Published at 17th of December 2021 9:05 am

Volume 5, Chapter 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You – Travel.

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

Part 1

Kamijou Touma forgot to breathe.

It happened instantly.

After blinking his eyes once, the middle school girl, Shirai Kuroko, was standing in front of him. He was lucky to even remember the word “teleportation” in that time. But if he relied on that, he would only make things worse for everyone.

The Imagine Breaker power in his right hand would interfere with the teleportation.

So instead, he pushed Alice forward from his lap and raised his voice.

“Go!! Take Alice!”

He didn’t have time to wait for Shirai’s response.

His action must have caught her by surprise because she flinched before she and Alice vanished into thin air. A terrifying roar and impact followed. Kamijou was in the café on the 2nd floor of the Delivery Go Round’s 9th car, but the force of the impact traveled from the flattened first car all the way to the last car in an instant, lifting his feet from the floor. He really was thrown all the way to the neighboring 8th car before he hit the floor again.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He rolled through what looked like a deserted childcare center, breaking through and scattering a plastic jungle gym and slide before coming to a stop.

He had trouble breathing.

He couldn’t believe the horror before his eyes.

But his shock did not come from the pain piercing his body.

“Th-the chicken…” he groaned, forgetting to get up from the floor.

His reusable shopping bag had been thrown from him and the sales items he had bought with his last remaining money were scattered across the floor. The plastic wrap had burst, the soft tray had broken, and the contents were cruelly splattered around. The oatmeal spread across the floor was already soaking up the moisture and getting soggy.

“Eh? Eh? The radish broke? And there’s shards of glass in it all. Wait, why were there mice on this train!? And what is that smushed against the wall there…red cabbage? Nooooo!! The big hard clams were cheaper than the normal ones, but now they’re all broken! And so is the miracle 90yen pack of eggs!? Ah, ahh. Gwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

Holding his head and wailing wasn’t going to change reality.

Clear tears fell from the corners of his eyes.

That was it. He was going to die. He had failed his attempt at the New Year’s Tokyo survival life. He didn’t have it in him to accept this cruel reality. He only had 49 yen left in his wallet, so how was he supposed to replace all of this? How many times had he mentioned that the ATMs didn’t start back up until January 4!? How would he survive the New Year’s season now? Was he going to have to starve starting today!?

He heard a racket from outside.

“Argh!! These people after the high bounties are just getting in the way. Go move them over into a corner or something! We will pursue the fugitives. Uiharu, you check through the camera records and try to track them down that way as best you can!!”

“…”

Kamijou Touma sat up in the deserted space.

Just before the crash, that twintails girl had mentioned a prisoner transport train. And based on her panicked voice, some of the prisoners onboard must have escaped.

That had been the purpose behind the entire incident.

He took a look out the window and nodded.

He didn’t know who they were, but he would make sure they died for this.

And there was a high bounty on their heads? Then he would use that to build himself a house out of chicken and green onion!!

He grabbed just the can of caviar that had survived with only a few dings and stood up like a man possessed.

He was on the second floor of the train, but the metal stairs down appeared to have been destroyed. But he didn’t care. He just needed to reach the platform. He rushed toward a fully broken window.

“I-I am giving them such a punching,” he muttered to himself. “Someone needs to teach them life doesn’t reward food wasterrrrrrrrrrs!!!!!!”

His rage and sorrow exploded out as a great roar and he didn’t even hesitate to jump out the 2nd floor window to the station platform below.

Except the platform was gone.

“Eh?”

This he hadn’t expected.

His mind went blank, but he couldn’t change his course in midair regardless.

“Um, excuse me!?”

The floor below had crumbled away, leaving a hole large enough to swallow up a small truck. He had lost sight of his landing point, but before he could do anything more, gravity took hold and dragged him down toward the pit of hell.

He screamed as he felt his stomach rising.

“Gyahhhhhhhhh!!”

He probably fell two stories’ worth.

The length of the fall had suddenly grown on him like he had casually hopped over a hurdle to find it was actually a balcony railing.

He might break a bone or two from this.

The fear took hold, but then he hit something with a sticky splat.

“???”

He had…survived?

But what was this? With the floor broken through, he had assumed he would find jagged rubble below, but he instead found a pile of black sludge. He appreciated it since it had cushioned his fall, but he would have preferred something he could identify.

(Does this mean the platform melted? You have got to be kidding me. That thing is made of concrete and a steel frame. This isn’t harmful to touch, is it!?)

After some struggling, he managed to extract himself from the sludge pile and rolled away from it.

The regret rushed in after the fact.

When stranded on a mountain or in other emergencies, people’s stress and exhaustion would give them extreme tunnel vision and they would make overly optimistic predictions. For example, they wouldn’t want to be stuck out in the dark after sunset, so they might think they could make their way down the slope if they felt along the nearby trees and watched their step. But if they actually attempted it, they would end up slipping and falling off a cliff.

In hindsight, jumping from the Delivery Go Round’s 2nd floor window just because the stairs were blocked had been a dumb decision. There had to have been plenty of better options, like moving to the next car and searching for some surviving stairs.

The station platform was on an upper level to match the height of the elevated railway, so the lower level was a clean station concourse containing accessways and shops.

However, the number of customers and employees in evidence was unnaturally low.

Was that due to the break alert? The strange sort of convenience store only found in train stations, the standing soba shop, and the mall-like sales area that combined a gift shop with a bento shop were all abandoned. The excessive number of lights felt unusually bright. The way the automatic glass doors opened on their own and the way an announcement repeatedly asked an empty café to download their official app only made the place feel lonelier.

It wasn’t just the train.

Was something still underway on a large enough scale to affect the entire station building?

“…”

Kamijou gulped.

He waved at the security camera on the ceiling, but there was no sign of any adults coming running.

A special train had crashed and the criminals contained inside had escaped. That was enough to sound like a minor fantasy to a high schooler like him, but what if that hadn’t been a coincidence? The station platform was melted. He didn’t know if an esper power or some kind of technology was to blame, but if someone wanted to make sure they escaped, would they really rely on that alone?

(This sounds bad. Maybe I should have stayed put and waited for Alice and that Judgment girl.)

If the culprit had managed to set up this accident, couldn’t they have hidden some tools inside the building? Or maybe they had emergency kits hidden across all 23 districts of the city?

Those could contain money, a change of clothes, false IDs…and maybe even deadly weapons.

He heard a sound.

He could tell the burden on his heart right now was bad for his health.

He was scared. But trying to ignore this would only cause the anxiety in his chest to grow. He slowly turned around and tiptoed toward the sound, being careful not to make any noise. He passed through a gift shop laid out like a luxury supermarket and reached a corner of the corridor. He was pretty sure the sound had come from around that corner. He bit his lip and hesitantly peeked around it.

He saw some coin-operated lockers lined up on the wall.

A girl of about 10 with long black hair stood facing them. But the sound had not been her opening and closing one of the thin metal doors. He could see her pulling a flat business bag from the gap between the bookcase-like sets of lockers.

What was she doing? Why hadn’t she run away with everyone else?

She set the bag on the floor, checked its contents, and then reached for her clothes. It looked like a thick work jumpsuit, but it wasn’t. By the time Kamijou realized that was a prison uniform, she had stripped it off in the middle of the station corridor.

He instinctually looked away from her carelessly exposed skin, but then realized now wasn’t the time to be a gentleman.

He had seen something more concerning.

(What is that? A gasmask and a white coat stained with paint?)

When she put on the coat and fastened the collar so it covered a chest unusually large for her height, it weirdly looked sort of like a yukata. She wore the gasmask on the side of her head like a mask at a shrine festival.

Then she pulled out several test tubes filled with colorful liquids.

He didn’t know what those were, but he could easily imagine they were dangerous chemicals.

It may have been one of them that had melted the steel and concrete station platform into black sludge. This girl had been wearing a prison uniform. He didn’t know what crime had gotten her a ride on that prisoner transport train, but he doubted it was safe to directly sniff at those chemicals. And if they really were only chemicals, then Imagine Breaker wouldn’t be any help.

He couldn’t afford to underestimate her just because she only looked to be 10. A gun held by a baby in a stroller was still a gun and a grenade thrown by an old man with a cane was still a grenade. A tool’s power was a constant, so the correct choice here was to remember her location and get away from here. Then he could pull out his phone and tell Anti-Skill or Judgment what he had seen.

He was nervous, but he was afraid to even gulp.

He held his breath and tried to calmly take a step back.

His butt bumped into something in this deserted world.

“Teacher☆”

“Kyahhhhhhhhh!!!???”

He screamed and immediately regretted it.

Smiling Alice stuck out her small arms and grabbed at him from behind while the mystery chemical girl spun around at the lockers.

The situation was on the move.

And it was headed in a deadly direction.

Part 2

Shirai Kuroko had only taken her eyes off her for a second.

(Argh, where did that blonde girl go!?)

Panic filled her on the station platform.

As much as she disliked that wretched ape, he had left that girl in her care.

She finally heard some sirens approaching in the distance. She had been doing paperwork in the station by pure chance, so it was going to take a while before Anti-Skill could get to work preserving the scene. There was probably an Anti-Skill station in a train station this large, but they were probably overwhelmed helping people evacuate.

The crash between the Overhunting prisoner transport train and the Delivery Go Round shopping train was horrific to behold. The shopping train in particular had a few of its cars bent upwards like an inchworm and its platform doors had broken so they jutted outwards.

She had to try to find the ape who had been left onboard, but at the same time…

“Uiharu, start up a new priority task and share this information with Anti-Skill and Judgment! Put in a search request for a girl named Alice!! She looked to be around 12, she has long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she is wearing what appears to be a costume dress. A short-sleeved dress despite the season. I can’t let her be forgotten in the confusion!!”

“Eh?” replied the girl on the phone. “Can’t you give me a photo, Shirai-san?”

“If you need one, find it in the station or train’s surviving camera footage! It’s too dangerous to leave her unsupervised here!!”

The Overhunting was going to gather most of the attention since it carried dangerous prisoners, but the Delivery Go Round included a café, a restaurant, and even a spa with hoses to supply its hot water, so it was packed full of flammable materials. She couldn’t ignore the crashed train either.

(She didn’t return to the train to search for her friend, did she?)

It seemed unlikely, but it was still a possibility. Shirai couldn’t delay the search and then have the girl get caught in a gas explosion. She carefully walked along the platform and checked through the broken windows to see if anyone was onboard.

Her efforts were wasted and she found no one.

Not Alice and not the ape.

She didn’t notice any sounds or heat sources either.

After walking far enough along the platform, she moved past the Delivery Go Round and reached the Overhunting that had crashed into it. She tilted her head, but if those two weren’t in the shopping train, they may have gone elsewhere.

“Uiharu, what data do you have on the Overhunting?”

“Pretty much just the name. Wow, it’s like the entire train just popped into existence today.”

The front car had been crushed like an empty can, but she heard someone groaning from the driver’s compartment. The damage to the platform door actually helped her here. She couldn’t tell how crushed things were inside, so she couldn’t teleport in. Instead, she searched around the door until she found the emergency release lever.

It didn’t do anything when she turned it, but the heavy metal clunk told her where the hinges were located. She pulled two metal darts from the belts on her thighs and teleported them to destroy the metal hinges. The bent door collapsed out onto the platform.

She pulled the two drivers out and noticed two black synthetic leather holsters at their hips. Those held handcuffs and revolvers.

(They don’t look like Anti-Skill who would be authorized to carry those.)

“Uiharu.”

“I already said I don’t have any data for you.”

The young man groaned and provided a report.

“Ugh…this is a special prisoner transport train.”

“I am aware. You were carrying Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, and Benizome Jellyfish. They were all survivors of Operation Handcuffs, weren’t they? I am from Judgement. I was called here to provide support.”

“I can stand on my own. Please help me organize what information we have. Ow.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. We suddenly lost control of the train. It is true the Overhunting is special and prioritizes manual control over the ordinary ATS system, but that’s why it has multiple safety devices like the air brakes and the EM brakes.”

(EM brakes?)

The older woman was still unconscious. After checking her pulse and breathing, Shirai lay her down on a platform bench and wrapped something like a thick plastic zip tie around the woman’s wrist like a watch. It was a rescue tag that shared its GSP data with the firefighters. The presence of the gun was worrying, but it appeared to be fixed to her with a special strap. Just to be safe, Shirai removed the ammunition, borrowed a tool from the young man, removed the firing hammer from the gun itself, and left it all with the younger driver. She didn’t like leaving it with him, but her training and education weren’t enough to let her carry around a gun and live ammunition.

“Y-you seem awfully comfortable with this,” said the young man.

“I use more dangerous projectiles.”

The Overhunting’s special design could be seen in how everything but the first car remained relatively intact. She even saw some prison guards slowly emerging onto the platform. She was afraid the strange weapon cars would explode, but that fear never came to pass.

(Her name was Alice, wasn’t it? It seems unlikely she would have snuck aboard the prisoner transport train, but you can never say anything for certain when it comes to a curious child.)

“The prisoners were only on the 4th and 5th cars,” groaned the younger driver with a hand on his head.

“Not what I wanted to hear. Those doors appear to be open.”

She checked inside and found a few wheeled cages that reminded her of the ones used to transport animals. Their locked doors sat open and the floor was littered with handcuffs, fetters, and other restraints.

They must have all escaped.

The destruction of the first car had cushioned the rest of the train enough that the prisoners had the strength needed to escape.

Shirai Kuroko checked each name on the tags pasted to the cages.

Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, Benizome Jellyfish.

She narrowed her eyes while picturing the criminals who had been aboard the Overhunting. Each of them had played an important role in Operation Handcuffs.

(Rakuoka.)

She bit her lip.

That former Anti-Skill officer had ultimately been arrested as part of the harmful dark side. During Operation Handcuffs, the bitterness had built in her chest the longer she pursued the criminals with him.

He too had escaped the prisoner transport train.

Had he seen it as an opportunity?

But Shirai made the rational decision.

“No, he isn’t the biggest threat. That would be Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier, who uses other lifeforms to transport harmful substances.”

“Th-three hundred million? Her bounty is well above the rest.” The younger driver stared at the tablet he had kept in an industrial shock-resistant case. The disbelief in his voice told Shirai he had not witnessed Handcuffs. She wouldn’t have wanted to get involved for a hundred times that much.

He looked up with confusion written on his face.

“But she’s only a 10-year-old girl and doesn’t have any special esper power?”

“Did you miss what I said about her using other lifeforms?”

Shirai Kuroko pointed at the large hole in the platform a short distance away. She recognized the dark melted structure. The Carrier had not waited around for law enforcement to make the first move.

“Mosquitos, fleas, ticks, flies, hornets, snakes, rats, crows, stray dogs, black bass, snapping turtles – the list goes on. That monster can control most any urban pest or vermin. That means her weapons are found in every part of the city and her supply is near limitless. With her, you can never assume she has been neutralized just because you have confiscated all of her tools. In a way, she uses the city itself as a weapon.”

“…”

“And there is no controlling her once she has the attractants needed to control animals and the highly toxic chemicals and microbes those animals can carry. The real problem is that she might be able to create those things from the exhaust gasses and waste waters found across the city. If you don’t want that biochemical warfare specialist committing war crimes throughout the city, you need to set up a blockade to keep her from-”

Shirai never finished her sentence.

