Volume 5, 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You – Travel.(4/6)
Shirai had remained silent for a bit now, but she finally pulled out her phone.
“Uiharu. Can you hear me, Uiharu!? Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s because Frillsand #G is producing so much electricity, but you’re supposed to be one of the best in the IT field, so use some trick of yours to get me a connection. Right this instant!!”
“Geez. Ksh. Why do so many people think hackers are basically witches?”
The girl on the other end complained but still got Shirai a connection right away.
Kamijou and the others couldn’t believe it, but Shirai just gave her next instructions.
“Gather all the records you can find on December 25.”
“What are you looking for? There were so many deaths that wouldn’t narrow it down much. I mean, around half of Anti-Skill is either dead or resigned due to mental issues. They’re trying to keep up appearances, but I doubt they’re really functioning as an organization anymore. They haven’t touched this Winter Cleaning stuff.”
Youen leaned forward with a “tell me more” look on her face, so Kamijou held her back. Shirai Kuroko glanced over at them before continuing.
“Then give me data on any criminals who managed to destroy an Anti-Skill branch or caused equivalent damage.”
“Coming right up,” said the girl on the phone. “Two girls thought to be the twins who call themselves the Decomposer and the Carrier attacked the South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station. More than 99.9% of the personnel inside were killed or injured. The majority of the dead were decomposed to the point that their genetic information was destroyed, which has made identifying the bodies a challenge. Shirai-san, you were there when it happened, weren’t you?”
“Oh, that’s about me. I’m the Carrier one.”
“Bff!?” spat Kamijou.
Youen didn’t sound particularly proud. She made it sound as casual as reporting on the results of a grocery run.
“Kaai and I also destroyed the Anti-Skill Chemical Analysis Center in District 18’s twin towers, but that turned out to be bait so I guess you can call it a draw.”
This explained the harsh looks Shirai Kuroko had been giving the girl.
And the report from the phone wasn’t done yet. They were only getting started.
“The District 1 General Anti-Skill Station was attacked by Kihara Hasuu and a girl known as Ladybird using a prisoner transport vehicle. They wiped out the ordinary Anti-Skill officers and some special forces known as Anti-Skill Aggressor and appear to have sabotaged the station’s server to shut down the network. I find it hard to believe, but the girl is reported to have deflected full-auto gunfire with only a heavy metal machete and thrown herself on top of a grenade to protect her surroundings. Not to mention the Anti-Skill Aggressor radio records include the phrase “She’s a machine, so how the hell can she use telekinesis?” There isn’t enough information to say whether that claim is legitimate or not.
“This is unconfirmed, but a few Anti-Skill officers in a District 8 street were apparently found dead due to friendly fire. No detailed records remain, but reports from people in the area suggest a girl named Vivana Oniguma was involved.
“20 Anti-Skill officers were killed or left in a state of confusion after attempting to raid a dark side mobile trailer base in the unmanned industrial section of District 17. The direct cause appears to be a supposed artificial ghost named Frillsand #G, but she was apparently acting as a hyper-aggressive decoy so a researcher named Drencher Kihara Repatri and some unidentified children referred to as ‘specimens’ could escape.”
That was a lot of information.
It included some names not present here in this station. It also didn’t explain the sniper or the mass of muscles they knew were inside or near the station.
Kamijou guessed some of the mentioned people were already dead.
This much was already complicated and it didn’t even touch on the magic side plot that spread the Coins of Nicholas, so he doubted they were even looking at the whole picture of what had happened on the night of the 25th.
However, one part stuck out to him.
“Frillsand #G. That’s the ghost who’s been causing trouble here, isn’t it? But..”
He trailed off.
Shirai Kuroko continued for him.
“Uiharu. Give us details on everyone connected to Frillsand #G. For example, who is this Drencher Kihara Repatri? It sounds like he was involved in Handcuffs, but he wasn’t aboard the Overhunting and he isn’t in this station.”
“Yes, well, doesn’t that suggest a certain possibility?”
A short silence followed.
No one wanted to say it out loud.
“No body was found for Drencher Kihara Repatri. It seems like the criminals were attempting to escape outside of the city toward the end of Handcuffs, but I doubt any of them succeeded. If he wasn’t on the Overhunting and isn’t in a hospital’s ICU, we should assume he didn’t survive. He just hasn’t been found yet.”
“..”
