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“You’re taking this peacefully... This isn’t the kind of person I was told you were. So you really have changed. Loners usually don’t hesitate at times like this. And they end up dying because they try to stand up to me. I’m well past the point where I worry about how to clean up a corpse...”

“I see.” Accelerator smiled slightly as he spoke. “Did you know that people who stand up to me tend to end up as mincemeat?”

Still smiling, he moved his hand to the switch on the back of his neck.

“Hoo...” Komaba exhaled. “If you’re going to try to act cool, at least be battle ready before hand...”

“You do realize you’re talking to Academy City’s strongest Level 5, right?”

“...Confronting monsters like you is what Skill Out does best.”

Komaba tapped the back of his neck with his pointer finger.

“That electrode...is a transmitter for some kind of electronic information, isn’t it?”

“Tch!!” Accelerator clicked his tongue and flipped the switch for the electrode.

He altered the vectors for his legs. The asphalt beneath his feet cracked and he shot like a rocket towards the fourth floor where Komaba was standing.

But Komaba was faster.

He pulled what looked like a spray can from his pocket and hit it with a whip-like kick. His kick was delivered with a force one wouldn’t expect from a normal person and it tore the metal can to pieces like it was made of paper. Its contents scattered through the air.

The contents were thin sheets of metal about the size of the lead to a mechanical pencil. They glittered in the dim back alley. They were composed of two thin wings so they looked like tiny helicopter rotors.

Hundreds of these thin sheets of metal stopped in midair while slowly rotating like bamboo copters.

“...These are a type of radio jamming weapon called Chaff Seeds. ...They use a micro motor to float in the air using the structure of the seeds of plants in the Dipterocarpaceae family...”

Komaba’s expression remained unchanged as he spoke.

“I originally had this to knock out Anti-Skill radios.”

“!!”

Accelerator’s power of ascent suddenly stopped.

He didn’t reach the 4th floor Komaba was on; he fell down and landed on the framework of the third floor.

Even his reflection ability must have been knocked out, because pain spread through his back like it would for a normal person.

“Gh..ah!?”

He let out a cry, but he didn’t have room to writhe around.

“I had seen something like that just a bit before.”

When he heard the quiet voice come from above him, Accelerator quickly looked up.

“The teleporter who attacked had something like that on her back... Hers probably works differently than yours and I don’t know exactly why the two of you are wearing them... But I’m betting they assist you with your powers.”

A shadow stretched out.

Komaba jumped down from the 4th floor aiming for Accelerator’s gut with both his feet.

If that hit him, his organs would rupture.

He had a handgun, but that giant body wouldn’t stop if he shot it.

“Tch! Fucker!!”

Accelerator gave up trying to attack, brought his arms and legs in, and rolled like a ball backwards on the narrow frame.

Komaba’s feet landed forcefully in the spot Accelerator had just been in.

A loud dull noise came from the metal.

Stopping his roll, Accelerator brought his handgun up and fired in response, but Komaba moved his upper body dodging the 3 shots fired. He wasn’t watching the bullets; he was keeping away from the barrel.

The cartridges that smelled of fireworks fell all the way to the ground.

“...How unsightly.” A smile spread across Komaba’s face. “If your powers were perfect, you wouldn’t need a gun...And you wouldn’t have avoided my attack.”

(God damn it. I just have to stop his movements by shooting him in the lower back!!)

Accelerator gritted his teeth and altered his aim. But...

“Heh... Don’t fall off.”

As he spoke, Komaba brought his foot down and the 3rd floor framework broke in half like a tree branch.

(...!? That strength...!!)

No normal human could produce that attack and Komaba was Level 0. That meant he must have some kind of equipment supporting him.

“...Kh!!”

As his already unstable footing slanted to the side, Accelerator’s aim strayed a good ways from Komaba. And before he could bring it back, Komaba’s gigantic body was headed for him.

(I still can’t use my powers!!)

The numerous glittering metal Chaff Seeds were still floating in the air like bamboo copters. They were spread evenly all throughout the area, so trying to brush them away with his hand wasn’t going to help much.

