No, not that.

This was nothing so cliché. She wanted to know how exactly this woman had appeared here now.

Yomikawa Aiho worked in District 7, so she wouldn’t show up at the District 10 garbage incinerator for no reason. That meant someone had told her what was happening. But who?

“Be-”

When the answer hit her, Tessou Tsuzuri entirely ignored the situation and gnashed her teeth.

“Benizome Jellyfish!! You damn scoop junkie!”

Part 18

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

That was very true. The thing was, she didn’t care.

The woman in a red China dress and cowboy hat wasn’t interested in siding with either of those.

She was presently lying on the floor and munching on the Red Town fried rice sandwich and banana spring rolls she had acquired nearby.

“Ha ha☆”

She grabbed her weapon with a melting smile on her lips. Her sniper rifle was only used to set the stage.

Her true weapon was a single-lens reflex camera.

She was willing to throw out all chance of escape if she could snap this one photo.

Her lower jaw? Feel free to blow that away if she could capture the crucial moment.

“Did you know you can still get published from jail?”

Part 19

Something swished through the air.

Black-uniformed Tessou Tsuzuri had pulled out the whip coiled at her hip.

She carried a stun baton, pepper spray, an LED strobe light, a spherical wireless speaker, and other tools used to tame large animals in nature parks and circuses.

She used it all to “tame”, control, and efficiently defang dangerous criminals.

Because she believed it would reduce the number of victims as the chaos spread.

But Yomikawa Aiho sighed when she saw it.

She saw through the trick right away.

“Magnetic osmotic pressure cell membrane control. If you’re controlling the ion channels and sodium pumps too, I’m guessing you’re altering the signals sent to your muscles to overload their output. In a way, I suppose that makes you a new form of cyborg. Not all cyborgs replace their muscles and bones with metal.”

“..”

She was exactly right.

Even the most powerful weapon could never hit if its wielder lacked the necessary strength. And even if it did hit, it wouldn’t do any real damage. So Tessou had needed to reject her own weakness if she hoped to stand up to the city’s malice.

She could not make that decision unless she was prepared to abandon her own humanity.

“Tessou. Do you hate the dark side?”

“I do.” The whip woman nodded stiffly at the shield woman. There was no hesitation in her voice. “I want to save the people who have fallen into the darkness no matter what it takes. The city’s children were left in our care, so why would I ever hesitate, Senpai?”

Yomikawa Aiho and Tessou Tsuzuri.

The two Anti-Skill officers’ gazes clashed between them.

They both had enough of a reason to keep their gazes firm.

The emblem on Tessou’s shoulder belt was upside down, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was even a saint who had asked to have his cross upside down because it would have been too disrespectful to hang from the same sort of cross as his savior.

“People can be permanently broken. Once someone has gone bad, even if they’re a small child, they will continue fighting and taking lives unless they are stopped. Anyone who saw Operation Handcuffs on the 25th would reach the same conclusion.”

That was why the city already had a self-cleaning system.

The villains would kill other villains.

That created a strange balance, like filthy water filling a cup. The contents of the cup would never overflow unless the good tried to dive in and “fix” things.

That was why so many would notice the people trapped and suffering there but would keep walking without interfering.

Handcuffs had forcibly tried to wash the cup clean, but that water purifier or chlorine tablet had only made things worse.

“Yes, yes. Those who call themselves villains, prefer violence, and risk their lives for momentary profits and pleasures might laugh and accept that destructive lifestyle, but I can’t just let this keep going. I want to be the kind of teacher who protects the children. Just like all the others who never managed to live up to that dream.”

“Tessou.”

“So.”

The Anti-Skill Negotiator had decided she would start speaking with evil, so there was one thing she would never say to those villains no matter what else she might do.

She would never play the all-powerful but despicable card of writing them off as incomprehensible.

She had remade herself so she would view them as human beings. And instead of timidly hiding behind her powerful colleague’s back as an inexperienced Anti-Skill rookie, she had chosen to stand out front to protect someone.

“Someone has to control them. Someone has to set an upper limit on their evil, direct their violence, and make sure they actually help the city. That way they can see they have a place here and that we aren’t just rejecting their power outright. At the same time, we show them the consequences of stepping out of line, allowing them to find the best position for themselves and limit themselves.”

Some children did not go straight home after school. Some students did not stay in line at the cafeteria. From a teacher’s viewpoint, the so-called dark side was just a more extreme version of that familiar phenomenon. And outside of school, they could get away with more savage solutions that had been eliminated from modern education.

