one and only chance.)

Maybe Hanatsuyu Youen really was a horrific villain in the real world, but he was certain she could end up like the version in Alice’s world if she made the right choices. She wasn’t the worst of the worst and she wasn’t pure evil. Her preferences trended in a dangerous direction, but if she happened to switch paths just a bit, she might be able to find a future where she smiled like that.

So he wasn’t going to give up.

Kamijou Touma refused to give up on someone else’s life. Even if she wasn’t even aware that path existed!!

(I know your abilities can be used to save lives. And that’s enough of a reason to risk my life for you!!)

He stepped into arm’s reach of her. A height difference this great actually limited his possible arm movements, but it didn’t matter if she could predict his actions. He only had to tackle her and pin her arms to her hips to neutralize her. Then he could place his weight atop her.

But before he could do any of that, a dark red hole was blasted in the center of his gut.

Part 12

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, deary me☆”

(I was waiting for the Carrier to from that stack of boxes before I ordered her capture, but the ricochet hit someone else instead.)

The black uniformed woman viewing the scene through a pair of binoculars didn’t bother slapping her forehead as she made an objective assessment of her choices.

“Hm.”

Her top priority was Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier. Once that girl was in her grasp, she could take complete control of the 29th. But if she screwed that up, Youen would finish her plan and make a mess of things.

That was why Tessou Tsuzuri whispered smoothly into her radio.

While toying with the hooked animal-taming rod in her other hand.

“Go, Nodoka-chan☆”

Part 13

Kamijou felt something hard and heavy inside his body.

Just beforehand, the color orange had burst from the plain metal pillar in front of him, so had it been a ricocheting bullet? And Hanatsuyu Youen didn’t have a gun.

(So is someone else here!?)

He had heard a ricochet would reduce the force of a bullet, but he had also heard the jagged edges of a crushed bullet made it more dangerous if it hit you.

Both ideas came from action movies he had seen, so neither one was worth gambling his life on.

He nearly collapsed to the floor, but..

(If it only hit me by accident after ricocheting, then it probably wasn’t aimed at me. If Youen hasn’t moved, she’ll be shot!)

“Nh, bh, gahhh!!”

“Kyah!?”

He had no choice but to use his bloody body. He forced himself forward and tackled Youen to the floor. He was surprised by how cute her shriek was.

Something outside broke through the metal shutter for the trucks and a jagged sheet of metal duller than a saw whizzed by just above his head.

He looked that way, but there was no one there. And he heard a creaking sound from overhead.

(That wasn’t a gun. Did they jump up to the ceiling and cross the pool-sized pit in the blink of an eye!?)

He didn’t have time to check.

He was in no state to even get up. The most he could manage was holding young Youen tight and rolling to the side before the black shape on the ceiling dropped down like a meteor.

A metallic roar followed.

Someone had landed in a curled-up pose where he and Youen had been a moment earlier. A fist protected by thick brass knuckles shaped like a cat paw needed to be slowly pulled out of the steel floor.

The woman wore an apron and her long chestnut hair was tied back with a simple hair tie. She looked to be college aged or maybe a bit older.

But her gentle homemaker look made it hard to believe the extreme violence playing about before his eyes. She probably wasn’t an esper since she was an adult, so was this some kind of bizarre Academy City tech!?

This was completely different from the muscular Rakuoka Houfu he had seen in Alice’s world. She wasn’t surrounded by thick muscle armor and she kept her slender and soft bodylines.

Something exploded right next to her without warning.

It was a work light that was probably a later addition. A piece of the shutter may have stabbed into the fuel tank for the generator below it.

She only shook her head to the side.

Unbelievably, she dodged the shrapnel soaring horizontally toward her.

With the whirr of small motors, the pair of neon triangles on her head turned toward Kamijou.

They moved just like cat ears.

Had they detected the explosion in advance or accurately located the flying shrapnel?

(A cat?)

That was when it hit him.

This all came down to nimbleness. A chemical or something had changed her tendons and cartilage to alter the movable range of her joints.

Cats could jump four or five times their height without a running start, which was how they managed to jump onto roadside walls or reach the knob to open a door. That required powerful muscles, but it had more to do with their nimble joints and cartilage. Expand that to human size and this was perfectly possible. She could jump to the ceiling, cling to it, cross a pit longer than a school pool, and drop back down on the other side.

(Hold on. Wouldn’t a 160cm cat be a jaguar? Or a cheetah? No, this is even worse. Isn’t this on the level of a small lion!?)

