p.

“There’s more coming down.”

“Hm!? Eek!!”

Kamijou quickly adjusted his grip on limp Shirai Kuroko and fled below the railway overpass where some rundown food carts were set up. Smiling Alice clung to the side of his hip the entire time.

He heard some heavy crashing noises as metal pieces of something rained down. Had the rails been torn up, or were those the poles holding up the power lines? Not only were they heavy, but they scattered bluish-white sparks.

“What the hell!? Is there a mountain gorilla or a dinosaur going nuts up there!?”

He so hoped the unidentified monster didn’t jump down here. He shifted the twintailed middle school 1st year into a princess carry and stepped out from the other side of the railway overpass. They needed to avoid this foe’s attention while getting as far away as possible. Alice ran alongside him staring jealously at the girl being princess carried like something from a picture book, but he didn’t have time to focus on that. Making any promises now might just lead her to leap onto his back with a smile, so just like a stray dog you can’t take home with you, showing kindness would actually be crueler in the end.

He felt a dull pain throbbing in his temple. He too had been attacked by someone up there.

“Wait, wait, wait. What happened to Frillsand #G? Death is coming on so much stronger than in Alice’s world. My skin is still tingling after making it this far away.”

“Hmm.”

What happened next went well beyond a pink bat and some hedgehog balls emerging from below her apron.

He heard a straining sound.

He looked over to see Alice’s fairy tale dress pulling to either side so hard it was about to tear. The sturdiness of the actual materials and stitches didn’t matter. It was going to tear as easily as a thin stocking. It was all too obvious that the stagnant warmth gathered inside was trying to escape.

If that burst open, the world would be destroyed.

“It’s not too late to use the girl.”

“Please, Alice. Anything but that!!”

Alice genuinely puffed out her cheeks and pouted her small lips. That was the look of a girl whose thoughtful suggestion had been rebuffed as a nuisance. The apparent innocence only made him more concerned she might explode without warning.

“Keep that hidden and don’t let it out at the drop of a hat. Please!!”

“So it’s a secret? A secret for just the girl and her teacher!? Kyah, kyah☆”

It transformed into a smile an instant later. She even held her hands to her cheeks in an extremely bashful way. That was a relief, but he had to hope the things he said now weren’t going to come back to bite him later. Saying whatever saved his skin in the moment could end up teaching her the wrong lesson.

historical

That was when Shirai Kuroko groaned in his arms.

“Ugh.”

No matter how weak she was, he was afraid she might suddenly move her limbs and unbalance herself enough for him to drop her. He gave up on moving and stopped below the roof of a deserted bus stop.

Even stopping to ask her what had happened up on the elevated railway was taking a risk. If he didn’t keep a close eye on their surroundings, the unidentified monster could catch up and tear him in two.

But Shirai brought up some unusual points.

“Hold on. So you’re saying this Anti-Skill Negotiator is trying to bring the Handcuffs criminals onto her side to boost her power enough to fight even more powerful criminals?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“But she was directly involved in the Overhunting’s crash. She was the one who messed with the ATS brake sensor on the track.”

Shirai Kuroko was very insistent that he put her down, so he carefully lowered her onto the simple bench.

“That doesn’t make sense if she’s part of some secret special forces mobilized to capture the Handcuffs criminals who escaped the prisoner transport train. Why would the Anti-Skill Negotiator cause the crash that let the criminals escape in the first place? For that matter, when did she find the time to contact Rakuoka Nodoka and turn her into a puppet?”

There was of course another possibility.

Maybe that Anti-Skill Negotiator named Tessou Tsuzuri had arrived after the fact to solve the case and the crash had been caused by some third party like Frillsand #G.

But Kamijou Touma shook his head even as he described the possibility.

“No, that couldn’t be.”

“Why not, teacher?”

“Then she would have no reason to attack me to hide the cause of the crash. If it was just me, fine - maybe she got confused. But she did the same thing to Shirai. And Shirai was wearing a Judgment armband. It doesn’t make sense to assume she’s a criminal just because she’s approaching the scene of a crime on the off-limits elevated railway. That wasn’t a mistake. She’s attacking anyone who comes by to investigate the crash. To hide her own guilt.”

“You mean?”

“Her plan was to let the criminals escape so she can kill them while they ‘resist arrest’ or whatever excuse she comes up with. If they end up in prison, they’ll be out again eventually. So what’s the only way to ensure they never commit another crime? She may feel the need to settle this once and for all since it was Anti-Skill that risked their lives arresting these criminals in the first place.”