The platform and the entire station building around it shook violently.

She immediately leaned against the side of the bent platform door. She heard the sparking of severed wires from all around and then she was enveloped in darkness. The lights had gone out across the entire platform.

It was currently 5:20 PM.

This late in the year, it would be dark out by then.

(Hm? I can’t reach Uiharu. But I doubt the base station on the surface is down.)

Shirai Kuroko was isolated down here. She felt her tension rapidly rising.

An explosion didn’t sound like the work of Youen the Carrier who specialized in toxins and bacteria, but during Handcuffs, Shirai had seen her use microbes to produce a methane explosion.

When his tablet lost its signal too, the younger driver complained with the backlight illuminating his face from below.

“Wh-what the hell!? What’s happened now!?”

“Something we would much rather not witness. Unfortunately, we will be forced to do so regardless.”

Part 3

The lights flickered worryingly but ultimately stayed on. Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was finally forced to see the horrors crawling in the depths of Academy City.

It began with a light.

He heard a popping of air far more violent than a bug zapper and saw a white light far more brutal than welding.

“Eh?”

But this did not come from the white coat girl further down the corridor.

The flickering malice came from the side.

He reflexively held his right hand out toward the unidentified threat.

“Teacher, you mustn’t use that.”

Someone grabbed his hand and shoved him to the side.

It was Alice.

A moment later, something brutal indeed shot past in a horizontal line at his chest height. It bent and broke four or five of the thick decorative pillars lined up along the concourse. This wasn’t a strange laser weapon or beam cannon. It only moved in straight lines, but it bent in a zigzag pattern. And it had been launched by a shaky silhouette?

“Ligh-”

After Alice tackled Kamijou out of the way, they both tumbled behind an elevator protected by reinforced glass. Alice was in short sleeves, so the softness of her upper arms reached him directly. The elevator itself was transparent, so it wouldn’t have hidden them if not for a magazine rack covered in free travel brochures. Kamijou sat on the floor staring in disbelief at the scorched empty space where his eyes still saw an afterimage.

He felt a stinging pain in his little finger.

It hadn’t hit him directly, but some kind of secondary effect had discolored the finger a bright red. It was probably burned.

That might not seem like much, but it told him what would have happened if Alice hadn’t protected him.

The pain was minimal, but it meant a lot.

(Imagine Breaker doesn’t work on this!?)

“Lightning?”

For just an instant, he saw a bloody young man sitting on a concrete floor with a smile on his face.

“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

Something scorched the back of his mind like a camera flash.

But he wasn’t sure what it meant. Unlike a dream, it remained so vivid in his mind.

“?”

What was that?

His right hand defense hadn’t worked on the attack or on the afterimage lingering in the back of his mind. Did that meant it could all be explained with ordinary science, like some kind of electrical signal linked to his brain?

He shook his head, pulled his old folk’s phone from his pocket, and held it sideways.

He couldn’t trust his eyes anymore, so he would view his surroundings through the camera app.

The distant silhouette was twisted into something like an S-shape. And for some reason, seven different facial recognition boxes popped up on different parts of it.

In this age where people were forgetting how to even write kanji, it was unusual to lose faith in the answer presented by your phone.

“Wh-what the hell am I even looking at?”

The phone picked up the crackling of electricity. When the phone started converting that into something like a flat Buddhist chant, he immediately switched off the screen. He shoved the phone into his pocket and felt an odd heat on his thigh. It creeped him out as much as having someone’s severed hand in his pocket.

He held Alice protectively against his side and she shrieked in delight.

Something was very wrong here, but the destructive power of that electricity was real. The lightning itself and the concrete and rebar it blasted into the air could both tear large chunks from his body.

“What now, teacher?”

Alice never seemed to notice the danger despite having the uncanny sixth sense of a small child, so she was still smiling innocently. Maybe she could see some deeper meaning behind all this, or maybe she was just enjoying being held by him.

“Shush, Alice. That thing already knows where we are, but I don’t want to give away our timing from our breathing or something.”

“Is this a secret? Wow…a secret for just the two of us.”

He wasn’t sure how, but the way she held her hands to her cheeks suggested he had tugged very forcefully at her heartstrings.

He heard something, so he held Alice close, held his breath, and pressed against the magazine rack by the elevator wall. He slowly poked his head out around the corner to look further down the corridor.

There was definitely a silhouette there.

It was wavering side to side.

“…is F…san…chan. I am…hind you.”

It was nearly impossible to make out at first.

The mass of noise was too messy to recognize as a voice.

But his instincts screamed that he couldn’t ignore it. Even though anyone in Academy City should scoff at the very thought of something like this.

“Hel…thi…rill…d #G…curr…be…you”

He couldn’t do it.

No one could claim this was an illusion, they were imagining it, or they had misinterpreted what they had seen and heard.

A doll-like woman wore a special dress that clung to her figure but spread out around her ankles.

Her curvy body and blonde twintails were at odds, giving her an unbalanced appearance.

Her head swayed irregularly side to side with long bangs covering her eyes.

The hem of her blue dress was absorbed by the base of a destroyed pillar. No, that wasn’t it. Her unsteady feet were buried in it. She was passing right through the solid object.

Anyone who saw this would reach the same conclusion.

Yes.

No one could say how this could exist in a world ruled by solid physical laws and inundated with artificial tools, but this was undoubtedly something not of this world.

Or more bluntly, a ghost.

“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”

Kamijou knew this had to be bad.

That phrase acted as some sort of trigger. A much worse trigger than the words “kill” and “die” that back alley delinquents used so habitually. He sensed killer intent passing right by him after being released along a path straighter than a bullet.

It wasn’t aimed at him or Alice.

Which meant…

(The white coat girl in front of the lockers!?)

Grinning Alice had asked him “what now” earlier.

This ghost had launched an electric current powerful enough to break through several concrete pillars, even if they were only decorative, and she had also passed through a wall. Worse, his Imagine Breaker hadn’t worked against her attack. That proved she was not an occult being', but that was no reason to relax.

“Hee hee. That’s a ghost. Since she’s making an appearance at this busy time of year, could she be a Kallikantzaros?”

“You’re kidding, right? Are you saying she looks like a ghost to you too?”

He didn’t know what that Kalli-whatever was, but she had definitely said “ghost”. This could not be described with a different word like hallucination, hologram, or retinal projector. It was one of those things where “you know it when you see it” and he now had confirmation that it wasn’t just him who thought so.

But a ghost? Most likely, no one had an exact definition there. But since she was walking through Academy City, could she have been artificially created with the power of science!?

“You have got to be kidding me. Finding a scientific explanation for a ghost doesn’t make this one any less dangerous. In fact, that only makes her more of a threat for me!”

“Mhh, that dress-up doll has really big boobs. Finding a dress that fits her can’t be easy.”

Alice was worried about something else entirely.

This ghost existed here as a scientific, physical phenomenon. That objectivity only made her more dangerous. This wasn’t just the placebo effect and it wasn’t just an illusion or hallucination meant to kill him from shock. She caused very real harm.

There was no point in trying to fight and eliminate her.

Losing would mean his death, but winning wouldn’t accomplish anything. And if that victory meant destroying something or killing someone, then he would be seen as a common criminal. It felt silly to bring it up when discussing a ghost, but that was how real incidents worked. It was all a waste of time. The best plan was to find cover and escape outside the station as quickly as he could.

And since his right hand didn’t work, Kamijou had only one option in mind.

“Alice.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s get out of the station to escape this ghost. You can see the sign pointing to the north exit, right? We’ll run straight down the concourse following those signs and get out of here as fast as possible. But I’m taking that girl with me!!”

He grabbed a bundle of free travel brochures from the nearby magazine rack and tossed it to the other side.

With a dreadful zapping noise, a high-voltage current was released in the wrong direction, shattering a bakery’s window. I’m damaging people’s property already!? lamented Kamijou as he tensed in preparation. A rotting stench reached him from a smoking flatscreen LCD monitor and the speaker on the ceiling swayed side to side like it was cackling. Something was very wrong here, but he couldn’t let it slow him down.

Don’t falter. Shake it off. If they didn’t use this noise as their cue, they would never manage to leave this spot.

“Alice!! Go!!”

Alice’s unnatural affection for him worked in his favor here. He gestured for her to go and she looked delighted to start running with the white fluffball on the back of her apron shaking. He pulled away from the elevator wall too and ran across the concourse. Everything around him scared him at this point because he never knew what would carry the high-voltage current to him. Several of the pillars had broken, so it was even possible the ceiling would collapse without warning. He couldn’t even trust the reinforced concrete. It felt like he had been swallowed up into another world entirely.

Their goal was the ticket gate for the north exit, which was located about 50m away, but Kamijou did not take the most direct route. He instead approached the wall, bringing him toward the coin-operated lockers. He wanted to reach the 10-year-old girl in a white coat stained with colorful paint. That was why he had put Alice down.

He charged in headfirst.

The girl’s surprised face grew to fill his vision.

He spread his arms and rushed at the girl by the lockers in what amounted to a headfirst slide more than a tackle.

And a moment later, he passed right through her.

The girl’s silhouette crumbled away.

The shoulders that looked so slender they would break if he held them too tight, the chest much too large for her age, and the young face that wore a cruel smile surprisingly comfortably all faded away.

He lost his balance like he had crashed into a pile of snow or sand and he collapsed to the floor before he could figure out what happened.

“Eh?”

His mind went entirely blank.

The 10-year-old girl simply wasn’t there. Nor was there a large LCD panel or anything like that. The image came apart into countless small specks that crawled all over his hair and skin and even got in his mouth.

“Ew!? Peh, peh. The hell? Why bugs!?”

Part 4

Hanatsuyu Youen had been cautious.

Of course she had. The 10-year-old girl with a prison uniform resembling a thick work jumpsuit was pressed against the exit of a station convenience store located right next to the lockers.

She hadn’t been careless enough to march on over and collect her emergency supplies right away. She had instead created a 3D image of herself using the bugs and pests she controlled with synthetic nectar and chemical compounds and then kept an eye out for any possible pursuers.

(Dragonflies and clearwing moths are just two examples of insects with clear wings. The human eye is easily fooled if you can bend light. So by using the transparency of their wings, it isn’t hard to display an image of myself a short distance away. Combine that with animal fur and feathers and, similar to an AR fitting room, I can even display clothing that isn’t really there.)

Simply put, she had in fact removed her prison uniform, but not in front of the lockers. The white coat and gasmask had been additional data she created by adding extra colors on top of the 3D image created from reflected light. Jewel beetles and morpho butterflies were just two examples of creatures that used structural coloration to manipulate light like the grooves of a CD. If she wanted to, she could display an adult version of herself or even a giant version who towered over the skyscrapers.

However.

This situation went well beyond anything she had expected.

First of all, what was that ghost?

She knew the Overhunting’s crash was no accident and someone had caused it on purpose. So whether she stayed on the train or tried to escape, she couldn’t escape that person’s plans if she didn’t make a real effort to do so.

But what was this?

She had been expecting to be the target of Academy City’s higher ups, Anti-Skill, or some other goody-goody spouting nonsense about justice and hoping to score some points, but this came as a complete surprise.

If anything, this supernatural being reeked of the shadows just like she did.

(This isn’t just an image. Could they have been a part of Handcuffs too?)

Hanatsuyu Youen had not seen the madness on December 25 through to the end. She and her twin Kaai had tapped out early in District 18, so she didn’t know the full picture. This thing may have reached a deeper darkness on that day.

But more than that, what was wrong with that incomprehensible pointy-haired boy!?

He was the exact opposite.

He was like a bright and shining sun, so she feared she would get burned if she approached too carelessly. He had just tackled the false image she had placed in front of the lockers, but surely he hadn’t been trying to protect a complete stranger from that artificial ghost’s attack, right?

The atmosphere changed.

The sticky darkness was cleared away.

“Eww!? I won’t deny I was a little excited to see a naked girl outside all of a sudden, but did she have to be an illusion filled with bugs!? Is this some kind of divine punishment? Peh peh. Not in the mouth!! They’re so scaly!! Ugh, bleh, bleh!!”

“Hee hee. The girl wants to hug you too☆”

Youen could not believe what she was seeing.

The mystery high school boy was writhing on the floor and a picture book blonde girl named Alice was leaping at him with a beaming smile and arms spread. She didn’t seem to care he was crawling with bugs.

Then Youen’s eyes met the boy’s.

This had all been a shock, but she had still been careless.

And. Still swarmed with clear-winged creatures and a picture book girl, he yelled to her from the floor.

He directed no anger or fear her way.

“Cough, cough!! Y-you there. I don’t know what’s up with that ghost or these bugs, but this place is dangerous!! The north exit is right there, so get out of here if you can still run!!”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure how to react.

He was serious.

This dyed-in-the-wool idiot was telling a prisoner he had never met before to escape. He didn’t even seem to realize she was the one who had chemically gathered the bugs to create that false image.

Her twin Kaai wouldn’t have hesitated to give an additional order that decomposed his entire body. Kaai shuddered with joy when she defiled herself by accepting the city’s corruption, so she hated nothing as much as an embodiment of the sort of hotblooded masculinity that forced his fastidious idea of justice onto everyone else.

But Youen was not Kaai.

She had always wanted them to melt away together, but Kaai had already left her. And not because some third party had torn them apart. Kaai had left of her own free will.

(…)

Youen bit her small lip.

She thought a moment about why her twin had left her.

“Okay, fine!!”

She sprinkled around a chemical compound made from the wastewater found around here and sent another command to those decomposers. With a sound like adzuki beans rolling inside a tilted box, she sent the swarm of bugs away from the mystery boy and toward the electrified artificial ghost. She put her prisoner uniform back on while shouting to the boy.

“This way, normal person. If you don’t want to die, then grab that business bag and coat and follow me!!”

Something so small could still alter someone’s destiny.

Part 5

The situation was on the move.

The clear-winged bugs swarming Kamijou peeled away from him like iron sand being drawn to a magnet. The creepy, spine-tingling feeling immediately vanished.

“Don’t go, buggies!”

For some reason, Alice reached her small hands out after them. On closer inspection, the insects fluttering in front of her were a type of moth. It was hard to believe, but were fairy tale girls not afraid of bugs? Kamijou grabbed her wrists to keep her from accidentally crushing the bugs in her grasp.

He had heard someone ask him to follow her.

He grabbed the requested items and obeyed.

“Let’s go, Alice!!”

“Okay!”

It was faster to hold smiling Alice under his arm than to pull her along by the hand. She flailed her arms and legs the entire time, but she was clearly enjoying herself. On his way to the station convenience store’s entrance, he crashed into the black-haired little girl in a colorful prison uniform. They collapsed inside and landed in a pile.

A high-voltage current shot by like an optical weapon, blowing away a vending machine and capsule toy machine in front of the store and shattering all of the windows. Kamijou’s mind dulled as the fear of death took over, but that actually helped keep him moving. Maybe a paranormal phenomenon had caused the air conditioning to malfunction, but he didn’t have time to worry about the warm air that felt like the inside of someone’s mouth. They crouched low as they cut across the inside of the store, pushed open a staff only door with a shoulder, and escaped into the staff only space in the back. He was scared, so he wanted the unfamiliar girl’s opinion on the matter.

