ad inherited that defeated weapon.

“You risked your life for this, but to no avail. Look, not all of them were onboard. They must have run in fear from the very person who would have saved them.”

“Hamazura, two of them were left behind. We can’t just leave them here.”

A boy and a girl in gym clothes were holding hands a short distance away.

What had they thought when they learned the truth behind that young man’s satisfied smile?

Especially when their own actions had worked against him.

“Well, those two will suffice. I will be taking them as a souvenir. Any more than this would have been a waste of food anyway.”

“Shut up,” spat out Hamazura.

He really should not have been doing this. He had come here to escape to safety. It had been clear from the very beginning that he could not be a great hero or brave warrior. This selfish choice here might put himself and his girlfriend in danger.

But.

Even so.

A dying man had left this with him. He had been reminded what it meant to do the right thing. There were lives here he could save. He could redo things. And most of all, his girlfriend was watching.

He was done being pathetic. He gathered strength in his sweaty body and stood up under his own power again. He had to.

“Maybe you’re a Kihara and an android.”

His goal was to run away?

No, sometimes a man had to stand up and speak his mind.

“But I’ll take you on, you goddamned dark siders!!!!!!”

He knew it was possible.

He had just seen a man stay true to this way of life.

He could reclaim his humanity. He must have learned something from what he saw here.

Part 9

Of course, Hamazura could never actually hit the crimson-haired android by firing the 9mm handgun at random. He knew she would deflect the bullets with her thick machete and fill him with holes.

So he did something else instead.

“Aneri!!”

A giant shape suddenly moved right next to the racing swimsuit girl.

A wheel loader used to stack up the railroad-sized containers was being remotely controlled.

“Move.”

What was that machete even made of? She did not even look in that direction as she swung her weapon and sliced apart the snowplow-looking piece of machinery. Even though she was not using any rapid vibrations or heat.

But Hamazura used that moment to pull on his girlfriend’s hand and move from there.

This was a vast circular space, but it was not an empty colosseum.

It had concrete columns just like an underground common utility duct and it had various equipment needed for operating and maintaining the trains, all located where it would not get in the way of the turntable and the twelve directions of track. Transformers were surrounded by a fence, a prefab hut had been made into a control room, giant jacks and a carwash were prepared for maintenance purposes, and more.

Aneri had directly operated the freight train, so he felt safe assuming she could operate all of the equipment here.

He pulled his girlfriend close while hiding behind a concrete column and whispering to his phone.

“Aneri, can you directly hijack that hunk of junk?”

No response.

He took that as a no. This did not sound like it was an issue of building up to that or setting something up in advance. That android was immune to cyber attacks on some level he did not understand.

(That means the only option is to destroy her the old-fashioned way!!)

“Hamazura, we can’t hide here forever. If she stops focusing on us, she’ll go after those children. Villains always go for the easiest target.”

“I know that.”

Takitsubo kept trying to wipe the sweat from her brow, but something was not right. The moxibustion should have relieved her symptoms to an extent, but that treatment might not be working as much anymore.

He was worried, but he could not stop now. He hated that fact.

“But using ourselves as bait will put us at risk. Are you prepared for that, Takitsubo?”

“Ask any more stupid questions and I’ll slap you.”

“Okay, it’s time to win your heart all over again!!”

They both ran out from behind the concrete column.

Their eyes met the ones with pupils mechanically expanding and contracting, but they stayed strong this time.

Part 10

Ladybird had a lock on two targets.

She walked barefoot across the floor and accurately obeyed her instructions, but she also had a question.

Why were the children necessary?

Kihara Hasuu—her Sensei—was researching androids. He had already successfully created one, so he no longer needed to capture biological humans to dissect and observe them. This disagreement appeared to be over ownership of the Child Errors (she failed to realize it was her education by that true Kihara that led her to use the word “ownership” in this context), but why was the old man so insistent on this?

That unfortunate research was a thing of the past.

She was an android built from purely mechanical parts, but she could use an esper power. That meant no more human specimens were needed for esper development experiments. They only had to mess with machines from now on. The Child Errors no longer needed to be captured and used up.