Accelerator clicked his tongue as Komaba Ritoku approached.

There was a roaring wind.

Even with the unstable footing, Komaba had moved a few meters in an instant.

And...

He was using his powerful leg to attack with a crushing kick.

“!!”

Accelerator immediately twisted his body, but that leg knocked his gun off of the frame. Komaba had been aiming for the gun the whole time. His speed had been too fast to react to.

“...You’re going to burst open and paint this area red.”

Komaba pulled a handgun of his own from his belt. It was a large handgun with an odd form that had two thick magazines sticking into it just in front of the trigger.

This wasn’t an attack Accelerator could avoid by moving his head to the side.

(Shit!!)

He prepared himself and jumped with all his might to the side and then right off the framework.

The 2nd floor was next.

But since he dove off without looking, he messed up the timing on his landing and struck the framework without being able to soften the blow. He fell down another floor because of it. The impact made a dull noise. He had partially landed once partway down, but he had fallen to the ground from the 3rd floor all the same. The pain was more than one could bear just by gritting one’s teeth. And for someone who left everything to his powers instead of training his body like Accelerator, it was even worse.

“Gwaaaah!!” Accelerator yelled while holding the top of his shoulder.

Komaba ignored his scream and pulled the trigger.

As he rolled on the dirty ground, Accelerator somehow managed to avoid the bullet.

The power of the bullet was much greater than a normal one. It pierced a steel frame partway down and the thick piece of metal exploded from the inside. The frame was transformed into a large number of small metal pieces and they rained down on Accelerator. He was rolling on the ground, but he still received small tears on his skin.

“Tch!!”

Accelerator searched the ground with his gaze looking for something.

(...! There it is!!)

He grabbed his handgun that Komaba had kicked down.

He rolled onto his back, held the gun up in both hands, aimed towards the framework above, and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot rang out.

But Komaba wasn’t there. The bullet flew through empty space and hit the edge of one of the plastic sheets covering the sky. The bullet must have hit the clasp because the sheet blew to the side.

“Checkmate...”

Accelerator heard this monotonous voice that sounded like the written words were being expelled from the speaker’s mouth coming from a blind spot diagonally up from his position.

Komaba must have already moved to a different frame.

“I give you one final choice... Where do you want me to shoot you when I kill you?”

“...So you have a Smart Weapon.”

Accelerator muttered that in annoyance, but it was hard to aim towards Komaba in his state.

He heard the voice coming from outside his vision again.

“My Smart Weapon uses infrared rays to accurately measure the target’s composition, solidity, and distance. ...And then it mixes the powder that will cause the most appropriate level of destruction. ...Then the plastic instantaneously hardens forming the bullet. It can shoot through a steel plate or it can leave the bullet in a piece of tofu. If you have a way you would prefer to die, tell me now. I am confident that I can create almost any type of death while operating it on manual...”

“I see,” muttered Accelerator.

If Accelerator was defeated here, Komaba Ritoku would trigger Code Orange which would knock out the communications network. Then he would take advantage of the confusion and indiscriminately attack the espers in the area. But nothing would be gained by it. Skill Out just wasn’t powerful enough to gain control of the entirety of Academy City.

That was why they had changed from the original target of their violence and were aiming for an “enemy” they could actually defeat.

They were attacking a low-level “enemy” instead of the Level 5’s and the Board of Directors who they truly hated.

The skin on Accelerator’s face distorted into a smile.

The law of the back alleys was ruled by strong vs. weak instead of good vs. evil. He was so familiar with it, he wanted to vomit. And Accelerator had parted from the world of light and plunged into the depths of GROUP in order to fight that type of law.

Accelerator gritted his teeth.

--Are you trying to rule Skill Out like this?

“In your case, it may be better if you remain suspicious of others’ kind words. Especially if you know the value of what you want to protect.”

--Are you just going to enjoy causing trouble at your own convenience like this?

“No matter how unsightly it may be, you have no choice but to keep paying back every yen, every fraction of a yen, you can. If you keep adding it up, your path will surely open up before you. After all, you have power unlike me. There are plenty of ways you can pay it all back at once.”

