Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item2 Chapter2

==Chapter 2: The Storm Approaches==

===Part 1===

It was August 5.

“Bam, bam, bam!! Bam, bam, bam, bam! Go, go, Hoooshiiiyaaamaaa!! The girls have pulled into the lead in this country. Their ratings have finally surpassed the boys tournament this year. Welcome back to Academy City’s high school girls baseball tournament. The District 2 representative is Tonami Technical High School – a first-timer in this tournament after converting away from a boys school three years ago. Their Level 4 Breaking Ball Princess is showing signs of fatigue after throwing several fouls in a row, but they still aren’t swapping her out. Meanwhile, their opponent is the District 15 representative – Hoshiyama Girls, known for producing videotubers who outperform TV personalities. Their 4th batter is 2nd year Muraki. Can her Move Sensor accurately read the spin of the ball? Now, here comes the 7th pitch. And it’s a hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!! The runner moves from 2nd to 3rd – no, wait. She’s accelerating with her Kick Spike to take it home! Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!!!’

Takitsubo Rikou was watching TV while expressionlessly eating salted corn on the cob by holding it on either end, but then she noticed an emergency warning displayed at the top of the screen.

“Typhoon 11 is on track to make landfall on the east coast of Honshu, Japan. All Academy City residents should monitor the latest weather information and adjust any plans to head out.”

Kinuhata Saiai blinked twice and gave the TV a puzzled look.

“Takitsubo-san, what district is your school in? Super which team are you rooting for?”

“The one that’s losing.”

She didn’t sound like she cared all that much.

Takitsubo appeared to be constantly switching which team she supported while squirrelishly filling her cheeks with corn. Her Body Crystal case had been blown up during the attack on their apartment, but a new case was now sitting on the edge of the table. That was one less thing to worry about.

Kinuhata looked to the TV again and sighed.

“Isn’t it super hard to watch this stuff when you live in the shadows? They’re the lucky ones. Seeing those bright and shining success stories is like watching something that’s forever out of reach for you.”

“Why does that bother you?”

Takitsubo sounded legitimately confused.

“Well, maybe it’s not an issue for you and your ultra rare AIM Stalker. Meanwhile, I super don’t get anything from my connection to the #1. Because it’s incomplete. No matter what I do, I only have brute force going for me. I’m just a mass-produced product that only has control over super common nitrogen.”

Takitsubo expressionlessly tilted her head.

“Kinuhata, are you familiar with the Four Bioelements Cycle?”

“No, super what is it?”

“Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Almost all life on Earth goes through its life moving those four components through breathing, photosynthesis, eating, decaying, and more. It’s the foundation of the food chain.”

“…”

“Directly controlling nitrogen means you have the possibility of tearing down one corner of the Four Bioelements Cycle. That means you could influence the entire cycle. In other words, ''you either directly or indirectly have the chance of becoming a queen who holds all life on Earth in her grasp.'' If a rare lifeform that doesn’t need any of those four elements were to stand in your way, you could threaten the majority that are under your control to attack and eliminate that lifeform.”

Kinuhata Saiai smiled a little.

“You’re super exaggerating.”

“Maybe so,” admitted Takitsubo. “But you could describe Mugino’s Meltdowner as nothing more than the power to control common electrons. I think esper powers are all in how you use them. Strength and adaptability are what matter – not what it is you control in the first place.”

On the TV, allowing a run must have thrown off the pitcher’s focus because she threw another hit. Apparently the high-level espers accepted by the sunny world had their own troubles.

“And, Kinuhata, isn’t it lucky we found another hideout so quickly? They say a typhoon is coming, so we might have been forced to fight the rain and wind outside.”

“But it was a super close call, wasn’t it?”

Kinuhata felt the floor shook below her. That was only an illusion, of course.

The blimps with giant screens on their side were used for more than ''just'' advertisement. The gondola hanging below the rugby-ball-like gasbag contained a large hotel and a 5-star restaurant. The idea was for it to function as a flying luxury hotel that gave a view of Academy City at night. Takitsubo’s corn was fancy room service, not something bought on sale at a supermarket, so Kinuhata wasn’t interested in learning how much it had cost.

They were staying here for more than just Mugino’s fancy tastes.

“After all, it’s summer break, so all the ordinary hotels and inns are full up and only these stupid expensive rooms are left. If we were only a little slower, I bet we super would’ve been stuck out in the typhoon.”

“Mugino is great at searching out little-known rooms like this. For whatever reason, she never has trouble finding them.”

“Oh, I get it. They are VIPs who keep rooms reserved so they’re super available even during the busiest times of year. Oh, god. That super rich girl cut in line, didn’t she?”

“And you’re benefiting from it now.”

That said, this would be for nothing if their enemy blew up this hideout too. If they didn’t want to find out what it was like to be weather girls doing an on-site typhoon report, they had to go on the offensive and eliminate the threat.

Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary.

That researcher and successful experiment both surpassed Mugino Shizuri by definition.

“Apparently Honey Queen wasn’t just an online marriage scammer.”

“I still can’t super believe she’s only 10. Still, it would be super more accurate to say she was an industrial spy who was after her targets’ research data. She just decided the online marriage scam would lure them in a lot better than a phishing email with a malicious attachment.”

And instead of someone trying to steal the tech they couldn’t create themselves, she was trying to steal her own crucial research data back from the dark side lab that had kicked her out.

(Still, I have to super wonder what that girl did. A gruesome dark side lab isn’t going to freak out over something like human experimentation, so how do you get them to kick you out for being immoral?)

“A scammer is an expert at cutting their target off from accurate information and controlling their target psychologically.”

“Super what about it?”

“That she chose that method could mean she was worried if she didn’t use it. I could understand that if she used to work among those grownup dark side researchers at her age. But why would she choose marriage out of all the different options? Does she just want to make a mockery of ordinary love, or is she actually starved for it?”

Kinuhata was secretly impressed.

Takitsubo was always so perceptive. It wasn’t clear if this came from her power or if she was analyzing people’s expressions, words, and actions, but she was already working at revealing their enemy’s internal motivation after one short encounter. Kinuhata felt ashamed that she had still been trapped by the strange “legend” their enemy had created about herself.

“Of course, if we look at the entire Honey Queen team, then the marriage scams aren’t their only MO. They have also destroyed thick locks by brute force to steal hard disks from a bank safe deposit box or from an armored car in transit. Could that have been the mask girl called Tachiuo Mary? Plus, there could be more we aren’t aware of. Maybe some important research data has been stolen but no one has discovered it yet.”

“So you’re saying Honey Queen is a group of ''secret data thieves''?”

That intellectual-sounding description felt at odds with the actual threat they faced.

Those two were an underground researcher and test subject who were stealing pieces of research data stored across the city and using it to strengthen themselves.

Those monsters had outplayed ''the'' Mugino Shizuri and easily knocked her out.

“Do you think we can win? To be super blunt.”

“''The explosion of the crashed truck wasn’t anything special.''”

The question didn’t have much meaning, but the track suit girl still replied calmly and quickly.

Was that the difference between a newbie and an experienced member?

Takitsubo’s opinion had rapidly eliminated the curse of the enemy’s “legend” from Kinuhata’s mind.

“I don’t know if she used her power or sent a signal from her phone, but all she did was hit Mugino from a blind spot, which kept Mugino from reacting quickly enough. Our Level 5 was defeated. That much is true, but keep in mind what actually happened and don’t let it rattle you. That ''trick'' was something anyone could have done if they had as thorough a knowledge of Mugino’s behavior.”

The only real difference there was one of experience.

In other words, Ainame Caroline had built up more experience with that Level 5 than Takitsubo Rikou had supporting her. If anyone should feel ashamed, it was Takitsubo, not a newcomer like Kinuhata.

So the track suit girl would not try to place the blame on Kinuhata Saiai’s shoulders.

This was an issue she had to overcome herself.

“No one is unbeatable. Which is why Item lost here.”

“…Right.”

“But ''that means you can say the same thing about those two.'' What we need now is information and a strategy. If we can gather the appropriate equipment and come up with a specialized plan, we can defeat them. Kinuhata, let’s repay them for the lesson they taught us here. With plenty of interest.”

===Part 2===

“Typhoon 11 is traveling north in the Pacific. Make sure you already have a plan before it makes landfall. Bring inside any bikes, potted plants, or anything else that could blow away in the wind. If you live in an expected flood zone, there are measures anyone can take, such as stacking sandbags around the building in advance.”

The warning news displayed on the side of the blimp was a bit more insistent than before.

But Mugino wasn’t interested in that as she walked along the sidewalk.

“Is that any good?” asked Mugino, sounding skeptical.

“In the end, it tastes just like a Starzucks iced café mocha with extra whipped cream. But it’s 0 Calories no matter how much you drink and it can also reproduce the seasonal drinks you can’t actually get anymore. Like the Christmas strawberry milk iced latte or the autumn maple quadruple mixed cream coffee.”

Frenda Seivelun removed her lips from the end of the virtual drink’s thick straw to speak.

“In the end, is defending ourselves our main motivation for this job?”

“That and the basic reward for defeating Honey Queen.”

“The basic one? I know you better than to think that’s enough for you to go to all this effort. In the end, there has to be reason you’re out in this sweltering heat with a typhoon approaching when you could just have our support organization do all the investigation. Out with it already!”

“Fine, there is another reason, but it only applies to me.”

Mugino pouted her lips while passing a drum-shaped cleaning robot that was struggling against the powerful wind.

“I don’t actually know how the adults are using Meltdowner or what other research it ties into. I would love to get a peek at that by pursuing this mission. But that doesn’t do the rest of you any good.”

“It doesn’t have to! You’re saying we’re approaching some kind of deep secrets about you, right? That’s great! I say that’s worth risking my life for!!”

Frenda was invading Mugino’s personal space a little too much, so Mugino grabbed her with a hand and pushed her away.

Thick, dark clouds covered the sky above.

The latest news said the typhoon was definitely headed this way. The trees alongside the road were rustling in a crosswind and it finally started to sprinkle.

“Mugino, Mugino. In the end, let’s stop by the convenience store.”

“He’s just some thug from the support organization. Are you seriously going to bring him a gift?”

“Yes, but I was more thinking about buying an umbrella.”

Frenda could make friends with anyone, so it was just like her to not deny her intentions.

She purchased a cheap plastic umbrella and a box of somewhat expensive-looking Belgian chocolates. Mugino didn’t normally pay much attention to it, but apparently some convenience stores sold a decent number of gift products.

“Really? It’s not Valentine’s.”

“I really don’t think many girls these days actually make their own heart-shaped chocolates in preparation for February 14. In the end, you have to remember that the support organization’s delinquents aren’t known for having brains. They’ll rejoice like a puppy if they receive candy from a lovely girl, no matter the time of year. But anyway, Mugino, let’s share this umbrella☆”

A powerful gust of wind turned the umbrella inside-out and carried it off into the heavens. The wind turbines were rapidly rotating and producing an unpleasant noise from the intense friction.

The solid blasts of wind continued to pummel them until they arrived at the hospital.

However, this was nothing like the general hospital that served District 3.