What would happen if she used that speed to swing her brass knuckle enhanced fists? He wasn’t liking what his imagination was suggesting. And what if she had boosted herself in other ways as well?

But Youen’s confusion was directed elsewhere.

She forgot to even pull a test tube from her white coat. The little villain girl kicked her young legs to struggle below bloody Kamijou’s weight.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

“Shut..up!! Agh! I’m trying to save you!!!!!!”

“???”

That must not have been what Youen had expected to hear from the stranger who had attacked her out of nowhere. The confusion drew out her 10-year-old girl side more than her extreme villain side.

“Oh, dear. Oh, my☆”

Another voice reached them from elsewhere.

There was a third person here.

“Benizome-chan. I don’t need the boy. Just shoot him and tear him off of her.”

“!!”

(Oh, no!! They’re after her!!)

As soon as he realized where the previous ricochet had come from, Kamijou freed Youen below him and shoved her as far away from him as he could.

But she instead pulled him toward her with her small arms. Then the Carrier’s thumb popped the rubber cap off of a test tube.

A thick black wall rose from the ground. A disturbing number of bugs created a barrier more than a meter thick. Some hot and sharp scraping sounds came from the other side, but the countless obstacles appeared to be altering the ballistic paths. It may have been like sniper shots through an aquarium’s water tanks.

Bleeding and groaning, Kamijou couldn’t even get up from the floor. He only managed a weak question.

“What are you doing?”

“I have no idea!! You idiot! You freak!!!!!”

Hanatsuyu Youen looked perplexed as she snapped back at him.

To a violent villain, incomprehensible good apparently qualified you as a freak. That was a subtle difference from in Alice’s world. He had not been rewarded in the slightest for screwing up his courage, shaking off the fear, and risking his life to tackle the little villain to the ground. Reality was not so kind.

But that was what made it so much fun.

A heavy tearing sound flew by right in front of him.

How many tens of thousands of lives were taken in that single strike? The apron woman had used her brass knuckles to tear through the wall of bugs like it was tissue paper.

All that technology and they hadn’t even earned enough time to run away while hidden from view. The primitive violence rushed toward them.

However.

Kamijou had no idea what happened next.

He could only describe it as a tower. A tower of flesh.

The thick steel floor burst apart and something grew up from the hole. It was a mass of muscles. The muscles formed a tightly clenched fist at the end of an arm longer than Kamijou was tall.

The steel floor was torn up like aluminum foil and something like a picture book ogre emerged. Except he had the head of a middle-aged man with a combover and glasses.

“What the hell!?” shouted Youen. “Why is everyone showing off their brute strength here!? I’m not letting you turn this into a contest of muscles and body size!!”

She must have been afraid of anything that could force its way through all those bugs because she grabbed the collar of Kamijou’s jacket and struggled to get away.

“Ra-” muttered the pointy-haired boy in a daze. “Rakuoka Houfu?”

Yes.

This was him.

But Kamijou Touma had another question when he saw that great muscular back before him. This was a mystery he hadn’t solved even in Alice’s world. Since that former Anti-Skill Aggressor had escaped from the Overhunting prisoner transport train, he had to be one of the dark side’s villains.

But on a more fundamental level..

(He did this in Alice’s world too. He’s clearly on a rampage, but what is he fighting for?)

In that world, he had grappled with Frillsand #G. Even though a wielder of purely physical attacks could never really damage that ghost.

Fleeing the city as quickly as possible didn’t seem to be his goal. If so, he would have ignored Kamijou’s group when they were under attack and run off on his own.

On the other hand, he didn’t seem to have a grudge against Anti-Skill or Judgment for arresting him. If he did, he would have gone after Shirai Kuroko before Frillsand #G.

It didn’t fit. That couldn’t be it.

(What if?)

Kamijou gulped. He slowly backed away while tightly holding onto Youen who would try to escape and drop into the deep pit if he let her.

(What if he’s still trying to capture the criminals as an Anti-Skill officer!!!???)

Part 14

What he had done was wrong.

It had been an undeniable mistake.

Rakuoka Houfu clenched his teeth.

But there had been someone he wanted to be happy even if it meant leaving the straight and narrow. So when he had found his sister standing dazed in a pool of blood, he had hugged her, discussed it with the entire family, and decided to crush, smash, and chemically break down the malicious stalker’s dead body to leave no trace of him in the world.

The real tragedy had come from his talent.

He could have screwed it up at any step along the way, but he had found success at every turn.