A young man whose corpse hadn’t been found. And he had a connection to Frillsand #G.
Could he be the man from the scene that burst into the back of Kamijou’s mind whenever those electric attacks were flying?
“Umm, Shirai-san? Hello, you’re breaking up. Kssshhh, Shira- kssshhh!!”
The connection suddenly died.
A source of signal interference was slowly approaching. Just like the TV or radio signal growing staticky as a large typhoon or thick thunderclouds blew in.
The artificial ghost had been willing to act as a decoy against a squad of Anti-Skill officers to help Drencher and the children escape safely. But Drencher was nowhere to be found, Frillsand #G was running wild, and she was wandering around attacking any Handcuffs survivors. Kamijou was starting to get what the ghost was fighting for.
Vengeance.
Perhaps all ghosts were bound to the world of the living for some tragic reason.
Something exploded.
The nearby concrete wall burst apart and several metal lockers were knocked over as a huge mass of muscle rolled into the room.
“Rakuoka!” shouted Shirai, eyes wide. Strangely, she had the tone of someone worried about a friend’s wellbeing.
But the others had bigger concerns.
“Hello. This is Frillsand #G-chan.”
A face emerged from the hole in the wall, swaying irregularly side to side.
“Next stop: fried to a crisp. Repeat: fried to a crisp.”
Something was slowly but surely approaching.
“Po. Popopopopopo, popo..po......po......popopo........po......po.”
Slowly but surely approaching them.
“Am I pretty?”
They heard the sound of gathering electricity and all the shower nozzles burst open at once.
Frillsand #G.
They had no way of avoiding her. But the water soaking the floor and walls must have come as a surprise for the ghost as well. A fearsome lightning bolt was redirected so it flew right past Kamijou.
Corrupted text appeared on the shower temperature displays until “42 degrees” glowed from all of them in a red light. Wasn’t that the dividing line between life and death with a fever?
Kamijou lowered his static-covered head to look at his right hand, but Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate this. An invisible force enveloped his head and data gradually seeped into his brain from outside his skull.
A scene from the past began to play.
“They’re just kids. And it’s not like I’m asking for all of them. Just two or three will do.”
“I wanted to protect them from the dark side scum who think like that.”
A young man had lost his life in a place no one in the world recognized.
For some reason, she had been helpless to do anything but watch.
It wasn’t an issue of courage or motivation. Her nature as an artificial ghost had gotten in the way. So she had been helpless to do anything. But that didn’t mean she had accepted what happened.
That young man had spent his life to protect those small children and successfully found someone in the dark side worth handing the children over to. He had breathed his last with a smile on his lips.
She had watched it all.
“How could you throw away your own life over this!? When you get down to it, those kids are just strangers! How could a goddamn harmful go this far just because you ‘wanted to save them’!? How!? Tell me!?”
“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”
So he had lost his life.
And her inability to do anything about it had broken something deep inside her.
Kamijou Touma’s mind resurfaced as a blinding light flashed before his eyes.
“Agh!!”
He lost his equilibrium and nearly fell to the side, but he managed to stay on his feet.
He could tell there was some connection between the electricity and his brain, but he couldn’t explain what exactly was going on in his head. He felt the same fear as being cursed and then suffering from a mysterious fever or finding a wound shaped like a human face. It was the same horror as seeing the doctor try everything they could think of and then throw in the towel.
But the passion swirling inside him was enough to sweep aside that fundamental fear.
What had he just seen?
Frillsand #G was not doing this because she hated Kamijou’s group or was after the bounty on the fugitives. But that was why she wasn’t really viewing the reality around her. Her rampage was on a deeper level, so she could not be reasoned with.
A good person had been killed and she had been unable to stop it, so she had lost sight of who she was and now continued to cause further damage. Wasn’t that the whole story here!?
He wanted to speak with her. To exchange words with her.
But he doubted that was possible anymore. That point had passed before he even met her. The keyhole was right there in front of him, but the key had already been broken and thrown away.
With her blonde twintails, white skin, and doll-like blue dress, she looked European, but Frillsand #G was a very Japanese kind of ghost. She couldn’t be destroyed by holding up a holy cross and sprinkling holy water on her. Writing a Buddhist sutra all over your body would do nothing to stop her from ripping your ears off. She was a different sort of paranormal being.
There was only one person in the world who could possibly stop her now: Drencher Kihara Repatri.