“Do you have any idea what that ghost woman is!? When I aimed my phone at her, the facial recognition went haywire!!”

“Sigh. This is Academy City and she seems electrical, so I would suspect some kind of virus or cyber attack.”

Could that really explain all of this?

The attacks that looked like ultra-high-voltage electricity seemed more like strange masses of data to him. His malfunctioning phone and the images that appeared in his head when it shocked him seemed like a small part of what was happening here.

“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

What was that partial phrase burned into the back of his mind? Who was that bloody young man he had seen?

It was like the ghost pursuing them didn’t realize she was leaking some kind of message.

As far as he could tell, being hit by Frillsand #G’s lightning attacks burned a scene into the back of your mind. If that artificial ghost couldn’t converse in the normal fashion, that might be one of the few ways she had of conveying information. But all of this was speculation. None of it seemed worth stepping in front of that high-voltage current that could easily cause his entire body to burst.

They still weren’t safe. The back of a convenience store was a curious place for Kamijou who had no part-time work experience, but the rows of drinks kept behind the glass doors apparently continued on back to here. The cans and bottles would slide down a gentle slope to restock the shelves.

The high-voltage current pierced right through those glass doors and plastic bottles. It was on a collision course.

“Ugh!?”

He groaned and felt a pain in his heart, but he belatedly realized nothing had happened to him.

Something was dancing through the cramped space. It was floating in the air as if to protect Alice who he held under his arm, but what was it? A weapon? An oar? It was a long flat panel painted pink.

“A cricket bat,” muttered Youen in a puzzled voice. “Were you hiding that under your apron?”

A second and third blast of electricity flew their way, but the bat(?) soared this way and that to block them with sparks flying. Every time, pink feathers scattered from the bat and it squawked like a bird. At times, the oar-shaped bat’s outlines started to distort.

Kamijou had not seen it emerge, but if Youen was to be believed…

“Um, hey.”

“What do you need, teacher?”

“Alice, are you doing this?”

“?”

She smiled and tilted her head in his arm.

Bending at all would be nearly impossible with that large board under her apron and he hadn’t noticed her having any trouble moving before. Had she actually pulled it out at some other time like with a stage magician’s handkerchief, or could she manipulate space like Shirai Kuroko? He couldn’t say when he didn’t know anything about Alice.

Regardless, they couldn’t stay here. Deflecting the attacks wasn’t the same thing as shutting them off at the source. With another earsplitting boom, a beam of light shot right past them and scorched the wall.

“Yikes!!”

“It’s electricity. That means we need to avoid anywhere that’s flooded. This way.”

In that case, Kamijou didn’t like the idea of any water on the floor at all or any twisted wires. He also wanted to avoid stepping on the broken glass. He never really thought about how sturdy the soles of his shoes were.

But he also had a more fundamental question.

“Who are you? I’m super afraid of the answer, but isn’t that a prison uniform?”

“I am Hanatsuyu Youen. I am glad you don’t recognize me because it means you’re one of those ignorant normal people. One piece of advice: do not search my name online. You will regret it if you do. Checking the news articles won’t be too bad, but if you dig deeper than that, your search history might get you put on a watchlist of dangerous individuals.”

With a cruel smile that looked weirdly at home on her face, Youen crouched low and approached another metal door. It apparently led to a corridor for workers to transport supplies. The narrow windowless concrete corridor felt so much like an underground tunnel that it was easy to forget how far above the ground they were.

Kamijou set down Alice so she could walk alongside him and she spoke to him with a smile.

“You seem accustomed to electric attacks, teacher.”

She wasn’t wrong since he happened to know an electric girl with a short temper, but he had never imagined that girl’s dysfunctional communication style would one day save his life from something as crazy as a ghost.

“Ideally, we could escape outside the station with this corridor not found on the public diagrams, but I doubt it will be that easy. Whether or not we can defeat her, we need to be ready to break past that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” suggested Hanatsuyu Youen, sounding only mildly concerned.

Then Kamijou heard a rustling sound.

He looked over to see the black-haired girl of around 10 had unzipped her thick prison uniform and stripped it off in the middle of the corridor.

She did it so naturally he nearly overlooked it, but then he jumped.

“Whoa!? Wh-what the hell are you doing!?”

“Just return that coat and mask. Oh, and the bag.”

“So there really was a girl naked outside? It wasn’t just a weird hologram made with bug wings?”

“I guess that was a horrific way for it to end for you. You can overwrite the memory with this.”

He couldn’t tell how serious she was as she pulled something like a thick belt from her business bag. It looked like the ammunition for a machinegun in an action movie, but it instead contained countless test tubes carrying colorful liquids.

Alice jumped up from behind Kamijou and (imperfectly) covered his eyes and spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“S-she is shorter than the girl but still has big boobs!?”

“Heh heh. Sexy, aren’t I?”

Youen wrapped the belt around her body (which was unnaturally curvy for a girl of her age), pulled the white coat’s collar together like a yukata, and used a medical corset to fasten it in place like a thick sash.

“There, now I’m ready to fight. And the color of the reagents suggests the chemicals are unaltered.”

“Really?”

“I don’t have to worry about money either. Cash is easily acquired by selling rare insects in violation of the Washington Convention. Or I could soak some random weeds in hallucinogenic insect venom and sell it in the back alleys for at least 100 thousand yen a gram. Heh heh. I have everything I need to earn some running away money.”

“Why do you have to add these lengthy and very concerning explanations?”

It might have been cute if she wore a black lace eyepatch and gothic lolita fashion, carried a “demon sword” decorated with black roses, and was at the age where kids loved Legendary Ultimate Eternal Almighty Magic more than food, but this girl didn’t seem so harmless. Youen wasn’t trying to steal the initiative away from an older boy like Kamijou. She was speaking to herself and checking over each of her abilities to ensure she would be safe.

“Sigh. I thought I was over this, but now that I’m out in the city, there’s so much I want to eat. Like Red Town’s kiwi gyoza.”

“Is Los Angeles just taking over my life now? I don’t have many good memories of that city.”

Anyway, they needed to get outside.

This hidden corridor had no windows and it took a few right-angle turns along the way. It was probably laid out to weave between the rectangular stores bordering the concourse. The twists and turns made it hard to see very far ahead, so they were forced to nervously peak around the corners. Fortunately, they never found any kind of ambush.

After a few turns, they came across something different: a metal shutter and a human-sized metal door alongside it.

Kamijou’s face lit up and he approached it.

“There, that’s it! We can get outside from here!!”

“?”

But one of Youen’s eyebrows shot up like she had felt her phone vibrating in her cleavage. She chose one of the colorful test tubes and pulled it from within her coat. She viewed the surface of the neon yellow liquid inside.

“Wow, it’s rippling,” said Alice in delight.

“Microwaves? No, the reagent’s coloration colloid particles are reacting, so it must be terahertz waves. That’s not good. Hey, you! Get away from that shutter immediately!!”

“?”

For some reason, Youen glared harshly at the concrete next to the shutter instead of the shutter itself. Kamijou had taken a step ahead of her, so he looked back her way in confusion.

Just then, two loud noises tore into the thick security shutter.

The cause appeared to be a pair of metal darts.

The destruction was focused on the top of the shutter. The upper left and right. That destroyed either the device to roll up the shutter or the latches holding it in place because the shutter dropped to the floor like a dramatic unveiling ceremony.

The view outside opened up.

A girl with twintails stood in front of them wearing strange goggles over her eyes.

“Who is this girl?” shouted Alice on reflex. “She has strong pervert energy!!”

“At the very least, I’m not as weird as you and your short sleeves this time of year!!”

She twirled the short metal darts rapidly between her fingers, keeping them in constant motion.

“I was right to leave that driver back at the platform.” That middle school girl – Shirai Kuroko of Judgment – readied several metal darts that could destroy even the toughest and strongest material when she teleported them through space. “Hanatsuyu Youen!! You are under arrest for escaping custody and on suspicion of property damage to the station building!!”

Terahertz waves were special electromagnetic waves that could be used to scan through objects, so they were used in airports in place of magnetic metal detectors and X-ray scanners that could cause health problems. The special waves had an extremely high frequency and a nature midway between light and radio waves, so they could easily search out the number and locations of people on the other side of a wall.

No toy could be so dangerous in the hands of a teleporter who could ignore all three-dimensional restrictions to directly attack any point in space. Currently, there was no hiding from Shirai Kuroko.

The situation could hardly have been worse, but Youen actually smiled savagely and shoved Kamijou to the side. Her other hand held several test tubes full of colorful liquids.

Before she even popped the rubber caps off with her thumb, the city’s shadows were already crawling through the ceiling duct and the drain at the edge of the floor.

“My, my. You survived December 25 but still didn’t learn a single thing from the darkness?”

“Do not attempt to resist. My darts can break through any and all defenses.”

“Can they? That inability to ‘strike with the back of the blade’ as it were sounds like trouble for a justice exhibitionist like you. I doubt you use those goggles all the time, so how long does the battery last? A few minutes perhaps? But I’m one of the bad guys, so I won’t hesitate. You really should have considered what it means to oppose the Carrier who controls every last urban pest and vermin. Oh, right. You had to tap out back on the 25th, didn’t you? Abandoning your partner in the process.”

“Hanatsuyu Youen!!”

“You stole Kaai from me. Did you think I would just let you get away with that? No matter how powerful your attack is, destroying individual points isn’t enough to hold back a torrent of death. I will sweep you away with a solid wall☆”

They both held deadly weapons at the ready and they both stepped forward as if to provoke the other.

Kamijou didn’t like the look of this. This wasn’t a clash between a sword and a shield. It was sword against sword. When two people who protected themselves with a deadly force clashed and neither side got scared and put their weapon away, there was no stopping a battle where one side or the other ended up in a pool of their own blood.

Even if they were only trying to defend themselves and had no intention of killing the other.

Even if they would look down at their bloodstained hands and let out a bloodcurdling wail of sorrow once it was all over.

He couldn’t let this happen. He had to find some way of stopping it.

(Oh.)

He wasn’t sure why he made the decision he did.

But the moment after he shoved Youen aside, the metal dart appeared out of thin air and stabbed into his body.

Part 6

The point of scorching heat rapidly spread until his entire body was on fire.

Kamijou collapsed to the ground. He clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t hold in the scream. His body felt like a vortex of agony, so he wasn’t even sure where the injury was on him.

“Gah, ahhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He couldn’t even get up and the hand holding his shoulder was mostly a reflexive thing. It was only then that he realized the metal dart had pierced his shoulder.

The disgusting feeling of the metal sticking in where it didn’t belong was more powerful than the simple pain.

Hanatsuyu Youen’s jaw dropped as she stared at him screaming and shedding meaningless tears. Shirai Kuroko pushed her terahertz goggles up to her forehead and rushed over.

Alice may not have understood the gravity of the situation because she laughed and mimicked his screams in genuine delight.

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing, you ape!?”

“Don’t ask me. But if you feel even a twinge of regret after seeing this blood, then stop teleporting those things at people. You’re both using way too much deadly force! Why does Academy City insist on bringing everyone closer to death the higher you go!? I’m starting to think it’s the ordinary Level 0s who are the safest and most at peace!!”

Meanwhile, Youen finally regained her composure and whistled with her hands clasped behind her head.

“Wow, this wasn’t my fault. Maybe I should go tattle to the teachers.”

“You villain!!”

“Here’s the thing, justice exhibitionist. If you don’t want him to die because of you, then you’d better step aside right now. I’ll fix this silly blunder of yours.” Youen held a hand to the center of her unnaturally large chest and winked. “If you need sterilization or disinfection, I can produce some ethanol or Bifidobacterium. If you need a pain relief chemical, I can extract it from a mosquito or tick. The quickest way to stop bleeding is to control the coagulation and sewing up a blood vessel requires some sturdy animal thread, right? There are so many options there, from silkworm silk to spider silk. The silkworm is praised as the most plentiful beneficial bug in the world, but it’s really just a grotesque moth larva. This is sounding a lot like my area of expertise, isn’t it?”

“You…?”

Shirai Kuroko couldn’t find the words.

She seemed to know Youen form somewhere and it appeared to come as a complete shock that Youen would choose to save an injured person’s life.

However…

“N-no!! Unlicensed medical procedures are against the law! Especially if we are talking about unhygienic surgery using urban pests and vermin!!”

“Sigh. Yet again, justice proves it kills more people than us villains ever could. I can’t imagine why this softhearted idiot would protect me, but this means I owe him twice. And I don’t care what you say – I’m not going to let him die until I’ve repaid him with interest.”

“…”

“Paying back your debts sounds like a system unrelated to good and evil to me.”

The two girls’ gazes clashed while they crouched on either side of collapsed Kamijou.

But they didn’t have all day.

Kamijou was still groaning in agony from the deep wound and the unsettling feeling of the metal in his shoulder, but he still managed to reach out an empty hand to draw Youen’s attention by tapping her on the side of the hip.

He couldn’t get his voice out even though the wound was in his shoulder.

His position lying on the floor had allowed him to notice something before the others.

The artificial ghost’s face had just appeared out from a nearby concrete wall.

Whether it was natural or artificial, that was a real ghost. That meant the laws of physics might not apply. But could she really just pass through solid walls? That was cheating in a different way from teleportation. A foe that could do that without warning could sneak up on even by the most experienced combat veteran!!

Did Shirai and Youen even notice the bug zapper sound?

Unlike with the train crash, there wasn’t time to leave Alice and Youen with the teleporter.

Frillsand #G released a massive high-voltage current in all directions.

The white light was brighter than welding at close range and the rumble of the concrete walls and ceiling coming down shook the boy’s eardrums.

“Shi…rai!!”

All he could do was shout her name and give her a shove.

A moment later, something blurred and he saw another scene on top of reality. He wasn’t sure why, but the phone in his pocket heated up so much he feared it would burn him.

He had misinterpreted what happened last time. It wasn’t being hit by the high-voltage current that sent the strange hallucination into his mind. Yes, his phone and the station’s devices hadn’t malfunctioned because they received a direct hit from that thick beam of electricity.

The entire area around the artificial ghost was faintly electrified.

(My…hair? So that’s it. Static electricity or something is surrounding the entire surface of my head.)

The scene played out in hellish slow motion, but he still had no way of avoiding the ghost’s attack. Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate it. It was possible he could reduce the risk of death from the agonizing shock if he let the hallucination take over. Even if it only increased the odds he could get back up and fight back next time.

A moment later, the mass of high-voltage electricity pierced straight through the center of Kamijou Touma’s body.

Part 7

An old man’s voice rang through a dizzyingly vast but suffocatingly claustrophobic concrete space.

“The Vanishing Tunnel does not actually exist.”

He was answered by a young man who seemed threatened and driven to the edge.

“Do you want my research notes on Frillsand #G?”

Whose memory was this?

It wasn’t the old man’s or the young man’s. Neither one seemed to consider the presence of whoever’s eyes were watching them. Like they thought that person had already left the scene.

Maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.

The scene felt like a dream. Like the viewer didn’t have the ability to interfere in what they were watching.

