zome Jellyfish.

The directional mic installed on a surveillance drone had picked up the sound of a staff-only door opening.

“..?”

(They haven’t given up? Don’t give me that. Why would you try to escape after I already fired on you?)

She had drones monitoring all the exits, but she could only shoot at one exit at a time. The last thing she wanted them to do was split up and escape from different exits, but they must not have been that smart. Even if they had been brought together by chance, once the camaraderie grew, they would find it difficult to choose to sacrifice someone.

Benizome was not here to kill.

Nor did she have a grudge against the normal(?) people with the bad luck to end up working with the Handcuffs people.

She wanted to get the perfect photo of the moment someone died. And the more gruesome and shocking a death it was, the better. To get that, she was willing to shoot out the leg of someone being chased by a lion.

“Hm.” The woman wearing a fusion of Japanese, Western, and Chinese exhaled quietly. “If the warning shots weren’t enough, who should I actually shoot? Well, I’m watching the entire group, so I can still get my scoop with one of them missing.”

The metal door was already open.

Whoever was there, she would shoot the first one to terrify the rest. She would go through with it. The cricket girl could apparently stop the bullets, but it would still scare them and stop them.

A dark shape emerged.

She let the drones handle taking photos while she held her breath and placed her finger on the trigger.

Immediately, a blinding flash stabbed into her retina.

She could only see the color white.

Sharp pan ran through her temples and she jerked her head away from the mirrorless multifunction scope that even display EM waves and electrical noise.

“Tch!? Was that a subway bug zapper!?”

Snipers were terrifying.

But if you knew you were being watched, you could strike back.

She grimaced and waved a hand to send an instruction to the drones. It took five seconds before the afterimage burned into her retina faded. She had to ensure her target didn’t use that time to run outside and escape behind cover. Her 7.62mm bullets could easily break the sound barrier, so even if she was a little delayed, she could still push them back with gunfire as long as she knew where they were.

Or so she thought.

Benizome still believed she was the hunter here.

She heard something like a burst of wind.

“!?”

With a series of dull thuds, her long sniper rifle broke apart. The pieces fell to the rooftop along with several metal darts. She recognized those weapons. During Handcuffs, it had been the law enforcement agencies of Judgment and Anti-Skill that had dealt with Benizome in the end.

Her caution was meaningless.

A moment later, a 50kg weight surpassed the restrictions of 3D space to land on top of her. This was teleportation. A middle school girl appeared 3m above the roof and then landed butt-first on the sniper as she attempted to twist around to look up.

“Gah!?”

“Could you not react like I’m really heavy? I am at least two sizes slimmer than you.”

“Agh, y-you!?”

“Hello, dark side. I know this is sudden, but you will be handing over all your information!!”

Part 14

The rooftop sniper had been dealt with.

That meant Kamijou’s group was no longer restricted to the District 7 station building.

“What!? Then why are we descending into the subway!?” protested Shirai Kuroko.

“Because of Frillsand #G,” said Kamijou “We can’t run through the crowded streets with her chasing us!! Who knows how many people we’d get hurt or worse!!”

The train accident had been at an elevated platform, but the large station served more than just one line. Kamijou held incautious Alice under his arm and Shirai carried tied-up Benizome over her shoulder while they ran down the stairs to reach the subway platform.

Shirai Kuroko made sure to hold her phone out for the ticket gate, but then her eyes widened and she shouted at the others.

“Hey! Don’t jump over the ticket gate like it’s a hurdle! If you don’t have a subway card, then go buy a ticket!!”

“Does she really think we’re going to do that!?” asked Kamijou.

“That justice exhibitionist can’t help it. She’s the sad kind of person who would obediently stop at the red light and let the pursuing wave of lava engulf her car. She is best ignored if you prefer staying alive.”

“Kya ha ha☆ The girl is playing tag with her teacher!”

Alice slipped out from Kamijou’s arm and jumped down an entire flight of stairs despite wearing a skirt. Unbelievably, she stuck her legs out in front of her so she would land on her butt. Kamijou’s eyes widened in fright, but then several balls made from curled-up hedgehogs spilled from below her apron. They gathered together into a cushion and she bounced softly off of them. Their flattened spines seemed to act like bed springs, but surely that still had to hurt, right!?

The disconcerting zap of busting air came from somewhere. The speaker used to inform of arriving trains exploded from within and a bundle of cables stuck out like a long tongue.

That was the artificial ghost.