--Are you just going to continue bringing misfortune to innocent people like this?

“I’m back, says Misaka as Misaka gives the standard greet-...Ow! Why are you repeatedly chopping me without saying anything!? says Misaka as Misaka holds her head and pretends to cry!!”

(Is he just going to devour other people’s happiness just to vent his own pent up anger and satisfy no one but himself!?)

“Fuck that, you piece of shit!”

And with those words, two guns fired.

Part 5

And with that the battle was over.

Who won and who lost was as clear as day. Accelerator’s last ray of hope was that his gun was pointed towards somewhere other than the metal Chaff Seeds scattered throughout the air that were obstructing his powers or his target, Komaba.

And Komaba Ritoku’s Smart Weapon was accurately pointed at him from a blind spot. In shogi, that was called a perfect checkmate. It was a situation where his attack couldn’t reach and his opponent’s attack could take his life.

The fired bullet pierced soft flesh.

The bullet from the Smart Weapon tore through the meat of a person’s side. The scraps of clothes torn off were soaked with blood and the weight kept them from floating. The scraps merely fell to the ground.

A second later, a burning pain ran though that side.

But there was no time to even put a hand to the wound.

“Why...?”

The words naturally seeped out.

The taste of blood spread through that mouth and that red liquid spilled from those lips.

“Why is your ‘reflection’ back?”

Looking at Komaba coughing up blood above him on the framework, Accelerator gave a thin smile while still lying on the dirty ground.

“You idiot.”

It was a thin, thin, thin, thin, ever so thin smile.

It was a smile that looked like it had been split open by a razor blade. It was a smile that starved for blood.

“After you scatter that foil called chaff into the air, it jams electromagnetic signals. So the solution was simple. I just had to get those thin sheets of metal out of the air somehow. With ventilation, for example.”

“You...don’t mean...”

Komaba looked up.

One of the various colored plastic sheets that were spread from building to building as a satellite countermeasure was blown out of the way. Accelerator’s bullet had knocked off the clasp.

Due to the sudden wind, the Chaff Seeds had blown well out of formation. They could float under their own power to a certain extent, but it wasn’t enough to stand up to a strong blast of wind. A large hole had been blown in their compact formation from before.

“Now then...”

The sound of the ground being struck was heard.

Accelerator must have altered some vector or other because, from lying on his back, he stood straight up without bending like a door being opened.

“You need to rethink what it means for a Level 0 to pick a fight with a Level 5!!”

“...Tch!!”

Komaba slowly reached for his pocket.

Whether he used his special gun or strong legs, Komaba Ritoku had no chance of winning now that Accelerator’s vector conversion ability was back.

So he must have been trying to disseminate more Chaff Seeds and retreat.

“Too slow!!”

Accelerator kicked some pebbles at his feet.

That was all he did.

Nevertheless, the vector converted pebbles shot strait through Komaba’s palm. A loud roar could be heard after the flesh on his hand was torn open.

“Gwaaaaahhh!?”

The Chaff Seed container Komaba had taken out fell and he crouched down holding the wrist of the hand hit. But that was when he lost his balance. While crouched down, he fell from the 3rd floor frame.

Komaba Ritoku wasn’t going to die from just that. His legs were strong enough to break those steel frames. If he could regain his balance partway down, he could easily make a proper landing.

And for that very reason, Accelerator showed no mercy.

“Ha ha! C’mon, let me have a little more fun!!”

He altered the vectors of his legs and shot forward like a rocket. He grabbed Komaba’s gut just as he was about to land and slammed him into a nearby steel pillar.

He had converted Komaba’s falling vector to one straight ahead.

The thick steel pillar bent unnaturally from the impact. Komaba’s giant body trembled. His cell phone and the reserve Chaff Seed containers came from his pocket and scattered across the ground.

“Gh...bh...!?”

Komaba coughed up blood, but, regardless of whether it was going to reach Accelerator’s face or not, he repelled it to the side so not a single drop landed on him.

