Volume 5, 4: If Someone Remains to be Saved – Final_Exams_“Handcuffs”.(1/5)
Part 1
It doesn’t matter which side anyone is on. Let’s combine all the strange tech seen in Operation Handcuffs and resurrect the dead.
That was the plan from Alice’s world, which sounded ridiculous in hindsight.
But what if Kamijou hadn’t attempted it alone? What if someone far more talented and wicked than a simple high schooler had attempted it in the real world?
“..”
Kamijou Touma stared at the phone receiver for a while after the call ended.
Payphones mostly had the same features as an ordinary phone, but they unfortunately lacked a redial button. And during his New Year’s Tokyo survival life, he couldn’t hope to guess the right number with only 49 yen to work with. It was already looking like they would have to survive until the ATMs were back on nothing but a small convenience store chocolate bar and a packet of sold-separately dressing.
But who were Kihara Hasuu and Risako? Where in Academy City were they? Needless to say, Academy City was a large place covering a third of Tokyo where 2.3 million people lived.
(Think back.)
Accelerator had hung up without giving him any answers.
Accelerator wasn’t the type to bother with riddles. He had the best brain in the city, so he had likely skipped several steps to reach the answer on his own. That meant the necessary clues were already here and Accelerator hadn’t seen a need to state the obvious.
(The answer isn’t hidden somewhere like District 15 or 20 that hasn’t shown up at all during this mess. The answer is right there in everything I’ve already seen. And Accelerator would know what the others were doing too. That means Benizome, the Rakuoka siblings, Youen and Kaai, and Frillsand #G. Could there be a hint in something the others saw?)
Drencher, the Anti-Skill woman, and even the Anti-Skill Negotiator had shown them that Academy City’s adults weren’t all bad - even if that last one had had a messed-up way of showing it.
They had risked their lives to fight for someone else.
Everything would fall apart if he ignored their resolve and determination now.
With that in mind, he raised his head.
“Damn, that’s right. There’s still Frillsand #G.”
“Um?”
Still holding onto him from the side, Alice shook her fine blonde hair, wiggled the fluffball on the back of her apron, and tilted her smiling head. She still didn’t seem bothered by her short sleeves. Now, was Accelerator aware this small storybook girl was here? It wouldn’t surprise Kamijou to find out that Alice had mysteriously escaped his notice.
“The real one was so powerful that simply seeing her was enough to nearly kill us. We didn’t even have a chance to make out what she was talking about.”
He had admittedly written it off as nothing more than her being a creepy ghost, but he couldn’t do that here.
“But where did she appear from?”
He couldn’t always rely on what had happened in Alice’s world since she had distorted so many factors, but there she had walked around the concourse and suddenly appeared from the next room by passing through the wall. That meant she wasn’t bound by the laws of physics but still followed the paths on the map to an extent. She did not suddenly teleport from point to point like Shirai Kuroko.
Then realistically speaking, how could she have caught them by surprise at that covered bus stop?
They would have noticed her approaching from a distance. Or rather, they would have collapsed sooner. She hadn’t passed through the wall of a nearby building either. Which only left one option:
“Underground,” he muttered. That was the only way for her to get so close without them noticing. “She emerged from underground. Like someone floating up to the ocean surface. It was the same with Rakuoka Houfu. I thought he was underground because Kaai was in the sewers, but what if that wasn’t the only reason?”
He heard a solid metallic sound.
It came from Rakuoka Houfu, who had shrunk down to a small middle-aged man. Anti-Skill had placed him on a stretcher. He had fought Tessou Tsuzuri who had pushed back with extraordinary strength and he had been sniped a few times by Benizome, so he was in no state to answer any questions.
For just a moment, Anti-Skill stopped working.
He couldn’t get up from the stretcher, but he managed to reach out and touch the forehead of a woman knocked out by a drug. They didn’t say a word. Neither sibling had lived a laudable life, but he still deserved a chance to reconfirm the weight of what he had risked his life and taken bullets to protect.
Finally, Anti-Skill loaded Rakuoka Houfu onto the ambulance.
Whatever was on her mind, Shirai Kuroko sighed while watching from a distance. Kamijou had not played a role in Handcuffs, so he couldn’t know what feelings that sigh carried.