Anti-Skill only had the right to arrest. They couldn’t convict a suspect or adjust the severity of their sentence. According to Shirai, Tessou’s colleague had brought that up over the phone and Tessou had said she didn’t care about the criminals’ rights.

That was the answer right there.

She wasn’t satisfied with the sentence the courts had given and decided to carry out a capital punishment herself. And she was willing to destroy a strictly-defended prisoner transport train to do it.

She had taken it upon herself to determine the weight of their sentence.

She felt Anti-Skill deserved to redefine those criminals’ punishment.

(Was it that bad? Can she not bear to go on if she doesn’t cling to her hatred of Handcuffs?)

Kamijou had not directly experienced the hellish night of the 25th, so it was hard for him to say.

The metal rails or poles falling from the railway suggested it was an absolute mess up there. Perhaps Tessou was physically eliminating all evidence of her sabotage. She and Rakuoka Nodoka had come from elsewhere, so they may have been going around destroying each piece of sabotage in turn. So even if a forensics team went over the place with an electron microscope, they would only find the scars left by Rakuoka Nodoka’s rampage. And that was no skin off Tessou’s nose when she only saw the other woman as a useful tool.

Tessou Tsuzuri, the mastermind behind it all, could walk away unchallenged and find someone else to capture and threaten. She didn’t feel an ounce of camaraderie with Rakuoka Nodoka, so she would use up a human being like a bullet. She would repeat that process until all of the infamous Handcuffs criminals were wiped out. So she would proactively gather anyone related to that event and set them up to destroy each other.

She was joining forces with the criminals on the other side so she could gather together all the technology seen at Handcuffs.

Kamijou had chosen that same path in Alice’s world. All while that small girl guided him around by the hand. Did that choice really look so twisted and ugly from the outside?

“It won’t be that easy, Tessou Tsuzuri.”

Before, Kamijou had assumed he only had to hand the captured criminals over to the adults in Anti-Skill, but this proved that idea wrong. He had to protect the prisoners from the sinister scheme set up by some of the adults.

“This greatly changes how we have to go about this,” whispered Shirai Kuroko, holding a hand to her swollen forehead that had to ache pretty bad. “This Anti-Skill Negotiator only sees the escaped prisoners as a means to expand her power. She seems to be doing fairly well with Rakuoka Nodoka so far, but if Tessou Tsuzuri was planning to deal with the Handcuffs criminals from the beginning, would she really assume she only needed verbal threats to get them to obey? She already knows how far those villains are willing to go.”

“Are you suggesting she has something else set up?” asked Kamijou.

“It’s too soon to say anything for certain, but her plan seems to be to actively bring criminals onto her side and use them as efficiently as possible to defeat and threaten even more powerful prey. We need to protect them before she can capture them and use them as a disposable tool. Who knows how far the harm will spread if we don’t.”

Kamijou smiled a little at that.

She gave him a puzzled look.

“What? This is no laughing matter.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She had said they needed to protect them.

Belonging to Anti-Skill or Judgment did not mean you had to blindly hate the criminals and view them as an enemy.

People were too delicate and complex to be described with simple, named emotions. They would make seemingly contradictory or incomprehensible choices all the time.

And this unexpected choice felt really nice.

Not everything was permissible simply because it was considered “just”.

This was not the convenient world Alice had created for him. Good was not guaranteed to prevail and evil was not guaranteed to be punished in this version of the 29th. The prisoners didn’t stay in the train station forever, someone not even on his mental cast of characters had attacked him, and the dead would not come back to life. If you declared it unfair and came to a stop, you would be the next one to be mercilessly destroyed. This world could only be described as harsh and unforgiving.

But it meant so much to hear those words here in the real world.

Kamijou Touma had finally found something that made him glad he had chosen this more difficult path.

Part 7

Low tremors intermittently shook the asphalt.

However, this wasn’t necessarily the handiwork of the Tessou Tsuzuri and Rakuoka Nodoka team.

“Hee hee hee. Off, off, off with their heads?”

Alice smiled and sang a disconcerting song with the white fluffball on the back of her apron wiggling to the beat. Is this the unique cruelty of small children? wondered Kamijou, staring out from the bus station.

“So how do you suggest we end this commotion?” he asked.

“I doubt we would find any of the criminals if we returned to the station now,” answered Shirai. “If they hope to escape, they wouldn’t remain anywhere near the Overhunting.”

That meant they now had to search the entirety of Academy City for Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish. Not to mention Frillsand #G who hadn’t been on the Overhunting. Even with several options, it was unlikely they would encounter anyone if they ran around at random.