“So you want to be the scary teacher?” asked Yomikawa Aiho.

“Yes. Maybe it won’t be pleasant right now. They can resent me as much as they want. But one day, they will look back on this and laugh. This has to be far better than letting them die here and never having another chance at all. Even if they’ve been driven to the verge of death and their heart stopped beating more than a minute ago.”

“But none of that has anything to do with Rakuoka Nodoka.”

“Oh? You didn’t know what she did a loooong time ago? Well, maybe that’s not a fair question. They did set things up so nothing could be proven in court.”

This wasn’t enough to shake Tessou Tsuzuri. Learning about the criminals’ horrific crimes wasn’t enough for her to seal them away. She wouldn’t hide them below the darkness.

She couldn’t forgive the people who would cover themselves in wounds and throw out their own future.

That was the thought on her mind when she thoroughly remade herself physically and mentally.

“Rescuing the criminals and their families is part of our job too. We construct and provide the objective evidence needed to make them productive members of society once more and to counteract any unfair criticism. At the very least, my negotiations will shift them from the position of hated criminals to poor victims. And if they capture an even worse criminal, that shuts up all the bored people online and in in their living rooms. Isn’t that the same idea as a plea bargain?”

“I see.” Yomikawa Aiho had only one thing to say. “But what about Kamijou Touma?”

“..”

“He’s just a normal kid. He has nothing to do with any of these criminals.”

Tessou Tsuzuri had no answer for that one.

Yomikawa shook her head softly.

But she didn’t hold back.

“You can’t answer that because you’re wrong and you know it.”

Yomikawa wasn’t going to be shaken by words any more than Tessou was.

She wouldn’t have accepted the burden of people’s lives if her feelings were half-baked.

“You chose this path because you envied the dark side. You only learned one thing from seeing hell on earth in the District 7 station, but it wasn’t a new method of reducing the number of victims and it wasn’t new values that let you reduce the number of criminals. You saw a predator who readily took the lives of people they didn’t like and you wished you could do the same.”

Tessou Tsuzuri didn’t nod. This didn’t matter. She had chosen to do whatever it took to protect the people of this city, but that very decision may have been when the darkness trapped her.

“So what are you saying?”

“..”

“If that’s what it takes to protect Academy City, then I’ll do it. They’re young, they’re powerful, and they have no remorse. So the instant they leave their cells, they’ll do it all again. And as long as they get what they want, they don’t care if they destroy themselves in the process. Their love of doing evil is a part of who they are, so you can’t just change them into good people. That’s as difficult as using the education system to turn a STEM person into a liberal arts person. For the vast majority of them, you will fail and fail until their sentence is over and they’re dumped out onto the streets unchanged. I will do anything to keep them from causing more deaths and destruction. I will do whatever it takes to teach them how to establish a healthy relationship with the darkness. Even if that means temporarily expanding their power through fabricated crimes.”

“So you’re going to stalk anyone who looks suspicious to you and use that hunch of yours as justification for sneaking up behind them, knocking them out with a stick, and placing a collar around their neck? Locking someone in a room isn’t the only way to commit kidnapping and imprisonment. You’ve already started down that path if you’ve created any kind of environment they can’t leave of their own free will. Lawless justice is just violence. I’m more worried about you causing more death and destruction than any of them.”

They didn’t have to see eye to eye. If Tessou had naively assumed everyone would agree with her, she would have invited her respected colleague to join her from the beginning. And she would have been stopped before she started.

She would have failed to even become a criminal to save anyone’s lives.

Now it was one-on-one.

This wasn’t how the Anti-Skill Negotiator was meant to fight, but this was only the beginning.

Maybe it would all fall apart, but the situation would dramatically improve if she could take out Yomikawa Aiho here. Maybe it wasn’t logical, but she was certain she could save more people this way.

“Yomikawa-senpai, your methods can’t change anything.”

“Maybe not, but I seriously doubt yours are any better in that regard.”

There was no signal.

They both took a step forward at the same time.

Then something swished through the air.

It was a lot like an iaido strike.

Tessou unleashed a full-power attack with a brutal whip capable of killing an elephant, but Yomikawa swung down her shield to catch the whip against the ground, severing it.

“Yomikawa-senpai!!”

“After everything you’ve done, I doubt destroying your weapon is going to stop you!!”

Tessou didn’t hesitate to throw away the whip grip and draw the hooked pole from her hip.