The deadly being had no weaknesses. That powerful grudge could maybe even destroy all of humanity singlehandedly. If she caught up and placed a hand on their shoulder, they would be killed instantly by the powerful energy. Her chaotic electric storm could break through walls and pillars, so they wouldn’t fare well if that hit them either.

But now that Kamijou knew the reason behind it, it all held a different meaning for him.

This wasn’t just a deadly weapon. It was a vortex of uncontrollable emotion.

(I will save you.)

He clenched his teeth, but kept his eyes forward and his feet running.

He couldn’t let himself die here. If he did, he couldn’t save this woman who had been dragged into a great tragedy, lost the man she loved, and continued to weep and wail.

(This isn’t just about us anymore, so I swear I’ll save you too, ghost!!)

Youen still wasn’t out of breath, so she may have used an enzyme or chemical to boost her abilities. The bad girl looked entirely unaffected by the running as she asked a question.

“Are we running through the tunnels all the way to District 10?”

“Please, isn’t there a legit railfan in here who can drive one for us!?”

“Don’t ask for the impossible.”

The soles of Kamijou’s shoes lifted from the floor.

Surprised, he held onto young Alice who was running nearby.

After floating up in defiance of gravity, they shot down the subway tunnel with the speed of a bullet.

Based on his shadow cast on the wall, it looked like he had sprouted giant fairy wings. No, that wasn’t it. He was extremely hesitant to look at his back, but he was pretty sure a winged bug over a meter long had grabbed onto his back like a crane game!

“What? Eh? How is it so big!?”

“It’s called parasitic enlargement. That’s one of my toys.”

Youen’s calm voice came from unexpectedly close by. She was moving just as fast as him.

Young Alice rejoiced at being princess carried by the pointy-haired boy and tried to reach out her small hands. Toward what? Toward the thing on his back.

“Wow, it’s all black and hard and shiny! I’ve never seen such a big roa-”

“Stop, Alice! Do not confirm anything for me here!! There are all sorts of flying bugs, right!? I-I am never looking back. I will never confirm which of the giant bugs from the Hanatsuyu Youen Collection is holding onto my back!!”

“Fun fact: In the bug world, particularly among beetles, a male getting up another one’s back is a symbol of a live-giving ceremony. Hee hee. By which I mean mating!”

“Stoooooooop!!!!!!!”

He saw a blue shine. Youen was wearing a giant morpho butterfly like a backpack as she amused herself by whispering insect trivia to him. Of course that gloomy mini-villain had given herself the most beautiful option.

Alice was so delighted she kicked her legs around in her thick white tights.

“Hm, hm? The girl really does love you, teacher.”

“Where did that come from!?”

“Your arms are the best seat. If anyone is going to hold the girl, it has to be you. Heh heh☆”

Apparently she thought he was a memory foam pillow or something. Maybe it was like how a boy’s shaved head or broad chest was briefly popular with the girls but then abandoned at Mach speed.

Shirai Kuroko had refused to be equipped with a bug at all. Maybe Tokiwadai girls couldn’t understand the romance of bugs. She carried bound Benizome Jellyfish over her shoulder like a sack of rice and repeatedly teleported to move down the subway tunnel faster than a sports car.

A flashing white beam shot past them from behind.

That meant the artificial ghost had descended into the subway tunnel too.

They had avoided a direct hit, but that was no reason to relax.

Frillsand #G’s lightning could destroy steel and concrete with ease. If the metal rails or concrete pillars up ahead were blown up, the airborne fragments would become obstacles for the fast-moving group. Given their relative speeds, a direct hit would be enough to tear an arm off at the shoulder.

Resentment, sorrow, rage, regret, and what else?

Maybe human emotions weren’t meant to be named and organized like that.

Even a single screw or bolt was a threat here.

“Ahhh!?” Kamijou shouted in reflex.

He couldn’t even cover his face with Alice in his arms.

The tunnel was a lot less straight than he had expected and went through several curves, but the wings on his back made the turns for him and he didn’t feel like he was in control at all. Perhaps this was what it felt to ride a rollercoaster in a country with extremely lax safety standards.

With his life solidly in someone else’s grasp, he raised his eyes with real tears in them.

“Shirai!! Did you get any information out of that China dress woman!? I want a destination. We know abut that Kihara guy’s lab where he built Ladybird, but I also want to know where the artificial ghost was made!!”

“You heard him. Got any ideas?”

“..”

Benizome Jellyfish was not unconscious.

She had intentionally chosen to remain silent. The sparking and flashing lights behind them suggested Frillsand #G had noticed their escape and started moving down the tunnel. It was obvious what would happen if Shirai got sick of the woman and abandoned her here, so that silence took guts.