Anyone could come up with that answer, but no one could make it happen.
She was like the vengeful ghosts in many stories who were doomed to eternally wander the earth because they had lost the one solution to their problem. Like someone forever searching for their body after it was mistakenly cremated while they were astral projecting, like a stalker ghost who was forever attempting to pursue a woman who had already died by suicide, or like the spirit of a serial killer’s victim who pursued their killer without realizing they had already been executed. Frillsand #G was searching for something she could never find, yet no one among the living could ever inform her of that.
(Wait.)
But.
Kamijou Touma had a fundamental question about all this.
Operation Handcuffs had rocked the shadows of Academy City. It would leave its name in scientific history due to the countless tragedies that he was sure the simple reports did nothing to adequately describe.
Anyone would want to cover their eyes at what they were seeing. But what if?
Handcuffs was something you wouldn’t hear about if you lived an ordinary life in Academy City. And a lot of strange technology had been at play there.
Frillsand #G was the perfect example, since she was an artificial ghost.
Then there were Youen and her twin Kaai with their roles as the Carrier and Decomposer.
There was that mass of muscles Rakuoka Houfu and the unidentified sniper. Even the Vivana Oniguma who had only been listed as a name had likely used some kind of technology all her own.
There was some other puzzle here.
He had to throw out his preconceptions that this was nothing but unmitigated tragedy. He had to focus on all the technology laid out on both sides of the field. The night of December 25 had already passed. He could not return to that time. But those events had led directly to this on the 29th, so the same technology, or remnants of it, had to still be in the city.
Was it really true that the mysterious dark side could only cause death and destruction?
He couldn’t let those assumptions lead him astray.
Technology didn’t take sides.
Military martial arts were designed to kill, but that same knowledge could be used to provide first aid. A chef license and nutritional science were used to support a healthy diet, but that same knowledge could be abused to include enough salt and sugar to shorten someone’s lifespan or to create a torturous dish that was unbearably foul to taste.
This was the same.
The question was how all these different technologies would be used.
He had to rethink this horrific puzzle and take another look at Operation Handcuffs. Was there really no salvation left in that incident? Was there really nothing there they could still use now?
Really???
(No.)
This grudge came from an artificially-created ghost.
So could that same artificial method be used again?
Was it possible?
“It might just work.”
Part 11
“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”
A deep, unsteady female voice echoed across a flooded shower room with a broken wall and pipes.
The source had long, blonde twintails and a doll-like dress.
She took step after step through the puddles without making a sound and she passed through the walls and pillars with ease.
High Voltage Cutting.
With both ion sheaths and shock diamonds, releasing powerful enough energy for long enough would create unusual interference and overlapping. Intentionally creating and manipulating this to make someone nonexistent appear in the physical world was the foundation of artificial ghost technology, but Frillsand #G in particular used a giant civilization battery constructed from a combination of the copper, zinc, and other metals found wherever people lived and the acid rain produced by the carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide constantly produced by human society.
Ultimately, that energy source could come from an entire city, an entire country, or the entire world. She was an artificial ghost who would never disappear unless humanity abandoned every last one of its civilizations.
Attempting to exorcise her was a fool’s errand.
You could build a solemn shrine and desperately worship her as a god, but whether or not she stopped was entirely up to her mood.
She was like a natural disaster supported by chemistry and physics.
“..Drencher.”
Someone had said Operation Handcuffs was already over.
They had said the dark said was no more.
But if so..
“Besides, I have a secret weapon prepared for this special day.”
“Tah dah!! It’s foie gras. I’m going to sauté it in the frying pan.”
They hadn’t had anywhere near enough money. They may have gathered more than average, but anyone would have trouble making ends meet when looking after so many children.
But he had never let his weak smile fade.
She knew that fool had scraped together whatever he could to give the children a feast so they could have something special for Christmas.
“Oh, Drencher..”
Drencher Kihara Repatri.
That infamous Kihara name had been a complete lie.
The usual justice and charity weren’t enough to save the children swallowed up by the dark side, so that endlessly caring man had mastered the worst of worst, built up a position for himself, and then saved those young lives from the darkness.
The artificial ghost bit her lip that did not biologically exist.
He was no more.
If his ultimate sacrifice had caused the dark side to disintegrate, then the small place he had left behind would vanish along with it.
Could she really let that happen?