But that was only a distraction while her other hand pulled out the LED strobe light. She held it out and let it flash while she rushed in.

She ran right into Yomikawa’s shield.

She was knocked back and her hooked pole broke. The shield was like a shovel, so it could be used as a deadly weapon with an attack that focused the force on the edge or point.

But that was why Tessou sneered.

(She could have killed someone like me with that one!!)

The strobe light was working.

It flashed at a maximum of a million candelas, so it rivalled a stun grenade.

Yomikawa’s shield was made of clear plastic. That was meant to ensure she could see while protected by the shield, but that meant it failed to protect her eyes from bright lights. The only way to avoid being blinded was to turn her face away. And that would keep her from doing much else.

(Goodbye, Senpai.)

Still holding out the strobe light, Tessou tossed the hooked pole aside. Blinded by the light, Yomikawa would be reliant on sound.

Tessou had thrown out her hesitance toward hurting people when she decided to try and understand the villains.

(I can use that big shield as a weapon too! Even if you’re holding it with both hands, that’s still just two points on a single axis. I’ve boosted my muscles, so if I use my weight to kick it with the sole of my boot, I can slam it into your forehead like I’m knocking on a door!!)

Then something unexpected happened.

Yomikawa subtly altered the angle of the shield.

There was one thing you were never meant to do when searching an abandoned building wrapped in darkness. A powerful blinding light would also give your position away to the enemy, so you must never move around with it on. You were meant to flash it for just an instant and move based on the image burned into your mind. You also were supposed to avoid shining it directly at a window or any metallic parts. Why was that?

Because the light would blind you if it was reflected like a mirror.

“Gahhh!?”

“About what I expected. Do you have any idea how much time I’ve worked with you? When you realized you couldn’t defeat me from a distance with that whip, I knew you’d move in close and try to blind me. It wasn’t hard to trap you when you were eager to put your mind at ease by moving past your failure.”

Yomikawa Aiho’s voice was as cold as ice.

She was different. She could not bring herself to accept and cater to wicked hearts.

Nevertheless, she had gained the strange ability to place a limit on violence from a position of pure good. She must have learned that from dealing with a monster far more twisted than any of the Handcuffs villains.

She didn’t need any excuses about protecting lives, protecting students, or protecting the city.

“!!”

Don’t let this chill down your spine affect you, Tessou told herself.

Don’t let this temporarily blindness scare you. You can attack the shield by kicking at the source of the reflected light. Then you can hit her with the very shield meant to protect her.

She doubted that would be enough to win.

So she drew her stun baton with the hand not holding the strobe light.

She would be extra certain.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“By the way.”

Tessou’s heavy boot kept going after hitting the shield. It wasn’t just that Yomikawa had pulled the shield back as she hit it. Tension and panic grew inside Tessou and Yomikawa’s voice stabbed into her ears.

“You can stick the bottom of the shield into the ground so it stands on its own. Which means I don’t have to be holding it.”

“!?”

Yomikawa had escaped, but she had to be defenseless without her shield. The afterimage of the bright light still flashed in Tessou’s vision as she thumbed on the stun baton.

And after a loud “zap!!” it was Tessou who crumbled to the ground.

Her boosted muscles twitched uncontrollably and she could feel her black stockings tearing on their own, presumably because of the high-voltage current.

“Also, stun weapons - especially batons - don’t mix well with liquids,” said an exasperated voice. “That includes sprinklers, mist, and sweaty palms. I thought you would draw it at some point when you were feeling cornered, so all I had to do was push you around until you started to panic. Tessou, you can play the bad girl role all you want, but you haven’t changed your timid nature.”

Yes.

Yomikawa was right.

Tessou had to admit it to herself while clenching her teeth at her soaked palms and her ugly heart.

She was still an inexperienced member of Anti-Skill, so no matter how much she tried to remake herself and no matter how many pawns with strange talents she gathered, she could not win on a more fundamental level. In a direct confrontation between two Anti-Skill officers, she could not defeat the tougher and more experienced woman.

Or so it had been in the past.

But she had chosen to become the scary teacher.

She would give everyone a future even if it earned her their resentment and ensured she would never be invited to any kind of reunion held by the children. She would rescue people from the unfair criticism people got just for being a criminal or their family. Because in her glimpse of the hell that was the dark side, she had seen not just the slaughter of innocent people but children who were forced to rely on those techniques to survive. It wasn’t an issue of morality. So she needed to teach those people that things would get better as long as they survived. After seeing the hopelessness that was Handcuffs, she had sworn to herself she would become that kind of teacher!!