“Well, there is that place hidden deep below District 10.” The answer came with surprising casualness from the cream-colored liquid violating gravity by spiraling around Youen. It transformed into the other twin like a water spirit (that looked so filthy you would take poison damage if you touched it). “Youen and I didn’t see Handcuffs through to the end, but I did notice something strange while enjoying my lovely sewer vacation. Everything down there is designed to avoid a certain area. We didn’t care about it, but that might have been the goal for most of the criminals caught up in Handcuffs.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“What else?” The liquid girl seemed confused he didn’t know. “I’m talking about Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.”
Hanatsuyu Kaai went on to explain something unbelievable.
According to her, Academy City strongly promoted recycling since they could not mine their own resources, but that wasn’t enough to break the city’s reliance on importing resources. However, the amount of materials brought in and the amount of garbage produced didn’t match up. For some reason, the amount of garbage was larger. That violated conservation of mass, so the numbers only added up if there was a secret underground passageway through which materials were transported.
However, the legend of a secret passageway was only a bluff meant to hide the truth and Academy City’s Greatest Taboo was something else.
The real answer was Operation Handcuffs’ ending point.
While so many criminals met tragic ends, only a few experts like Kihara Hasuu and Frillsand #G would have arrived at that true darkness. If some part of the supposedly resolved incident remained, it had to be there.
Youen sighed and continued for her twin.
“If it’s below District 10’s outer wall, your best bet is probably to descend into the subway and travel as far south as you can get. Although Kaai said the underground infrastructure is built to avoid the Taboo.”
“Hmm. Is it really that complicated?” asked Kamijou. “If he really was working with Frillsand #G, then Drencher must have reached that Taboo as well. His mobile base was left in the parking lot of the abandoned leisure spa next door, so we should be able to reach our destination by heading underground from here.”
“I see. And even if he did seal up the underground passageway, we can break through a random wall to make a shortcut. A biological acid or a methane explosion should do the trick.”
“Youen? Since when are you helping me?”
“What? You’re going to make use of us criminals again, aren’t you? Then hurry it up. If I have to risk my life, I want to get it over with as soon as possible. Even if urban pests and vermin tend not to hibernate, it still isn’t easy chemically guiding them during a late December night.”
“No.” She made it sound like a foregone conclusion, but Kamijou shook his head. “You’ve done enough already. I mean, none of this would have even happened if the Overhunting hadn’t crashed. You have no stake in this fight, so you don’t need to risk your life.”
“Do you have a death wish? I’ve only heard of Kihara Hasuu and never actually met him, but if he reached the Taboo and is waiting there now, then he’s an even deeper part of the darkness than me. Did you think bringing ordinary Anti-Skill and Judgment with you would be enough?”
“No, I didn’t. But if I used you, I wouldn’t be any better than that Anti-Skill Negotiator.”
“But-”
Youen started to say more, so he grabbed her skinny shoulders and crouched down.
He put himself at her eye level before continuing.
“Please. This isn’t the first time you’ve saved my life.”
“?”
Oh, right. She didn’t remember what happened in Alice’s world.
Not that it mattered. He would never forget any of the things that little villain had done for him.
“If I owed you anything more, I’d never be able to repay you, so I want you to stay where it’s safe.”
She fell silent at that.
But the less sensible twin started trembling.
“F-first he asks for help to save that muscle man and now he has the audacity to say he cares about her safety? And Youen is falling for it? ..Yes. Oh, god, yes!! Youen’s heart and body are falling for a bankrupt boy with only 49 yen to his name and I’m helpless to do anything at all to stop it! I-is this what they call NTR? I can already tell this will defile my soul in ways I never even imagined! Gulp!!”
“Shut up, Kaai!! I-I am not falling for him in any way shape or form!!”
“I am not bankrupt!! Don’t even suggest something so horrifying!!”
Kamijou beckoned Shirai Kuroko over and she explained the situation.
“Yomikawa-san was sent away after getting a splint for her arm and the other Anti-Skill officers are staying here. They need to preserve the scene of the crime, quarantine and exterminate the pests and vermin, and keep an eye on the recaptured prisoners. I will be heading underground to tie up the last loose ends.”
“Got it. So is it just the two of us paying Academy City’s Greatest Taboo a visit?”
“The girl is coming too☆”
“Hey, no fair!!” shouted Youen, forcing Shirai to hold out a hand to silence her.
“You have no business doing this either. And you were shot!” she shouted to him, looking like she had a headache.
“But we’re the only two who can do this. I’m sick of forcing the risk onto people just because they’re villains, so I’m going too. I want to create a version of the 29th I’m satisfied with.”
“Okay, that’s enough!!”
Unable to just watch any longer, Youen popped off the rubber cap of a test tube and then Kamijou felt something hot at the center of his gut. Right at the bullet wound.