She knew, of course, that Drencher Kihara Repatri had loathed the city’s darkness more than anyone and had wanted to save as many lives from it as possible, so the destruction of the dark side had been the thing he longed for and dreamed of.
But.
Even so.
Frillsand #G could not accept it. That man was such a fool and so kind and he had worked so hard and even sacrificed his life to protect those children. How could she let all record of his life be swallowed up by the waves of time until he might as well have not existed at all?
No one wants to remember what happened? So what?
People are better off not knowing? Why should she care?
Maybe the people in charge had cleverly covered it up and maybe the masses had obediently looked away, but if she wasn’t satisfied, she would pry open the seal they had placed on that hell. She would show them that her rage came from their attempt to bury all evidence of that man’s life.
Some of the criminals remained.
Operation Handcuffs was not over.
If she fought with them and resumed the fight to the death, surely she would be back in the same world as that man.
Surely.
Please someone tell me it’s true.
I don’t care if I’m wrong about it all. Just don’t tell me to deny how I feel.
“Ah, ahhh.”
God, please save that kind fool.
And if you do not, please allow me to rip this pain from my heart.
“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”
Part 12
Fearsome electricity surged in every direction.
It radiated out from a central figure.
Finding some kind of shield wasn’t enough this time. Thick reinforced concrete broke like styrofoam and the row of metal lockers exploded. The vortex of destruction was so great it was a miracle the entire station and adjoining buildings didn’t collapse.
Imagine Breaker would not negate this
If not for the long pink cricket bat that popped out from below Alice’s apron and flew around her, Kamijou would have been hit and killed by the lightning. In fact, the bat wasn’t alone this time. Several balls dropped down from below her apron and then sharp needles shot out in every direction.
The effect was unclear. Or rather, he didn’t have time to watch what they did.
He was too busy escaping the locker room even if he had to roll along the ground.
“Ahhhh!?”
He couldn’t afford to worry about the wound Youen had treated and sewn up. He grabbed smiling Alice under his other arm (because she didn’t seem to grasp the situation and didn’t try to escape) and pushed open the metal door on the opposite end of the room. There he found a few office desks lined up with one wall covered in LCD monitors. Those would be for displaying the security camera footage from the station building and platforms. Some unfamiliar machines were lined up along another wall. He tilted his head until he realized what they were. They were ticket machines. He could remember a few times when his change or smart card had gotten stuck and a worker had opened a metal slit to speak to him from the other side of the wall.
Youen listened to the explosions through the wall while she took a look at her test tubes and pulled out a few that contained a muddy brown liquid. She threw them away.
“Tch. A few of my artificial pheromones are ruined. The test tubes have an airtight seal, so is that ghost using electrolysis? No, this may be photolysis, which only needs a bright enough light. If we keep running away, I’m going to lose more and more of my stock.”
Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure how to react. She liked the idea of a criminal losing her weapons, but she didn’t like the idea of losing the weapons they needed to survive.
Then the twintailed Judgment girl turned toward Kamijou.
“Anyway, what ‘just might work’?”
“Teacher, you did say that.”
Alice nodded repeatedly. She seemed eager to join any conversation related to him.
“No one can defeat that ghost called..Frillsand #G was it?” He glanced over at some grainy security camera footage. “But I do know why she’s doing this: Drencher Kihara Repatri. If he was here, he could convince her to stop.”
“That doesn’t do us much good.”
“Right. He wasn’t in the Overhunting’s records and there’s no record of him being hospitalized either, so the odds are good he died during Handcuffs. I know that.”
Kamijou did not deny how bad their situation was.
However.
“But we know this is an artificial ghost since my right hand doesn’t work. And if it’s possible to create a ghost purely with technology, then couldn’t you drag a dead man back to the realm of the living?”
“..”
“..”
No one responded for a while. That wasn’t a surprise from good Shirai Kuroko, but it also applied to Hanatsuyu Youen who would throw out certain possibilities because she saw herself as a bad person.
He understood this wasn’t an easy thing to agree with.
This would be an unthinkable kind of violation. He felt a solid taboo in his hands. He knew all that, but he still couldn’t abandon this possibility he had discovered.
“I mean, what happened is so sad.” He found himself speaking without meaning to. “All of Handcuffs was. So many people died and it didn’t accomplish anything. But I’m thinking about Frillsand #G who we’re all treating like a villain just because she’s grieving someone’s death.”