She would not let any villains treat their own lives as worthless.

She would give them a final chance to reject a ridiculous life where they cynically decided they were satisfied with dying. So she could not give up and be defeated here!!!!!!

“Gah.”

The teacher clenched her teeth, forced strength back into her falling body, and heard straining and cracking sounds from all over her body. Her boosted muscles were putting pressure on the bones within and even causing comminuted fractures. Just like a corpse stuffed into a metal drum and then solidified in concrete would have its bones shattered by the change in volume. But she could keep fighting as long as her abnormal muscles could support her.

Tessou Tsuzuri could remain the scary teacher for a little while longer.

It was all thanks to her magnetic osmotic pressure cell membrane control.

As long as she didn’t collapse and pass out, she could reach out a helping hand to the people who maligned themselves as villains and rushed toward their own doom. She had decided for herself to be the scary teacher, so she couldn’t let anyone see her falling to her knees in weakness.

She didn’t care how much she was feared or how many people tried not to remember her.

As long as she didn’t give up here, even the weakest person who couldn’t protect anyone could become the kind of teacher that could save people’s lives.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

She coughed up blood while swinging her fist around to the side.

She still couldn’t see and didn’t know where Yomikawa was. But that didn’t matter. She could judge the correct direction and distance based on the other woman’s voice. The air was as solid as clay and the frictional heat burned through her right sleeve. Tearing through the air with that much speed and mass would scatter the floating dust and dirt across a fan-like shape like wide-range birdshot.

(The effective range is 40m and the maximum angle is 150 degrees dead ahead. Yomikawa-senpai, this will knock you out no matter how you try to dodge it!!)

Tessou’s resolve popped like a bubble when her deadly fist was stopped prematurely. Without a full swing, she couldn’t produce the scattershot wall.

“?”

For a brief moment, she wondered if Yomikawa was using the same tech. Or did she have some new equipment Tessou wasn’t even aware of?

(It can’t be.)

“Are you not using anything at all? Did you sacrifice your own arm to stop my fist!?”

“Did you think I could carry the burden of so many people’s lives if I wasn’t willing to do that, Tessou?”

That had to be like stopping a large bus by sticking your arm into the rapidly-rotating wheel or axle.

But if that bus was loaded with children and headed toward a cliff, Yomikawa Aiho would not hesitate to sacrifice her arm.

She would do it. She would leap into a storm of bullets if it would save anyone, no matter who.

And she only needed one arm to finish this anyway.

Tessou felt a hand roughly grab her collar and a leg sweep her feet out from under her. A moment later, she lost track of up and down. Just as she realized she had been thrown, her back slammed into the ground and all the oxygen was squeezed from her lungs.

It knocked the breath out of her more than it hurt.

“Do you know what your first and biggest mistake was, Tessou?”

So she wasn’t entirely sure if she was really hearing this voice.

But she thought she heard it just before she passed out.

“You gave up on the children by thinking villains couldn’t become good people. I happen to know one monster who struggled and struggled through so much pain but ultimately escaped that life.”

Part 20

Finally.

It was finally over.

The Anti-Skill Negotiator had her hands cuffed behind her back and was loaded into a car by the adult Anti-Skill officers who had come running. The Anti-Skill woman who had cuffed her was not at all okay. After she confirmed the Anti-Skill Negotiator was restrained, Kamijou saw her collapse.

He couldn’t even get up while Hanatsuyu Youen expressed blatant displeasure with the flesh-colored liquid floating around her.

“That wasn’t enough. I only got to do it once and it only really hit that muscle guy.”

“What’s wrong with that? The less fighting the better.”

“You’re the one that got me all fired up! Don’t tell me you would say that kind of thing to just anyone!”

“O-ow!! Wait, I’m sorry! Don’t send that liquid toward me! I’m not sure if it’s alive or dead, but it’s made from a person, isn’t it!? It’s terrifying!!”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m pulling that bullet out of your gut!!”

“Gwah! Please treat me with more care than that!”

Kamijou desperately apologized while his limbs convulsed. It scared him that he felt so little pain yet his body wouldn’t do as he told it.

“Teacher☆”

The blonde girl ran over with a smile. She held her little hands out and mercilessly leapt at him, burying his face in the warmth of her flat chest, violently smothering him in relief. It was like drinking hot milk after a very long day. He was afraid he would fall asleep right then and there.