So..

(This might not apply since things are so different from in Alice’s world, but it’s worth a shot.)

“We find Youen.”

“What?”

Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure what he meant, so he clarified.

(Youen helped me in Alice’s world, but things are different now. So where would she have gone and what does she hope to accomplish here?)

“Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. We need to capture all of the criminals before that Anti-Skill Negotiator does, but we need a starting point. I might be able to just barely predict what she’ll do.”

That girl had the technology to manipulate any urban pest or vermin in order to send out microbes and chemicals at will. Her skills could be used to help people, but she chose not to. She would not join forces with an ordinary person, treat their wound, or make jokes with a gloomy smile.

But like a game of concentration, enough wrong answers could lead to the correct answer.

(What is Hanatsuyu Youen’s goal? Is she really the type to run away without a plan just because the adults are closing in on her?)

He didn’t think so.

He had a feeling she had some goal no ordinary person could understand.

Whether she would cause a citywide panic to distract Anti-Skill while she escaped the city or she chose not to escape and instead slaughtered Anti-Skill to ensure her own safety, he felt like the Carrier would think up and act on an idea so destructive it made him feel faint.

Academy City was a big place.

But what facility would let her use her trait as a Carrier most efficiently and spread harm farther than anyone else?

“We have to secure all of them regardless, so I don’t particularly care who we start with,” said Shirai. “I don’t see why that couldn’t be Hanatsuyu Youen like you want. And once we start collecting the prisoners, we will inevitably encounter that Anti-Skill Negotiator who wants their power. Once that happens, we need to rescue Rakuoka Nodoka from the scum who has her trapped.”

With that, Shirai started to stand from the bench.

That was when it happened.

“..is..still..”

Kamijou Touma’s view dropped straight down. No, all his strength had drained from him and he fell to his knees.

“Kah..”

He didn’t even have time to shout.

An unpleasant sound came from within his body. He thought he maybe had a nosebleed, but the stickiness he felt while blinking told him there was blood below his eyelids.

He saw a doll-like blue dress and long blonde twintails blowing in a way unrelated to the night breeze. She was right there in front of him, but she looked less real than a mirage.

(Frillsand #G!? Why does she have to show up now!?)

She hadn’t laid a finger on him.

She had not shot a horrific beam of light through his chest and she hadn’t caused a massive explosion.

She had simply appeared before him.

That was enough for a wet and sticky sensation to flow from his eye and ears. After falling to his knees, he was helpless to do anything but slowly collapse forward.

He was experiencing unexplained bleeding, a headache, chills, and a fever.

Death was approaching little by little - step by step.

“What? Bh..ah!!!???”

(Damn..it. I can’t even raise my right hand. This attack..makes no sense. Agh, what am I even supposed to punch with Imagine Breaker!?)

“..still..inside..”

This was absurdly dangerous.

That monotone female voice was simply too dangerous.

His vision was tilted on its side and growing red starting from one side, but he managed to see Shirai Kuroko collapsing from the bench to the ground. His brain was hallucinating cracking and straining noises. The confusion of all his senses was worse than any pain and it felt like having an invisible hand squeezing him in its grasp.

This was Frillsand #G the artificial ghost.

Unlike in Alice’s world, she did not just launch powerful electricity and use her scientific nature to resist Imagine Breaker.

This was not a visible, physical threat like that. He didn’t understand any of it, but was she a much more dangerous being who would kill you if you carelessly looked in her direction when she spoke to you!?

At the same time..

“Yawwwn?”

He heard an odd voice.

It was cheerful, carefree, and cutely sweet. Apparently she had trouble staying up late in the real world too. She was nodding off in the middle of the crisis playing out around her.

Alice Anotherbible looked like she had stepped out of a picture book and she alone remained standing. After holding a small hand to her mouth and yawning, she placed her index finger on her chin and tilted her head to ask a question.

Yes.

The fundamental question of why was everyone around her collapsing?

“Ri..still..inside..”

“That won’t work on the girl,” interrupted Alice with a sleepily clueless smile.

This time, no cricket bat or hedgehog balls emerged from below her apron. This was a formless curse, after all. But Alice was still entirely unaffected by the invisible attack.

Was she built differently from the others on the inside?

Was this like how carbon monoxide was deadly to humans but harmless to insects because their blood was different? This didn’t seem like she simply didn’t feel any pain because she was that much stronger than the average person. It was a lot more like the conditions of the attack didn’t apply to her in the first place. Kamijou even had a meaningless fantasy about someone continually giving animal carcasses to a vulture in the hopes of giving it food poisoning.