“I’m no barbarian.”

Maybe that was why that person could only watch. Even though they knew the scene was headed toward disaster.

“A few of them.”

The old man pointed toward several small children in gym clothes. In the realm known as the dark side, those lives would be consumed in the name of combat or research.

“Just select a few at random.”

The young man had challenged the city’s darkness in order to protect them.

He had even pretended to be a Kihara to bolster his insufficient strength.

Even giving physical form to a pipedream like an artificial ghost and finetuning it as a weapon may have been a part of that goal.

So.

Even if he was backed up to the precipice of death, he had only one possible answer here.

“Go to hell, you son of a bitch.”

The observer had known from the beginning how this would end.

Finally, a dry gunshot rang out before their eyes.

They couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Not one thing.

Part 8

The ringing noise filling Kamijou Touma’s mind rapidly faded and reality rushed back in.

The high-voltage current might have actually stopped his heart for the few seconds his sense of time had been out of order.

“Gah!!”

The white light was replaced by color.

Sound crept back into the great pressure.

His limbs trembled. If he didn’t clench his teeth, he was afraid his convulsions would make him bite off his own tongue.

Something was messing with his mind. This was very bad. He had underestimated the risk. If this kept happening, he was afraid he would lose track of what was his own memory, what was a meaningless hallucination, and what was external data placed in his head.

In the instant of the blast, his senses had been so confused he forget whether he was standing up or lying down. Everything felt fake, like he was swimming through a strange liquid. But even in that state, what little of his mind was still functioning worked to rejoin reality.

The destruction of the concrete wall was very real.

However, that was not the result of the electric storm released from Frillsand #G’s body.

“Gwoahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

A deep roar shook the ground below them.

The concrete wall across from the one the ghost had emerged through was smashed apart by some great force. It must have been a punching fist or a tackling shoulder. The giant mass of muscle that emerged grabbed Frillsand #G and smashed through the opposite wall to disappear again. The attack made it easy to forget this was a straight corridor. It felt more like a crash at an intersection.

But aside from that, Kamijou forgot all about the pain in his shoulder while lying on the floor.

He was truly shocked.

That had been nothing but muscle.

Pure muscle had overpowered a scientific ghost?

What even was that monster? It looked like someone had taken the body of a storybook ogre and pasted on the head of a skinny middle-aged man with a combover and glasses. There probably were girls who read shoujo manga as a child and honestly wanted a sparkly guy who was disproportionally tall for the size of his handsome face, but there was no way anyone wanted that macho body with a tiny middle-aged head on top.

Yet someone seemed to recognize that otherworldly image.

Shirai Kuroko rubbed her eyes and grimaced before shouting into the hole in the wall.

“Rakuoka Houfu!! What do you think you’re doing!?”

She was only answered by repeated flashes of light and deep zapping sounds coming from the hole. The battle must have been fairly one-sided. A vending machine equipped with AI and a camera malfunctioned such that a female voice kept repeating “Facial recognition failed. Please take a step back.” while drink bottles spewed from the bottom.

Alice approached dazed Kamijou with a smile. She bent over and rubbed the top of her little blonde head against his stomach. The two pointy curls that resembled animal ears actually hurt a fair bit.

“Teacher.”

“Yes, that girl’s intuition is correct. The ghost is the greatest threat, so escaping the station is our top priority if we want to survive.” Youen spoke on Alice’s behalf. “I say we let the justice exhibitionist play her stupid role while we do the smart thing and get the hell out of here. Can you stand? If not, I can surround you with bees or ants and force you onto your feet with them. Go, creepy-crawly powered suit☆”

“No need!!” he insisted, springing to his feet. Having tens of thousands of ants and bees covering him too thoroughly for cutaneious respiration and tugging his arms and legs around like a puppet was the stuff of nightmares. But it turned out intense fear worked great to eliminate less-important pain and suffering. He doubted his sanity was going to last long like this, though.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going!?”

“Tch. The goody-goody freak noticed. But an emergency evacuation comes first right now!!”

They hurried him along, but Youen and Alice were too small to lend Kamijou a shoulder. He was forced to clench his teeth and walk forward under his own power.

They had to get through the broken shutter and outside the station.

Then they could escape this deadly nightmare.

Or so he thought.

After hearing a sharp “zing!!”, they ducked back toward building.

“What?”

Kamijou noticed orange sparks and a shallow scrape in the asphalt near his feet.

Someone was firing on them from a distance.

Part 9

Kamijou’s group weren’t the only ones shocked.

(What is that? A flamingo bat? That animal ears girl must be some kind of weirdo to choose a non-baseball bat in this country.)

The sniper wore a cowboy hat and a red China dress. You couldn’t find that kind of clothing at an ordinary store, so she must have stolen it back from the confiscated items being transported along with her in the Overhunting. She gulped at what she assumed that picture book dress girl must have done. A pink oar-like object had floated into the air and blocked the ricocheted bullet.

(Is she an esper, or is that a next-generation weapon? No, I can worry about the exact definition later! I just hope it isn’t something truly incomprehensible like that Coin of Nicholas.)

She lay on her stomach atop a store building on the other side of a major road from South District 7 Station. A semiauto sniper rifle’s stock was pressed against her shoulder and a plastic case bearing the Anti-Skill logo sat nearby.

(Sigh. Anti-Skill must not get paid very much. Wait, do they even get a special bonus beyond their ordinary teacher’s pay?)

A whirring motor hovered overhead.

“Yeah, these drones are more convenient than I expected. I honestly thought anything was fine as long it had a camera and could store images.”

She used a mirrorless multifunction scope that displayed both the moisture and EM waves in the air to check around the destroyed metal shutter again, but she displayed a different window at the same time. With those small drones, she wouldn’t miss the crucial moment even if it happened inside the giant closed room that was the station building.

“You can’t tempt a scoop junkie like me with such a juicy incident. Now I’ve just got to get a really shocking pic☆”

Yes. Benizome Jellyfish was a paparazzo who was willing to kill if it would get her what she wanted and nothing would ever change that. She even licked her lips as she kept whispering to herself.

“Don’t give me that. I can’t have you escaping to safety, you little chicks. I went to the trouble of hiding out with my camera at the ready, after all. I’ll give you some chaos to start with, but I need to you to grow this into an incident with a shockingly high body count☆”

Part 10

More orange sparks scattered from the asphalt. This time, it was less than 30cm from Kamijou’s shoe. Shirai shouted “Benizome”, which he assumed to be a name.

The mysterious sniper fire kept them from leaving the station.

“Th-this is bad.” Kamijou had gone entirely pale. “And the worst part is I’m barely even questioning the presence of a real sniper rifle here in Japan.”

“Wow, it’s already night outside. The girl wants to spend the night with her teacher. She wants to talk about things she can’t tell anyone else!!”

Alice rejoiced for entirely unrelated reasons, so he grabbed the back of her collar to restrain her while walking back into the station building. He was afraid she would run out into the sniper fire with a big smile.

There were two large holes in the corridor walls. Sparking light came from one, suggesting the battle between the ghost and the muscles was still ongoing. That meant it would safer to try the other hole, the one Rakuoka Houfu had come from.

But Youen was still calm enough to think rationally. Which he found unbelievable.

“The accuracy of those shots suggests the sniper can see the moisture and electricity in the air. Bullets weren’t exactly rare in Operation Handcuffs, so I would rate them a lower-middle threat maybe? The biggest threats were all bizarre nonsense.”

“You are imagining things,” insisted Shirai. “It is the 29th. That nightmare ended on the 25th!!”

“For example, this justice exhibitionist’s teleportation. But I never saw that ghost back then.”

Could they confuse the sniper with Youen’s 3D images? No. No matter how many false images they created, it was still up to luck who the sniper actually targeted. That wouldn’t eliminate all risk of the girls being shot.

The hole in the wall led to a shower room. That seemed like an odd thing for a train station, but it may have been for the station workers. They couldn’t return home in their uniforms, so maybe they needed a place to change and freshen up. With the wall broken through, it was impossible to tell where the general public was and wasn’t supposed to go.

They walked across the tile floor and found a locker room. There was a bench with a back, so Kamijou finally got to sit down.

Low tremors continued to shake the floor.

Hanatsuyu Youen was focused on his shoulder.

“I should probably treat your shoulder wound now.”

“Eh? What?”

“First, I will remove the dart.”

The agonizing pain made stars dance before his eyes.

It honestly felt like the wound had swollen to several times its size.

He let out an incomprehensible shout, but he wasn’t sure the sounds leaving his mouth and the ones entering his ears were actually the same.

He was glad the dart didn’t have a barb. Removing what was plugging up the wound definitely caused the bleeding to increase, but the wicked 10-year-old wasn’t concerned.

“I need to disinfect the wound before I stop the bleeding. Come on out, you adorable maggots!”

“What? What did you just say, you horrible girl!?”

“Have you never heard of maggot therapy? Ignorant, hotblooded, and short-tempered is so not a good combination.”

She intertwined spider silk around a hornet stinger and used that to sew up a thick blood vessel and then used a coagulating mixture of snake venoms to seal up the wound itself. The difference between poison and medicine was mostly in how the substance was used, so there may not have been a strict boundary between the two. Of course, an amateur attempting it would only get the patient killed.

In other words, this small Carrier didn’t lack the skills to help instead of harm and it wasn’t that the option had never occurred to her.

She could do it, but didn’t.

The option was right there in front of her, but she didn’t choose it. Was that due to her personal interests and preferences? Or had she lived a life where her situation never allowed for that option?

It didn’t seem to bother her any and she patted her small hand on the closed wound.

“There, all done. When I decide to heal someone, I make sure not to leave a scar. You’d better cry your eyes out in thanks.”

She blew him a kiss and then pointed her small thumb toward a tall machine tucked into the gap between two sections of lockers.

“The bleeding has stopped, but you’ll still want some vitamin C or folic acid. I’ll buy you some vegetable juice from that vending machine, so hand over some change.”

“Vitamins?”

“As ingredients for a hematinic drug. Closing up the wound doesn’t bring back the blood you lost.”

That made perfect sense.

Needing blood made him think of iron-rich foods like liver or spinach, but if an expert in the field (what field?) said this was best, he wasn’t going to argue. Blood had several different components, so maybe there were ways beyond directly ingesting iron.

However…

“I-I only have 49 yen.”

“Garbage. Human garbage,” spat the white coat girl, giving him the look of a girl when her worthless date left her with the entire bill.

Kamijou’s shoulders drooped at his utter failure in the New Year’s Tokyo survival life, but then he felt something crinkle at his feet.

It was a rolled up 10000yen bill.

“Good fortune does exist!!”

“It’s lying near a change machine, so take it and I’m handcuffing you for theft,” warned Shirai.

“Fine, whatever. You can let the fugitive criminal take care of it.”

Youen swiped the money from terrified Kamijou’s hand and inserted it into the vending machine. She ignored Shirai’s protests and bought all of the vegetable and fruit drinks shown on the display.

“Go, creepy-crawly fusion☆”

“You aren’t just going to give me the drink as-is!?”

“I said they were only ingredients, didn’t I? Now say ‘ah’♪”

“Wait, no! I’ll drink it, I’ll drink it! I won’t waste your home cooking, so at least let me decide when I do it!”

“Shut up, you.”

“Hm? Why did you just put it in your mouth!? I really don’t have any good memories when it comes to receiving sketchy drugs mouth-to- mghmghmghgmgh!!!??”

The mystery liquid allowed Kamijou Touma to realize the male dream of a cute girl giving him his medicine mouth-to-mouth. And unlike with Anna, this wasn’t even poison. For some reason, Alice stared jealously with her mouth forming a small triangle.

This was supposed to help with his blood, but his mouth tasted like a grassy soup.

After pulling away and letting out a breath, Youen held a finger to her lips in realization. The gloomy but hard-to-read girl whispered to herself.

“Oops. That was my first kiss, wasn’t it?”

His male dream received an added bonus. This was reaching legendary levels on par with warming each other’s naked bodies with a cute girl while snowed into a mountain cabin. (Q1. By what miracle would a guy end up snowed in alone with the kind of girl he would normally be too nervous to even talk to?) At this point, he was terrified a horrifying catch was about to reveal itself.

“(And here’s half the change.)”

“(Why do I get a 5000yen bill while you get four 1000yen bills and 520yen in coins? The way you can combine substances into just about anything, I don’t like the idea of you carrying around several different metals like that.)”

She placed the money in his hand and he whispered back with a shadow on his face. If he didn’t get that money back from her, he feared she would use it to create a chemical that could melt through anything. But if he did take it from her, he feared she would claim he owed her a debt.

“So is all that stuff with bugs and snakes really safe? The area around the wound feels hot. I’d swear it’s swollen to twice its size.”

“You’re just imagining things. But if the pain bothers you that much, I could inject the affected area with a medicinal leech’s anesthetic. The stuff makes sure you don’t feel a thing while the leech tears through your skin with saw-like teeth and gorges on your blood, so it’s more effective than the morphine issued by the military. Although if I did use hirudin, your blood wouldn’t clot and the wound would open back up.”

“No, thanks!! I don’t want to rely too much on drugs!!”

Shouting made his shoulder throb with heat.

He grimaced and groaned, which created a heavier mood.

He told himself to be more careful about that. They were already in a bind, so the most badly injured person’s mood could affect the overall mood.

“Let’s review what we know.”

He had refused the easy help of anesthesia himself, so he would have to accept the pain in his shoulder. He tried not to let it show on his face as she got talking.

“The station is deserted, a weird ghost is wandering around, and she got in a fight with some mass of muscles. We were right to conclude this place is dangerous, but when we tried to leave, a sniper fired warning shots to push us back in. If we tried to force our way out, I bet they really would have shot us.”

Shirai Kuroko sighed.

“At 17:20 today, the Overhunting prisoner transport train issued a break alert within South District 7 Station. That means criminals from Operation Handcuffs are loose in and around this station. The muscles, the sniper, and this pest here are the fugitives who triggered the break alert. But the ghost I have no information on. The Overhunting’s EM brakes and a few other safety devices malfunctioned, so I would imagine the ghost played a role in the crash, though.”

“Ee em brakes?” asked Alice, tilting her head and smiling. She was harmless as long as her attention was on that, but Kamijou feared she would start poking at his treated wound if he let his guard down.

“It’s an emergency brake system that uses electromagnets to clamp down on the trains wheels,” explained Shirai. “But contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t send electricity to the device to produce the magnetism needed to stop the train. The magnetism is always on to keep the brake pads open and the electricity is cut off in an emergency, freeing the brake pads’ springs.”

“Wait, but how could that malfunction?”

If the electromagnets were used to stop the heavy wheels, a lack of power would cause a malfunction. But when the electromagnets were preventing the springs from returning to their original position, electrical trouble would cause the brakes to activate.

That wouldn’t lead to the train crashing at full speed.

“That is why I think that ghost is behind it. Really, it’s scary to think that anyone other than Onee-sama can control such a deadly amount of electricity. But this doesn’t tell us who they are or why they attacked the Overhunting.”

“It has to be someone involved in Operation Handcuffs,” said Youen. “And the whatever tech that ghost is using doesn’t seem to be standard issue Anti-Skill or Judgment gear.”