“In the end, I can’t believe Honey Queen let our driver live. They should know even a simple pawn will turn against them once he wakes up.”

“Either they seriously underestimate us, or it’s some kind of trap. Be on the lookout for anyone tailing us.”

That aside, knowing what was wrong with the driver was their first step toward striking back. Ainame Caroline had remotely done something to the delinquent’s brain, instantly knocking him out and causing the 4-wheel-drive truck to crash. They really did want to find out what that something was as soon as possible.

Mugino and Frenda entered a cheap short-term apartment building and took the elevator up to the roof. There they found a transport helicopter with two special coaxial rotors, one in the front and one in the rear. The main fuselage was more than 15m long and it was around 30m all the way out to the tips of the rotors. The helicopter was only a few meters wide, so its max capacity was around 50 people, meaning it contained about the same space as a classroom or two. It may have used the more complex structure of coaxial rotors because the design had borrowed from delivery drones.

However, most of the space inside was taken up by medical equipment, an air purifier to eliminate all dust from the air, and various scanning equipment, so it only had enough space left over for a single bed.

The “hospital” Mugino and Frenda were visiting was in fact a high-end medical helicopter created by modifying a transport helicopter. Simple procedures like stitching up wounds could be done in flight. When landed, it could provide plastic surgery to change one’s face or fingerprints or even delicate brain surgery. But a normal hospital would not need the ability to scatter chaff or flares to escape an attacker’s missiles.

“Every time I come here, this feels too nice for a black market doctor’s stronghold. When a villain is shot in the arm or leg, the most they should manage is to rush to a sketchy animal hospital or to a factory breakroom with a special first aid kit inside. In the end, why don’t the Six Wings attack helicopters rush in whenever this thing takes flight without permission?”

“Altering the air traffic control data is apparently part of the business model. Really, she swoops in to save the lives of anyone useful or with useful associates so she can earn their thanks and expand her network of valuable people. There’s always a catch.”

“Hm. In the end, that sounds too nice.”

“True, it isn’t a very dark side thing to do. We’re talking about a medical expert here, so it’s possible she was responsible for the injuries and illnesses she helped the airport workers with. No proof of that has surfaced, though.”’

This hospital provided all sorts of services – from anonymous consultations for fugitives on the dark web to life-saving surgeries performed in person. Since none of that could be charged to anyone’s insurance, the costs had to be astronomical.

Mugino and Frenda were guided in by some miniskirt nurses carrying full-auto shotguns that likely killed with a scattershot of poison needles measuring less than a millimeter long. After entering the rear cargo door and climbing a slope, they entered an airlock where they were disinfected. The damp-eyed nurses looked lewd and cute, but they were probably soldiers doped up on all sorts of military drugs to boost their physical abilities to the very limit. They would feel no exhaustion or limits as they nimbly evaded projectiles head on or grabbed and threw a 750cc motorcycle like it was a metal bat.

(Hm.)

Tachiuo Mary. It was uncertain if she used the same kind of tech as these combat nurses, but it was possible her superhuman strength was not the result of an esper power.

It was best to consider the possibility she had another trick up her sleeve.

“This is supposed to be where we do our surgeries before we stick them in one of the short-term apartment rooms below to recover.”

A frilly blouse, a tight miniskirt, a white coat, and glasses. She looked like she was cosplaying a lewd female doctor. Were the nurses’ outfits also the result of her tastes?

“But he’s in too delicate a situation to leave him in a random bed. Honestly, I really need to build some kind of ICU. He’s hogging the entire flying operating room. All I can do right now is the online consultations and social media counseling for criminals.”

“You don’t look all that upset about it. Are you the kind of doctor who can’t bear to abandon a patient?”

“Not another word. I left ''that man’s hospital'' because I’m in it for the money. Everything I’m doing here is a crime, so I’m not about to start preaching to you about being humane.”

This young doctor appeared to have a storied past, but that wasn’t why they were here.

Frenda frowned.

“In the end, what happened? All I know is our delinquent suddenly passed out while driving.”

The busty black market doctor gestured toward the wall with her shapely chin. A giant LCD screen displayed what Frenda assumed were images of the delinquent’s brain from MRI and ultrasound scans.

“Look here.”

“…”

“''Something was burned directly onto the surface of his cerebrum. That physically obstructed his brain’s pathways, so there’s no way he can stay conscious.''”

They saw something impossible there.

His brain was coated with black, like stubborn mildew in the bath.

It would have actually been more believable if it formed a mysterious face or some kind of occult symbol.

But it didn’t.

“What…the hell?”

Frenda enjoyed viewing gory and gruesome images, but even she gasped at the reality before her eyes.

“ ‘Don’t miss the Shop Marukawa 50%-off sale. Buy a dozen eggs and all profits will be donated to the local community.’ ”

“I don’t think the actual text matters. ''A random supermarket flier must have been burned into his brain''.”

That text was formed on the highly delicate brain inside his skull.

The doctor shrugged.

“If this was an esper power attack, it probably falls under the Thoughtography category. That power outputs or copies information the esper shouldn’t know onto an existing medium. That said, it’s supposed to be used to predict the future or read someone’s mind. I’ve never seen it used offensively.”

“So would that mean someone with Honey Queen – either Ainame Caroline or Tachiuo Mary – has that power?”

“I don’t know anything about who did it. …Meltdowner, that wasn’t information I would be better off not knowing, was it?”

Directly “burning” something inside a target’s body from a distance was enough of a threat on its own.

But if the esper actually had Thoughtography, there was a chance they could look into the future and plan accordingly.

“Tch. That explains how they kept predicting our actions during the attack. I don’t know what they got a photo of, but they did more than profile us based on our past actions.”

“In the end, will he recover?”

“If the text scrawled inside his skull is removed.” The doctor sighed when she saw the chocolates Frenda had brought. “But with the equipment I have here, removing a 1mm brain tumor is a major undertaking that lasts five hours. Based on the standards of brain surgery, safely and fully removing all of that without damaging the surrounding nerves and cells just isn’t possible. Our ability to focus long enough is one problem, but even without that, the patient wouldn’t survive having his skull open that long.”

“Those Honey Queen girls aren’t gods,” stated Mugino. “Ainame Caroline was the head researcher for developing Meltdowner, which means her Personal Reality will be electricity based. If she has Thoughtography, it should use electricity.”

“Oh, so you’re going to search out the esper? It is true this support organization boy, whose name I don’t remember, risked his life because he trusted you. This isn’t about right or wrong – even villains need to look out for those who work for them. Which is why you brought him to my luxurious hospital once you found he was still alive, right? Even if the cost isn’t worth it. If you want to heal him, defeating the source would be best. The ‘paint’ is probably iron. Did you know if you mix an iron clip with gelatin and let it solidify, you can make it jiggle around using a magnet? This did that at such a small scale even nanodevices would be shocked. The black powder paint was sent in through the pores on the skin and slipped past the filters provided by the organs to draw whatever the esper wanted inside the body.”

“In the end, is that also why the truck exploded out of nowhere?” asked Frenda, their explosives expert.

Thoughtography was not a fiery power, but that truck had suffered a serious crash. What if the iron ink used for the Thoughtography had filled in the cracks leading to the sparking electronics within the damaged engine and the leaking fuel had been ignited at the perfect moment by removing that ink?

The sexy doctor nodded.

“I haven’t actually checked with a transmission electron microscope, but this power sounds like something that would cause a panic among the young wives who are terrified of nanotech cosmetics. The iron art is magnetically held in place. If you can convince the esper to release their power on him, the brain graffiti should disappear. It will be carried by the blood and other bodily fluids and expelled from the body.”

“And if we can’t convince her?”

“You could try killing her? There’s at least a chance that would release him from her power’s hold.”

That didn’t sound like a very doctorly thing to say, but it did sound an awful lot like dark side advice.

“In the end, has the Honey Queen esper been concentrating on this the whole time? I don’t really know how it feels since I’m a Level 0, but wouldn’t she burst a blood vessel in her head?”

“The human body is constantly generating a small amount of electricity. Once the thoughtograph draws the pattern, the patients’ own bioelectricity will keep the deadly paint in place. For as long as he continues to struggle to live. So killing the esper should be plan B. Getting the esper to release her power is a lot more likely to work.”

It was fully storming once they left the flying operating room created from a transport helicopter.

The combat nurses, who had put on transparent raincoats at some point, smiled at Mugino and Frenda as the two of them boarded the short-term apartment building’s elevator.

“Ugh. In the end, I’m already soaked. Even my underwear is making wet sounds when I move. I hate it!”

Frenda grabbed the bottom of her miniskirt and wrung it out like a wet rag. Her dress had been white to begin with, so it was now even more see-through than usual. Mugino used a handkerchief to wipe the moisture out of her long hair.

“You could wear something more mature, you know?”

“Yeah, I know the striped bra seems kiddy, but these casual ones are just more comfortable for me. If only I wasn’t too old for the bras that use rubber straps instead of a hook. And I bet it’s even worse for you with that lacey adult bra. How can you stand all those support wires?”

“It’s never bothered me.”

“In the end, I didn’t expect pure white, milady☆”

At any rate, Mugino and Frenda discussed what they had learned while they rode the elevator down.

“I guess that was a worthwhile visit. We know generally what one of their powers is and we have that supermarket flier. That suggests they can burn in things they physically see, not just images of the future. Maybe they have to look at the flier again in a week’s time? Whatever the case, sales like that tend to be pretty localized even between different stores of the same chain.”

“In the end, I hope that’s enough…” Frenda sounded unusually grim as she removed her beret and dealt with her hair. “It’s not that I doubt you, Mugino, but in the end, there are other possibilities. I can’t keep those Honey Queen fish names straight<ref>Ainame and Tachiuo are both names of fish.</ref>, but the mini researcher one. ''If she also worked on developing the #6’s power,'' then electricity might not be enough to explain her power.”

===Part 3===

The approaching typhoon was bad news.

Item and Honey Queen were both pursuing each other, so they couldn’t have all trace of their actions being washed away by the rain and wind.

Item had no way of knowing how far into the future Honey Queen’s thoughtograph had seen, but they had to assume they were always playing catchup on the intelligence front. Which was all the more reason they couldn’t afford any mistakes when gathering intel the old fashioned way.

Nevertheless, their group phone conversation was complete chaos.

“Urp, gwehh. M-Mugino, this blimp was a mistake. Let’s leave this unorthodox choice and move to a super stable hotel with its foundation on the ground!!”

“Hm? Why do you sound close to death?”

“Mugino, the crosswinds are so powerful the blimp won’t stop shaking. That makes it feel like a ship rocking in the waves. I was doing better than Kinuhata, but that might change if I actually see a bucket or washbasin.”

Those two were complaining a lot given the typhoon hadn’t even made landfall yet. But those guinea pigs had gathered this data firsthand, so Mugino feared she would end up the same if she didn’t heed this warning.

“Mugino. In the end, what are we going to do now?”

“We won’t be able to track down Ainame Caroline or Tachiuo Mary right away. Honey Queen can use their Thoughtography to predict the future and run away before we get there.”

