm? Are you sure this is everything?”

Alice sounded displeased and hadn’t let go of him.

He looked to her in confusion while she pulled some hedgehog balls from below her apron, stuffed them in a sack, and sat on that.

“Did you ever figure out why Frillsand #G attacked?”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

He had no answer for her.

“…Huh?”

Come to think of it, what had that artificial ghost been doing? She hadn’t been onboard the Overhunting and she hadn’t had anything to do with Anti-Skill Negotiator Tessou Tsuzuri, but she had still played a role in the day’s events. So where was she now?

Did some of the 29th’s storm clouds still hang in the sky?

He had no clear answer. Leaving this unfinished would mean wasting the efforts of the teacher who had fought until she broke her arm and passed out.

He was left speechless by this question, but then he heard something else.

A flat, repeating electronic tone.

He turned his head to see a fluorescent light at one corner of the garbage incinerator grounds. It shined on an old-fashioned device: a payphone in a booth of reinforced glass. It was ringing like a home phone.

He hesitantly approached, opened the creaking door, and looked to the phone. It never stopped ringing no matter how long he waited, so he finally picked up the receiver.

He pressed it to his ear and heard a voice.

“Hi.”

“A-Accelerator?”

He didn’t understand.

He blinked in confusion before finally managing to squeeze out a question.

“Weren’t you arrested?”

“I was. Which is why I’m calling you from prison.” Accelerator sounded bored. “You never should’ve been involved in this mess, but if you’re gonna stick your neck where it doesn’t belong, have the decency to actually end it properly, third-rate.”

“…”

Even over the phone, Kamijou felt the usual tension.

“I’ve been monitoring the events with my demon, but that only tells me so much. Can you fill me in on the details?”

Kamijou nodded, not really understanding what was happening here. Then he realized Accelerator couldn’t see him nodding over the phone and gave a verbal affirmation instead.

“Did you capture all the prisoners who escaped the Overhunting?” asked the boy on the phone.

“Um, yes. We caught Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish. And for some reason, Youen is with her twin.”

“What about the Anti-Skill Negotiator behind the train crash?”

“The Anti-Skill officer who survived Handcuffs, right? Was her name Tessou Tsuzuri? We somehow managed to capture her, so that should settle every-”

“One last question. How much do you know about the conflict between Kihara Hasuu and Frillsand #G?”

“…Eh?”

He had no answer.

What was that about? He knew Frillsand #G, but Kihara Hasuu? His name had been mentioned as an android researcher back in Alice’s world, but what was this about a conflict? He hadn’t shown up yet, so didn’t that mean he had died on the 25th like Drencher and Vivana?

He heard a disappointed sigh from the phone.

But he still had a question.

Tessou Tsuzuri had been threatening dark side villains to get them on her side so she could battle even greater criminals. But if she just captured all of the prisoners who escaped the train crash she caused, she was right back where she started. He had never learned who she was hoping to attack after getting them all on her side.

Could it be?

Could another Handcuffs criminal still be out there? Was that Frillsand #G, or was it someone else? Was that why the Anti-Skill Negotiator had been fighting to gather all the criminals riding that train?

But that still didn’t answer what Frillsand #G had been doing and he hadn’t even met this Kihara Hasuu. And didn’t this gap in information suggest there was some greater depth to the 29th’s dangers?

“That’s right. And speaking of that ghost…”

Things had worked differently from Alice’s world. If she hadn’t been involved in the Overhunting’s crash, then why had she attacked his group?

If he couldn’t come up with an answer, maybe he was looking at this all wrong.

For example, what if she hadn’t been trying to harm them at all and they simply hadn’t been strong enough to withstand her presence? What if she hadn’t meant any harm and had only been appearing to them to ask for help?

“Someone out there still needs help.” New Board Chairman Accelerator gave the answer. “Her name’s Risako. I can’t give you a passing grade if you haven’t found her yet. So get out there and rescue her from Kihara Hasuu.”

Part 21

At the District 7 hospital, the ICU’s visiting rules differed from the ordinary hospital rooms, but not for a good reason. An ICU patient’s condition could worsen and lead to death at any time, so they visitors were never restricted.

Takitsubo Rikou had only left her seat for a short while.

Only five minutes at the most. But when she returned, she found the ICU bed empty.

“Hamazura?”

Between the Lines 4

A voice whispered deep in the darkness below Academy City.

No one knew these depths even existed.

But was this really a voice? It was a lot like starting to find meaning after listening to any long, drawn-out noise, like a deep groan.

“You are weak, which places a greater burden on those around you.”

The words felt like a physical blow as several faces appeared and disappeared in the back of the young girl’s mind.

…The doggy she had met in the sewers and never seen again.

…Vivana Oniguma who had protected her from that big muscle man and later been reported dead.

…Drencher Kihara Repatri who had fallen to a bullet before her eyes.

…The older delinquent boy who had brought her and Sodate-chan to the surface and then been shot by a grownup.

“This will keep happening.”

The girl curled up and held her head in her hands so she couldn’t hear anything.

So she failed to hear the female voice that was weaker than the first voice but still tried to reach her. A grinding sound dragged her away from salvation. The sound of gears locking together and turning a chain.

“If you want to avoid any further sacrifices, you have no choice but to change yourself. Risako-kun, your only option is to make yourself strong.”

At first, that might sound reassuring.

But that was all the more reason to be cautious. The more reassuring the suggestion, the harder it was to emotionally reject it even if it made no sense.

“So use me. As a Kihara, I can make you the strongest person in the entire dark side.”

Whether they were natural or artificial, ghosts did exist.

Ironically, that had been proven by Frillsand #G, who most wanted to protect this young girl.

In other words, death wasn’t necessarily enough to put an end to a true villain’s villainy.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Kamijou Touma: The girl’s teacher. He teaches her all sorts of things.

Accelerator: Academy City’s biggest VIP.

Shirai Kuroko: Judgment girl. She can teleport.

Kihara Hasuu: A bad guy. Like, really bad.

Risako: A lost bunny.

Rakuoka Houfu: Fugitive. Muscular combover guy. Captured.

Hanatsuyu Youen: Fugitive. Uses chemicals.

Benizome Jellyfish: Fugitive. A camera lady. Captured.

Tessou Tsuzuri: A bad Anti-Skill lady. Captured.

Rakuoka Nodoka: A cat ears lady. Captured.

Frillsand #G: An Academy City ghost.