“Are you suggesting it’s a criminal neither of us are familiar with?”

“My guess is she was the final boss of that crazy bloodbath. If we had seen Handcuffs through to the end, we might have encountered her then.”

“There it is again,” muttered Kamijou.

Good Shirai Kuroko and bad Hanatsuyu Youen both turned his way and innocent Alice followed suit without appearing to understand what this was about.

He continued now that their attention was on him.

“You keep mentioning that term. What is that Operation Handcuffs thing?”

His question earned a sigh from both the good and the bad. They narrowed their eyes as if to criticize him for being so behind the times, but also with some envy of his ignorance.

Then they both explained it for him.

Operation Handcuffs.

It had started as the new Board Chairman’s sweep of Academy City’s dark side.

The initial focus had been on shining sunlight on all that darkness, so it was a long-term plan that included rehabilitating the arrested criminals so they could be released as productive members of society.

But that had fallen apart somewhere along the way.

The information had gotten confused and the cause was still under investigation. Some claimed that the damage had grown beyond anyone’s expectations when some criminals slipped past Anti-Skill with an uncanny level of luck and furious Anti-Skill had drawn their lethal weapons and relied on deadly force. There had been heavy losses on both sides.

The two girls made a point of mentioning the Coins of Nicholas as a key item.

They took about an hour to charge, but if you held one in your hand and prayed, a locked door would open, you would win the lottery you were playing, or something else bordering on miraculous would occur. That was apparently how the criminals had escaped the smart encirclement and gotten in an unexpected “lucky punch”.

“Hold on,” interrupted Kamijou, pale in the face. “Coins of Nicholas? Those have got to be spiritual items. There’s no way they’re a product of the science side’s research. Why was a magic side toy being passed around in Academy City’s darkness!? In a way, that’s one of the biggest taboos out there!!”

“?”

“?”

Shirai and Youen both tilted their heads. They weren’t playing dumb to hide something from him – they simply weren’t familiar with the terms “spiritual item” or “magic side”.

But that was a major problem in and of itself. What if those coins were given to people with no understanding of how they worked and they kept using them with no knowledge of the risks and downsides?

(Was there something magical going on this city and I didn’t even know about it?)

His anxiety spiked.

The Coins of Nicholas were extremely effective and creepy, but no one would give them away for free like that. He didn’t know who, but someone had benefited from it.

(So that operation was the new Board Chairman’s plan? I sure hope he wasn’t letting R&C Occultics or someone trick him. Setting aside what their exact domains are, the magic side and science side do not get along. Hopefully he understands that.)

“Yawwwn.”

His thoughts were interrupted by a weirdly lengthy yawn.

It came from Alice who leaned against him on the bench and helped herself to his lap pillow. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How are you sleeping when we’re still at risk here?”

“No! The girl was not asleep! Because she is staying up all night with you!!”

She tried to sound very awake, but she was still slumped down in his lap pillow. The most she could manage was waving her little hands up from the bench. She always seemed overly careless for the situation. She rubbed her eyes while muttering something.

“Guh. The only actual occult element of Operation Handcuffs was the Coins of Nicholas. But ghosts are occult too, so does that mean the ghost is connected to the coins?”

“I…don’t think so?” Kamijou looked down at his right hand. “Alice, I know you know this.”

It wasn’t just the electricity that pierced him to the core. His little finger still hurt from its burn. That meant Imagine Breaker did not work on the ghost. How was still a mystery, but that ghost had to be something scientific. She had to be separate from the purely magical Coins of Nicholas.

It was Alice’s immediate realization of that fact that let her shove him out of the way and save his life.

“Hm, then it’s a lot more straightforward. She would count as an ordinary robber, so wouldn’t there be a record somewhere?”

“But that justice exhibitionist and I didn’t see Handcuffs through to the end. We don’t know what went down later on.”

“…”

Could they be making a crucial misunderstanding here?

That concern suddenly crossed Kamijou’s mind. It wasn’t that they had made the wrong decision back at the beginning. It was more like there was someone else they should have been more worried about. Like they had mistaken the fundamental cast of characters and now they would never find some of the basic information they needed to reach the correct answer. That worthless fantasy rapidly grew in his mind.

Shirai had remained silent for a bit now, but she finally pulled out her phone.

“Uiharu. Can you hear me, Uiharu!? Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s because Frillsand #G is producing so much electricity, but you’re supposed to be one of the best in the IT field, so use some trick of yours to get me a connection. Right this instant!!”

“Geez. Ksh. Why do so many people think hackers are basically witches?”

The girl on the other end complained but still got Shirai a connection right away.

Kamijou and the others couldn’t believe it, but Shirai just gave her next instructions.

“Gather all the records you can find on December 25.”

“What are you looking for? There were so many deaths that wouldn’t narrow it down much. I mean, around half of Anti-Skill is either dead or resigned due to mental issues. They’re trying to keep up appearances, but I doubt they’re really functioning as an organization anymore. They haven’t touched this Winter Cleaning stuff.”

Youen leaned forward with a “tell me more” look on her face, so Kamijou held her back. Shirai Kuroko glanced over at them before continuing.

“Then give me data on any criminals who managed to destroy an Anti-Skill branch or caused equivalent damage.”

“Coming right up,” said the girl on the phone. “Two girls thought to be the twins who call themselves the Decomposer and the Carrier attacked the South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station. More than 99.9% of the personnel inside were killed or injured. The majority of the dead were decomposed to the point that their genetic information was destroyed, which has made identifying the bodies a challenge. Shirai-san, you were there when it happened, weren’t you?”

“Oh, that’s about me. I’m the Carrier one.”

“Bff!?” spat Kamijou.

Youen didn’t sound particularly proud. She made it sound as casual as reporting on the results of a grocery run.

“Kaai and I also destroyed the Anti-Skill Chemical Analysis Center in District 18’s twin towers, but that turned out to be bait so I guess you can call it a draw.”

This explained the harsh looks Shirai Kuroko had been giving the girl.

And the report from the phone wasn’t done yet. They were only getting started.

“The District 1 General Anti-Skill Station was attacked by Kihara Hasuu and a girl known as Ladybird using a prisoner transport vehicle. They wiped out the ordinary Anti-Skill officers and some special forces known as Anti-Skill Aggressor and appear to have sabotaged the station’s server to shut down the network. I find it hard to believe, but the girl is reported to have deflected full-auto gunfire with only a heavy metal machete and thrown herself on top of a grenade to protect her surroundings. Not to mention the Anti-Skill Aggressor radio records include the phrase “She’s a machine, so how the hell can she use telekinesis?” There isn’t enough information to say whether that claim is legitimate or not.

“This is unconfirmed, but a few Anti-Skill officers in a District 8 street were apparently found dead due to friendly fire. No detailed records remain, but reports from people in the area suggest a girl named Vivana Oniguma was involved.

“20 Anti-Skill officers were killed or left in a state of confusion after attempting to raid a dark side mobile trailer base in the unmanned industrial section of District 17. The direct cause appears to be a supposed artificial ghost named Frillsand #G, but she was apparently acting as a hyper-aggressive decoy so a researcher named Drencher Kihara Repatri and some unidentified children referred to as ‘specimens’ could escape.”

That was a lot of information.

It included some names not present here in this station. It also didn’t explain the sniper or the mass of muscles they knew were inside or near the station.

Kamijou guessed some of the mentioned people were already dead.

This much was already complicated and it didn’t even touch on the magic side plot that spread the Coins of Nicholas, so he doubted they were even looking at the whole picture of what had happened on the night of the 25th.

However, one part stuck out to him.

“Frillsand #G. That’s the ghost who’s been causing trouble here, isn’t it? But…”

He trailed off.

Shirai Kuroko continued for him.

“Uiharu. Give us details on everyone connected to Frillsand #G. For example, who is this Drencher Kihara Repatri? It sounds like he was involved in Handcuffs, but he wasn’t aboard the Overhunting and he isn’t in this station.”

“Yes, well, doesn’t that suggest a certain possibility?”

A short silence followed.

No one wanted to say it out loud.

“No body was found for Drencher Kihara Repatri. It seems like the criminals were attempting to escape outside of the city toward the end of Handcuffs, but I doubt any of them succeeded. If he wasn’t on the Overhunting and isn’t in a hospital’s ICU, we should assume he didn’t survive. He just hasn’t been found yet.”

“…”

A young man whose corpse hadn’t been found. And he had a connection to Frillsand #G.

Could he be the man from the scene that burst into the back of Kamijou’s mind whenever those electric attacks were flying?

“Umm, Shirai-san? Hello, you’re breaking up. Kssshhh, Shira- kssshhh!!”

The connection suddenly died.

A source of signal interference was slowly approaching. Just like the TV or radio signal growing staticky as a large typhoon or thick thunderclouds blew in.

The artificial ghost had been willing to act as a decoy against a squad of Anti-Skill officers to help Drencher and the children escape safely. But Drencher was nowhere to be found, Frillsand #G was running wild, and she was wandering around attacking any Handcuffs survivors. Kamijou was starting to get what the ghost was fighting for.

Vengeance.

Perhaps all ghosts were bound to the world of the living for some tragic reason.

Something exploded.

The nearby concrete wall burst apart and several metal lockers were knocked over as a huge mass of muscle rolled into the room.

“Rakuoka!” shouted Shirai, eyes wide. Strangely, she had the tone of someone worried about a friend’s wellbeing.

But the others had bigger concerns.

“Hello. This is Frillsand #G-chan.”

A face emerged from the hole in the wall, swaying irregularly side to side.

“Next stop: fried to a crisp. Repeat: fried to a crisp.”

Something was slowly but surely approaching.

“Po. Popopopopopo, popo…po………po………popopo…………po………po.”

Slowly but surely approaching them.

“Am I pretty?”

They heard the sound of gathering electricity and all the shower nozzles burst open at once.

Frillsand #G.

They had no way of avoiding her. But the water soaking the floor and walls must have come as a surprise for the ghost as well. A fearsome lightning bolt was redirected so it flew right past Kamijou.

Corrupted text appeared on the shower temperature displays until “42 degrees” glowed from all of them in a red light. Wasn’t that the dividing line between life and death with a fever?

Kamijou lowered his static-covered head to look at his right hand, but Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate this. An invisible force enveloped his head and data gradually seeped into his brain from outside his skull.

A scene from the past began to play.

“They’re just kids. And it’s not like I’m asking for all of them. Just two or three will do.”

“I wanted to protect them from the dark side scum who think like that.”

A young man had lost his life in a place no one in the world recognized.

For some reason, she had been helpless to do anything but watch.

It wasn’t an issue of courage or motivation. Her nature as an artificial ghost had gotten in the way. So she had been helpless to do anything. But that didn’t mean she had accepted what happened.

That young man had spent his life to protect those small children and successfully found someone in the dark side worth handing the children over to. He had breathed his last with a smile on his lips.

She had watched it all.

“How could you throw away your own life over this!? When you get down to it, those kids are just strangers! How could a goddamn harmful go this far just because you ‘wanted to save them’!? How!? Tell me!?”

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

So he had lost his life.

And her inability to do anything about it had broken something deep inside her.

Kamijou Touma’s mind resurfaced as a blinding light flashed before his eyes.

“Agh!!”

He lost his equilibrium and nearly fell to the side, but he managed to stay on his feet.

He could tell there was some connection between the electricity and his brain, but he couldn’t explain what exactly was going on in his head. He felt the same fear as being cursed and then suffering from a mysterious fever or finding a wound shaped like a human face. It was the same horror as seeing the doctor try everything they could think of and then throw in the towel.

But the passion swirling inside him was enough to sweep aside that fundamental fear.

What had he just seen?

Frillsand #G was not doing this because she hated Kamijou’s group or was after the bounty on the fugitives. But that was why she wasn’t really viewing the reality around her. Her rampage was on a deeper level, so she could not be reasoned with.

A good person had been killed and she had been unable to stop it, so she had lost sight of who she was and now continued to cause further damage. Wasn’t that the whole story here!?

He wanted to speak with her. To exchange words with her.

But he doubted that was possible anymore. That point had passed before he even met her. The keyhole was right there in front of him, but the key had already been broken and thrown away.

With her blonde twintails, white skin, and doll-like blue dress, she looked European, but Frillsand #G was a very Japanese kind of ghost. She couldn’t be destroyed by holding up a holy cross and sprinkling holy water on her. Writing a Buddhist sutra all over your body would do nothing to stop her from ripping your ears off. She was a different sort of paranormal being.

There was only one person in the world who could possibly stop her now: Drencher Kihara Repatri.

Anyone could come up with that answer, but no one could make it happen.

She was like the vengeful ghosts in many stories who were doomed to eternally wander the earth because they had lost the one solution to their problem. Like someone forever searching for their body after it was mistakenly cremated while they were astral projecting, like a stalker ghost who was forever attempting to pursue a woman who had already died by suicide, or like the spirit of a serial killer’s victim who pursued their killer without realizing they had already been executed. Frillsand #G was searching for something she could never find, yet no one among the living could ever inform her of that.

(Wait.)

But.

Kamijou Touma had a fundamental question about all this.

Operation Handcuffs had rocked the shadows of Academy City. It would leave its name in scientific history due to the countless tragedies that he was sure the simple reports did nothing to adequately describe.

Anyone would want to cover their eyes at what they were seeing. But what if?

Handcuffs was something you wouldn’t hear about if you lived an ordinary life in Academy City. And a lot of strange technology had been at play there.

Frillsand #G was the perfect example, since she was an artificial ghost.

Then there were Youen and her twin Kaai with their roles as the Carrier and Decomposer.

There was that mass of muscles Rakuoka Houfu and the unidentified sniper. Even the Vivana Oniguma who had only been listed as a name had likely used some kind of technology all her own.

There was some other puzzle here.

He had to throw out his preconceptions that this was nothing but unmitigated tragedy. He had to focus on all the technology laid out on both sides of the field. The night of December 25 had already passed. He could not return to that time. But those events had led directly to this on the 29th, so the same technology, or remnants of it, had to still be in the city.

Was it really true that the mysterious dark side could only cause death and destruction?

He couldn’t let those assumptions lead him astray.

Technology didn’t take sides.

Military martial arts were designed to kill, but that same knowledge could be used to provide first aid. A chef license and nutritional science were used to support a healthy diet, but that same knowledge could be abused to include enough salt and sugar to shorten someone’s lifespan or to create a torturous dish that was unbearably foul to taste.

This was the same.

The question was how all these different technologies would be used.

He had to rethink this horrific puzzle and take another look at Operation Handcuffs. Was there really no salvation left in that incident? Was there really nothing there they could still use now?

Really???

(No.)

This grudge came from an artificially-created ghost.

So could that same artificial method be used again?

Was it possible?

“It might just work.”

Part 11

“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”

A deep, unsteady female voice echoed across a flooded shower room with a broken wall and pipes.

The source had long, blonde twintails and a doll-like dress.

She took step after step through the puddles without making a sound and she passed through the walls and pillars with ease.

High Voltage Cutting.