But what if that unexpected success had in fact widened the cracks? What if those cracks had grown into a great maw that was now threatening to devour his family again? And what if his family troubles were putting so many other Academy City lives at risk?

He had to put an end to this himself.

Even if it meant becoming a big, bad ogre.

This was not his first time directly facing the malice that ruled the city’s darkness, so this pitiful loser was not going to get cold feet now.

He had already developed an immunity to these sticky shadows.

“Rakuoka Houfu is low priority. You only need to approach the one.”

He heard an amused voice.

Just like back then, these were the mocking words of a demon enjoying the act of bending people to her will.

“Your top priority is Hanatsuyu Youen. Benizome-chan, kill him if he gets in the way. Nodoka-chan, you stay where you are☆ That’s all you need to do to make him freeze up.”

A scorching heat stabbed into Rakuoka’s upper body at supersonic speed and exploded inside him. The lead had been crushed into a flower when it failed to punch through his powerful muscles, which actually worked against him.

His large body tilted to the side.

So what? His precious family was watching.

She wielded deadly violence supported by her crafting skills. But no matter how much anyone else feared her, her brother would always see her as his little sister, so he gently knocked her aside. That sniper was not the type to worry about where her ricochets ended up. If he sent Nodoka into the dumping pit, she would be outside the angular range of the sniper bullets.

He cared about his family more than his own life safe, so now that she was safe, he no longer needed to hold back.

He slowly changed direction.

His bloody muscles swelled out further, growing another size. The crushed bullet was forced back out from the wound.

He had a single target here.

The glasses woman in a black uniform. The Anti-Skill Negotiator. She was supposed to be one of those who prevented crimes by acting as a friendly confidante before things reached this point, not the one who punished the criminals after the fact.

The two foolish adults who had failed to fulfill that role stared directly into each other’s eyes.

Tessou Tsuzuri gave a light wave of her right hand. She was probably sending a signal to the distant sniper, but he ignored that. His muscular strength let him lift more than 70 tons. He could end this fountain of tragedy at the source by getting in a single punch before a bullet could break through his thick muscles and shut down a vital organ.

“Oh.”

He took a step.

From there, he exploded into a run.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He had lived a shameful life.

He had entered his 40s without accomplishing anything, he was now an unemployed criminal, and his little sister had gotten married and started a family before him. He was still a virgin, for that matter.

But surely he was still allowed to do one thing his family could be proud of, right?

Part 15

“Heh.”

A deep, artificial voice spoke from a transmission tower that gave a view of the entire facility.

The lit end of a cigar wobbled up and down.

This romance-loving golden retriever had once rejected this man in the depths of the earth.

“That’s a lot more like it, big brother.”

Part 16

When Kamijou heard fierce blows rattling the metal shutter, he grabbed struggling Hanatsuyu Youen with his bloody hands and rolled behind a nearby indoor wheel loader. A simple high schooler didn’t know how to locate a professional sniper and the random ricochets were still a threat, but it had to be better than staying put.

Rakuoka Houfu vs. Tessou Tsuzuri.

Ordinarily, it was hard to imagine the skinny woman defeating the 3m mass of muscles, but surprisingly, neither side had emerged victorious yet.

She blocked his attacks. The battle remained even while heavy straining sounds filled the room.

(Damn, that Anti-Skill Negotiator woman is using something too. I guess celebrating this convenient interruption won’t be enough to survive!!)

There was no saving Rakuoka Houfu if he was sniped from the side while dealing with Tessou. He was an Anti-Skill officer turned criminal, but he had put himself in harm’s way to let them escape. Shirai and Alice were not here and Kamijou’s right hand could not negate bullets. That left him with only one person to rely on. He spoke to the girl in his arms.

He spoke to the little villain who he had not abandoned even while encountering new surprises at every turn.

“Youen.”

“Wh-what?”

“I want your help. How much of your strength as the Carrier do you have left? Can you call all those crickets in here!? C’mon, please! I’m begging you!!”

“S-stop grabbing me and using my given name like we’re friends! Unless I screwed up mixing a drug and erased my memories with some kind of gas, I’ve never met you before in my life!”

“Just! Do! It! Now!” He was shaking her back and forth by the collar. “You’re the only one I can rely on!! I don’t want that guy to die after he chose to fight for us and you can prevent it with your Carrier stuff. So please!! I’ll do anything, so please save us with some trick only you can pull off!!!!!!”

“..”

For a while, she forgot to even blink as she tried to process what he had said.