“It’s a nontoxic mold. It can only place a thin film over the wound, but that’s better than nothing, right?”
“Mold?”
“If you don’t want it, you can remove it by rubbing on some ethanol, but that would probably cause the wound to open up all the way, killing you.”
This exchange left Shirai Kuroko looking about as exasperated as humanly possible. Was that directed at Youen herself or at Kamijou for speaking so casually with such an unmanageable villain?
“I really think I should leave you here with the prisoners where Anti-Skill can protect you,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m willing to put myself through hell as many times as it takes.”
“Why do I get the feeling that right there is the entire problem with you?”
Shirai sighed in utter annoyance, but she didn’t stop him either. She was still a middle school 1st year, so whether she was consciously aware of it or not, she may have been reluctant to approach this unseen Taboo alone.
Frillsand #G and Kihara Hasuu. Youen had assured him this darkness was deeper than her.
Fortunately, there were plenty of stairways leading underground.
“Let’s get going.”
“Sure.”
Part 2
All hesitation was gone once they descended the subway station stairs.
Something isn’t right, gulped Kamijou.
They hadn’t arrived at Academy City’s Greatest Taboo yet. Drencher may have passed through here on the way to the Taboo, but according to Kaai and Youen, they would have to travel south from here and maybe blow up a wall before finally reaching it.
The station was warm.
And not just because they were sheltered from the winter air. A somewhat musty and sour smell helped make him feel like he was walking down the gullet of a giant creature.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yes?” asked Shirai Kuroko.
“This is still a normal subway station, right?”
The ticket gates extended from the walls.
They walked around those since they couldn’t pass through them and a bit later the floor changed from concrete to marble. The basement of a fancy department store led to the sewer, which ultimately smoothly connected to a rough stony area reinforced with steel beams. It was a lot like a cave or a mine.
Something very different was happening here. They were going somewhere else entirely without knowing what had caused the change.
Could they blame this on Frillsand #G or on the mysterious researcher named Kihara Hasuu?
“Wait, wait, wait. A mine? Since when does Academy City have one of those?” he asked.
“The Taboo was supposed to be a secret passageway for transferring materials, so perhaps they preserved the limited underground resources instead of using them. Or maybe they distributed algae that rapidly convert animal carcasses into petroleum,” suggested Shirai.
“I get the concept and maybe somewhere like that does exist somewhere in the city, but it seems wrong for this place to directly connect to those ordinary tunnels, like something from a surreal painting.”
“This could be the physical manifestation of something. It isn’t biological like the AIM Burst was, but this feels similar to me.”
AIM. That term reminded Kamijou of Kazakiri Hyouka, the girl who existed as a collection of the AIM diffusion fields made from the faint power that escapes an esper.
(But if that’s true..)
He gulped and looked around.
(Is that what all of this is?)
That did seem worth calling Academy City’s Greatest Taboo.
He had entered District 10 through the subway tunnels in Alice’s world, so he couldn’t rely on that memory. However, it did get him thinking.
The tunnels hadn’t been this expansive back then, so was something causing the distortion to accelerate?
The underground wasn’t covered by the map apps, so he doubted he could rely on them. That meant his old folk’s smartphone was only good for its digital compass. He kept them pointed south. The underground space stretched out in a network of tunnels, but he was afraid one wrong turn down a side tunnel would mean never finding the surface again.
They heard a solid sound like shoes on the ground.
Shirai Kuroko casually turned toward the source and then collapsed. Whatever she had seen had drained the strength from her legs. Kamijou recognized that phenomenon, so he kept his head turned the other way while picking up the limp girl and hiding behind a nearby pillar. He normally wasn’t aware of it, but the human body was a heavy thing. It felt like dragging a sandbag.
“Frillsand #G!!”
She didn’t respond, which was for the best. Whether or not the artificial ghost meant any harm, her stimuli were too powerful for human senses. And sight wasn’t necessarily the only trigger. An unexpected word from her could always knock him out.
With a visual threat, he could at least guess what to punch with Imagine Breaker to damage it, but this was too vague and spectral to have a punchable target.
“Please, restrain yourself a little more!! We aren’t strong enough to bear it!!”
He heard more footsteps resembling a knocking sound. Incautious Alice was clearly sticking her head out from behind the pillar and smiling, the white fluffball on the back of her apron cutely wiggling. She could shrug off a curse, germ, or any other internal threat (it was like trying to kill a mole by burying it alive) and she seemed proud of that ability, giving off some full power “compliment me” beams. The upper arms left exposed by her short sleeves shined bright without a single goose bump.