She thought that was a wonderful thing. She could not believe the people who still clung to the old system that required humans to use other humans. Did they wish to protect the status given to them by the current Level system? If they truly believed their fight was just, then they were beyond reasoning with. Machines were not the only ones that could have their memory data rewritten. Humans could have their feelings and thoughts falsified as well.

So she would bring an end to it all.

She was fighting here to end the misfortune and tragedies caused by the esper development program.

“Ohhhh!!”

The boy raised a meaningless battle cry, ran in, and repeatedly fired his handgun. She only had to block those shots with her machete.

But he had apparently learned how she fought.

She tried to hit him with the ricochets, but they refused to hit. When she deflected a bullet back, it would follow the same straight trajectory. Placing a single piece of plywood in the middle would change things. A bullet’s force was determined by its muzzle velocity. The force of the ricochet would generally be lower. That was obvious enough since bullets were not constantly accelerating like a rocket or missile. So he could set it up so he could shoot her through an obstacle, but she could not break through it on the way back.

Her use of ricochets was similar to Accelerator’s reflection, but all her machete did was knock the bullet back. She could not include the actual vector in that.

That said..

(I doubt someone with such a stupid face could do this. He must be receiving assistance with the calculations.)

She considered jumping. Lifting both feet from the ground was usually a bad idea in combat, but not so with her. With her android specs, she could kick off of one column to the next and attack from the air.

She heard the loud roar of an engine while dealing with the bullets.

It appeared to come from a forklift.

“Aneri, surround the kids! I don’t know where that old man got off to, but don’t let him get close!! If he tries it, run him over!!”

“Don’t get distracted.”

He could have gotten a hit in on her by sending the forklift in from the side while firing on her from the front. Not that a blow like that would be enough to destroy her frame.

She swung the thick machete in her right hand while gathering her strength in the space between her eyebrows.

That was how she aimed.

A blast of wind blew away the obstacles between her and Hamazura Shiage. It was more like they were obliterated by an explosion than swept away by wind.

“An esper power!?” shouted the boy.

“It looked to be Level 3 or higher,” said the girl.

She no longer had to worry about the gunfire now that the line of fire was clear. He must have known the risk of ricochets was back because he stopped attacking and hid behind a nearby column, but that was no defense. She could charge in and slice through the column and his torso behind it with a single horizontal sweep of her blade.

She had enough time to reach her other hand to her thigh, pull out the bottle, and take a drink of the discharge machine oil.

A dull boom burst out.

She was only an android modeled after the structure of the human body, but the materials used for her skeleton, muscles, and everything else were bizarre dark side tech. If she wanted to, her horsepower could rival a V12 engine at max RPM.

But even as she chose the correct action, her mechanical head was filled with questions.

She had used a wind power.

But hadn’t she used fire during her previous clash with these people? And what about the time before that?

Androids had the same structure as humans, so a single android should only have a single power. Or could she do what humans could not because she was a machine?

(Sensei?)

Part 11

A column of reinforced concrete was sliced through as easily as tofu or thin paper.

Not horizontally or diagonally—vertically and all the way through. After kicking from column to column to gain height, she had apparently dropped down like lightning. She had a human form, but she could perform superhuman movements.

Hamazura Shiage had tried to jump to the side just beforehand, but he ended up tumbling into a roll.

It was not his torso sliced through along with the column. It was a gas drum kept on hand for the facility’s auxiliary power generator.

He grimaced at the pain in his hips as he continued rolling and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

Not even Ladybird could deflect bullets that hit the concrete ground and sent sparks flying.

The vaporizing gasoline ignited into explosive flames that swallowed up the entire racing swimsuit silhouette.

However..

“No, Hamazura! It didn’t work!!”

“Tch!!”

He clicked his tongue while the track suit girl ran over from elsewhere and pulled him to his feet. A black figure was displayed on the other side of that fiery screen. She showed no sign of collapsing or writhing in pain.

Had she used that previous wind power to affect how the flames spread?

He hoped so. If she was simply this tough, he could not imagine how to defeat her.

“How do you defeat an android anyway? Strangle her or stab her in the heart, she’s still a machine. That won’t stop her!!”

Could he break her motherboard? Or pull out her battery? But he had no idea how many she had or where in her slender body they were located.