With both ion sheaths and shock diamonds, releasing powerful enough energy for long enough would create unusual interference and overlapping. Intentionally creating and manipulating this to make someone nonexistent appear in the physical world was the foundation of artificial ghost technology, but Frillsand #G in particular used a giant civilization battery constructed from a combination of the copper, zinc, and other metals found wherever people lived and the acid rain produced by the carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide constantly produced by human society.

Ultimately, that energy source could come from an entire city, an entire country, or the entire world. She was an artificial ghost who would never disappear unless humanity abandoned every last one of its civilizations.

Attempting to exorcise her was a fool’s errand.

You could build a solemn shrine and desperately worship her as a god, but whether or not she stopped was entirely up to her mood.

She was like a natural disaster supported by chemistry and physics.

“…Drencher.”

Someone had said Operation Handcuffs was already over.

They had said the dark said was no more.

But if so…

“Besides, I have a secret weapon prepared for this special day.”

“Tah dah!! It’s foie gras. I’m going to sauté it in the frying pan.”

They hadn’t had anywhere near enough money. They may have gathered more than average, but anyone would have trouble making ends meet when looking after so many children.

But he had never let his weak smile fade.

She knew that fool had scraped together whatever he could to give the children a feast so they could have something special for Christmas.

“Oh, Drencher…”

Drencher Kihara Repatri.

That infamous Kihara name had been a complete lie.

The usual justice and charity weren’t enough to save the children swallowed up by the dark side, so that endlessly caring man had mastered the worst of worst, built up a position for himself, and then saved those young lives from the darkness.

The artificial ghost bit her lip that did not biologically exist.

He was no more.

If his ultimate sacrifice had caused the dark side to disintegrate, then the small place he had left behind would vanish along with it.

Could she really let that happen?

She knew, of course, that Drencher Kihara Repatri had loathed the city’s darkness more than anyone and had wanted to save as many lives from it as possible, so the destruction of the dark side had been the thing he longed for and dreamed of.

But.

Even so.

Frillsand #G could not accept it. That man was such a fool and so kind and he had worked so hard and even sacrificed his life to protect those children. How could she let all record of his life be swallowed up by the waves of time until he might as well have not existed at all?

No one wants to remember what happened? So what?

People are better off not knowing? Why should she care?

Maybe the people in charge had cleverly covered it up and maybe the masses had obediently looked away, but if she wasn’t satisfied, she would pry open the seal they had placed on that hell. She would show them that her rage came from their attempt to bury all evidence of that man’s life.

Some of the criminals remained.

Operation Handcuffs was not over.

If she fought with them and resumed the fight to the death, surely she would be back in the same world as that man.

Surely.

Please someone tell me it’s true.

I don’t care if I’m wrong about it all. Just don’t tell me to deny how I feel.

“Ah, ahhh.”

God, please save that kind fool.

And if you do not, please allow me to rip this pain from my heart.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”

Part 12

Fearsome electricity surged in every direction.

It radiated out from a central figure.

Finding some kind of shield wasn’t enough this time. Thick reinforced concrete broke like styrofoam and the row of metal lockers exploded. The vortex of destruction was so great it was a miracle the entire station and adjoining buildings didn’t collapse.

Imagine Breaker would not negate this

If not for the long pink cricket bat that popped out from below Alice’s apron and flew around her, Kamijou would have been hit and killed by the lightning. In fact, the bat wasn’t alone this time. Several balls dropped down from below her apron and then sharp needles shot out in every direction.

The effect was unclear. Or rather, he didn’t have time to watch what they did.

He was too busy escaping the locker room even if he had to roll along the ground.

“Ahhhh!?”

He couldn’t afford to worry about the wound Youen had treated and sewn up. He grabbed smiling Alice under his other arm (because she didn’t seem to grasp the situation and didn’t try to escape) and pushed open the metal door on the opposite end of the room. There he found a few office desks lined up with one wall covered in LCD monitors. Those would be for displaying the security camera footage from the station building and platforms. Some unfamiliar machines were lined up along another wall. He tilted his head until he realized what they were. They were ticket machines. He could remember a few times when his change or smart card had gotten stuck and a worker had opened a metal slit to speak to him from the other side of the wall.

Youen listened to the explosions through the wall while she took a look at her test tubes and pulled out a few that contained a muddy brown liquid. She threw them away.

“Tch. A few of my artificial pheromones are ruined. The test tubes have an airtight seal, so is that ghost using electrolysis? No, this may be photolysis, which only needs a bright enough light. If we keep running away, I’m going to lose more and more of my stock.”

Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure how to react. She liked the idea of a criminal losing her weapons, but she didn’t like the idea of losing the weapons they needed to survive.

Then the twintailed Judgment girl turned toward Kamijou.

“Anyway, what ‘just might work’?”

“Teacher, you did say that.”

Alice nodded repeatedly. She seemed eager to join any conversation related to him.

“No one can defeat that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” He glanced over at some grainy security camera footage. “But I do know why she’s doing this: Drencher Kihara Repatri. If he was here, he could convince her to stop.”

“That doesn’t do us much good.”

“Right. He wasn’t in the Overhunting’s records and there’s no record of him being hospitalized either, so the odds are good he died during Handcuffs. I know that.”

Kamijou did not deny how bad their situation was.

However.

“But we know this is an artificial ghost since my right hand doesn’t work. And if it’s possible to create a ghost purely with technology, then couldn’t you drag a dead man back to the realm of the living?”

“…”

“…”

No one responded for a while. That wasn’t a surprise from good Shirai Kuroko, but it also applied to Hanatsuyu Youen who would throw out certain possibilities because she saw herself as a bad person.

He understood this wasn’t an easy thing to agree with.

This would be an unthinkable kind of violation. He felt a solid taboo in his hands. He knew all that, but he still couldn’t abandon this possibility he had discovered.

“I mean, what happened is so sad.” He found himself speaking without meaning to. “All of Handcuffs was. So many people died and it didn’t accomplish anything. But I’m thinking about Frillsand #G who we’re all treating like a villain just because she’s grieving someone’s death.”

Kamijou Touma had not been involved on the night of the 25th. He had fought a different deadly battle on the 24th and 25th and been left groaning in a hospital bed.

But what did that matter?

“Don’t you want to change this tragic ending?”

Just say it.

It’s not about whether or not you’re qualified.

Anyone would do. Raise an objection against that tragedy!! Don’t turn away and say you can’t bear to look at it. Face it head-on and figure out if there’s anything you can do to help now!!!!!!

“I don’t care what kind of trick we have to use. Don’t you want to use everything found through Handcuffs to actually save her and give the finger to the god in heaven who let all this happen?”

All technology could be reproduced.

When a new tank, mine, rocket, or other weapon appeared on the battlefield, the enemy would be using the exact same thing before long.

Finally, one of the girl’s sighed.

“The ethical and moral aspects don’t matter to me. I just don’t want to explode from all that electricity. If you have a plan to avoid that, I’m all ears.” The exasperated comment came from Youen the Carrier. “We can set up a ghostly date if we want, but do you have any guarantee a second ghost based on this one will last very long? It won’t be much of an emotional reunion if he only exists for a few nanoseconds. I also hope they don’t blow up the whole city as soon as their powerful electrical energy bodies tearfully embrace.”

“Yeah, a hug might not be all that satisfying between two intangible ghosts,” agreed Kamijou.

This was a puzzle, so he hadn’t expected a single piece to solve it.

“But the artificial ghost wasn’t the only piece of bizarre tech seen at Handcuffs. There was that Ladybird android who could use an esper power despite being a machine. If she really exists, couldn’t we give the intangible ghost a tangible body?”

“…”

“I don’t know how we would attach the ghost to the machine body, but there might be some tech we could use. Youen, maybe your chemicals or microbes. Or, Shirai, maybe that quantum 11th dimensional awareness you can handle like it’s nothing!”

Operation Handcuffs had been more than just death and destruction.

If they combined the technologies used by both sides of the conflict, they could even obtain the ability to overturn a decisive tragedy.

They had to cast out their biases.

They couldn’t let their assumptions and preconceptions lead them astray.

They had to remember that Handcuffs was originally envisioned as a way to tear down the dark side and help the people found there. For every piece of death and destruction, there had to be a corresponding piece of life and salvation.

What did the dark side label matter?

Was that any reason to just shrug and give up?

I’m sick of your shit, misfortune. Sure, I didn’t make it in time on the 25th, but it’s not too late.

I’ll show you how Kamijou Touma does things.

“We can’t know how Frillsand #G works just from observing her. And we have nothing beyond Ladybird’s name. So is there anything we can do!? You were both involved in Handcuffs, so do you have any ideas? Like where any of them had their hideouts or labs!? Anywhere the plans or equipment for their tech could be hidden!!”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Youen casually raised her hand. “I had some small connection with Ladybird – or really, Kihara Hasuu who created her. That old man was connected to the corpse disposers you can find crawling all throughout the District 10 landfill. Those disposers would periodically receive corpses from the Kiharas and remove anything of value they could find. Those disposers would sometimes pay Kaai and me a lot of money to help melt down the parts they didn’t need. Following the path of bodies back should lead us to Kihara Hasuu…and his android lab.”

Kamijou and Shirai were horrified by the flood of disturbing words in that explanation, but Youen only shrugged with a “don’t let that shock you” look.

But why would someone building a mechanical android need human corpses?

“Frillsand #G is a complete unknown for me, though. Judgment, what about you? The official announcements claim Operation Handcuffs is over. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”

“How would I know? I haven’t seen any records related to Drencher or Frillsand #G, so we should assume an entire group participating in Handcuffs went overlooked.” Shirai Kuroko sighed in disgust. “But if we want information on the dark side, wouldn’t it be best to ask someone else from the dark side?”

Kamijou’s eyes wandered through the air.

No, he had turned toward something on the other side of the building walls.

He could only think of one other person they could ask.

“That sniper. They’re a Handcuffs survivor too, right?”

“Her name is Benizome Jellyfish, a paparazzi willing to kill to get a scoop. But she is basically a professional peeping tom, so she probably would know a lot about other people’s secrets.”

Part 13

A woman in a China dress and cowboy hat frowned while holding a sniper rifle on a building rooftop located near the train station in south District 7.

She was Benizome Jellyfish.

The directional mic installed on a surveillance drone had picked up the sound of a staff-only door opening.

“…?”

(They haven’t given up? Don’t give me that. Why would you try to escape after I already fired on you?)

She had drones monitoring all the exits, but she could only shoot at one exit at a time. The last thing she wanted them to do was split up and escape from different exits, but they must not have been that smart. Even if they had been brought together by chance, once the camaraderie grew, they would find it difficult to choose to sacrifice someone.

Benizome was not here to kill.

Nor did she have a grudge against the normal(?) people with the bad luck to end up working with the Handcuffs people.

She wanted to get the perfect photo of the moment someone died. And the more gruesome and shocking a death it was, the better. To get that, she was willing to shoot out the leg of someone being chased by a lion.

“Hm.” The woman wearing a fusion of Japanese, Western, and Chinese exhaled quietly. “If the warning shots weren’t enough, who should I actually shoot? Well, I’m watching the entire group, so I can still get my scoop with one of them missing.”

The metal door was already open.

Whoever was there, she would shoot the first one to terrify the rest. She would go through with it. The cricket girl could apparently stop the bullets, but it would still scare them and stop them.

A dark shape emerged.

She let the drones handle taking photos while she held her breath and placed her finger on the trigger.

Immediately, a blinding flash stabbed into her retina.

She could only see the color white.

Sharp pan ran through her temples and she jerked her head away from the mirrorless multifunction scope that even display EM waves and electrical noise.

“Tch!? Was that a subway bug zapper!?”

Snipers were terrifying.

But if you knew you were being watched, you could strike back.

She grimaced and waved a hand to send an instruction to the drones. It took five seconds before the afterimage burned into her retina faded. She had to ensure her target didn’t use that time to run outside and escape behind cover. Her 7.62mm bullets could easily break the sound barrier, so even if she was a little delayed, she could still push them back with gunfire as long as she knew where they were.

Or so she thought.

Benizome still believed she was the hunter here.

She heard something like a burst of wind.

“!?”

With a series of dull thuds, her long sniper rifle broke apart. The pieces fell to the rooftop along with several metal darts. She recognized those weapons. During Handcuffs, it had been the law enforcement agencies of Judgment and Anti-Skill that had dealt with Benizome in the end.

Her caution was meaningless.

A moment later, a 50kg weight surpassed the restrictions of 3D space to land on top of her. This was teleportation. A middle school girl appeared 3m above the roof and then landed butt-first on the sniper as she attempted to twist around to look up.

“Gah!?”

“Could you not react like I’m really heavy? I am at least two sizes slimmer than you.”

“Agh, y-you!?”

“Hello, dark side. I know this is sudden, but you will be handing over all your information!!”

Part 14

The rooftop sniper had been dealt with.

That meant Kamijou’s group was no longer restricted to the District 7 station building.

“What!? Then why are we descending into the subway!?” protested Shirai Kuroko.

“Because of Frillsand #G,” said Kamijou “We can’t run through the crowded streets with her chasing us!! Who knows how many people we’d get hurt or worse!!”

The train accident had been at an elevated platform, but the large station served more than just one line. Kamijou held incautious Alice under his arm and Shirai carried tied-up Benizome over her shoulder while they ran down the stairs to reach the subway platform.

Shirai Kuroko made sure to hold her phone out for the ticket gate, but then her eyes widened and she shouted at the others.

“Hey! Don’t jump over the ticket gate like it’s a hurdle! If you don’t have a subway card, then go buy a ticket!!”

“Does she really think we’re going to do that!?” asked Kamijou.

“That justice exhibitionist can’t help it. She’s the sad kind of person who would obediently stop at the red light and let the pursuing wave of lava engulf her car. She is best ignored if you prefer staying alive.”

“Kya ha ha☆ The girl is playing tag with her teacher!”

Alice slipped out from Kamijou’s arm and jumped down an entire flight of stairs despite wearing a skirt. Unbelievably, she stuck her legs out in front of her so she would land on her butt. Kamijou’s eyes widened in fright, but then several balls made from curled-up hedgehogs spilled from below her apron. They gathered together into a cushion and she bounced softly off of them. Their flattened spines seemed to act like bed springs, but surely that still had to hurt, right!?

The disconcerting zap of busting air came from somewhere. The speaker used to inform of arriving trains exploded from within and a bundle of cables stuck out like a long tongue.

That was the artificial ghost.

The deadly being had no weaknesses. That powerful grudge could maybe even destroy all of humanity singlehandedly. If she caught up and placed a hand on their shoulder, they would be killed instantly by the powerful energy. Her chaotic electric storm could break through walls and pillars, so they wouldn’t fare well if that hit them either.

But now that Kamijou knew the reason behind it, it all held a different meaning for him.

This wasn’t just a deadly weapon. It was a vortex of uncontrollable emotion.

(I will save you.)

He clenched his teeth, but kept his eyes forward and his feet running.

He couldn’t let himself die here. If he did, he couldn’t save this woman who had been dragged into a great tragedy, lost the man she loved, and continued to weep and wail.

(This isn’t just about us anymore, so I swear I’ll save you too, ghost!!)

Youen still wasn’t out of breath, so she may have used an enzyme or chemical to boost her abilities. The bad girl looked entirely unaffected by the running as she asked a question.