With the wind blowing so hard, umbrellas were useless and you had to choose your underwear under the assumption there was a decent chance it would be seen. Mugino ignored the blowing rain as she gave her response.

“But the same isn’t true of the common thugs Honey Queen uses. They sent in a group of them when attacking us yesterday, so we know they have a support organization like we do. Their security is bound to be laxer than with Ainame Caroline or Tachiuo Mary, so it should be possible to track them down and use them to reach those two.”

“In the end, how are we supposed to find those common thugs?”

“…”

(I really didn’t want to rely on him for a problem inside the city.)

They entered a nearby convenience store to get out of the rain. Once inside, (soaking and see-through) Frenda went off in search of canned mackerel. Meanwhile, Mugino moved straight to the more expensive zone of the bento section, bought a salmon bento, had it heated in the microwave, and took a seat in the eat-in section.

“Hm, hm hm♪ Huh?”

She was really looking forward to the thick piece of grilled salmon when she elegantly picked it up with the disposable chopsticks and found…what’s this? The fillet was as thin as a cheap 15cm ruler. It had only looked so wonderfully thick because the bottom of the plastic bento container rose up unnaturally below it.

Shrinkflation strikes again.

“Arrrrgh!! How could you do this to me!? That’s not playing fair. Not even the dark side gets your hopes up and dashes them like that!”

Mugino’s tearful screaming made the gentle mama clerk nervously look over from the register counter. No, she was only bothered by how much of Mugino’s underwear was showing through her clothing and was wishing the employee manual said she could give the girl a big sports towel. Why did she have to be so nice? Now Mugino couldn’t be mad at her.

The delinquent girl sniffled and attached an eraser-sized anti-recording device to her phone’s bottom connector. That was the proper etiquette when going to the trouble of calling someone beyond the city walls.

“Oh, now this is a rare treat. Do you need something, milady?”

“Mujinayama.”

She called the name of the old butler who served her family outside Academy City.

She wanted to get this over with quickly. It couldn’t be easy looking after the people who ran the grain production company that filled the stomachs of 1.4 billion people worldwide (and lined the pockets of a gang with 100 thousand members).

“I was hoping for some advice from the Mountain Sniper.”

“My, my. I appreciate that you thought of me, but will your ''school friends'' be happy about this? If I make a trip all the way out there, they might just become jealous.”

Mugino could tell he was itching for a chance to assist her.

She dried her hair with a cheap handkerchief she bought at the convenience store while she explained the circumstances of the apartment attack to Mujinayama. Then she told him what she wanted to know.

“Whether bombing or sniping a target, you want to carry out your attack from a position with a good view of the target and the surrounding area, right? The initial attack began when our apartment was suddenly blown away by a self-destructing remote-controlled UGV while we were veramping. I’m assuming Ainame Caroline was holding the controller then, so ''I want to know what building she was observing us from''. The bomb had a small camera of its own, but she would have lost track of its direction and position while moving it through such a cramped space. I doubt we’ll actually find her there, but the support organization assisting her may have left some kind of clue behind.”

“Just say the word and I will ''snipe any point within Academy City from outside its walls''.”

“I know, I know.”

Mugino casually rejected that idea.

That would make Mujinayama an enemy of Academy City as a whole. She wasn’t going to place that kind of burden on such a kindhearted old man’s shoulders.

“Also, you appear to be mistaken about one thing, milady.”

“?”

“I doubt a sniper would choose an isolated skyscraper rooftop. The first rule of sniping is to take the shot and make a quick getaway. That will mean wanting a long distance between yourself and the target. Movies often depict snipers in a church steeple, but that would essentially be suicide. You would be surrounded during the time it takes you to descend the spiral staircase after firing.”

“You mean it wouldn’t even be an elevated location?”

“That is a pernicious preconception. If you were on an outward-facing balcony, she would have had a view of you looking up from below as well. The ideal sniping spot is somewhere the target will have difficulty noticing you even if they look your way and which also provides multiple escape routes.”

“That sounds too good to be true. Was Honey Queen using one of those strange mirrors used for interrogation rooms?”

“That would be useful if you had one, but there is a simpler method. That attack occurred in the late evening. There is a lot of light in a city at night, but I would check anywhere that has no lights. To find someone who is up to no good, search the deep shadows.”

“Hm.”

Mugino brushed up her wet bangs with a hand and toyed with her phone for a bit.

Then she grinned.

“I see.”

===Part 4===

This here is footage of the curb where a streetlight was conveniently broken. A nearby gas station surveillance camera caught it. It shows the two Honey Queen members and a few from their support organization. I doubt we would have any luck pursuing the main two right away, but if we ask these thugs for information, we should learn where Ainame Caroline keeps her hideout or how to contact her. But once we have that information, we have to attack. If possible, we could also threaten them to bring them to us or scare them away, luring them into an ambush. Basically, it’s like shogi or chess. They might have a path to victory using their Thoughtography, but that won’t work if both sides are working to predict each other. It’s just we have to do it without the help of an esper power.”

Mugino Shizuri said all this while lying face down in the nude.

Kinuhata and Takitsubo had complained enough to convince Mugino to leave the blimp hotel, so they had moved their base to District 21. That was a mountainous district with several dams, but it was secretly famous for its villas. It had plenty of cottages that could be rented out in place of a hotel. Few people wanted to camp out in the mountains with a typhoon approaching, so it had an unusual number of vacancies for the summer season.

Since those two had been granted their wish, they were providing a massage in exchange.

Takitsubo tilted her head while pouring oil onto her palm from a bottle.

“They have a different vibe from our support organization.”

“Super true. They’re like a cross between a gambler and an intellectual,” said Kinuhata, curiously moving her fingers inside bumpy rubber massage gloves.

“Kinuhata, do you know what to do now?” asked Takitsubo.

“I have the gloves, so you super check the example video. I’m supposed to rub these on her skin to scrub the filth away, right? I can handle that part since I’m second to none when it comes to power.”

Mugino began to worry it wasn’t safe to leave herself in those two’s hands.

“By following those intellectual thugs from camera to camera, we know their destination was District 22.”

“The district that’s all located underground?”

“For some reason, an unusual number of people gather at a defunct bowling alley there. Hey, Voice on the Phone.”

“Oh, shut up. Your healthy teenage skin doesn’t even need a massage. Why is it like this with you!? I wish I had time to look after my skin that well. I spend so much time sitting down there’s something visibly wrong with the surface of my skin – maybe it’s a circulation issue? …Anyway, that old building was supplied with slot machines, a sturdy safe, and so on. Following the money, I’d say it’s an illegal casino.”

If the Voice on the Phone had checked behind the scenes, that was almost certainly true.

“They have casinos in Japan as part of large integrated resorts, so why go super out of your way to risk using an illegal one?”

“Kinuhata, they are breaking the law to gather on the dark side when they could safely gamble by spending half a day traveling to Guam or Hawaii. They want a local gambling house that’s as convenient as stopping by the convenience store.”

And aside from that, traveling in or out of Academy City was a challenge.

While Item paid their support organization’s wages, Honey Queen apparently had theirs ''support themselves''. That meant they didn’t have to directly pay their subordinates, but it meant the support organization would grow beyond their control and any mistake it made could get its members arrested by Anti-Skill, which could spread to Honey Queen getting arrested too.

“The casino also runs online slots and poker, but they use some brutal settings,” said the Voice on the Phone. “They let the customers win just enough to get them hooked, but then they take them to the cleaners, leaving them deep in debt. It’s all set up that way from the beginning. Damn, the food here has really gone downhill. That’s sad.”

“She didn’t lose big there at some point, did she?” said Mugino, clearly exasperated.

Frenda didn’t have to help with the massage, so she grinned over from a short distance away.

“In the end, is our next mission sneaking into the casino and gathering information there?”

“I’ll be satisfied if we find any information on Honey Queen’s hideouts or activities on the computers or paper documents there, but if that doesn’t work, we can always find some thugs that probably knows something and knock them out with dart of barbital or ketamine hydrochloride.”

“Um, Mugino. A tranquilizer gun filled with a mixture of different drugs isn’t as convenient as it might seem. If you don’t use a neutralizing agent quickly enough, they’ll never wake up again. In the end, it’s ''safer'' to knock out everyone in the room using the pressure of an explosive blast than to fire tranquilizer darts everywhere.”

“You know a lot about this, Frenda. And not just about bombs. You’re so smart,” said Takitsubo.

“Heh heh. Think I would look good as a cool science teacher in a lab coat and glasses? And when you get down to it, chemicals and bombs are the same thing. Explosions are just what we call a certain type of very rapid chemical reaction.”

Takitsubo and Frenda continued their conversation, but Kinuhata was a little disturbed by it all.

“Ugh. So we’re going to super trick them into letting us in?”

“Don’t like lying? In the end, even Anti-Skill and Judgement do sting operations. Wow! Isn’t it cool how having a badge or armband magically makes it okay?☆”

“The only time I enjoy being lied to is when the movie industry films in a southern US desert and then super labels it ‘Ancient Egypt’ in the movie. Also, the people who come when you call emergency services don’t abduct and torture people.”

“Yeah, cause it all depends on ''context''. If you confine a healthy person and cause them pain, it’s illegal, but if some clumsy girl restrains a struggling injured person and provides first aid in an extremely painful and indirect way, she’s considered innocent. Really makes you wonder if there even is a solid definition of ‘humane’.”

Frenda clearly wanted to do it and neither Mugino nor Takitsubo had questioned the idea.

Entering enemy territory and gathering information without rousing suspicions was a job for Frenda Seivelun since she could befriend anyone. That rare talent could be used to stop all fighting across the globe and bring smiles to all of humanity, but it could also be abused in the hands of the dark side.

“I’d be terrible going undercover, so you can handle this one, Frenda. You can choose whether to disguise yourself as a rich customer or a new part-timer.”

“In the end, only someone who works there would be able to check the staff-only section in the back. So should I use my card trick skills to become a dealer? Or should I use this perfect sexy body to become a bunny girl?”

“Wait, wait, super wait!” interrupted Kinuhata.

She ignored Mugino protesting that she was getting distracted while rubbing her sensitive skin.

“I’m not letting you super handle everything just because I’m the newest member. Undercover investigations are super risky, aren’t they? And when we don’t know the conditions for the enemy’s Thoughtography, your cover could be super blown even if you don’t make a single mistake.”

“In the end, I’m not sure it counts as an ‘undercover investigation’ when we’re villains without the official right to investigate.”

“I super don’t care. If this is what we’re doing, that’s fine, but I’m the best choice for this kind of dangerous job. Because if something super goes wrong, I can protect myself with Offense Armor.”

If her cover was blown and bullets started flying when there was no escape, Kinuhata’s ability to block bullets with her power gave her an overwhelming advantage.

However.

Frenda blinked a few times, looking surprised.

“In the end, I hope you don’t think that nitrogen barrier is the ultimate cheat armor that blocks all physical and elemental attacks. Or are you underestimating these people because they’re from a support organization? If they have a stun gun, capacitor bullets, ''or some other weapon that uses a powerful enough electrical current to trigger electrical breakdown, your thin gas barrier is powerless.'' And the villains who work in an illegal casino full of bunny girls love using toys that don’t leave a mark on the skin.”