The roaring flames were sliced apart. A horizontal sweep of the heavy metal machete conquered the orange barrier. The barefoot android stepped through entirely unscathed. There was no sign of discoloration on her crimson hair, white skin, or orange and black racing swimsuit.

“Something isn’t right,” said Takitsubo Rikou with eyes seemingly more robotic than the machine’s. What was she looking at right now? “An android that uses esper powers is conceivably possible. Mechanical processing may be able to ‘observe’ the waves or particles like a human brain does. And if you developed that far enough, you might be able to purposefully select between different supernatural phenomena. But this wavelength is simpler than that.”

“You mean how she switches between powers?” spat out Hamazura. “That container base in the garbage pile was their lab, right? Then I get why that old man wants those kids so bad. Even if I don’t know exactly how he would use them.”

Now, why were they able to spend so long discussing this?

The delinquent boy made sure to keep his gun aimed, but the android in question was only tilting her head.

A dark liquid was dripping from her eyes and nose.

He had seen that before. Immediately after she had been hit by the hakama girl and fought back with her fire power.

“Oh, dear.”

Kihara Hasuu’s voice reached them from somewhere, but it was echoing too much to tell where it came from. Hamazura would have shot the man if he saw him.

“Is it that time already? This is why I wanted to stock up sooner rather than later.”

“Hey.” Hamazura shouted at the unseen man. “Isn’t that cheating? You can’t really call her an android if that’s what you’re doing.”

The boy watched as the girl in the orange and black racing swimsuit held her head and doubled over.

A low straining sound came from her.

Then her back opened along the line from her nape to her tailbone.

The clasp holding together the X-shaped band at the center of the swimsuit’s back popped open and the supports were released in four directions.

Then her soft skin opened wide while supported at her nape.

Her opened back almost looked like a steam locomotive’s boiler or a furnace from hell. The fact that it was smooth human skin instead of a thick metal door gave it the sinister appearance of an insect’s shell opening up.

The top half of her swimsuit fell out of place, but her chest was not visible.

Her long red hair dropped down to cover it up.

She had planted her hands and feet on the ground like a beast.

Something translucent crawled out of her. It looked like a long, narrow blade or like a wriggling snake. It would grab something, drag it inside her, and cut it away. It was an automatic extraction organ.

Hamazura knew what it was for.

“I saw the junk those trash collectors were taking back after searching through those piles of abandoned items. A fridge was full of some brownish filth.”

He felt nauseated just remembering it.

He grimaced as he viewed that monster.

“It was stuffed full of corpses with the contents of their heads removed. When those trash collectors were searching out fridges and washing machines, they weren’t selling them to used appliance stores. They were opening up bloodstained boxes packed full of still-usable organs. And they all came from your lab, didn’t they!?”

“Well, the ordinary corpses were apparently disposed of in District 10’s slums, but there are a lot of people willing to buy up ones fresh enough to make use of their parts.”

Ladybird was not an android with esper powers. She was as harmful as they came. She was a machine that would devour people’s brains when necessary. In Hamazura’s opinion, that meant she did not fit the definition of an android.

“This is a completely different approach from the Rensa model of esper cyborg. Instead of a cyborg made by giving a brain a body, Ladybird-kun is a body given a brain.” Hasuu sounded like he was introducing his favorite grandchild. “Cellulose nanofiber is a carbon material gathering attention for its use in making wires and bulletproof materials, but the point is we can create delicate wires even thinner than the cranial nerves. But unlike a biological brain, leaving them in their active state causes them to automatically replicate and they will try to forcibly fold themselves up for space if they run out of room in the skull. The cerebrum’s frontal lobe is especially troublesome. So a foreign object must be introduced to constantly provide just the right amount of damage to ensure the brain remains the size I want it. Her power changes each time a new foreign object is introduced, but that is due to the change in the rejection and damage pattern. You can think of that as a simple idiosyncrasy.”

“Sen..sei?”

A grinding sound came from Ladybird while she seemed to be searching for something. However the old researcher described it, a human brain was apparently a necessary part for her to run. Her movements were noticeably stiff and awkward as she pursued that poison on her own.

“Sensei..but you said this research would help. You said the spread of androids would mean no more human specimens were needed for the esper development.”

“The ladybird—another name for the ladybug—might look humorous, but it is in fact a ravenous carnivore. You have heard that they are good to have around because they eat aphids, haven’t you?”

