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