It was best not to imagine what fate awaited Kinuhata if she was knocked out by an electric shock. The stories of organs being worth more the fresher they were was only the very beginning when it came to the dark side.

Scientific esper powers were commonplace in Academy City, so the villains there had developed their own special tactics for fighting back against those powers. It was naïve to assume a special power ''guaranteed'' safety.

Anything they did meant risk.

On the dark side, it was possible the small child passing you by on the street would stab you.

“Everyone has their area of expertise. Can you keep a stupidly carefree face when they have all their weapons and powers aimed your way and then sneak in without rousing suspicion, newbie? I doubt it. In the end, you can let everyone’s beloved big sister Frenda sneak in and gather that intel☆”

“Super shut up. And I won’t let you call me that again once this job is over.”

“?”

“Newbie. It’s been a month since I joined Item, so it’s super time you stopped that.”

===Part 5===

“Despite what spy movies may have led you to believe, the trick to an infiltration job isn’t earning everyone’s trust. For one, that’s simply not possible. If you’re going to infiltrate enemy territory, don’t try to make friends with the enemy – try to make it so they have no choice but to shake your hand even if they hate your guts.”



“If you want to get close to the enemy fast, create some trouble you can work with your target to solve. In the end, nothing brings two people together faster than a shared success.”



“If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t give a yes or no answer. Instead, smile and change the subject. Always stay in control of the conversation. If you wait for their reaction, they’ll wear you down with the conversation.”



Frenda gave more and more advice like a mother giving the shopping lift to her child. Kinuhata listened to it all while putting a tiny earphone in her ear and attaching a miniature microphone to the back of her back tooth with the knife of a pliers-style multitool.

“I’ll be monitoring all of your conversations and I’ll search up anything information you need and give it to you through your earphone. You’ll be cheating because your life depends on it. But unlike with an entrance exam, there is no official textbook, so I can’t know everything about the criminal organization’s rules. You’ll be found out in no time if you can’t follow our carefully-worked-out plan and also come up with some quick adlibs, so be careful.”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

“Listen, newbie. In the end, the worst thing you can do is have nothing to say. Avoid that at all costs. A pause of more than 0.6 seconds will be seen as unusual. But as long as you answer faster than that…”

“I get it. You super see me as a clueless newbie, don’t you? How disappointing.”

Kinuhata rebelliously pouted her lips, but for some reason Frenda hugged her tight around the shoulders.

Kinuhata’s eyes widened as Frenda spoke to her.

“Ugh. In the end, I’m just so worried. I really wish I was going instead.”

“I super told you not to, ''Senpai''. Honestly.”

Kinuhata hugged her “Senpai” back with her little hands and then relaxed her shoulders.

But then Frenda’s dark side persona emerged.

“In the end, I have this too.”

“?”

Frenda lifted a gold-glinting metal tube measuring about a meter long. It resembled a stretched out version of a 2L water bottle. It looked pretty heavy.

“Um, super what is that?”

“Oh, just ''the world’s smallest antimatter cannon'' with a caliber of only 155mm. It’ll cleanly annihilate everything within a diameter of 1000m. Oh, and it isn’t just the chip and detonator this time – this has got everything in there.”

Kinuhata wasn’t sure how to react to that.

“To be clear, the theory behind this has been around for decades, so it’s a piece of cake to build one with Academy City tech. In the end, if you fail, it’s my responsibility for sending you in. So if you screw up and get yourself killed, I’ll fire this and wipe the casino from the face of the Earth. I promise you I won’t let a single one of them escape. I’ll make sure to collect your bones afterwards, so you can rest easy about that.”

“…”

“(But in all seriousness, Mugino would start firing Meltdowner beams into the building the instant she heard you scream if I didn’t have this ready, so this is really just a Mugino deterrent. I really hope I won’t have to use it☆)”

“Super um…”

When she was mad, that electron beam demon queen really was more dangerous than that miniaturized antimatter weapon.

Takitsubo had been listening to all this in silence, but now she expressionlessly held her index finger up to her lips and spoke.

“Kinuhata, Mugino won’t obey the law, but she’s a kindhearted person who cares deeply about her teammates. But don’t let her hear you say so. That won’t end well.”

“Um, if this could turn out that super bad, I’d really rather you hadn’t told me…”

“I could totally see Mugino tearing one of us in half just to hide that she’s embarrassed. In the end, you have our support, so don’t worry about a thing as you go complete this ''errand''!”

It was written plain on Kinuhata’s face that she had no idea what to say in response to any of this as she set out on her own.

At midday, Kinuhata Saiai boarded a bus and rode it to District 22. She worked up a sweat on the way due to the poor air conditioning. She wasn’t wearing the hoodie dress that grew see-through far too easily, so she was better off than the girls in short-sleeve blouses on the same bus.

The typhoon hadn’t made landfall yet, but wind and rain were pounding on the bus’s windows. It wasn’t too bad at this point, but there was a chance bus service would be canceled before she made her return trip.

(District 22. The entire district is a massive multilevel underground facility, right?)

The bus descended a giant spiraling slope until a silent space spread out before it. Needless to say, the was no wind or rain here. There was a forest of skyscrapers down and a dark cloudy sky was displayed on the screen overhead. The only thing that felt off was the lack of three-bladed wind turbines. Down here, it was hard to believe there was a large and powerful typhoon coming.

This one vast underground space was not the entirety of District 22.

Several of them were stacked vertically, like a tiered bento box.

(Of course, it’ll all flood if there’s any trouble with the water pumps, so I super don’t want to be here on a day like this.)

That thought led Kinuhata to groan and freeze in place.

Offense Armor gathered nitrogen from the air around her to guard her. Did that mean she was susceptible to drowning? First electricity and now water – she was finding a lot of weaknesses in her power now that she was working in the field.

(For better or for worse, the world outside the lab is super full of possibilities.)

After disembarking at the bus stop, she found the underground space had recreated the same sweltering heat of the outdoors. That felt like a waste of energy. Annoyed by that, she walked the short distance to the former bowling alley.

She passed by a drum-shaped cleaning robot on the way. It was moving smoothly since the stormy winds were absent down here. Its camera concerned her, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She hadn’t gone undercover or done anything wrong ''yet''.

“Kinuhata, we’re on the same level as you. We won’t tell you which car we’re in because it would look unusual if you turned to look for us.”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

“In the end, you looked. From here on, be careful when you speak. Don’t move your lips and don’t glance toward the ear with the earphone whenever you hear one of us speak.”

She found an abandoned building about the size of a school.

There were no people or cars at the front entrance where the parking lot was located, but when she circled around back, she found a few delinquent boys gathered together. At first glance, they looked like idle delinquents hanging out behind the abandoned building using an empty coffee can as an ashtray, but they had their eyes on their surroundings, not the center of their circle. To be blunt, it was unnatural and conspicuous. They were likely the ''doormen'' for the illegal casino and they appeared to have noticed Kinuhata.

“In the end, this is your first challenge.”

“Is that super advice supposed to be helpful?”

Kinuhata exhaled softly before nervously approaching the boys. There was no correct expression or way to behave. Whether she smiled, looked nervous, or looked terrified, they would suspect her all the same.

“Whaddya want?”

“Excuse me, I super came here for a job interview…”

One of the delinquents viewed Kinuhata’s small body from head to toe, but she knew the real threat was the boy a step behind him who nonchalantly stuck his right hand in his pocket. The dark side was not like the people who made fools of themselves on video sites in the pursuit of clicks. Here, the plain and forgettable ones were the most dangerous.

“Who told you about this job? One of our employees?”

“''Kinoshita-san☆''”

She lied with a smile. She didn’t actually have a recommendation, so she just had to trust in the fact that you could find a Kinoshita-san or two anywhere you want in Japan.

However…

“Never heard of a Kinoshita-san.”

“He said he was a regular here. You really don’t know him?”

“Tch,” the delinquent clicked his tongue.

Maybe because he didn’t trust this girl who had shown up out of the blue and maybe because some loose-lipped customer was telling people about their casino.

That aside, no customer would want to go by their real name at an illegal casino, so there was no way to verify her story. The doormen had run into a problem they couldn’t answer.

And eventually…

The delinquent pulled out a radio instead of a phone. Because that wouldn’t go through an external server.

“We have an interview candidate. Tag her with Visitor Kinoshita-san, for all the good that’ll do.”

Apparently he didn’t want to risk upsetting a source of cash by turning Kinuhata away. The narrow back door unlocked with a deep metallic clunk.

“Frenda, you’re the expert, so you need to give Kinuhata some advice.”

“In the end, shut up. Remember what I said about a lag of more than 0.6 seconds sounding suspicious? Once she’s in a conversation, our newbie doesn’t have time to listen to me.”

“She came for a job interview on the advice of Kinoshita-san. Kinoshita-san is a regular customer.”

Mugino was speaking quietly, seemingly to herself, so she was probably jotting down some notes and pasting them to the car’s ceiling. If Kinuhata forgot the scenario she had adlibbed, it would rouse suspicion and get her killed, so they needed to keep track of all the details and immediately update it all. The more information, the more important that was for her to survive.

Kinuhata stepped inside while hearing the other girls sound so carefree since it wasn’t their lives at risk.

The atmosphere immediately changed.

She couldn’t let it show on her face.

It was hard to believe this was inside the rundown abandoned building she had seen from the outside. She saw fluffy carpet, two symmetrical flights of stairs, and a giant crystal chandelier at the ceiling. It was all designed to look like a classical mansion, but this was only the entranceway and cloakroom where she was searched and had to leave her possessions. The actual casino appeared to be beyond the large doors directly ahead.

Instead of the delinquent, a man dressed in a black party suit pulled out a 60cm rod.

Kinuhata’s heart leaped into her throat after Frenda’s talk of electric weapons, but…

“Place your phone in this box.”

“Um?”

“Do it now. As well as any trackable keychains, game systems capable of online play, or anything else that emits any kind of signal. Only a limited number of employees are authorized to carry communication devices.”

While Kinuhata obeyed, the man in black held the rod out horizontally and ran it across Kinuhata’s body only a few centimeters out from her clothing. It appeared to be some kind of scanner, so he had to be searching for EM signals.

Kinuhata was a little worried about her earphone, but…

“And done. You’re clean. Sorry, I know this is a hassle.”

“It’s super not a problem.”

“Hm? What happened there, Mugino?” asked Takitsubo in Kinuhata’s earphone.

“Unlike in dramas and movies, the real world won’t let you enter that kind of dangerous area while wearing a communication device constantly emitting an EM signal. It doesn’t matter how small or well-hidden it is. Even a toy radio sold at a discount store for 800 yen can detect those signals. But if you use something other than EM, then that coil scanner won’t detect a thing. For example, you could use ultrasonic communications based on the chirping of insects, or you could use synthetic pheromone communications that use chemical compounds.”

Kinuhata knew it was true, but she really wished they wouldn’t dis movies right in her ear. What if it showed on her face?