“Gh..kh.”

“And there are a lot of insects that mimic ladybugs. That includes a type of darkling beetle and cockroach, both kinds of bugs people might not normally want around. But that is not actually a type of protective coloration. Ha ha. Instead of trying to blend into their natural surroundings or avoid their predators, that coloration might actually be used to make humans like them.”

historical

How deep did the dark side go?

How disgusting could the dark said get?

“So don’t you see?”

Its attacks were indiscriminate, like a cannibal insect.

The developer spoke to what looked like a lovely girl. And he seemed to be enjoying it immensely.

“That is the perfect name for you.”

Part 12

text> @I thought there was a problem with the world.

text> @I thought it was wrong for @humans to use @humans for their research in this city.

text> But @I could climb onto the examination table instead.

text> @I can be repaired or remade as many times as necessary.

text> Since my body was made identically to a @human’s, @I would be able to use an esper power as well. Pieces of my body could be freely added or removed, so @I could be examined inside and out more easily than a @human and @I could be modified as they saw fit.

text> No more sacrifices would be necessary for the esper development research.

text> That is why @I fought.

text> @I thought @Sensei’s research was a wonderful thing.

“You know, Ladybird-kun, the term android signifies an artificial human built with an engineering approach. Based on that definition, it seems appropriate to me for a completed android to behave like a human.”

text> @Sensei’s words were like a shining light of hope.

text> @I wondered if @I really was good enough.

text> But @I was happy as long as @I could be of some use. @I think that kind of feeling is not something a simple machine could feel.

text> Does that mean @I am somehow @human?

text> The @humans that @I have seen are like that. They do not hesitate to make inefficient choices without even considering cost performance.

text> That is why @I find @humans to be so incredible.

text> @I have not spoken much with any other than @Sensei, but @I know that is because @androids cannot be made public yet. But @I love the @humans that @I see from a distance.

text> @I will build a path to a brighter future for them—a path to a happier world—so @I cannot allow someone to destroy all that just because they do not understand. So I will not let anyone interfere. Anyone who claims it is right to harm @people cannot be allowed to trample on the future @I can bring them.

text> So..

text>And yet..

Part 13

“Ah, ahh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The lovely girl in a racing swimsuit screamed.

All light vanished from her already mechanical eyes. She had fully transformed into a grotesque predator that roared on all fours.

She wanted to reject the idea, but she could not.

The only way to preserve herself was to devour that raw body tissue and bring it to the most important part of her body. Because intentionally introducing that foreign object would trigger a rejection reaction that would continue to damage her head in just the right way. That truth was more horrifying than needing to soak in a bathtub full of rotting corpses every day. Yet she could not stop. She was not allowed to stop. That had been built into her at the design phase, whether she liked it or not. She would always return to it like a drowning person struggling to reach the surface for air.

Tears spilled from her eyes.

Her mechanical face was painted with anger, hatred, and shame.

Why was she designed to do that?

An ordinary person like Hamazura could not figure it out. What logical reason was there? It almost felt like the cruelty of someone who enjoyed to watch others suffer.

At the same time, everything she needed to survive was contained inside her. Or maybe it was more accurate to say she had been built as an autonomous iron maiden. The victim was thrown into her back, the door to that steam locomotive boiler would slam shut, and the rest was completed automatically. She was made to do that and she must have actually done it several times before.

At that point, it was not an issue of good and evil on her part.

Hamazura could not judge her, but he did have to stop her.

No matter what.

“Grahhhhhhhh!!” she roared.

“Hamazura!!”

Takitsubo shouted in a panic because the red figure had vanished.

But the quadrupedal android had not leaped toward Hamazura or Takitsubo. Nor did she leap toward Kihara Hasuu who had made her this way. She went for someone else. She gained height by kicking off the columns and she moved every closer to the smallest and easiest prey: the kids in gym clothes.

Her instincts took precedence over strategy or emotion.

“Aneri!!”

A hacked track inspection car drove in from the side to tear apart an exposed high-voltage power line for the train. The power line whipped like a serpent and tangled around the android.

A great crash followed.

Knocking her to the ground was not going to flatten Ladybird, but it mattered a lot that she had fallen on her right side with the machete still in that hand.