Which was more unnatural here: Frillsand #G for causing fatal wounds without laying a finger on anyone or Alice for being exposed to that and smiling like it was nothing?

“A ghost can’t match the girl’s level of mystery☆”

“..”

A few solid impacts rang out.

They came from Frillsand #G, not Alice. Her neck kept bending unnaturally to the right or the left. At times, it bent more than 90 degrees.

The shadow extending from young Alice’s little feet had grown unnaturally long.

It slid out past Frillsand #G and a strange silhouette stood up from it. The emaciated and bony silhouette was far creepier than the flamingo or hedgehogs. But instead of white bones, these were clear as crystal.

It held a one-sided axe with a sharp sword blade extending from the butt end of the staff.

This was the horrifying side of fairy tales - the polar opposite of the candy and the stuffed animals.

(What is that?)

Kamijou had no advance knowledge and no one gave him the answer, but when he saw the bony creature wrapped in a tattered black cloak, he was strangely certain of the answer. Like the answer had been inserted into his mind.

(An executioner?)

The ominous silhouette seemed puzzled by its failure to lop off its target’s head in a single attack.

Its skull-like head tilted disconcertingly far while it spun the shaft around in its hand. It switched to the sword blade and sliced sharply at the air. Whenever it spun the shaft like a baton and aimed the point at its target, the artificial ghost’s head was mysteriously knocked aside, causing it to bend directly sideways.

Kamijou honestly couldn’t even see the axe, the sword, or even the blur of the blades in motion.

Most likely, the conditions it used to cut had nothing to do with that motion.

Maybe it was the arrangement of the fingers gripping the weapon, maybe it automatically sliced at the weak points the target reflexively tried to protect, and maybe the baton-like weapon was a spool for the threads of life and destiny and it would cut those threads, killing you instantly, if you failed to defeat it before it spun a certain number of times.

Frillsand #G was only still intact because she was an artificial ghost, but Kamijou was willing to bet he would have been decapitated before he could even try to react. He couldn’t even guess when he would need to use his right fist.

“Oops.” Alice noticed something and quickly pressed her small foot against the ground and rubbed forward with the sole. “Teacher would be mad if the girl actually killed you. Come on back, Executioner. You can’t cut the Cheshire Cat who vanishes into thin air.”

That was all it took for that powerful silhouette to collapse and disappear.

Kamijou only now realized something.

Both in Alice’s world and the real world, the pink bat and hedgehog balls would emerge and block any attack that Alice couldn’t avoid herself.

But it wasn’t about protecting her.

It wasn’t motivated by a fear of injury.

If she was hit by an attack that obstructed her movements, it would piss her off so much she would kill her opponent without even meaning to. So Alice made sure to block the attacks so that wouldn’t happen.

Not even the Executioner was Alice’s own power. Anything that slipped past the cricket defense and escape the Executioner’s blade would probably find Alice herself waiting for them.

“..”

Even after taking several lethal slashes to the head, the artificial ghost was still functioning.

Didn’t an old children’s story say you couldn’t behead a bodiless cat?

Frillsand #G silently pointed a finger up with her head still bent unnaturally far to the side.

A deep boom echoed from overhead.

It came from one of the photography or delivery drones that were common enough nowadays. She must have messed with its large battery, causing it to explode above Alice’s head. Even a single screw could become a deadly weapon when dropped from sufficient height. This was like creating a falling ceiling from the many fragments.

The artificial ghost’s formless attack had not let up.

Kamijou still suffered from the inexplicable fever and bleeding while he did his best to roll along the ground.

“Gah..ah!?”

(That ghost woman doesn’t just harm anyone she meets. Can she also make machines malfunction!? I-is there anything she can’t do!?)

“Hmm.”

It was Alice’s turn to act.

She removed the finger from her chin and directed her small palm toward empty air.

She had the look of a child when the stone they were kicking down the road on the way to school fell into the ditch. It was the look of someone abandoning some meaningless, self-imposed restriction and preparing to unleash whatever they were holding back.

Most likely, this wasn’t due to the electric ghost’s approach. It was something else that made Alice spread her long blonde hair to the sides.

All the assumptions were breaking down.

The cricket defense had been slipped past and the Executioner’s blade had been escaped, so it was time for Alice herself to make her move.

“The girl kind of has to now, doesn’t she?”

“Alice!!!!!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth like he was about to cough up blood and gathered all his remaining strength in his legs.