“This way. Don’t let the visitors see you. The staff uses the side door. You can ask Kawazakana-san about the rest.”

“Kawazakana-san? Wait, should you really be telling me that? I super don’t have the job yet.”

“It’s a fake name. Everyone uses a floor name – a surname for the guys and a given name for the girls. That’s standard in a business where discretion is key, so don’t forget it.”

After the man in black knocked on a small door off to the side and opened it, Kinuhata found herself in small room of plain concrete that didn’t mesh with what she had seen before. Apparently the luxurious interior decoration was only in the areas the customers would see. A lot of small windows were displayed on a large LCD screen and they all displayed footage from different parts of the casino. She guessed this rundown room was the security room. The main difference from a convenience store was how the cameras tended to be aimed at the tables and people’s hands.

Two young men in their mid-20s were waiting inside.

She had been invited into a room where a single mistake would mean her death.

“Super are you Kawazakana-san?”

“Welcome. I’m Consultant Kawazakana and this guy standing next to me is Manager Kubota-kun.”

Kinuhata wasn’t sure what the exact difference between a manager and a consultant was, but from the look of things, Kawazakana was the one in charge. He was seated in a folding chair while Kubota stood by his side. The discrepancy between their titles and the actual power balance confused Kinuhata a little.

“Ha hah. Is this your first time working at a place like this? Oh, right. Have a seat there. I don’t have a drink for you, but you don’t mind, do you? We really only serve alcohol here.”

“Eh heh heh. Do I look old enough to have had a job before?”

“Is that why you came to the dark side? We do tend to ignore those pesky labor laws and business laws.”

“I ran away from my dorm during summer break. It turns out I can’t get out of the city because of that stupid wall, but I refuse to let them drag me back to my dorm. So now I super need money to super survive here in the city.”

“I see.”

Kawazakana then hit her with a question unique to Academy City.

Namely…

“''What’s your power''?”

“I’m a Level 0☆ If I had some great power, I’d super automatically get scholarship money and I wouldn’t be here asking for a job, would I? Academy City would be paying me to assist with their research.”

“Good point.”

Kinuhata smiled and gave her answer while realizing she wasn’t entirely sure what bank account was receiving the scholarship money she received for being a Level 4.

(The term Level 0 is really convenient. There’s super no way to continue the conversation from there. I don’t know where she got off to, but I can see why that ''cosplay lover'' used that story.)

That memory nearly produced a reaction on her face.

Kawazakana smiled thinly and pulled a deck of cards seemingly out of nowhere.

That was probably a pro’s card trick.

“I’m going to perform a few tricks, so can you tell me what I did?”

“Eh? But I was hoping to be a super bunny girl, not a dealer.”

“Just do it.”

Kawazakana fanned the cards out on the table and then returned them to an orderly stack. He set down set down the cards one at a time, slowly forming groups of five.

This was apparently meant to mimic dealing a poker hand, but…



“There. You palmed a card. That is, you super hid a card in your palm like it was just sucked in there.”



“There. The deck looks like an orderly stack, but you super intentionally left one sticking out a bit so you can pull out the card you want. A lot like a bookmark, I guess?”



“Super there. One of those cards is the same on both sides.”



“Good, good,” said Kawazakana, amused.

He seemed to be observing Kinuhata’s face more than what was happening on the table.

“Next: in the end, the entire deck is formed from odd numbered cards. Next: this one’s simple. He ordered the cards how he wanted and then pretended to cut the deck without actually cutting it. Grab his wrist before he deals himself a royal flush.”

“You know so much about this, Frenda. You’re so mature.”

Kinuhata appreciated the advice in her ear, but had Takitsubo become nothing more than a cheerleader?

“A bunny girl is more than a waitress who brings the visitors their drinks and food.”

“Oh?”

“You need to keep an eye on the entire casino floor to spot and prevent cheating. That’s actually your most important job. The visitors – that’s what we call our customers – will only be wary of the dealers and guards. They tend to be so smitten with the bunny girls they see them as on their side, so a lot of those morons let their guard down. There are even some sad men who ask a bunny girl to elope with him – that isn’t just a thing in dramas. Even though everyone who works here are accomplices who share the profits.”

Was that how it worked?

You couldn’t eliminate all risk even with the most logical and mechanical security system. In the end, it all came down to interactions between people driven by raw greed. In that sense, a psychological approach may have been sensible.

“Hm? Kinuhata, is he saying the point of bunny suits is to distract perverts?”

Kinuhata’s facial muscles trembled from the effort it took to avoid laughing and getting herself killed for it. Meanwhile, Kawazakana gathered the cards back into a single deck and placed his index finger atop them.

“One last thing. Suppose someone has a card trick where they pull a single card from a deck a hundred times in a row and it’s the ace of spades each and every time. How did they do it?”

“They would practice over and over with a single company’s cards, super learning how the cards feel between their fingers. Due to how the cards are lined up, the aces tend to be on the top when shipped from the factory, so even if a new deck is used each time, the aces are more likely to have slight damage or fading from the sun. The jokers tend to be at the very bottom so they can easily be thrown away since they aren’t used in every game. The best form of cheating is one based on hard work, not a trick. Right?”

That was all advice from Frenda.

Kawazakana clapped his hands in hollow applause.

“Congratulations. You have a good eye. Baccarat, roulette, craps, slots – each game has its own forms of cheating. That can include analog sleight of hand and that can include digital devices or programming skills. We’ll have you study up on them all so you can spot them, but you should do fine since you have the observation skills and you know how to read a room. I think you’re exactly the kind of person we want working here.”

“Super really?”

“Ha hah. To be honest, you had more or less passed the test from the moment you didn’t hesitate to give up your phone back at the door. Judgment and online news investigative reporters tend to trigger the first warning there. We’ll tag them but let them continue a while longer while we work out who they’re working for and what they’re doing here, but 90% of the time, it’s already over for them by that point. Humans can’t bear feeling alone or seeing that ‘no signal’ display. Especially when their lives are at risk.”

“Ha hah☆”

Kinuhata mimicked how her boss laughed.

She was currently wearing an earphone, but she ignored that here.

“You said you want to be a bunny girl, right? As a runaway, I assume you want to be paid in cash. How many days a week can you work? Not how much you can physically work, but how often you can head out here without the adults getting suspicious. Well, we can work out all those details later.”

Kawazakana leaned toward her.

He moved his head right in front of her.

“''Now that you work here, you belong to me. Don’t you dare betray me and go work for one of our competitors''.”

Kinuhata felt the temperature drop around her.

But she kept her smile.

Then Kawazakana held a hand to his mouth.

“Just kidding. Ha hah!! This really is your first time at a place like this, huh? You’re so innocent! Word of an illegal casino always gets out sooner or later and then comes the Anti-Skill raid. Just like you heard about us from your Kinoshita-san. So just relax and work hard like a freelancer who can move to another place at any time. In our business, you can’t get too comfortable with the everyday routine and fail to pull out in time. Leave all the worries for the guy in charge who’ll be stuck as the last one standing after everyone else jumps ship.”

Kubota, who hadn’t said a word this entire time, jumped at that.

It sounded like Consultant Kawazakana was the effective leader and Manager Kubota had been given the top position as a breakwater in case of trouble. That explained the strange balance of power. Was he a former visitor who cheated or brought fake chips to this dangerous dark side casino, or had he gotten too drunk and tried to get a little too chummy with a bunny girl?

“What’s the first letter of the alphabet that comes to mind? In 3 seconds!”

“H.”

“Then your floor name is Haruka-chan. A name that starts with a letter that comes to mind quick tends to be a popular one that won’t stick in anyone’s memory. Welcome aboard.”

He told Kinuhata where the locker room was, so she walked there alone and found an array of simple mannequin torsos wearing plastic packaged bunny suits. She wondered why they didn’t just use hangers before she realized those suits had no shoulders to hang on a hanger. There were some in Kinuhata’s small size, suggesting they hired middle school and even elementary school bunny girls here.

The only ones in her size were pink. She picked up the entire mannequin torso, opened a locker without a nametag on it, and then looked to the ceiling.

“Are you still super monitoring me?”

“Don’t worry, Kinuhata. We won’t lose sight of you.”

“Not my point. If you can see me, it means there’s a security camera in here. Do those pervert criminals watch the girls change!?”

“In the end, I think it’s a business decision, not a voyeurism fetish. The customers won’t use credit cards or e-money since they want to keep their identities hidden, so the casino needs to keep a lot of cash stored in their safe to make all the necessary payments, right? If there’s any kind of blind spot in the building, their own workers can swipe the money or a dealer and visitor can meet in secret to discuss how to cheat, so they have to install cameras and mics everywhere to prevent any secret conversations from taking place.”

Kinuhata didn’t care how logical it was.

She blushed, shut her eyes, and mumbled a request.

“Please super fake some trouble.”

“Sure, sure. In the end, this will increase their alert level, though?”

“Just super do it!!”

Kinuhata used the 20 or 30 seconds of static in all the casino’s security cameras to quickly strip off her clothes and put on the bunny suit. She had never worn one before, but it felt a lot like a stiffer version of a swimsuit.

She heard a commotion outside the door, so she cracked it open and suck her head out. As cutely as she could manage.

“Super what is it, Kawazakana-san?”

“Nothing. Just some technical difficulties. God, was it a power surge? Is the typhoon effecting things this deep underground?”

Was he referring to the static in the security cameras?

Then Kawazakana stuck a hand in his pocket.

“''Haruka-chan,'' did you manage to change on your own? Then take this. It’s standard issue here.”

“Wow.”

He handed her a real handgun.

A piece of plastic was attached below the barrel like a bayonet.

“In the end, that’s a 9mm handgun and an 800,000-volt stun gun. The slide has a different texture, so I’m guessing they used a conversion kit to upgrade the handgun to full-auto. If he’s giving that to you, newbie, it means that’s the minimum standard here. The guards in black are meant to deal with fights, so they’ll have much bigger guns.”

Not even Kinuhata would survive if she was incapacitated with a stun gun and then shot with a gun on full auto.

That possible death flashed through Kinuhata’s mind.

(Esper powers are a lot harder to use than I super thought. It’s more about compatibility than strength.)

“The bunny girls are meant to look weak and sweet so the visitors will let their guard down, so it would be best if you didn’t let them see that,” said Kawazakana. “You pick it up when you show up for work and turn it in before you leave. Make sure you don’t leave the premises with it.”

“What should I super start with today?”

“Eager to work, huh?” He smiled thinly. “But I can’t send you out onto the floor with all the visitors right away. For today, you can take a look around the place, learn the layout and the equipment, and then learn the names of all the food and drinks we offer. There’s actually a lot bunny girls have to learn. As much as a convenience store worker. You need to know the most effective way of earning the visitors’ affections, but you also need to know how to keep an eye on the entire casino floor to watch for cheating and for unnatural increases or decreases in chip amounts that would suggest someone is stealing chips or adding in fake chips. You also need to learn how to resuscitate drunks.”

“How to…resuscitate them?”