She almost looked pleasantly surprised, like no ordinary person had ever come to her for help before.

“Ha.”

Finally, she broke out of her daze with a laugh. She pulled a bunch of industrial-strength drugs from her pocket, crushed them in her fist, and tossed the powdery result toward the garbage dumping pit. Was that the allergy medicine that caused drowsiness as a side effect? That likely reached Rakuoka Nodoka, knocking her out.

With a loud clink of glass on glass, she pulled several test tubes of colorful liquids from her white coat.

“You’re going to regret this.”

Was she summoning a swarm of crickets to act as an acoustic weapon, a swarm of hornets or spiders filled with deadly venom, or something so horrific a high schooler couldn’t even conceive of it?

With several dull sounds, she tore open the nearby pipe until white steam erupted from it. She may have wanted a secret ingredient for her test tubes, but the real surprise was how she tore the pipe open with her teeth.

“What? My teeth melted away during Handcuffs, so I replaced them with nonmetallic implants I made myself. It’s the same stuff they make airplane fuselages out of.”

Apparently she used more than just chemicals. And how had she managed to implant herself with that new equipment while restrained? He had been shot before it could happen, but if he had managed to tackle her and incapacitate her, would she have bitten into his chest or shoulder?

Also, what had his analysis of her abilities been again?

She was powerful. She used chemicals to control the urban pests and vermin to carry microbes or chemical weapons to her target. Once that process had begun, there was nothing you could do, but she lacked the immediacy of a handgun.

“Benizome-chan.”

That voice was the slightest bit faster.

Tessou Tsuzuri managed to speak while grappling with the mass of muscles.

“Your top priority is Hanatsuyu Youen, but if I can’t have her, no one can. If she is falling into another player’s hands, eliminate her.”

“Ah!? Youen!!”

Kamijou had to wonder what he hoped to do about the bullet that would soon be flying their way. He could barely even get up and Imagine Breaker wouldn’t work on it.

Nevertheless, he rushed out in front of her.

However, the flow of time felt distorted. His body moved so slowly and Youen felt terribly far away when she was right there next to him.

At the same time, a question occurred to him.

He knew why Anti-Skill Aggressor Rakuoka Houfu had come here, but why had he burst from underground to do so?

What possible reason was there for that?

The answer revealed itself.

A liquid erupted from underground.

The skin-colored syrup surrounded Hanatsuyu Youen and blocked the bullet as a thick liquid barrier.

Yes, skin.

That whitish cream color could have applied to so many other things, so why was that disturbing word the first thing that came to Kamijou Touma’s mind?

The answer was obvious.

It was so similar to the color of Hanatsuyu Youen’s skin while she stood there in a daze.

“Ka..?”

“Nee hee hee hee hee.”

After spiraling around the girl, the liquid swelled up in violation of gravity and finally formed a silhouette seemingly made of melted wax. Once the details formed, it looked exactly like Hanatsuyu Youen.

No, not quite.

Another girl was toying with the crushed rifle bullet held between her little fingers.

“I dissolved myself into the sewers to bathe in all the city’s filth forevermore, but I just couldn’t do it. Humans are great at adapting to their environment, but the Japanese spirit isn’t made to eat curry rice three days straight. Hmm, maybe I should’ve gone to train in India, the mystical curry capital of the world, before melting my body.”

“Kaai!? Is that you, Kaai?”

“Youen, I was honestly sick of your creepy dependence on me. Doing our hair and clothes exactly the same just cause we’re twins is so boring, so I wanted the freedom to be on my own and do whatever I wanted. But then I realized the filthiest part of this city was always right there by my side! Hello, my bluebird!! Hello, my defilement!!!!!! I want to see something really nasty from you, the only scum so filthy that even I have to doff my cap to you. Do that and I’ll play with this enemy of yours☆”

Youen the Carrier hung her head.

And she smiled a little.

“Heh.”

The strained atmosphere here was packed hopelessly full of malice, so it was the polar opposite of a comfortable household. But the little villain knew it had always been that way with them.

She could never be a good person, but now that something crucial had been restored to her, she pulled out a new test tube and poured its contents onto the floor.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

Both girls hummed while the one let her shape collapse and spiraled around the other. Kaai might have been called a water spirit if there was anything remotely pure about her. Together, the two wicked twins took the first step back into the city’s darkness.

“What do you think would make a good punishment? An indiscriminate slaughter?”

“What do you think would make a good punishment? An indiscriminate slaughter?”