“Teacher, that ghost is leaving.”
“Is she telling us to follow her? Or is she telling us to leave because it’s too dangerous?”
“That would be good to know.”
Kamijou tried to puzzle it out while lending feverish Shirai his shoulder and leaning out from behind the pillar. Frillsand #G was already gone, but he could hear her footsteps coming from the shadows up ahead.
“I think she’s telling us to follow her.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Because she could have knocked them all out now if she only wanted to stop them. She could have done so with ease. Well, except for with Alice Anotherbible.
Kamijou asked another question while helping Shirai stay on her feet.
“She lived with Drencher and those specimen children, right? How could something so deadly live with people?”
“Hm. Maybe it wasn’t always like this.” Alice placed her index finger on her chin. “What is this place, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Academy City’s Greatest Taboo was supposed to be near District 10’s outer wall, so whatever it is, it wouldn’t be this large. Doesn’t that mean the Taboo wasn’t originally like this and something destroyed it?”
“So what is happening here?” asked Shirai.
“Who knows. But this definitely isn’t a normal place. If teacher is right and the ghost is guiding you, then maybe she knows more about it.”
Alice tilted her head while poking at her hair’s animal ear curls. Was this underground labyrinth the result of Frillsand #G coming in contact with Academy City’s Greatest Taboo?
Or had something else caused the collapse?
What did she even want them to do? Accelerator had suggested they needed to rescue Risako from Kihara Hasuu, but was that really a powerful enough enemy that not even Frillsand #G could defeat him?
It felt like all those questions had taken physical form.
They followed the footsteps up ahead. Kamijou tried his map app, assuming it wouldn’t work, but it was completely frozen. He checked the digital compass and they were definitely headed south. Nevertheless, the tunnel they were following never seemed to end. He felt like they were going to leave Academy City if they kept this up much longer.
“Gh. This is just like that 1994 theory on faster-than-light travel,” groaned Shirai Kuroko, shaking her head and still borrowing his shoulder.
He hadn’t heard of this one.
“Near the end of the 20th century, a certain physicist seriously constructed a warp theory. The idea was to compress space, cross that distorted space in a single step, and then revert space to normal like straightening out a scrunched-up carpet to ignore the speed-of-light limit.”
Shirai probably knew so much about this because she was a Teleporter. She may have wanted to research all the other ideas out there.
“This could be the opposite. Some kind of force may have crumpled up this space like a flyer being thrown in the trash. So we won’t reach our destination by counting our steps in the same direction. It might look we’re only taking one step, but if space has been crumpled up, then this might actually be a third of Tokyo or an even greater distance compressed down to almost nothing.”
“Wait, then is Frillsand #G not leading us somewhere?”
“Who ever said she was?”
Maybe Frillsand #G thought she was safely guiding them, but Alice had said this space was destroyed.
In other words..
“Is this place ruled by conflicting wills, one wanting to protect us and one wanting to eliminate us?”
“The question is whether there is a third party in control here, or if this is a psychological battle being waged inside her.”
But protect them from what?
If Frillsand #G was this powerful, then why did she need someone else’s help?
An electronic sign used to display warnings sat on the rocky mine-like ground.
Text scrolled by on the orange lights.
“Why am I always the one that survives?”
Kamijou tilted his head. Would a ghost talk about “surviving”? After leaving the mine, they found a large, clean train station concourse. All of the pillars there had curved advertisement LCD displays attached.
Each one displayed a different smiling face. The voice they played was not the ghost’s.
One displayed a golden retriever.
“I haven’t seen the doggy since the sewers.”
One displayed Vivana Oniguma.
“The girl who saved me had her picture on the news. They said she died.”
One displayed Drencher Kihara Repatri.
“I saw mister shot to death.”
One was Hamazura Shiage.
“The delinquent who took Sodate-chan and me to the surface was..”
The trembling voice belonged to a girl Alice’s age or younger and was permeated with sorrow.
Kamijou didn’t recognize everyone shown.
And even those he did, he couldn’t say how much they matched up with what he had learned in Alice’s world. Take Drencher Kihara Repatri for example. The artificial ghost’s lightning attacks had burned an image into his mind, but was that what had really happened, or was it something Alice had invented just for fun?
He felt certain he would find the answer if he pursued Risako, who had been saved by villain after villain.