“If we called an ambulance every time a drunk collapsed, we couldn’t stay in business even with a hundred Kubota-kuns. Plus, visitors love it when a cute bunny girl helps them. I don’t know if it’s the suspension bridge effect or what, but you need to force your kindness onto them if you want some dedicated customers.”

“Huh? But couldn’t I end up super earning some girl’s ire if I rescue her boyfriend in front of her?”

“Ha hah. In those cases, the trick is to slip a perfume-scented business card in the boyfriend’s breast pocket when she isn’t looking. With a note asking him to come alone next time.”

Kinuhata was beginning to think her job was to ruin people’s lives.

Wrecking homes and relationships with debt and dependence was the name of the game. An illegal casino did not exist to let the customers win money – it existed to make them comfortable while they had their wallet drained of every last yen.

“You won’t actually start your job until next time, so you can relax for today. But do you need money right away?”

“Super yes.”

She actually wanted to investigate every part of the casino as soon as possible, but being too insistent wouldn’t help her here. He was the guy in charge and she was a part-timer on her first day.

She had envisioned the casino as mostly slot machines and roulette tables, but it appeared to have a lot more equipment than that. There was an industrial kitchen like you would find in a restaurant, a broadcast room that controlled the music, and a small room with stacks of cases containing plastic chips. There was even a room with a heavy-looking combination safe in one corner.

“That’s Sawaki-kun, the safe keeper.”

The indicated young man had a rugged crewcut and intellectual glasses that didn’t suit him at all. That STEM criminal looked like the perfect example of how scoring high on tests did not guarantee you would grow up to be a decent adult.

“He’s in charge of all the finances. If the casino atmosphere gets to you and you absolutely have to try gambling, you’re better off skipping the cards and asking Sawaki-kun for some stock and futures recommendations. Trying your hand at any of our toys is a great way to ruin your life, so be careful.”

After walking down the hallway some, they passed by some tough-looking men.

Unlike the normal(?) guards, these were wearing blast-resistant suits like a bomb squad might use. Their guns were humongous revolvers with an additional stock attached, forcing them to be wielded with two hands, and they wore firefighting axes on their backs.

“They’re our Murder Team,” casually explained Kawazakana. “I don’t have to explain what their job is, do I?”

“Yikes.”

“Ha hah! Don’t worry, don’t worry. They won’t have any business with you as long as you follow the rules. And to be honest, they’re real job is to look scary enough that no one tries anything in the first place. If you’re on break at the same time as them, they make great company while you eat.”

Of course, the dark side casino had to create a comfortable space for the customers or no one would gamble away small fortunes there. They couldn’t afford to suspect people without cause, so they normally only used the guards and only sent in the Murder Team in for emergencies. That way they could avoid intimidating the people on the casino floor.

From the look of things, there were usually between 20 and 30 people working in the illegal casino. If there were three shifts, that was a total of around 90. Of course, the 60 not in the casino were not all enjoying time off. There would be a team that moved on to their primary(?) job of assisting Honey Queen.

(Hm. They have more people than our support organization. Maybe that’s because Honey Queen doesn’t have to super think about the cost of supporting so many.)

These were non-disposable subordinates. If they each received a monthly wage of 300 thousand yen and there were 90 of them, the total personnel costs would be 2.7 million yen. Replenishing their stock of food, drinks, and other consumables would be between 5 and 10 million. They had illegally reformed an abandoned building, so they wouldn’t have to consider rent or taxes on the land or building. This was the bare minimum line, but their income goal had to be around 50 million a month. In a single month.

(Wow, looking at the numbers, keeping those delinquents fed is super expensive. And knowing it’s all invested in dimwitted delinquents is real mood killer.)

Kawazakana stopped in front of a small metal door in the very, very back.

“This here is our last stop. In a way, this room is more important to remember than the safe room.”

“?”

“''This is the cell for anyone stupid enough to cross us.''”

It was a small concrete room with no windows.

A middle school girl lay inside with her arms and legs bound by thick zip ties.

She had wavy black hair, her red, puffy eyes made it clear she had been crying for quite some time now, and the handkerchief being used as a gag was soaked with saliva. The fear of death had formed unusually large beads of sweat on her skin, soaking her dress (which looked out of place on her regardless) enough to see her underwear through it.

“We sometimes get people like this. She’s apparently a Judgment member who was pretending to be a visitor to sneak in. It’s no big deal if the manager on paper is arrested, but we can’t have someone photographing the interior and getting us all arrested. So in cases like this, this is our only option.”

Kinuhata Saiai was not a hero.

But she still felt her heart skip a beat.

Hadn’t he said during the interview that the initial request to hand over your phone could trigger a warning?

“While the dealers are specialists, the bunny girls have to know how to do everything, so you should probably learn how we ‘dispose of’ people like this. Oh, I know. For today, can you assist our throwaway Manager Kubota-kun with his work? You’ll be reducing 55kg of meat to ashes with an electric furnace designed to reach 3500 degrees to incinerate lab animals, so be careful you don’t burn yourself. A bunny girl’s value is in her body, after all.”

===Part 6===

Once Kubota arrived, it would be time to dispose of this human body.

But if Kinuhata refused, it would damage the trust she had only just built and would make her an enemy of the entire illegal casino.

With a combination of a high-voltage shock and bullets, there was a risk of her getting zapped after her nitrogen barrier was penetrated.

Kinuhata was from the dark side, so she wasn’t about to hesitate when it came to killing.

''The problem here was the needless killing of an ordinary person for self-defense.

That was a different kind of killing and a burden she wasn’t willing to bear.

A large silver box took up half the small room Kawazakana had called a cell. They may have torn down one of the walls, pushed the box in, and rebuilt the wall. The box had a large door reminiscent of a bank vault, but it was effectively a giant microwave oven. It was an electric furnace, an appliance capable of efficiently incinerating a human, leaving only a pile of ash behind.

The scary part was this wasn’t an excessive piece of equipment by dark side standards.

(These days, not even banks are too afraid of robbers to keep all their cash in on place. But the customers here don’t want to give their real names, which means no e-money or credit cards. They must do all their dealings in paper money. If you super think about it, it’s obvious they would be on edge about anyone scoping the place out.)

Kinuhata scooted over to the wall and used her bunny butt to crush a 2mm security camera embedded in the wall.

“Ugh, really!?”

Her shout made the Judgment girl jump.

Kinuhata didn’t know what that girl was imagining would happen to her, but she crouched down and removed the handkerchief gag.

“Super what did you do to get caught!?”

“Urb, ugh? Wh-who are you? You aren’t one of the casino’s soldiers?”

Kinuhata saw no need to answer that.

But the middle school girl – who was a bit bigger than Kinuhata – still sounded relieved.

“I-I’m Yamagami Erina. I’m with Judgment, so…oh, that’s right. I didn’t bring my armband.”

“…”

“I’ve heard that voice before,” said Mugino in Kinuhata’s ear. “Was that Judgment girl at the Colosseum?”

“I didn’t know this was a casino. We were investigating tax evasion through unreported income and we received word of a large safe being transported to the defunct bowling alley, so my job was to see what was going on inside. Um, the idea was for some adult Anti-Skill officers to support me.”

(Super what were you having this girl do, Anti-Skill!? Aren’t you supposed to be the good guys!? Let me guess: you sent her in without telling her how risky it was!? This isn’t a summer research project!)

“Do you super have any information?”

“?”

“About the two big bosses in charge of the people who run this illegal casino!”

“Blegh.”

It happened out of the blue.

Still bound, Yamagami Erina doubled over on the floor and vomited.

Or so Kinuhata thought.

Yamagami jerked her chin toward a flash drive the size of a stick of gum contained in several layers of clear plastic wrap.

“I was after the big safe with their illicit money inside, so I don’t have any details on the people.” The smelly Judgment girl weakly shook her head. “But I did extract all the data on the big computer in their office. I didn’t have time to see what was in there, so I can’t tell you what kind of information you’ll find.”

“Their office?”

Kinuhata thought she had been shown around everything but the casino floor where the visitors gambled, but she didn’t recall an office.

Had Consultant Kawazakana omitted that from the tour because it contained secrets he wanted to keep from a new hire?

Kinuhata accepted the flash drive (very carefully since it was covered in stomach acid), wiped it off with a handkerchief lying nearby, and hid it in her flat chest.

(Now I owe her one. She gave us data I didn’t even know existed, so super no one can complain if I help her!!)

“The bowling alley’s main entrance was boarded up. The visitors super use the back entrance and there were guards there. Do you know of another exit?”

“B-below the floor. I was told to escape through there if I ran into trouble, so I remember it clearly.”

The way Yamagami’s face lit up suggested she hadn’t realized the “good guys” had deceived her.

But if she did know of an exit, that was better than nothing.

If the hostage escaped from the cell, Kinuhata would be the primary suspect, but she needed to stay in the dangerous casino to gather more intel. Honey Queen’s Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary had easily defeated Mugino, so sitting around and waiting for them to attack would be a very bad idea.

Kinuhata wanted enough intel for Item to make an attack of their own. No matter what it took.

After ensuring Yamagami wouldn’t start yelling and running away in a panic, Kinuhata used Offense Armor to forcibly tear apart the zip ties binding the girl. Then she heard a voice on her earphone.

“In the end, you’re dealing with an electric furnace, huh?”

“Got any super magic tricks I can use to get out of this one?”

Frenda was the one to go to for advice here.

She was primarily a bomb specialist, but she also knew a lot about machines for designing timers and traps.

“Roughly speaking, you can think of an electric furnace like a humongous microwave oven. In the end, if you dump a person in one designed to incinerate lab animals, the flesh, bones, and hair will all be burned away. Only some soft white ash will remain.”

“I’m super not interested in you bragging about the specs! I think he said it reaches 3500 degrees. I can’t just throw a normal person in there!”

“Which is why you need to think it through. We’ll send more noise through the casino’s cameras and disguise it as a power surge, so in the end, you need to rush to the kitchen. There’s a trashcan for kitchen waste there, right? Gather up all the animal meat and bones in there. You need 55kg worth.”

That was enough for Kinuhata to figure out the basic plan.

Pink Bunny Kinuhata left the foolish Judgment girl in the cell while she peeked outside to make sure the coast was clear, stepped out into the hallway, and made her way to the industrial kitchen.

“Will it super trick them if we just burn pork and beef instead?”

“The idea is to dispose of a dead body so no evidence remains, so no matter how much they suspect something isn’t right, they’ll have no way of proving ''what it was originally''. All they’ll have is the pile of ash.”

“You don’t super think the presumption of innocence holds in the criminal underworld, do you?”

“Then let’s leave them with one piece of solid evidence.”

“?”

“In the end, there are two parts of the human body that are especially difficult to fully incinerate. The bone marrow contained in the femur, since that’s the body’s thickest bone, and the solid back teeth. In the body disposal business, it’s not uncommon for people to get arrested after one of those sticks around and allows the authorities to get the victim’s DNA.”

How could they use that to their advantage here?

“''I super get it.''”

