Volume 5, 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You – Travel.(1/6)
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.”
“..”
historical
“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 pillar-->>