Pain probably wasn’t going to get her to talk either.

But..

“Those are some pretty sexy modifications to your dress there. That tells me you’re the type to use your femininity as a weapon. It means you think you’re hotter than average,” said Hanatsuyu Youen while flying alongside them using the shiny blue wings of a morpho butterfly. She pulled out a test tube and shook it, creating motion in the surface of the neon green liquid within. “Did you know spiders break down their prey’s tissue - in other words, the protein - and uses their stomach like a pump to suck it all up? Doing some real-life character creation work to the face and figure is pretty simple. But don’t worry. After melting your boobs away, I’ll make sure to give you five or even ten of them in a grape-like cluster. Got a specific number you want?”

“O-okay, I’ll talk!! Don’t give me that!!”

Benizome panicked with her arms and legs bound by rope.

That paparazzo was all about spreading people’s information around, so maybe she didn’t have it in her to hide anything for long.

“Go to the abandoned leisure spa in District 10!! The people occupying it now have built a ton of illegal cardboard, plywood, and prefab houses in the empty pools, creating something like a Little Kowloon Walled City!! It’s a criminal area where anything goes and even I have a hideout there!”

“The District 10 slums?” asked Shirai.

“Your comparison is pretty out of date, isn’t it?” added Youen. “That high-rise residential area has already been demolished. Why not compare it to Johannesburg? Well, whether you’re talking about Russia or Mexico, you have to watch out in any major city of a country where the people don’t trust the police and unregistered guns are plentiful. So you’re saying the hideout we want is there?”

“A few large trucks were abandoned in the old employee parking lot out back where they would be relatively inconspicuous. I don’t know who they belong to, but a few groups of garbage collectors were killed in horrific ways when they got close. It must have been this ghost who did it!!”

“Are you saying those trucks are the lab where she was made?”

The group exchanged a glance while flying down the tunnel.

What a stroke of good fortune. Kamijou would have loved to gather some more bizarre tech involved in Handcuffs, but they didn’t have time to travel the full length of Academy City multiple times. Frillsand #G wouldn’t give them the chance. But fortunately, the artificial ghost tech and android tech were both located in District 10.

“How does she pull off the China dress so perfectly?”

Alice sounded somewhat depressed while focused on something else entirely.

If they could pull this off, they could save Frillsand #G from her eternal rampage!!

Part 15

In District 10, Kamijou’s group ran up the stairs from the subway station. A thick bolt of lightning shot past them and caused a section of the asphalt road to collapse like an antlion pit.

“Damn, that’s scary!!”

“Is that the abandoned leisure spa Benizome mentioned?”

Youen pointed at a large shape looming above them.

It must have been a landmark at first. It was right next to the subway entrance and the giant waterslide proved it wasn’t just a bath. Was it more like an outdoor heated pool than a spa? It was located next to a trash incinerator, so it may have reused the incinerator’s heat. The building hadn’t collapsed, but the rust and stains showed it hadn’t been cleaned or otherwise maintained in a while. It looked just plain gross and the air there felt heavy.

It was a wonder it wasn’t covered in spraypainted graffiti.

The local delinquents may have had an agreement to never carelessly approach the place.

The inside was apparently known as a Little Kowloon Walled City or Johannesburg, but they didn’t have any business in the illegal houses built in and around the pools.

Driven on by the storm of lightning behind them, they circled around to the rear entrance where trucks could make deliveries while remaining inconspicuous.

There they were.

A few large trucks were lined up in the parking area there. That wasn’t too strange on its own, but they looked unusually clean compared to the collections of abandoned materials forming everything else here.

“Found it! That’s the artificial ghost lab!!”

“Is this safe? Didn’t the garbage collectors who tried to take the trucks away get killed?”

Youen popped off the rubber cap of a test tube.

A black carpet rippled around them. It was formed from tens of thousands of ants. The ground itself seemed to be moving, so Kamijou felt like he was moving backwards despite standing still. On the Carrier’s instructions, the ants marched toward the trucks, but nothing happened. They were not blown away by a high-voltage current.

“No traps.”

“Then let’s end this before Frillsand #G catches up!!”

Kamijou, Alice, and Youen circled to the back of the closest truck. The door to the metal container had a keyhole, but Youen summoned a thumb-sized ant that melted the metal inside.

“The inner workings of a lock tend to be an aluminum or brass alloy, so my ants can destroy them easy.”

“What would those toxins do to a human?”

Kamijou shuddered at the thought while he undid the latch and threw open the double door.