There were always people in the large industrial kitchen, but Kinuhata stayed hidden by ducking through the labyrinthine pathways created by the gas stoves, countertops, and giant refrigerators. The sounds of cooking and frying were loud enough that no one would sense her presence while she hid behind cover.

“You had better not be thinking those chefs look nicer than the guards and the Murder Team.”

“I’m super not, Mugino.”

“Good. Everyone working in an illegal casino is a criminal. No matter how harmless and powerless they look, they still live in the same world as us.”

Still crouching, Kinuhata spotted something up on a countertop.

A cardboard box of alcoholism drugs sat next to some ingredients. That drug was made from calcium cyanamide and it greatly reduced one’s alcohol resistance so anyone would be easily intoxicated by a single drink. With that, anyone would be chemically knocked out in just 15 minutes. The drug was intended to make you dislike alcohol enough to fix your daily habits, but what was it doing here in an illegal casino full of young men and women?

A giant metal trashcan sat in a corner.

It might as well have been a one meter storage container.

Carrying 55kg of meat was no easy task, but Kinuhata was fortunate enough to have Offense Armor. She carried a stuffed trash bag in her hands instead of using a cart and she also borrowed a big pair of pliers from a tool box sitting on a steel rack in the hallway.

Once back in the cell, she immediately explained what had to be done.

Giving Yamagami time to think about it would only make this harder.

“I’ll be super taking one of your back teeth.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll be super roasting these cow bones and leftovers with microwaves to incinerate 55kg of kitchen waste, but that isn’t enough to fool Kawazakana and the others. But that changes if there’s a tooth ''as proof of what was fried''. The only DNA left behind will be human, so they’ll conclude the entire pile of ash came from a human. It’s not like I’m taking your brain or heart. I mean, you’ve got 32 teeth and you only need to give up one to save your life. If you think about it, that’s a super good deal.”

When Kinuhata showed off the thick pliers, the Judgment girl backed away, face tensing.

To be fair, only a small minority of the true masochists across the globe would want a cute bunny girl to use that big tool to destroy their mouth without even the bare minimum of sterilization or anesthetic.

So…

“Hn!”

“Bwagh!? Agh, hweh?”

Instead of sticking it in her mouth, Kinuhata slapped the girl’s cheek with the giant pliers. As long as the tooth came out, she didn’t particularly care how it happened. And that metal tool was heavier than a hammer. If you know how it was done, you could easily knock back teeth out of the gums with that. But using her power would cause ''too much'' damage, so it was tricky to get just right.

“Here, cover your mouth with this handkerchief. This is all for super nothing if you drip blood through the hallway. If you get out safely, go see a dentist…no, a cosmetic surgeon would probably be better in this case. I did essentially perform surgery without any anesthetic.”

“Uhh…”

Yamagami was weeping now.

Even if back teeth were hard to see from the outside, this damage was permanent. Kinuhata felt it was fair for the girl to resent her, but something wasn’t right. The Judgment girl grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t let go.

Was she too scared to go alone and wanted Kinuhata to escape with her?

Kinuhata scratched her head with her other hand.

“Get off of me!! I gave you a chance, but it’s super up to you to make it count. Will you run away now, or do I have to throw you into the furnace after all? That’s plan B, FYI. If you let this opportunity pass you by, the only thing I can do for you is to super break your neck first so you won’t suffer!”

“Eek, eeeeek!!”

The panicked girl threw open the metal door and ran down the hallway.

If she was that desperate to live, she would probably escape the bowling alley using the exit she had mentioned before.

“She was an investigator. You look different from normal in that fantasy costume, but she still saw your face up close. In the end, letting her escape was nothing but a risk.”

“Super shut up.”

Things were already in motion.

Kinuhata could not leave the illegal casino yet. If she was going to keep Kawazakana from getting suspicious, she had to complete this electric furnace magic show and ''create'' a single ‘legal human corpse’.

“They’ll be instantly suspicious if you mess with the default time or output settings, so don’t touch those. In the end, you want to create a big pile out of the cow bones and leftover food and then bury the target deep inside the center. Unlike in movies, the back teeth do have a tendency to stick around regardless, but that will ensure it does.”

“?”

“Kinuhata, what happens when you don’t microwave a big serving of yakisoba long enough? The middle stays cold, right? The best way to ensure the tooth survives is to shield it from the microwaves.”

“It would look unnatural if I don’t consider its location. Her head super wouldn’t be here if she was actually lying in there.”

“Remember, the human body is filled with moisture and cavities, so there’s a lot of bursting and moving around when its heated by microwaves. Have you ever had a supermarket side dish package pop its lid off while you heated it? You sometime see EM weapons in action movies, but they never depict that part right.”

“Why do people always feel the need to bash movies when they want to sound smart? I super hate how they make movies into their punching bag!”

“Whatever you say. In the end, do you know how to use the furnace? The parts can be pretty big with an industrial one, so don’t hurt yourself getting your skin caught in the door latch or a lever.”

“I’ll be fine. I can super defend my entire body with Offense Armor.”

With that, she extremely roughly got the device running.

The sound of evaporating water erupted behind the thick metal door. It had to be the placebo effect, but she felt like the room temperature had gotten a lot hotter. Actually, with all the power it was consuming, maybe it really was giving off heat on the outside too.

“Good, good.”

“In the end, Academy City esper powers are cheating with this kind of heavy lifting!”

Only unidentifiable white ash and a partially-burned back tooth would remain.

There was only one logical conclusion to reach with that combination: this was a human corpse with the victim’s DNA remaining.

Kawazakana rushed in.

“Whoa!? I noticed the power supply was unstable, but what the hell are you doing!?”

“Eh? Eh? Didn’t you super tell me to dispose of the body?”

“I only meant you were supposed to help Manager Kubota-kun with it. Oh, god…”

The new bunny girl had made a mistake, but Kawazakana was too nervous to enter the small room. Perhaps he only ever gave the order to kill and wasn’t used to getting his own hands dirty.

Kinuhata only cutely tilted her head.

All she had to do now was wait. The surviving human genetic information would lead the man to the wrong conclusion about the identity of the white ash.

“Um, I’ve never done this before, so I’m super not sure I did it right.”

(He won’t be super suspicious about me leaving some DNA behind in the tooth since it’s my first time, right?)

“I get it, I get it! Just come here. Get out of that room!!”

Once he gave her permission, Kinuhata left the cell.

Kawazakana didn’t seem to question the absence of the Judgment girl.

“That was a reckless thing to do. What if you did something wrong and electrocuted yourself? This isn’t a job to do in that revealing bunny suit… Oh, Kubota-kun. Did you bring your team with you?”

“…”

With more people around, her actions would be observed from more angles. She had to be even more careful now.

She took a deep breath to refocus her mind.

She looked to Kubota’s team and then recalled something she had been told before.



''“Despite what spy movies may have led you to believe, the trick to an infiltration job isn’t earning everyone’s trust. For one, that’s simply not possible. If you’re going to infiltrate enemy territory, don’t try to make friends with the enemy – try to make it so they have no choice but to shake your hand even if they hate your guts.”



''“If you want to get close to the enemy fast, create some trouble you can work with your target to solve. In the end, nothing brings two people together faster than a shared success.”



''“If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t give a yes or no answer. Instead, smile and change the subject. Always stay in control of the conversation. If you wait for their reaction, they’ll wear you down with the conversation.”



Before Pink Bunny Kinuhata Saiai had entered the illegal casino, Frenda had super condescendingly explained that to her like a mother listing off her small child’s chores.

And something else occurred to her.

She had received support over her earphone, but that didn’t mean the other three were all together.

This casino hired guards, a Murder Team, and bunny girls.

Kinuhata saw blonde hair and blue eyes.

''A white bunny girl with a very familiar face'' smiled over at her from right next to Kubota and then whispered in Kinuhata’s earphone that didn’t use EM signals.

“And in the end, if someone on the other side is secretly your ally, a careless statement won’t be enough to blow your cover☆”

===Part 7===

“Killing that Judgment girl super wasn’t a problem, was it?”

“In the end, how did you do it?”

“Um, I didn’t want her struggling, so I started by snapping her neck to kill her. Then I laid her body in the center of the furnace. That gets up to 3500 degrees, right? So I super set it for half an hour.”

“Hold on. You left her all in one piece? With sloppy work like that, some hair, bones, or maybe a back tooth could survive. Since this was your first time doing body disposal, you might not have eliminated all the DNA.”

They easily began a conversational back-and-forth.

Mugino and Takitsubo were telling Kinuhata what questions she would be asked in advance and, even if she gave a wrong answer, Frenda would smile and make it work out. Making a major mistake would be a challenge under those circumstances.

Frenda’s bunny ears swayed as she turned toward Kawazakana.

“Anyway, it’ll be dangerous in there, so don’t let anyone in the cell room. Don’t worry. Once the time she set is up, it’ll stop on its own. We can check for any problematic evidence once the furnace has cooled.”

“R-right. You know a lot about this. ''You said your main job is illegal forensics work, didn’t you?''”

“Oh, you want to know more about my previous job? Like why I need money badly enough to agree to wear this embarrassing getup? You’re the one who’ll regret learning that kind of dark side secret. Stick your nose where it doesn’t belong and you might get someone sent after you.”

Kawazakana grimaced for once.

The pink and white bunny girls kept their smiles while secretly conversing over their earphones.

“(What are you doing here? Super what happened to that antimatter cannon you showed me before?)”

“(Showing you that scary-looking toy was enough to convince you your super strong Senpai was actually staying behind, didn’t it? No one’s developed a practical antimatter weapon yet. In the end, you proved your newbie-ness by buying that cock-and-bull story. That’s what convinced me I had to go in with you. There was no way you could get through all the mind games on your own. I couldn’t just sit around and watch you get killed.)”

Frenda put an arm around Kinuhata while casually insulting her like that.

“Hey, can I take this girl with me for now? She’s gonna get herself killed if I don’t teach her how to use the equipment – and more importantly how ''not'' to use it. I’d hate to have one of our own lost in a corpse disposal accident.”

With that, Frenda practically dragged Kinuhata away.

“(Telling them to wait for it to cool may have bought us as much as an hour. What happened to the Judgment girl?)”

“(She should have super escaped outside by now.)”

The two of them entered the girls locker room before taking a deep breath.

Kinuhata opened an empty locker at the very end to block the view of the 2mm security camera embedded in the wall. She switched on a hairdryer and placed it on the floor to neutralize the small microphone.

“Again, super what are you doing here!?”

“In the end, I said I was sending you in undercover, but I don’t recall saying I wasn’t also going in undercover using a different route☆”

Kinuhata Saiai really did facepalm.

No matter what she did, Frenda was still in control.

“So what did you get from her?”

“She super left me with a flash drive. She said she copied all the data from the computer in their office, but I can’t check what’s on it without a phone.”

“In the end, I snagged these.”

Frenda opened a locked locker and dumped a bunch of mobile devices on the floor.

“These are all the phones the customer and staff left up front. In the end, I just swiped the entire box of them. I was planning to search the personal data on them for anything related to Ainame Caroline or Tachiuo Mary, but let’s take a look at your flash drive while we’re at it.”