She could not use that to defend with her arm caught between herself and the ground.

Hamazura gripped the small revolver in both hands and fired several times.

Dry gunshots expanded through the enclosed space.

This time, the shots actually hit the android whose back was turned to him. The “mouth” on her back quickly closed before she had even withdrawn the extraction organ that resembled the thin wing of an insect or a giant scalpel, but that was all that happened. This did not seem to do any real damage to her.

She used one arm to tear away the exposed power line wrapped around her like a serpent, freeing herself. At this rate, the forklifts protecting the children would not last long.

There was no time to spare.

“Boy!! Do you want to protect that girl!?” shouted Hamazura from a distance.

He did not wait for a response. The boy’s efforts had backfired badly, but if he did not care about that girl, he would not have gotten her off the train so she could escape.

Hamazura Shiage decided to trust this fellow human being.

“Then be brave and step forward! Falling back only gives her more of a chance to eat you two!!”

When the boy protecting his friend squeezed his eyes shut and stepped forward, Ladybird briefly came to a stop. She needed the soft brains inside those children. That was the poison she needed to damage herself.

But moving up to her was the right choice.

It was just like a cowboy’s lasso. You could swing it overhead to gather strength all you liked, but it would still be hard to throw it around the head of someone who was close enough to hug you. The android’s extraction organ looked like the thin wing of an insect or a transparent sword, but it was very long. That meant it was hard to use against someone right up in front of her.

But this method would only buy a few seconds at most.

Once she moved to the proper distance and tried again, the boy really would be eaten.

Hamazura made his next move before she could do that.

He had picked up a bottle of industrial cleaner presumably used to wash the train and he chucked it over a metal fence to hit a device larger than a refrigerator.

The giant railroad transformer scattered a frightening amount of sparks. And while it was invisible, it also sent out powerful electromagnetic waves.

Those waves’ effect on the human body was unknown, but their effect on a machine would be much more severe.

He heard a scream. That thing shaped like a calm and composed girl was now writhing on the ground in apparent pain.

Hamazura ran over, fired two or three shots at her, and continued on past her. Then he picked up the gym clothes boy still standing in danger and slid along the ground like a baseball player.

He hid behind the concrete column where the gym clothes girl was.

“Well done, boy. It’ll be okay now.”

Maybe someone from Anti-Skill or Judgment should have been saying that.

Maybe someone from the filthy dark side had no right to say it.

But he had taken over for a man who had wanted to say that so very badly.

And while he said that, Hamazura made sure to check his phone where the kids could not see. The screen was dead and Aneri was not responding. He doubted her program had been taken out, but without a device to receive her instructions, he had lost the support AI’s help.

It really would be 1-on-1 from here on.

But he did not need to let that show on his face.

“Maybe she’s with the dark side and maybe she isn’t, I dunno, but I don’t want to trample on her dignity any longer.” He looked the boy in the eye. “I’m going to end this here. Listen, don’t get yourselves killed. You need to survive if I’m going to save her.”

“What are you going to do?”

The gym clothes boy’s voice was vanishingly quiet, but he still got it out.

Even if he had to suppress the trembling in his body.

“I don’t want to run away anymore. What I did wasn’t brave. If I had faced mister honestly, he wouldn’t have had to get hurt. So..!!”

“Then help me out.”

Hamazura had planned to tell the boy to take the girl’s hand and run as far away as possible on his signal.

But he changed his mind.

Drencher Kihara Repatri, that young man who had wanted to save the children who would be used up by the dark side, was dead and nothing could change that. But this boy’s eyes carried the light the man had instilled in those children. After losing to Drencher, Hamazura could not allow that light to be extinguished.

No matter what.

So he changed his mind.

“I need a few tools to finish this. I’ll buy some time with this gun, so you gather them for me. Can you do that?”

Hamazura recalled the hard sensation in his pocket and clicked his tongue. He tried pulling it out, but its shine was still dull. It was not quite fully charged. The golden shine had yet to make a full circle around the edge of the coin. But that was fine. He threw the coin as far as he could, even though he had no idea if it would draw Ladybird’s attention or not.

He did not regret losing it.

He did not need the Coin of Nicholas.

Everyone already had the ability to switch over th-->>

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