“Are we running through the tunnels all the way to District 10?”

“Please, isn’t there a legit railfan in here who can drive one for us!?”

“Don’t ask for the impossible.”

The soles of Kamijou’s shoes lifted from the floor.

Surprised, he held onto young Alice who was running nearby.

After floating up in defiance of gravity, they shot down the subway tunnel with the speed of a bullet.

Based on his shadow cast on the wall, it looked like he had sprouted giant fairy wings. No, that wasn’t it. He was extremely hesitant to look at his back, but he was pretty sure a winged bug over a meter long had grabbed onto his back like a crane game!

“What? Eh? How is it so big!?”

“It’s called parasitic enlargement. That’s one of my toys.”

Youen’s calm voice came from unexpectedly close by. She was moving just as fast as him.

Young Alice rejoiced at being princess carried by the pointy-haired boy and tried to reach out her small hands. Toward what? Toward the thing on his back.

“Wow, it’s all black and hard and shiny! I’ve never seen such a big roa-”

“Stop, Alice! Do not confirm anything for me here!! There are all sorts of flying bugs, right!? I-I am never looking back. I will never confirm which of the giant bugs from the Hanatsuyu Youen Collection is holding onto my back!!”

“Fun fact: In the bug world, particularly among beetles, a male getting up another one’s back is a symbol of a live-giving ceremony. Hee hee. By which I mean mating!”

“Stoooooooop!!!!!!!”

He saw a blue shine. Youen was wearing a giant morpho butterfly like a backpack as she amused herself by whispering insect trivia to him. Of course that gloomy mini-villain had given herself the most beautiful option.

Alice was so delighted she kicked her legs around in her thick white tights.

“Hm, hm♪ The girl really does love you, teacher.”

“Where did that come from!?”

“Your arms are the best seat. If anyone is going to hold the girl, it has to be you. Heh heh☆”

Apparently she thought he was a memory foam pillow or something. Maybe it was like how a boy’s shaved head or broad chest was briefly popular with the girls but then abandoned at Mach speed.

Shirai Kuroko had refused to be equipped with a bug at all. Maybe Tokiwadai girls couldn’t understand the romance of bugs. She carried bound Benizome Jellyfish over her shoulder like a sack of rice and repeatedly teleported to move down the subway tunnel faster than a sports car.

A flashing white beam shot past them from behind.

That meant the artificial ghost had descended into the subway tunnel too.

They had avoided a direct hit, but that was no reason to relax.

Frillsand #G’s lightning could destroy steel and concrete with ease. If the metal rails or concrete pillars up ahead were blown up, the airborne fragments would become obstacles for the fast-moving group. Given their relative speeds, a direct hit would be enough to tear an arm off at the shoulder.

Resentment, sorrow, rage, regret, and what else?

Maybe human emotions weren’t meant to be named and organized like that.

Even a single screw or bolt was a threat here.

“Ahhh!?” Kamijou shouted in reflex.

He couldn’t even cover his face with Alice in his arms.

The tunnel was a lot less straight than he had expected and went through several curves, but the wings on his back made the turns for him and he didn’t feel like he was in control at all. Perhaps this was what it felt to ride a rollercoaster in a country with extremely lax safety standards.

With his life solidly in someone else’s grasp, he raised his eyes with real tears in them.

“Shirai!! Did you get any information out of that China dress woman!? I want a destination. We know abut that Kihara guy’s lab where he built Ladybird, but I also want to know where the artificial ghost was made!!”

“You heard him. Got any ideas?”

“…”

Benizome Jellyfish was not unconscious.

She had intentionally chosen to remain silent. The sparking and flashing lights behind them suggested Frillsand #G had noticed their escape and started moving down the tunnel. It was obvious what would happen if Shirai got sick of the woman and abandoned her here, so that silence took guts.

Pain probably wasn’t going to get her to talk either.

But…

“Those are some pretty sexy modifications to your dress there. That tells me you’re the type to use your femininity as a weapon. It means you think you’re hotter than average,” said Hanatsuyu Youen while flying alongside them using the shiny blue wings of a morpho butterfly. She pulled out a test tube and shook it, creating motion in the surface of the neon green liquid within. “Did you know spiders break down their prey’s tissue – in other words, the protein – and uses their stomach like a pump to suck it all up? Doing some real-life character creation work to the face and figure is pretty simple. But don’t worry. After melting your boobs away, I’ll make sure to give you five or even ten of them in a grape-like cluster. Got a specific number you want?”

“O-okay, I’ll talk!! Don’t give me that!!”

Benizome panicked with her arms and legs bound by rope.

That paparazzo was all about spreading people’s information around, so maybe she didn’t have it in her to hide anything for long.

“Go to the abandoned leisure spa in District 10!! The people occupying it now have built a ton of illegal cardboard, plywood, and prefab houses in the empty pools, creating something like a Little Kowloon Walled City!! It’s a criminal area where anything goes and even I have a hideout there!”

“The District 10 slums?” asked Shirai.

“Your comparison is pretty out of date, isn’t it?” added Youen. “That high-rise residential area has already been demolished. Why not compare it to Johannesburg? Well, whether you’re talking about Russia or Mexico, you have to watch out in any major city of a country where the people don’t trust the police and unregistered guns are plentiful. So you’re saying the hideout we want is there?”

“A few large trucks were abandoned in the old employee parking lot out back where they would be relatively inconspicuous. I don’t know who they belong to, but a few groups of garbage collectors were killed in horrific ways when they got close. It must have been this ghost who did it!!”

“Are you saying those trucks are the lab where she was made?”

The group exchanged a glance while flying down the tunnel.

What a stroke of good fortune. Kamijou would have loved to gather some more bizarre tech involved in Handcuffs, but they didn’t have time to travel the full length of Academy City multiple times. Frillsand #G wouldn’t give them the chance. But fortunately, the artificial ghost tech and android tech were both located in District 10.

“How does she pull off the China dress so perfectly?”

Alice sounded somewhat depressed while focused on something else entirely.

If they could pull this off, they could save Frillsand #G from her eternal rampage!!

Part 15

In District 10, Kamijou’s group ran up the stairs from the subway station. A thick bolt of lightning shot past them and caused a section of the asphalt road to collapse like an antlion pit.

“Damn, that’s scary!!”

“Is that the abandoned leisure spa Benizome mentioned?”

Youen pointed at a large shape looming above them.

It must have been a landmark at first. It was right next to the subway entrance and the giant waterslide proved it wasn’t just a bath. Was it more like an outdoor heated pool than a spa? It was located next to a trash incinerator, so it may have reused the incinerator’s heat. The building hadn’t collapsed, but the rust and stains showed it hadn’t been cleaned or otherwise maintained in a while. It looked just plain gross and the air there felt heavy.

It was a wonder it wasn’t covered in spraypainted graffiti.

The local delinquents may have had an agreement to never carelessly approach the place.

The inside was apparently known as a Little Kowloon Walled City or Johannesburg, but they didn’t have any business in the illegal houses built in and around the pools.

Driven on by the storm of lightning behind them, they circled around to the rear entrance where trucks could make deliveries while remaining inconspicuous.

There they were.

A few large trucks were lined up in the parking area there. That wasn’t too strange on its own, but they looked unusually clean compared to the collections of abandoned materials forming everything else here.

“Found it! That’s the artificial ghost lab!!”

“Is this safe? Didn’t the garbage collectors who tried to take the trucks away get killed?”

Youen popped off the rubber cap of a test tube.

A black carpet rippled around them. It was formed from tens of thousands of ants. The ground itself seemed to be moving, so Kamijou felt like he was moving backwards despite standing still. On the Carrier’s instructions, the ants marched toward the trucks, but nothing happened. They were not blown away by a high-voltage current.

“No traps.”

“Then let’s end this before Frillsand #G catches up!!”

Kamijou, Alice, and Youen circled to the back of the closest truck. The door to the metal container had a keyhole, but Youen summoned a thumb-sized ant that melted the metal inside.

“The inner workings of a lock tend to be an aluminum or brass alloy, so my ants can destroy them easy.”

“What would those toxins do to a human?”

Kamijou shuddered at the thought while he undid the latch and threw open the double door.

They didn’t get the correct one right away. This one was lined with bunkbeds and toys littered the floor. They tried a few more, but they had been converted into a kitchen and a bath. It all reminded Kamijou of the specimen children mentioned in relation to Drencher and Frillsand #G.

None of it looked like an experimental lab.

It was mostly an ordinary living space. It likely qualified as abandoned, but it didn’t feel remotely creepy. In fact, it was the first thing to put Kamijou at ease in a while.

Did something of the people who lived here still linger?

Was the sorrow all the greater the more comfortable the life that led up to it?

“…”

Eventually, Kamijou found the right one. One of the containers wasn’t like the others. As soon as he opened it, the scent of sterilizing ethanol rushed into his nose.

“This must be it,” he muttered.

The container floor was situated very high up. Alice tried to pull herself up with her young hands, but she had trouble and a pink bat and some spiny balls fell from below her apron. Those things were still a mystery, but they would make the occasional weird noise, which made it painful to watch them being used as a stepping stool for those patent leather shoes. The fluffball on the back of the apron wiggled side to side but the picture book girl couldn’t manage to get her legs up high enough, so Kamijou finally pushed her little butt up from behind.

The lab had apparently been used to create that embodiment of electricity, but he didn’t see any of the metal equipment found at transformer substations. A transparent oblong box sat in the center of the container. Round holes covered in thick rubber were placed at even intervals, so it was apparently designed to let you could manipulate what was inside without directly touching it.

Since she specialized in microbes and chemicals, Youen took a look around, assessing what kind of lab it was.

“A clean box, huh? The duct by the wall is used to prevent the passage of impurities and the sink is pretty secure too. Was the ghost research more biological than I thought?”

The box sort of looked like a clear coffin to Kamijou.

“Isn’t that more the kind of thing you’d see on a TV show about science-themed ghost stories? Y’know, like the model skeleton running around at night or a pool of formaldehyde used to wash dead bodies.”

“Not those old cliches.”

She rejected his ideas. He bit his lip and hung his head, but she must have thought he was crying because she actually looked unsure what to do.

Alice was more interested in the equipment around the clear box. Several video cameras were set up on tripods. She smiled and made a peace sign in front of one.

“Yay☆”

“Also, what are with those cameras?” asked Kamijou. “You wouldn’t need this many to record the experiments. I mean, this is just a truck container. With this many, I feel like they would get in the way of the research.”

“To record what happens, you would only need to install a few on the ceiling where they wouldn’t be in the way,” agreed Youen. “You wouldn’t need 12 of them arranged in a circle like this.”

“Meaning?”

“The cameras were part of the experiment. If observation was a crucial component, quantum physics may have been involved.”

Kamijou pressed a switch on the wall and the room’s lights changed. Just like a dark room in an old movie, the container filled with an orange light similar to sunset. A change came over the clear coffin. Glowing lines appeared inside, similar to the human outline at a crime scene. He also saw several stud-like electrodes there. Were those the acupuncture points that were also used in moxibustion? That was just his impression, but he couldn’t say for sure. The points may have been something unique Drencher had come up with. Regardless, the hundreds of electrodes were divided into small blocks that could be rearranged to alter their number and position.

It was like a wire diagram for a human body.

That may have determined the individual traits of the artificial ghost.

Youen leaned forward curiously, so she may not have had many opportunities to view someone else’s lab.

“For that ghost – Frillsand #G was it? – you only have to create an initial ‘spark’ in the lab. No matter how small it is, releasing it into the outside world will let it grow endlessly from there. Reminds me a biological weapon. No, that isn’t quite right. The biology, quantum physics, and weaponization research are like different colored pencils in a single set – they’re just elements used to create her. A ghost shouldn’t have any clear outlines, but she was forcibly divided into existing categories to create something humans could easily perceive.”

“What matters is we can create a ghost by turning this machine on.”

“We need some personality data on Drencher Kihara Repatri first. Maybe an oil-eating black mold would work. The distribution of fingerprints and footprints would tell us if he was meticulous, neurotic, or whatever else.”

“Y-you can learn how people think like that?”

“You think that’s strange? There’s an esper out there who reads people’s ‘residual thoughts’ from the electricity and moisture left on objects.”

With a few dull thuds, Shirai Kuroko teleported out of thin air and dropped some duralumin cases larger than she was.

“I found a ‘base model’ in the lab buried in garbage! I honestly find it hard to believe this faceless mannequin can be transformed into something indistinguishable from a human.”

“We need to get those cases open! And we need to figure out how it works! Are there any texts or manuals!?”

They opened the latches thicker than the ones on the truck containers and lined up the contents of the cases on the floor. Shirai Kuroko was right. It looked vaguely feminine since it was wearing something like a one-piece racing swimsuit, but there were no actual gendered features. It was a smooth ball joint doll with no hair and no face.

“Wait, what happened to Benizome?” asked Kamijou.

“I left her tied up in that lab buried under more than three million tons of garbage. She loves scoops so much she should enjoy being buried alive with a burnt corpse.”

Alice started trembling all on her own.

“Th-three million tons?”

“That might sound like a lot, but a single domed stadium weighs 370 thousand tons,” said Shirai. “Are younger children just more sensitive to the term ‘million’?”

But the “doll” was heavy.

Unlike the artificial ghost that barely seemed to be scientific at all, the android was fully physical. It was a machine seemingly made by wrapping a heavy metal skeleton frame with artificial muscles and silicon. Kamijou tried moving the shoulder or knee and felt a dull grinding sensation. The skeleton frame may have been somewhat adjustable to fit the desired body type. The power of science could now create the kind of magical girl who transformed from a child to an adult and back again.

Youen pulled out a few test tubes.

“If the exterior is silicon, I can form the details with an organic solvent. I’ll need a photo of this Drencher person for that. Also some of his clothing to learn his body size. Check the drawers over there. He lived here, so surely there’s a photo somewhere.”

“I’ll check, but this is only a machine, right!?” said Kamijou. “It’s basically a self-driving car shaped like a human, so will the artificial ghost really attach to it even if we do create one successfully?”

“If the ghost is electrical in nature, the powerful currents we’ve seen from the one chasing us would just fry all the circuit boards.”

“Then we just need to find a tech that will reduce its power. For example…”

They heard the low zap of bursting air, so everyone but Alice stopped blinking.

“(Here she is,)” whispered Kamijou.

“(I can’t believe it took her this long,)” said Shirai. “(Given her previous speed, she should have attacked well before this. Could she have hesitated after seeing the lab she used to call home?)”

If so, he felt kind of guilty for doing this.

But now that the attack had started, it wasn’t going to stop.

Youen pulled out a photo and some clothes while the sound of breaking glass rang loud. The windows and streetlights had to be bursting. The sounds of destruction continued as the container lab itself tilted. The truck’s tires must have ruptured from exposure to the high-voltage electricity.

What did that decision mean to Frillsand #G?

What was she thinking while destroying a place filled with so many memories to get at the people trampling on a treasure from her past?

Kamijou got down on the floor and protected carefree Alice while biting his lip. It pained him to see Frillsand #G run wild like this. That was the thought on his mind when he reached out to support one of the camera tripods that was about to fall. He didn’t have the specialized knowledge to know which equipment was important. It was possible the artificial ghost technology was something only Drencher could understand.