He rejected even that.

“Now it’s checkmate. You have no feeling left in your lower body, right?”

“Kh...”

“You did a good job of actually managing to keep your Smart Weapon in your hand through all that. I’ll give you that much. If you want to continue this, go for it. Seeing people kill themselves like that can be quite fun.”

While holding his target by the gut, the edges of Accelerator’s lips lifted up.

“It’s true Level 0’s are weak, but being weak doesn’t make you evil.”

He was enjoying disgracing this man who was on the verge of death.

“People like that are treated like nuisances because it’s always people like you in Skill Out causing the problems. Give you rights? A guarantee of safety? Fucking ridiculous. Can’t you tell you’re strangling yourself by doing things like that?”

“...Heh.”

All his teeth were stained red, but Komaba still laughed.

“Here’s a...hypothetical question...” he said in his voice that sounded like copy paper was coming from his mouth. “These ‘harmless Level 0’s’ you’re talking about... If attacking them for no reason became popular among you rotten espers...what would you do?”

Accelerator’s eyelids closed slightly out of disinterest.

“Problems with a person’s personality aren’t taken into account when it comes to whether they get powers or not... There are some people who have powerful abilities but are weak people. These horrible people can do nothing but gloat about it. ...I have seen dozens of espers like that who are nothing beyond their powers.”

Komaba Ritoku didn’t beg for his life; he merely looked Accelerator in the eye as he spoke.

Skill Out.

That group was originally created in order to protect themselves from powerful espers.

“And if...it became popular among those people to play a game where they hunted down Level 0’s who weren’t part of an organization like Skill Out...what would you do?”

There was something glowing on the ground.

It was Komaba Ritoku’s cell phone that had fallen when he had struck the steel pillar. The phone had unfolded when it hit the ground and light was coming from the standby screen.

The screen showed a low-resolution photo.

It was of a small elementary school aged girl and Komaba Ritoku standing uncomfortably next to her.

It was a scene far removed from the Skill Out and the back alleys.

Perhaps Komaba had gone to a lot of effort to distance himself from that kind of thing for that photo.

(This bastard...)

The reorganization of Skill Out.

The objective of this incident and its result.

What Komaba Ritoku had with him.

“Heh. I knew if I kept taking out-of-place actions it would eventually end like this...”

Accelerator lifted his head when he heard Komaba’s voice.

“But I got to see something good in the end. I suppose it all worked out...”

Komaba looked at Accelerator’s expression and smiled with his blood-covered mouth.

What exactly had Komaba taken from the change in the look on that Level 5’s face?

With slow motions, Komaba pointed his gun right between Accelerator’s eyes.

“It seems...you and I are living under similar circumstances.”

A gunshot shook the area.

Accelerator’s “reflection” made no exceptions. The bullet bounced back and flew back into the Smart Weapon’s barrel. The iron weapon was smashed to pieces from the inside and the bullet continued on its path and hit Komaba’s face. And with that Komaba Ritoku’s face was gone. There was a raw noise. The torn pieces looked like a bowl with chipped edges. It looked like a crude container with skin and hair on it that had only brains inside.

Accelerator saw it from point-blank range.

He saw it from closer than anyone else.

“...”

He let go.

The body fell to the ground and the arms and legs bent limply and remained stuck where they were. Komaba wasn’t going to say anything more. He had been a troublesome enemy when he stood in Accelerator’s path, but all resistance had left him.

And Accelerator’s job was over.

His first job had been completed without a hitch.

Part 6

“Well done,” Unabara Mitsuki said from the other end of the phone. “All that remains is transportation of the bodies as well as elimination of evidence. We’ll take care of the empty cartridges and blood stains. That black garbage truck is on its way, so get on that.”

“No,” Accelerator responded while holding his phone. “I’ll come back on my own. I don’t want any favors from you people.”

“That’s fine, but try not to run into anyone you know. There’s a reason we keep ourselves hidden; standing out isn’t going to bring you any favors. I wouldn’t advise it for any of us.”

“Quit speaking down to me. Do you want me to fucking kill you?”