Maybe none of them had been good people. They probably felt more at home in the shadows. But during the chaos of Handcuffs, those villains had felt a stirring from the last shreds of a conscience in their hearts. When they had seen a young life thrown into the center of that hellish Christmas, they had reached out a helping hand with no thought to their own lives. They had wanted to smile and give her a chance to run away and survive.
These people had risked their lives for nothing more than that.
Whatever the result had been, some of the villains on that day had possessed a strong enough will to make that choice. So Risako had no reason to feel this way.
And yet..
“So I need to be strong.”
All the concourse lights went out. In the pitch darkness, an image was displayed across an entire wall, like projection mapping.
A small girl hung her head and bit her lip while an artificial ghost flew around her.
“I want the kind of power that lets me keep anyone else from getting hurt. I need to protect Sodate-chan, the ghost lady, and everyone else from my weakness. No matter what it takes.”
The text displayed on the wall received a response.
Frillsand #G shouted to the girl.
She said that was wasn’t true, she said drowning in the darkness would accomplish nothing, and she said the people lost during Handcuffs had gladly risked their lives to drag her out of that very darkness.
But none of it reached the girl.
Frillsand #G was so dreadfully powerful, but her voice couldn’t even reach this small girl’s ears.
Why was that?
Because someone else didn’t want the nightmare to end and thus silenced the saving voice that would guide the girl to the safe exit.
“Hee hee. Ah ha ha. Your voice will never reach Risako-kun. You already lost during Handcuffs because an artificial ghost like you cannot exist in this space, remember? So you cannot reach her. She can only hear me! You are as powerless to protect her as the man you loved!! Gee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!”
An old man laughed crudely.
But this voice did not come from a mouth. It came from near the girl’s feet. Her young hands held a horrifically brutal chainsaw.
A voice seemed to bleed through from the depths of the earsplitting roar. Just like you started fantasizing a meaning in any white noise if you listened to it for long enough.
“Quite the retro sound, don’t you think? But it contains everything needed to destroy.”
A vague shape other than Risako appeared alongside her.
It stood across the chainsaw from her and held the weapon along with her, like a bride and groom holding the knife to cut the cake. Maybe the brutal chainsaw functioned as a link between the living and the dead.
The other figure could no longer be called human.
Frillsand #G and the heavy weapon spewing malicious words glared at each other with oblivious Risako in between. Yes, the old man clashed directly with the artificial ghost and even held his own.
“You cannot reach her.”
The mocking words did not come from the spectral old man. He was moving his mouth in time with them, but the sound actually came from the violent power tool young Risako held in her hands.
Something evil resided in that rotating blade.
“Your words cannot reach her. Only logical words can reach Risako-kun now. No matter how cruel it might seem, anyone can understand something if it is logically sound.”
“Kh.”
“Rejecting someone’s logical argument with groundless, subjective emotion feels so terribly violent to them. And violence is what Risako-kun detests most of all after the events of Handcuffs, so won’t she just push you away?”
“Kihara..Hasuu!!”
This would be over in the blink of an eye if Risako would simply open the door to her heart, but that would not happen. Other people’s emotions were so difficult to predict and they could even lead to violence if you weren’t careful, so the young girl would reject them herself.
Even though there was nothing at all wrong with emotions.
Was logic a symbol of calm stability and emotion a symbol of violent outbursts? Of course not. Anyone who lived in Academy City long enough would realize the great value of the ordinary kindness and gentleness that helped hold wild logic in check. If the world was ruled by nothing but logic, life would be so much colder and crueler. Hadn’t Drencher Kihara Repatri tricked profit-focused Academy City and taken in those specimen children so he could fight back against exactly that?
“I attempted to reproduce my mind based on you, but several of the details differ. For example, I can control the malfunctions brought on by Academy City’s Greatest Taboo. I can also hold objects to an extent. But unlike you, if I try to leave the Taboo, I would apparently release such a powerful and uncontrollable burst of electricity it would fry the entire city. It saddens me I would destroy any valuable experimental equipment I might try to approach, so I need a convenient body to use.”
“So you’re going to hijack Risako’s body!?”
“Oh, this is nothing so cliché.”
Why had Risako come all this way in the first place?
If Kihara Hasuu couldn’t leave, he couldn’t have forcibly taken her here.
Had she survived the 25th, but something hadn’t sat right with her?
Had she descended to this place in the hopes of collecting the traces of the people who hadn’t survived and then encountered a horrific monster?
If so, this was as horrifying a crime as a murderer killing a complete stranger while they visited a loved one’s grave.
“Admittedly, finding a way to possess peo-->>