The cacophony of destruction would not stop.

Their plan would fail if the interior of the lab was destroyed too. Their own survival wasn’t the only thing on the line here. Frillsand #G would eliminate her only chance to ever see Drencher Kihara Repatri again.

She fit in so well with the city’s darkness, but he didn’t want to give her that kind of ending.

Kamijou Touma stared into a video camera that’s lens was focusing despite not being switched on and he shouted into it without considering the risk to himself.

“Give it a rest, Frillsand #G!! What is it you really want? Just this one last time, picture the face of the person want to see more than anyone else in the world!!”

Did his voice reach her or not?

A blinding white light raged violently outside. A mass of lightning finally flew inside the container. The ghost’s sorrow hit them directly and orange sparks flew everywhere. A shelf drawer broke, sending documents and photos fluttering through the air. Hanatsuyu Youen rushed to the device and flipped the sparking switches there. With a low hum, the clear coffin started to glow.

“The electrical energy is too great,” shouted Shirai Kuroko, eyes wide. “Even if we do create the artificial ghost, the android will only explode if we try to place the ghost in it!!”

But if they did not present Drencher Kihara Repatri to the vengeful spirit, she would never stop attacking. Then the truck would explode with all of them inside.

Frillsand #G would be doomed to forever weep and wail in the wreckage of her one chance at salvation.

“That’s where…”

A scratchy voice spoke over the loud electric noises.

A small girl could be seen popping the rubber cap off of a test tube in the gaps between flashes of light.

Hanatsuyu Youen was not a good person.

But Kamijou knew better than anyone that she had chosen to save people’s lives on several occasions today.

“…this comes in!!!!!”

The electricity exploded.

The stench of burning plastic assaulted Kamijou’s nose.

Part 16

Of course, Frillsand #G knew exactly what that place was.

This was the collection of trucks where Drencher Kihara Repatri had spent so much time with those children. It was his mobile lab. And it was a large daycare center where he collected the specimen children who had vanished into the dark side.

She had mercilessly destroyed some garbage collectors who tried to collect the abandoned trucks. Very literally so. Their body tissue had exploded from within.

She had wanted to protect that place even if it meant spreading grudges and curses.

“…”

But now some Handcuffs criminals had made it inside, so she no longer hesitated. An all-out attack would not leave much of the lab intact.

She might blow away the very core of her memories.

She would probably be hit by intense regret afterwards, but this might let her break free of her current situation.

With that in mind, she held a skinny arm toward the trucks. This was not an indiscriminate, omnidirectional attack. She took precise aim to blow up the survivors of Operation Handcuffs.

Prioritizing destruction over her memories may have shown she had now become a true vengeful spirit.

But a moment beforehand…

“Good grief. I wake up and this is what I find? Fate can be cruel, can’t it?”

“What?”

It was deflected.

It was bent.

Her torrent of electricity could bring down a skyscraper, yet it was easily repelled with a single hand.

With the exception of the time some unidentified interference had caused her to malfunction, no one had managed to escape her grudge and curse during Operation Handcuffs.

But without breaking a sweat, he once more protected some children who had fallen into the darkness.

“Why? What are you doing here!?”

Surprise appeared on her face for the first time. Her eyes may have finally focused on reality again. Something about the opponent before her eyes would not let her wander through a nightmare any longer.

This person shouldn’t have been here.

But she also wanted him to be here more than anything.

“You know exactly what I’m doing here and why, Frillsand #G-kun. How can I sit idly by while the dark side continues to devour lives? Even if it means losing my own life.”

“That’s not what I meant. This is so much more than that! How are you here? This world stole everything from me, so why is it going back on that tragedy now!?”

Her own beam vanished.

Her ghostly face silently crumpled.

An indistinct figure appeared before her.

It took the form of someone so foolish and so kind.

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

It only took those words.

It only took that simple whisper.

“Ah.”

She stopped.

Frillsand #G came to a stop.

Her thoughts ground to a halt and refused to function.

Attempting to exorcise her was a fool’s errand. You could build a solemn shrine and desperately worship her as a god, but whether or not she stopped was entirely up to her mood. She was like a natural disaster supported by chemistry and physics.

“Drench…er?” she muttered, eyes wide.

She just about clung to him, but then she bit her lip.

She shook and held her head.

“You can’t trick me!! I won’t be fooled!!”

Perhaps she refused to accept the possibility because it felt too good to be true. Perhaps she feared there was some malicious trick hidden somewhere. The events of Handcuffs had been so cruel they had emotionally scarred even a ghost.

So when she spoke again, there was a tremor in her voice.

The invincible artificial ghost was terrified that simply touching this man would cause him to pop like a bubble.

“You died.”

“That I did.”

“I was never supposed to see you again!!”

“Says who?”

Drencher took a step forward. Frillsand #G shook her head, but she did not step back.

What she wanted above all was vengeance. It was supposed to be an eternal battle.

But was that really true?

Weeping like a child, she leaped into the chest of the dead man once more.

He accepted her into his arms.

Even if his body was fake, he would still have a pulse.

“Everything will be alright.” He gave her a trouble smile. “Everything will be alright now. I’m not going anywhere, Frillsand #G-kun.”

No matter who got in the way and no matter how much they said this kind of patchwork happy ending couldn’t happen, there was no stopping the pursuit of happiness.

Part 17

“Ha.”

A breath that was half sigh and half laugh left Kamijou Touma’s mouth.

They had cut this one extremely close.

But the electrical damage stopped right in front of the collapsed boy’s feet. It had been like diving headfirst into a thick thundercloud and all the lab’s equipment had burst from within, but he had somehow avoided losing his life.

“I provided a ground.” Hanatsuyu Youen was collapsed in the same lab. “Since the electricity was too powerful for the circuit boards, I just had to divert the unnecessary power into the ground. That prevented the artificial ghost from frying the android’s innards.”

She shook an empty test tube and raised her thumb even though the rubber cap was already gone.

“Now, this might alter the soil’s acidity a little, but no one around here has to worry about being electrocuted. Electricity flows along the path of least resistance and this wasn’t powerful enough to ignore the ground and race up to someone’s brain or heart.”

“Electrical stuff doesn’t sound like your area of expertise, so I’m betting you found a way to make this biological. What did you use this time? A bug? Or maybe some kind of mold?”

“Gallionella iron bacteria.”

“…”

“Don’t stare at me like that. It’s a microbe that oxidizes iron and manganese ions. They take metal inside themselves all on their own, so they’re perfect for constructing an invisible wire between the android and the ground.”

“Don’t tell those two. It would ruin the romantic mood.”

The boy realized he had recovered enough to complain about that.

He gave the embracing couple a silent look while still collapsed on his rear.

Then he sighed and spoke up.

“Alice, what is this?”

Between the Lines 3

“Oh, you noticed?”

Time froze.

Only Kamijou Touma and short-sleeved Alice remained facing each other in the slanted and scorched truck. The girl’s presence seemed to rule this space – both the shine of her golden hair and her warmth that drove out all loneliness.

As usual, the blonde girl of about 12 cutely tilted her head like a storybook girl.

“What part made you suspect?” she asked with a smile.

“All of it. From the beginning,” spat Kamijou.

Then he listed off what he meant by “all of it”.

“How did I escape nearly unscathed from a head-on collision between two trains?

“I jumped from the train’s 2nd floor, fell through the hole melted in the platform, and didn’t know where I was going to land, so it makes no sense I didn’t break a single bone.

“Frillsand #G built up an overwhelming pile of victims during Handcuffs. Did she really attack using something as immediately obvious as electricity?

“Even if that is what she used, I should have basically exploded if that high-voltage current even grazed me. It also doesn’t make sense she could share her memories with me using electricity. Our brains aren’t constructed the same like with the cloned Sisters.

“Is Shirai Kuroko of Judgment really the kind of person to do what a fugitive criminal says even if it’s necessary to solve the problem at hand?

“I don’t know how skilled that Uiharu girl is, but does she really know enough about the underside of the city to give us a list of Handcuffs mysteries just because someone asks her to run a search real quick? For that matter, does she have the mental fortitude needed to just smile and describe those dark side tragedies even if her search did turn them up?

“What about Benizome Jellyfish? Wasn’t it a bit much to just assume she had to know where Frillsand #G’s lab was? We had nothing to suggest that.

“Does the technology to link an artificial ghost with an android really exist? Can you really resurrect the dead by cobbling together Academy City tech?

“Why did Frillsand #G wait to attack until after we had found everything we needed in Drencher’s lab?

“Then there’s Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. This was my first time meeting a Handcuffs criminal, but is she really the kind of girl who would grow so attached to someone she just met even if we had a common goal? I mean, she changed in front of me and fed me a drug mouth-to-mouth. Being from the dark side doesn’t mean she’s that unguarded.

“But the most glaring error was me finding 10 thousand yen on the ground and all the other times I was insanely lucky.”

Alice sighed.

“The girl’s magic forces all of those things to work.”

“Magic?”

“Ah ha ha. Did you think it was an esper power? Like the #6 who you can’t see clearly?”

He was curious why Alice sounded so knowledgeable about that, but he was more interested in a different question.

Could Alice really be described using just the magic side?

“Do you modify probability so you could always win the lottery or at bingo? No, that isn’t it. That wouldn’t let you include nonexistent possibilities.”

“Correct. It is not that☆”

Alice slowly pointed her finger toward Kamijou.

But not at him. She pointed past him. He noticed something there and slowly emerged from the tilted truck.

The frozen outside world was not the world he knew.

A giant towered into the heavens above the abandoned leisure spa and enormous pumpkins shaped like human faces broke through the asphalt to grow from the ground all over the place. A five-pointed shooting star drew a trail behind it in the night sky and incomprehensible ancient characters and diagrams danced about like neon signs.

Time remained frozen.

Kamijou was honestly glad for that. If time resumed now, something awful would happen to Shirai, Youen, and everyone else who wasn’t here.

“Teacher.”

The voice behind him remained entirely innocent. She hopped around in front of him.

That girl there had done all this.

She could end the current world with a snap of her fingers.

“It doesn’t matter if your real-world theories have broken down. Even if there is no direct connection between two ideas, a bridge can always be built if the girl goes on an adventure and creates a new path.”

“A bridge?”

“Hmm, like this: ‘There are four emotions and four elements, so when roleplaying, you can draw on a special power by intentionally drawing on a specific emotion in yourself.’ ”

People would normally call that “a stretch” or “sophistry”. It might sound reasonable at first, but there was no existing mythology or law behind it. In this case, the idea of the four emotions was an Eastern thing and the idea of the four elements was a Western thing commonly seen in fantasy RPGs.

But if you could build a bridge between the two and it would give you power with 100% reliability, you would have a legitimate miracle on your hands.

It reminded him a bit of the way the Amakusas combined Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity, but this was completely different. Alice didn’t need to find points in common between the two things to form a logical connection. She could notice that a paint set on sale had 12 colors, associate that with the 12 numbers on a clock, and with nothing more than that gain a complete control over time. Except it wouldn’t just apply to Alice herself. The moment she decided that was true, all the paint in the world would gain the same power.

“Burning something requires phlogiston, observing one of a pair of separated particles determines the spin of the other one no matter the distance between them, neutrinos can travel faster than light. It might sound ridiculous, but if the girl links together the surrounding theories to build up a solid basis and makes it convincing enough, she can create an actual functioning theory. Even if the idea she started with was flawed and even if the values she started with came from faulty measurements.”

“You mean…?”

“It works even if the theory is how to resurrect the dead. After all, magic is meant to give people joyous hopes and fun dreams.”

By forcibly connecting entirely separate theories, she had created a single path to this destination.

Even if she hadn’t created anything herself and was journeying around by peering into someone else’s mind.

If he had continued traveling through that comfortable world without questioning it, all of the pieces would have intertwined and become real.

Like a board game where surrounding your opponent’s pieces captured all of those pieces for yourself.

Kamijou noticed a straining sound.

It came from within Alice.

Specifically, from her blue storybook dress with a white apron over it. It tore in a way such solid fabric never should have. The entire center of her body tore to either side like it was a thin stocking.

The ripping noise sounded somehow suggestive.

“Now.”

Immorally bright skin emerged from within.

The transformation was like a childish mint candy becoming a sticky honey dripping onto the skin.

The thing contained in the storybook dress came into view. Metal buckles shined and red and black belts glistened with oil while digging into a slender body.

Alice spread her arms wide without showing any concern for the empty shell left behind.

“Please guide the girl, teacher. She wants to go on an adventure inside you. You weren’t satisfied with this ending? Then what kind of ending would you accept? Just tell the girl and she will join the theories together, fill in the gaps, establish the necessary facts, and give you the world you want.”

“Is that so?” muttered Kamijou.

However it had happened, it was difficult to think of a happier ending than someone being reunited with a loved one who had died. And when it was done with a technology so closely connected to herself, that had to have saved Frillsand #G.

Not everything about Operation Handcuffs had been bad.

If you avoided taking a one-sided view of that night and rearranged things like a puzzle, it could even be used to save a life.

That answer was sure to save all the people who had been dragged into that mess.

Alice wasn’t doing anything wrong here.

He understood that.

So Kamijou Touma answered her just like she asked him to.

“Then return everything to the way it was, Alice. If I use your power like this, I can never truly reach the end.”

She looked confused.

She looked dreadfully psychedelic covered in belts that moved all on their own and loosely bound her legs together. She looked like she had stepped out of another world altogether as she tilted her head with so much of her soft skin showing.

“Umm, are you sure you want that?” she asked.

“I am.”

“The girl connects the unconnected, stabilizes impossible theories and ideas, and creates a better than optimal reality. To be blunt, you will not survive without the girl’s help, teacher.”

“It’s still what I want. You filling in the gaps keeps me from seeing what I really need to do.”

“The girl didn’t give Frillsand #G a power she doesn’t really have. That was simply the result of emphasizing just one aspect of her. Once she has access to all of her power, you don’t stand a chance against her.”

“Probably not. But I’m not trying to overpower her.”

“Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish escaped from the train. You aren’t naïve enough to think they aren’t a threat just because they aren’t as powerful as the ghost, are you? Each one of them is a difficult enough enemy to take you out the instant you encounter them.”

“I know that.”

“You will die.”

“That doesn’t change my answer.”

“Hm.” Alice placed her index finger on her chin and stared into empty space. “One of them wanted to become a god, one of them wanted to be immortal, and one of them wanted to get back at academia for making fun of him. The girl has gone on a lot of strange adventures, but this is a first.”

“?”

“Ah ha ha. Curiouser and curiouser. You reject the girl, but not because you have no desires inside you. The girl has never encountered this kind of desire. …This sounds delicious.”

Alice smiled.

But this smile looked subtly different from before.

Perhaps it had a touch of loneliness.

“New command from Alice Anotherbible. Immediately cease all modified kabbalah bridge linking within Live Adventures in Wonderland.”

The deep thunk that followed sounded just like a thick metal lock opening.

Kamijou Touma was enveloped in white light.

His senses gradually faded until nothing felt real anymore, but he definitely heard the girl’s sad but hopeful voice.

“Teacher. Please don’t let yourself die too easily, okay?”

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