The darkness really did suit them best.

So they used their forbidden techniques to clear their own way toward freedom.

Part 17

This isn’t good, calmly assessed Tessou Tsuzuri.

She could no longer simply beat down Rakuoka Houfu. A new player had entered the field and her options were growing more limited. The worst part was the great unknown of the Kaai-Youen twins pair. If they were working to fix everything like that boy wanted, she could ignore them and wait for the criminals to destroy each other, but if they had regained their original violence, waiting like that could be a critical mistake.

An Anti-Skill Negotiator’s tactics always came down to taking and using pawns.

It was a lot like chess except for the fact that she was on the board herself.

And no matter how unusual an example she was, she was still Anti-Skill deep down. She focused on the combined power of groups, not the overwhelming force of an individual. Her own specs were irrelevant.

“Un.”

“Un.”

She heard something like giant gas bubbles floating to the surface of a swamp and popping.

No, the popping bubbles were growing from the cream-colored slime surrounding Youen.

“Deux?”

“Deux?”

And Tessou’s original association had been accurate. These were giant gas bubbles.

“Trois☆”

“Trois☆”

“!? Tch!!”

A single spark of static electricity would trigger a massive explosion. Had they used their crazy microbes to rapidly turn the raw garbage into petroleum? Worse, this wasn’t just an indiscriminate gas explosion. It was directed in a single direction to accurately launch shards of metal like a sniper shot. And when the Decomposer and the Carrier were behind it, those “arrowheads” were likely coated with a horrific poison.

When you didn’t have the pawns necessary to accomplish anything, the only option was to retreat.

“Sh!!”

Tessou Tsuzuri kicked Rakuoka Houfu’s knee with her sharp heel to use him as a shield and then ran toward the exit. A second and third projectile tore through the air to reach her..and she doubted it would end there.

“Tch. We need a more creative way to boost our power.”

“Hey, hey, hey. I like the looks of that can of caviar you’ve got there. I’ll be borrowing that☆”

“Eek! Stop! That prize belongs to Alice!” shouted an out-of-place voice.

“?”

Confused, Tessou twisted around to look.

At that exact moment, a much more powerful shock hit her from behind. She immediately lowered her head, but that didn’t stop the sharp scratches from raking across her cheek.

Rotten gas had expanded inside the can until it exploded.

The attack had come from the can’s lid. She had just barely dodged that, but the scattershot of caviar had still broken her skin. It was like a needleless tranquilizer dart.

(Oh, no! The fish eggs burst inside the wound!)

The only pawn still available to her was Benizome Jellyfish. Rakuoka Nodoka had been mostly taken out of the fight with the drowsiness of an extra-strength allergy medicine and this place was crawling with the more bizarre side of the dark side: Rakuoka Houfu, Kaai, and Youen.

Tessou needed to get a fresh start.

She could imagine some kind of microbe or chemical was circulating through her body. There was no such thing as a panacea, so she couldn’t eliminate the risk without knowing what exactly was inside her. She used pure willpower to steady her shaky vision and pulled out the radio used to control her pawns.

(These dark side scumbags are all messed up in the head. It might look like they’re all working together now, but they’ll turn on each other in an instant if I sow some confusion!!)

“Goddammit! Nodoka-chan! Benizome too! If you don’t support me, I’m pulling your tongues out with the Fishing-!!”

Just as she clenched her teeth and rushed out of the building, something dropped toward her like a guillotine blade.

If she hadn’t rolled to the side, it might have functioned much like one too. Without her reflexes, she might have lost her head despite noticing it in advance.

It was a shield.

One of the clear shields Anti-Skill used for riot control.

She belatedly realized it had not in fact missed. Broken pieces of the radio she used to send commands to the Fishing Tongues were flying through the air.

Whoever this was had prioritized freeing the hostages over dealing a deadly blow to their enemy.

They had abandoned the option of a surprise attack and even introduced the possibility of being attacked in return.

“What?”

She knew who this had to be.

She knew an Anti-Skill officer who was especially fond of using a riot control shield. The woman excelled at using a shield instead of a weapon because she disliked aiming a gun at children, even if those children were rogue espers.

“Yomikawa..-senpai? What are you doing here?”

The bottom corner of the shield scraped against the ground as a low voice answered her - the voice of an Anti-Skill officer whose stance hadn’t changed one iota after being drenched in the sticky darkness during Operation Handcuffs.

“What, you need to hear from me why I’m here before you’ll accept it?”

-->>

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