“Pwah. Wh-what happened to Shirai Kuroko?”

“The girl saved her. Because you told her to.”

He heard a windy sound and saw the twintails girl appear out of thin air with a modified China dress woman over her shoulder.

“That’s the last of the fugitives. Now I won’t have to work through the night on this.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of how casual she was about it. He was pretty sure Benizome Jellyfish had played an important role behind the scenes in the events of the 29th and that meant she might have played a direct role in whether they lived or died, but it was all so uncertain he didn’t have a real argument.

He was also pretty sure the crickets had moved elsewhere when Hanatsuyu Youen had gathered all of her forces to herself, which was before Alice had rescued Shirai.

“You aren’t going to run away, are you?” he asked.

“Why would I need to?” The Carrier rubbed her cheek against the flesh syrup floating in the air. “Hee hee hee. I’m happy as long as I have Kaai, so I don’t care where we end up living. In fact, an airtight cell sounds perfect. I wouldn’t even need to implant a tracker in her. Now I know she can never escape me. Hee hee hee hee hee hee.”

“Ew, gross. Why are you so clingy, Youen? Kya ha ha. You’re the creepiest person in the world☆”

By this point, even Kamijou Touma had learned that there was no point in trying to understand the dark side. You needed enough mental fortitude to classify these twins as “friendly”.

“Okay..that’s finally everything squared away. Yes!! I so want to get home and take a shower. I’ve only got 49 yen, but I can worry about that after getting some sleep!!”

“Hmm? Are you sure this is everything?”

Alice sounded displeased and hadn’t let go of him.

He looked to her in confusion while she pulled some hedgehog balls from below her apron, stuffed them in a sack, and sat on that.

“Did you ever figure out why Frillsand #G attacked?”

................................................................................

He had no answer for her.

“..Huh?”

Come to think of it, what had that artificial ghost been doing? She hadn’t been onboard the Overhunting and she hadn’t had anything to do with Anti-Skill Negotiator Tessou Tsuzuri, but she had still played a role in the day’s events. So where was she now?

Did some of the 29th’s storm clouds still hang in the sky?

He had no clear answer. Leaving this unfinished would mean wasting the efforts of the teacher who had fought until she broke her arm and passed out.

He was left speechless by this question, but then he heard something else.

A flat, repeating electronic tone.

He turned his head to see a fluorescent light at one corner of the garbage incinerator grounds. It shined on an old-fashioned device: a payphone in a booth of reinforced glass. It was ringing like a home phone.

He hesitantly approached, opened the creaking door, and looked to the phone. It never stopped ringing no matter how long he waited, so he finally picked up the receiver.

He pressed it to his ear and heard a voice.

“Hi.”

“A-Accelerator?”

He didn’t understand.

He blinked in confusion before finally managing to squeeze out a question.

“Weren’t you arrested?”

“I was. Which is why I’m calling you from prison.” Accelerator sounded bored. “You never should’ve been involved in this mess, but if you’re gonna stick your neck where it doesn’t belong, have the decency to actually end it properly, third-rate.”

“..”

Even over the phone, Kamijou felt the usual tension.

“I’ve been monitoring the events with my demon, but that only tells me so much. Can you fill me in on the details?”

Kamijou nodded, not really understanding what was happening here. Then he realized Accelerator couldn’t see him nodding over the phone and gave a verbal affirmation instead.

“Did you capture all the prisoners who escaped the Overhunting?” asked the boy on the phone.

“Um, yes. We caught Hanatsuyu Youen, Rakuoka Houfu, and Benizome Jellyfish. And for some reason, Youen is with her twin.”

“What about the Anti-Skill Negotiator behind the train crash?”

“The Anti-Skill officer who survived Handcuffs, right? Was her name Tessou Tsuzuri? We somehow managed to capture her, so that should settle every-”

“One last question. How much do you know about the conflict between Kihara Hasuu and Frillsand #G?”

“..Eh?”

He had no answer.

What was that about? He knew Frillsand #G, but Kihara Hasuu? His name had been mentioned as an android researcher back in Alice’s world, but what was this about a conflict? He hadn’t shown up yet, so didn’t that mean he had died on the 25th like Drencher and Vivana?

He heard a disappointed sigh from the phone.

But he still had a question.

Tessou Tsuzuri had been threatening dark side villains to get them on her side so she could battle even greater criminals. But if she just captured all of the prisoners who escaped the train-->>

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