(I can’t do anything for Shirai. I’ll just have to hope the bus stop’s roof is solid enough!!)

He leaped to the side, grabbed Alice around the hips, and rolled into a nearby alley with her.

He heard hundreds of solid objects striking the ground outside the alley. It sounded a lot like a sudden downpour.

He kept the small girl pinned to the ground, pressed his forehead against hers, and shouted down at her.

“I told you I didn’t want any of that'!!”

“Mh! Well, the girl doesn’t want you mad at her.”

The way she shook her fine blonde hair side to side was as innocent as ever.

When he saw her smile and noticed he could actually see it clearly, he realized his red and distorted vision had already returned to normal.

Was that because he had moved a few meters away from Frillsand #G?

Or..

(No, this alley isn’t that far away. So is it seeing and hearing the ghost I need to avoid?)

That did sound like in ghost photos where it was the photographer or someone else in the photo who was cursed just because a ghost appeared in the photo.

He heard a windy sound and then woozy Shirai Kuroko appeared in the back alley. She leaned against the filthy wall from the side and cleaned up her bloody nose with a fancy-looking handkerchief.

“I’m impressed you could teleport in that state.”

“And I’m impressed you could get up at all. Also, you’ll feel better if you cough that up.”

He hit his limit as soon as she mentioned it.

Leaving Alice with Shirai and turning the other way was the most he could manage. Something warm rushed up from his stomach, but this wasn’t vomit. He spewed a red liquid onto the alley wall. What had happened to his organs during that encounter with the artificial ghost? She was an unreasonably deadly being.

It was terrifying finding himself unable to analyze what had happened even after it happened to him, but it was also creepy not knowing why she had appeared and attacked them here and now.

Yes.

(Hold on. Damn, I didn’t even consider this. If she wasn’t behind the Overhunting’s crash, then why is she involved in this at all?)

“I have no idea what makes her attack, but we won’t survive again if she passes through the wall and peers into this alley. We need to leave.”

“Agreed.” Kamijou wiped the blood from his mouth. “Hanatsuyu Youen will be the easiest one to predict. Let’s start with her.”

“Sure. I just hope the other prisoners are still safe and sound.”

Part 8

Metal clangs and orange sparks burst through the city night. A woman in a red China dress and a cowboy hat lay collapsed face down on the roof of one of the many skyscrapers.

Her dominant hand was pulled behind her back and a knee was pressed against her back to pin her center of gravity. The culprit was an apron woman wearing thick brass knuckles resembling cat paws.

This wasn’t just an issue of range. The pinned woman was a skilled cameraman and sniper, but she wasn’t only effective at long range.

The housewife with her long chestnut hair tied back with a hair tie seemed like a complete monster by this point.

Rakuoka Nodoka’s ability to cause harm was extraordinary. The fact that she had still managed to maintain a normal life without falling to the dark side only made her seem more dangerous.

“Gah!?”

Once the paparazzo’s hands were tied behind her back with a cheap zip tie, a booted foot kicked her sniper rifle aside and a woman with glasses and a black military uniform crouched in front of her. Even kneeling, she was still looking down at the other woman.

Tessou Tsuzuri held a long, thin object between her thumb and forefinger.

“Hi there, Benizome-chan. I’ll need you to open your mouth indecently wide for me, okay?”

“Mghhh!?”

A metallic sensation suctioned to the underside of her tongue. It was about the size of the AAA batteries used in TV and air condition remotes. A rubbery flavor filled her mouth.

“That’s a Fishing Tongue. One remote signal from me and the motor rolls up your tongue until it tears that entire lying tongue right out of your mouth. Isn’t it cute? Now you and Nodoka-chan match☆”

Only when the timid housewife stuck out her tongue and slowly moved it around was Benizome able to see the device for herself. It was attached with a suction cup or an adhesive.

“..!?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend trying to force it off. I mean, unless you like the idea of the lithium ion battery detonating and blowing off your lower jaw.”

The China dress woman froze when she heard that. There were times when the threat of a slower death would restrain people better than a quick death.

Tessou Tsuzuri had pulled all this off without a single run in her stockings. She started the discussion with a smile.

“Let’s get negotiating, shall we?”

“Don’t give me that. I don’t even get to choose if I side with the good guys or the bad guys?”

“You never did.”

(This gives me a short-range and a long-range fighter. A pretty standard setup. But it isn’t enough to control the entire board. If I want a complete victory, I need some more bizarre tech. I only need one more person and victory is mine-->>

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