They didn’t get the correct one right away. This one was lined with bunkbeds and toys littered the floor. They tried a few more, but they had been converted into a kitchen and a bath. It all reminded Kamijou of the specimen children mentioned in relation to Drencher and Frillsand #G.

None of it looked like an experimental lab.

It was mostly an ordinary living space. It likely qualified as abandoned, but it didn’t feel remotely creepy. In fact, it was the first thing to put Kamijou at ease in a while.

Did something of the people who lived here still linger?

Was the sorrow all the greater the more comfortable the life that led up to it?

“..”

Eventually, Kamijou found the right one. One of the containers wasn’t like the others. As soon as he opened it, the scent of sterilizing ethanol rushed into his nose.

“This must be it,” he muttered.

The container floor was situated very high up. Alice tried to pull herself up with her young hands, but she had trouble and a pink bat and some spiny balls fell from below her apron. Those things were still a mystery, but they would make the occasional weird noise, which made it painful to watch them being used as a stepping stool for those patent leather shoes. The fluffball on the back of the apron wiggled side to side but the picture book girl couldn’t manage to get her legs up high enough, so Kamijou finally pushed her little butt up from behind.

The lab had apparently been used to create that embodiment of electricity, but he didn’t see any of the metal equipment found at transformer substations. A transparent oblong box sat in the center of the container. Round holes covered in thick rubber were placed at even intervals, so it was apparently designed to let you could manipulate what was inside without directly touching it.

Since she specialized in microbes and chemicals, Youen took a look around, assessing what kind of lab it was.

“A clean box, huh? The duct by the wall is used to prevent the passage of impurities and the sink is pretty secure too. Was the ghost research more biological than I thought?”

The box sort of looked like a clear coffin to Kamijou.

“Isn’t that more the kind of thing you’d see on a TV show about science-themed ghost stories? Y’know, like the model skeleton running around at night or a pool of formaldehyde used to wash dead bodies.”

“Not those old cliches.”

She rejected his ideas. He bit his lip and hung his head, but she must have thought he was crying because she actually looked unsure what to do.

Alice was more interested in the equipment around the clear box. Several video cameras were set up on tripods. She smiled and made a peace sign in front of one.

“Yay☆”

“Also, what are with those cameras?” asked Kamijou. “You wouldn’t need this many to record the experiments. I mean, this is just a truck container. With this many, I feel like they would get in the way of the research.”

“To record what happens, you would only need to install a few on the ceiling where they wouldn’t be in the way,” agreed Youen. “You wouldn’t need 12 of them arranged in a circle like this.”

“Meaning?”

“The cameras were part of the experiment. If observation was a crucial component, quantum physics may have been involved.”

Kamijou pressed a switch on the wall and the room’s lights changed. Just like a dark room in an old movie, the container filled with an orange light similar to sunset. A change came over the clear coffin. Glowing lines appeared inside, similar to the human outline at a crime scene. He also saw several stud-like electrodes there. Were those the acupuncture points that were also used in moxibustion? That was just his impression, but he couldn’t say for sure. The points may have been something unique Drencher had come up with. Regardless, the hundreds of electrodes were divided into small blocks that could be rearranged to alter their number and position.

It was like a wire diagram for a human body.

That may have determined the individual traits of the artificial ghost.

Youen leaned forward curiously, so she may not have had many opportunities to view someone else’s lab.

“For that ghost - Frillsand #G was it? - you only have to create an initial ‘spark’ in the lab. No matter how small it is, releasing it into the outside world will let it grow endlessly from there. Reminds me a biological weapon. No, that isn’t quite right. The biology, quantum physics, and weaponization research are like different colored pencils in a single set - they’re just elements used to create her. A ghost shouldn’t have any clear outlines, but she was forcibly divided into existing categories to create something humans could easily perceive.”

“What matters is we can create a ghost by turning this machine on.”

“We need some personality data on Drencher Kihara Repatri first. Maybe an oil-eating black mold would work. The distribution of fingerprints and footprints would tell us if he was meticulous, neurotic, or whatever else.”

“Y-you can learn how people think like that?”

“You think that’s strange? There’s an esper out there who reads people’s ‘residual thoughts’ from the electricity and moisture left on objects.”

With a few dull thuds, Shirai Kuroko teleported out of thin air and dropped some duralumin cases larger than she was.

“I found a ‘base model’ in the lab buried in garbage! I honestly find it hard to believe this faceless mannequin can be transformed into something indistinguishable from a human.”

“We need to get those cases open! And we need to figure out how it works! Are there any texts or manuals!?”