Accelerator gave that parting comment and hung up.

(...Chaff, huh? So there’s an artificial way of jamming electromagnetic waves. Maybe I could carry a bomb or something around to knock that kind of thing out of the air.)

He looked back at the dirty ground as he thought about what he should do in the future.

Komaba Ritoku’s corpse was there with the top half of its face gone. The military flashlight that had broken in its fall was, too.

“Keh.” Accelerator made a noise of annoyance. “I know you’re alive, Musujime Awaki.”

After he spoke, he heard footsteps coming from farther into the back alley.

“I was watching from a window for some of it, but when did you notice me?”

“Heh. It was obvious you were there.”

In order to avoid Komaba Ritoku’s gunshots, he had jumped from the 2nd story of the framework.

Accelerator had retrieved his gun from the ground afterwards and counterattacked. However, when he thought about it now, it was obvious that that was just too much good fortune. It was pretty unlikely that his gun would be within reach after he fell. Musujime Awaki had used Move Point to move it within reach.

“Don’t interfere in other people’s fights.”

“Oh? Is that any way to talk to the person that saved your life?”

“...Do you want me to kill you?”

“Right back at you.”

A thin smile appeared on Musujime’s face and she got so close he could feel her breath on his face.

Her eyes were open so wide they looked like dinner plates.

“Did you forget? The only reason I’m here is because you interfered with my fight on that day. If it weren’t for you, I could have hidden and gotten more people to help me. Then I could have attacked the facility my comrades are restrained in and rescued them.”

The smile on her face looked like it was slicing her head in two as she slowly spoke.

“Heh. Heh heh. If you use your powers to help me with my work in GROUP and my comrades are released as a result, I’ll forgive you. But if you get in my way, you’re dead. Make sure your value to me doesn’t fall any farther. If you don’t you’ll have corkscrews all over your body.”

“Shut the fuck up, woman.” Accelerator cracked his neck as he responded. “You’re the one that doesn’t understand. You’re the one that got so upset just because I smashed some of your luggage. Try and get this in that defective brain of yours. If you waste even a second of my life, you’re going to be nothing more than a stain in a back alley.”

“...”

“...”

The two stared at each other for a bit, but then a car horn sounded multiple times with short intervals between. It seemed the black garbage truck had arrived at the entrance to the alley.

The tension between them disappeared when they heard that.

“Fucking ridiculous,” Accelerator spat out.

“You’ve got that right,” Musujime Awaki nodded and stepped back.

It wasn’t time for that yet.

“How did you trick Komaba?”

“It was actually quite easy. Because his legs were so powerful, he wasn’t going to leave a corpse. So I used a dumpster as a shield. It was behind a restaurant, so it had a pig bones and organs in it.”

“I used Move Point to move myself, so I did vomit once partway through,” she added.

To add more detail, she had apparently wrapped some hair she had pulled out with Move Point around her flashlight. She could teleport something as particular as specific hairs, but she still found moving herself difficult.

“...So you used a dumpster full of organs that just happened to be there. That was lucky.”

“Yes, it was. I would have just used something else as a shield had I not been so lucky. I could have used one of the other Skill Out members. I do consider it fortunate that I didn’t have to do that.”

Musujime picked her flashlight up from next to the corpse.

“You did quite a number on him,” she said in a disinterested voice. “Unabara called you, right? What did he say?”

“He said to get on the garbage truck that was coming. I said I’d go back on my own.”

Musujime gave a puzzled look at that.

“Oh? Do you have somewhere you want to go? It’s a bit too soon for lunch.”

“That elegant-acting man asked me that too, but it’s nothing much.”

Accelerator had another cell phone in his hand.

It was a plastic electronic device that was covered in the blood of a man who was now gone.

The standby screen showed a young girl smiling.

And when he pressed a few buttons, a number of phone numbers appeared.

The entry category was “People Requiring Special Attention in Regards to Attacks on Level 0’s”.

He looked through the entries.

As he did, he relaxed and spoke.

“I still have a job left to do. A special bonus job.”