Kamijou Touma had not been involved on the night of the 25th. He had fought a different deadly battle on the 24th and 25th and been left groaning in a hospital bed.
But what did that matter?
“Don’t you want to change this tragic ending?”
Just say it.
It’s not about whether or not you’re qualified.
Anyone would do. Raise an objection against that tragedy!! Don’t turn away and say you can’t bear to look at it. Face it head-on and figure out if there’s anything you can do to help now!!!!!!
“I don’t care what kind of trick we have to use. Don’t you want to use everything found through Handcuffs to actually save her and give the finger to the god in heaven who let all this happen?”
All technology could be reproduced.
When a new tank, mine, rocket, or other weapon appeared on the battlefield, the enemy would be using the exact same thing before long.
Finally, one of the girl’s sighed.
“The ethical and moral aspects don’t matter to me. I just don’t want to explode from all that electricity. If you have a plan to avoid that, I’m all ears.” The exasperated comment came from Youen the Carrier. “We can set up a ghostly date if we want, but do you have any guarantee a second ghost based on this one will last very long? It won’t be much of an emotional reunion if he only exists for a few nanoseconds. I also hope they don’t blow up the whole city as soon as their powerful electrical energy bodies tearfully embrace.”
“Yeah, a hug might not be all that satisfying between two intangible ghosts,” agreed Kamijou.
This was a puzzle, so he hadn’t expected a single piece to solve it.
“But the artificial ghost wasn’t the only piece of bizarre tech seen at Handcuffs. There was that Ladybird android who could use an esper power despite being a machine. If she really exists, couldn’t we give the intangible ghost a tangible body?”
“..”
“I don’t know how we would attach the ghost to the machine body, but there might be some tech we could use. Youen, maybe your chemicals or microbes. Or, Shirai, maybe that quantum 11th dimensional awareness you can handle like it’s nothing!”
Operation Handcuffs had been more than just death and destruction.
If they combined the technologies used by both sides of the conflict, they could even obtain the ability to overturn a decisive tragedy.
They had to cast out their biases.
They couldn’t let their assumptions and preconceptions lead them astray.
They had to remember that Handcuffs was originally envisioned as a way to tear down the dark side and help the people found there. For every piece of death and destruction, there had to be a corresponding piece of life and salvation.
What did the dark side label matter?
Was that any reason to just shrug and give up?
I’m sick of your sh*t, misfortune. Sure, I didn’t make it in time on the 25th, but it’s not too late.
I’ll show you how Kamijou Touma does things.
“We can’t know how Frillsand #G works just from observing her. And we have nothing beyond Ladybird’s name. So is there anything we can do!? You were both involved in Handcuffs, so do you have any ideas? Like where any of them had their hideouts or labs!? Anywhere the plans or equipment for their tech could be hidden!!”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Youen casually raised her hand. “I had some small connection with Ladybird - or really, Kihara Hasuu who created her. That old man was connected to the corpse disposers you can find crawling all throughout the District 10 landfill. Those disposers would periodically receive corpses from the Kiharas and remove anything of value they could find. Those disposers would sometimes pay Kaai and me a lot of money to help melt down the parts they didn’t need. Following the path of bodies back should lead us to Kihara Hasuu..and his android lab.”
Kamijou and Shirai were horrified by the flood of disturbing words in that explanation, but Youen only shrugged with a “don’t let that shock you” look.
But why would someone building a mechanical android need human corpses?
“Frillsand #G is a complete unknown for me, though. Judgment, what about you? The official announcements claim Operation Handcuffs is over. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”
“How would I know? I haven’t seen any records related to Drencher or Frillsand #G, so we should assume an entire group participating in Handcuffs went overlooked.” Shirai Kuroko sighed in disgust. “But if we want information on the dark side, wouldn’t it be best to ask someone else from the dark side?”
Kamijou’s eyes wandered through the air.
No, he had turned toward something on the other side of the building walls.
He could only think of one other person they could ask.
“That sniper. They’re a Handcuffs survivor too, right?”
“Her name is Benizome Jellyfish, a paparazzi willing to kill to get a scoop. But she is basically a professional peeping tom, so she probably would know a lot about other people’s secrets.”
Part 13
A woman in a China dress and cowboy hat frowned while holding a sniper rifle on a building rooftop located near the train station in south District 7.
She was Beni-->>