They opened the latches thicker than the ones on the truck containers and lined up the contents of the cases on the floor. Shirai Kuroko was right. It looked vaguely feminine since it was wearing something like a one-piece racing swimsuit, but there were no actual gendered features. It was a smooth ball joint doll with no hair and no face.

“Wait, what happened to Benizome?” asked Kamijou.

“I left her tied up in that lab buried under more than three million tons of garbage. She loves scoops so much she should enjoy being buried alive with a burnt corpse.”

Alice started trembling all on her own.

“Th-three million tons?”

“That might sound like a lot, but a single domed stadium weighs 370 thousand tons,” said Shirai. “Are younger children just more sensitive to the term ‘million’?”

But the “doll” was heavy.

Unlike the artificial ghost that barely seemed to be scientific at all, the android was fully physical. It was a machine seemingly made by wrapping a heavy metal skeleton frame with artificial muscles and silicon. Kamijou tried moving the shoulder or knee and felt a dull grinding sensation. The skeleton frame may have been somewhat adjustable to fit the desired body type. The power of science could now create the kind of magical girl who transformed from a child to an adult and back again.

Youen pulled out a few test tubes.

“If the exterior is silicon, I can form the details with an organic solvent. I’ll need a photo of this Drencher person for that. Also some of his clothing to learn his body size. Check the drawers over there. He lived here, so surely there’s a photo somewhere.”

“I’ll check, but this is only a machine, right!?” said Kamijou. “It’s basically a self-driving car shaped like a human, so will the artificial ghost really attach to it even if we do create one successfully?”

“If the ghost is electrical in nature, the powerful currents we’ve seen from the one chasing us would just fry all the circuit boards.”

“Then we just need to find a tech that will reduce its power. For example..”

They heard the low zap of bursting air, so everyone but Alice stopped blinking.

“(Here she is,)” whispered Kamijou.

“(I can’t believe it took her this long,)” said Shirai. “(Given her previous speed, she should have attacked well before this. Could she have hesitated after seeing the lab she used to call home?)”

If so, he felt kind of guilty for doing this.

But now that the attack had started, it wasn’t going to stop.

Youen pulled out a photo and some clothes while the sound of breaking glass rang loud. The windows and streetlights had to be bursting. The sounds of destruction continued as the container lab itself tilted. The truck’s tires must have ruptured from exposure to the high-voltage electricity.

What did that decision mean to Frillsand #G?

What was she thinking while destroying a place filled with so many memories to get at the people trampling on a treasure from her past?

Kamijou got down on the floor and protected carefree Alice while biting his lip. It pained him to see Frillsand #G run wild like this. That was the thought on his mind when he reached out to support one of the camera tripods that was about to fall. He didn’t have the specialized knowledge to know which equipment was important. It was possible the artificial ghost technology was something only Drencher could understand.

The cacophony of destruction would not stop.

Their plan would fail if the interior of the lab was destroyed too. Their own survival wasn’t the only thing on the line here. Frillsand #G would eliminate her only chance to ever see Drencher Kihara Repatri again.

She fit in so well with the city’s darkness, but he didn’t want to give her that kind of ending.

Kamijou Touma stared into a video camera that’s lens was focusing despite not being switched on and he shouted into it without considering the risk to himself.

“Give it a rest, Frillsand #G!! What is it you really want? Just this one last time, picture the face of the person want to see more than anyone else in the world!!”

Did his voice reach her or not?

A blinding white light raged violently outside. A mass of lightning finally flew inside the container. The ghost’s sorrow hit them directly and orange sparks flew everywhere. A shelf drawer broke, sending documents and photos fluttering through the air. Hanatsuyu Youen rushed to the device and flipped the sparking switches there. With a low hum, the clear coffin started to glow.

“The electrical energy is too great,” shouted Shirai Kuroko, eyes wide. “Even if we do create the artificial ghost, the android will only explode if we try to place the ghost in it!!”

But if they did not present Drencher Kihara Repatri to the vengeful spirit, she would never stop attacking. Then the truck would explode with all of them inside.

Frillsand #G would be doomed to forever weep and wail in the wreckage of her one chance at salvation.

“That’s where..”

A scratchy voice spoke over the loud electric noises.

A small girl could be seen popping the rubber cap off of a test tube in the gaps between flashes of light.

Hanatsuyu Youen was not a good person.

But Kamijou knew better than anyone that she had chosen to save people’s lives on several occasions today.

“..this comes in!!!!!”

The electricity exploded.

The stench of burning plastic assaulted Kamijou’s nose.

Part 16

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