Kinuhata picked up her own phone and an adapter cable someone must have left with their phone. She used the adapter cable to forcibly connect the flash drive to her phone’s bottom port.

“300 thousand files in all. That’s a lot of data, so super what should I search for first?”

“Start with names. Either Ainame Caroline or Tachiuo Mary.”

Made sense.

Kinuhata began the search right away.

She ignored the casino’s sales reports and the purchase records for weapons and vehicles. She did check the latest bodyguard schedule. She hoped following the movements of the support organization that accompanied those two would tell her where their hideout was or what places they regularly visited. But…

“Wait, Frenda-san. Super look at this.”

“What is it, newbie?”

White Bunny Frenda leaned in from the side to check the screen. The way her pointy bunny ears hit Kinuhata’s cheek was mildly annoying.

“Today at 8 PM, it looks like Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary will be performing some kind of deal that requires a super large number of troops. It’s happening at the District 7 Stadium Dome.”

“Huh? In the end, isn’t that where they’re holding the baseball tournament that’s been on TV?”

“Kinuhata, what kind of deal is it?” asked Takitsubo.

“If it’s for some kind of giant weapon, this is going to be a real pain in the ass,” complained Mugino.

“It super isn’t that,” said Kinuhata, scrolling the small screen. “It’s for a person. The Honey Queen secret data thieves are planning to super add a new member to give them more ways to steal.”

It was a high-level esper.

Which, in a way, was a lot like a powerful weapon.

Kinuhata Saiai gave the person’s name.

“''Shokuhou Misaki. It looks like they’re getting Mental Out, the Level 5 with the strongest psychological power.''”

===Part 8===

They had thought defeating Honey Queen would only require tracking down Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary’s hideout and launching an attack.

But it wasn’t that simple.

This overturned their basic assumptions.

Honey Queen was getting a Level 5 to match Mugino Shizuri. The scales were already tilting in the enemy’s favor, so Honey Queen would be completely out of reach if a monster like that joined them.

It was unclear what Shokuhou Misaki would gain from joining these secret data thieves, but ''perhaps there were some dark Academy City secrets she was willing to do just about anything to get her hands on.

The deal was set to go down in the District 7 Stadium Dome at 8 PM.

They had to stop that at all costs.

Everything else could wait.

(I super risked my life sneaking in here, but we aren’t any better off for it. All we have is more to worry about!!)

“The Level 5 with the strongest psychological power…”

“Well, if she can directly snatch secret data and passwords from people’s minds or control the researchers to have them unlock the lab from the inside, Honey Queen won’t need to bother with their online marriage scams anymore,” said Mugino.

“At that point, it’s hard to tell if she’s controlling minds or hacking a machine,” said Takitsubo.

You could even call her a mind hacker.

They had the enemy’s critical information and they had recovered their own phones, which were full of risky personal information. It was lucky this was the girls locker room. They didn’t have time to change, but they did stuff their removed clothing in a small bag. They didn’t need to spend any more time in this illegal casino.

“Mugino. And Takitsubo too. In the end, it’s time to start the escape phase. We could use some covering fire from outside. Track our earphones’ signals and make sure at least our location is never in the line of fire.”

“I have some Body Crystal,” offered Takitsubo.

“The side effects are bad, so if there’s another way, we’ll prioritize that.”

“And what do you mean by ‘at least’? What about the other people?”

“This is an illegal casino, so no one here is harmless – visitor or staff. In the end, we won’t be violating the dark side rules no matter how many people die when you blast through the wall!”

With that, Frenda left the locker room.

In the hallway, Consultant Kawazakana greeted them with his handgun’s muzzle. Not even Kinuhata’s Offense Armor would keep her safe if she was hit by the bayonet-like 800,000V stun gun followed by some 9mm bullets.

“Not so fa-”

“Huh? But we dealt with the camera and mic in the locker room. In the end, were you tracking the location of the phones? Or did you remotely activate one of their cameras?”

White Bunny Frenda raised her hands in front of Kawazakana (whose hands were trembling so much it looked like he might fire on accident).

“That aside, I’m impressed. Most idiots would go for strengthening their dominant right hand here, but you’re holding it in your left hand. It is the smart thing to do. Even if someone can dodge the big right straight, there’s no way they can dodge the quick left jab. A real pro strengthens their left. It’s so cool that you know what you’re- '''bang!!'''”

“Huh?” grunted Kawazakana with surprise on his face.

Then he looked down to see a dark red hole in the middle of his gut.

Right behind grinning Frenda, Pink Bunny Kinuhata was casually aiming a handgun.

“Thanks for hearing me out☆ In the end, you issued everyone in the casino the same equipment and then you actually took the time to listen to your enemy in the middle of a battle? You need to take the dark side more seriously than that.”

Frenda drew her own gun and took Kawazakana out in full auto mode.

Manager Kubota immediately reacted.

“I-I didn’t do anything!!”

“What?”

The sweaty man raised his hands in surrender, earning him a skeptical look from Frenda.

“How could those filthy criminals act like they had the right to punish ''me'' for breaking the rules? They forced me to be the manager on paper as their fall guy. But if this casino is destroyed, I’m free. Ha ha. I’m leaving now, but I’d actually appreciate it if you caused even more chaos in-”

He was cut off by a deafening sizzling sound.

A thick Meltdowner beam broke through the wall to the right, obliterated Kubota’s upper body, and broke through the left wall. As gruesome as the scene was, the way his remaining lower body failed to fall over was almost comical.

“…Huh.”

“He’s the one who super said he’d appreciate it if we caused chaos in here.”

With that over, it was time to escape.

“In the end, they’ll send their troops to fortify the exits to deal with this trouble. I was following along on my earphone, but that Judgment girl – Yamagami Erina, was it? – mentioned a path under the floor, right? How do we get down there?”

White Bunny Frenda was busy organizing the information in her mind, but Pink Bunny Kinuhata had a different thought.

“These bunny suits don’t provide much in the way of defense, so can you really fight in yours? There’s super not much you can do when you don’t have your bombs with you.”

“Don’t underestimate your Senpai, newbie. A bomber always has some explosives and fuses hidden on her person. Oh, but don’t expect me to get into the embarrassing details☆”

“As long as you can fight. I say we go through the central hall and super break our way out the main entrance.”

Frenda’s eyes bugged out.

“With my bombs, we can blow up any wall we like to create our own exit! In the end, why would you want to choose the route that’ll have the most bullets in the air!? Is it some stupid desire to act out a movie scene!?”

“If you make fun of movies again, I’ll super punch you. Using my power.”

With her gun at the ready, Kinuhata turned back toward Frenda.

“Let me super ask you this: are you going to just ignore the visitors still earning money in the central hall and the staff working here? Villains are villains. Even if we destroy this casino, they’ll just super start a new one.”

“Um, in the end, what did you expect a villain like me to say to that? I’m the girl who watched those deadly Colosseum battles for fun. While eating.”

“To put it kindly, you have garbage taste. If we weren’t allies, I’d super kill you.”

“So are you saying you’d do it right here and now if we weren’t?”

“Do you super want to try me?”

“…”

“Do you think this is a victimless crime because the visitors knew what they were getting into? You super remember that furnace in the cell, don’t you? This casino is a criminal enterprise that protects itself using periodic human sacrifices. And they don’t use their fellow villains for that. It’s those immoral rich people who go straight for the unintentional witnesses and the good guys from Judgment and then have a good laugh about it. So are you still going to let them get away?”

“……………………………………………………………………………I can’t tell if you’re being objective or subjective about this. Seeing what happens here up close must have really gotten to you, newbie.”

“Once we super charge into the big central hall, we can have Mugino provide covering fire. Then we take the most dangerous escape route to take all of those super shitty villains out on the way☆”

“In the end, I don’t really care one way or the other.”

So with that…

The two bunny girls kicked open the double doors and began spraying full-auto bullets everywhere.

[[Image:Item2_BW3.jpg|thumb]]

The space was so large it could have contained an entire 50m pool.

It was supposed to be a classic noble casino.

But in that moment, cards began to fly through the air, the rich visitors knocked over the very heavy roulette tables in their panic, and the slot machines began spewing chips as they were filled with holes. Some of the guards almost immediately lost the will to fight but were mercilessly shot in their fleeing backs. The Murder Team in the blast-resistant suits went red with rage and readied their .50 caliber revolvers with shoulder stocks, only to be vaporized into nothingness when a Meltdowner beam blasted through the wall to their side.

Then Pink Bunny Kinuhata tilted her head and looked confused.

She looked down at her handgun.

“Hm? I can’t seem to hit with this thing. If all I want to do is super kill them, I think it’d be faster to just punch them with Offense Armor.”

“(Yikes. She shot from behind me with aim that bad!? This might be her first time using a gun, so she could have hit me in the back as easily as Kawazakana!!)”

Kinuhata tossed the useless gun to her Senpai, yanked a craps table from the floor, and swung it around in one arm to smash the armed guards. She kicked a broken slot machine from the floor, hitting a fleeing lady in the back. Meanwhile, Frenda had upgraded to dual-wielding handguns, so she created a storm of lead around her.

Maybe they had decided to enjoy some illegal gambling in the calm underground district until the typhoon had passed, but those classy criminals were quickly mowed down.

The casino was awash with blood, corpses, and slaughter.

“Hm, we’re defeating the bad guys, but this super doesn’t feel like something good guys would do.”

“In the end, what else did you expect from Item?”

All they were doing was slaughter their irritating dark side enemies and those enemies’ source of funding.

Bunny Kinuhata jumped onto a baccarat table and then hit Safe Keeper Sawaki-kun with a flying kick. Before you feel jealous, keep in mind that her Offense Armor made that the equivalent of being hit by a giant construction hammer.

Then something exploded behind her, so Pink Bunny Kinuhata ducked down. One of the guards approaching them from behind appeared to have stepped on “something”.

“A…''stuffed animal''?”

“In the end, no one suspects the cute ones. So of course they’re the best thing to stuff full of bombs.”

The white bunny was busy setting up a few more ''traps''.

“That explosion was way too super close! I’m fine because of Offense Armor, but if it hit you, you’d be blown up by your own bomb!!”

“In the end, don’t insult me like that, newbie. Explosive blasts always take the path of least resistance, so I can freely control the direction and range of the blast using metal panels and concrete. That’s one of the most basic bomber skills. I can still only control it down to the meter, but Hollywood pyrotechnicians can divide up a single room into danger and safe zones down to 10cm. Those freaks are weirdly picky about guns, cars, and explosions when they’re willing to just use CG and VFX for everything else.”

“Super Frenda-san! My friend!!!”

“Hm? Hey, quit it! This is not the time or the place for hugging! That wasn’t meant as a compliment toward movies!”

Frenda hurriedly pushed away the other bunny who suddenly hugged her and rubbed her cheek against her for some reason. If Kinuhata had gotten carried away and used Offense Armor there, she could have easily crushed Frenda.

“Ahem. In the end, there are still at least 10 soldiers up ahead. So what’s the plan? If we wait here too long, more will reach us from behind. We could break through with brute force, but there’s got to be a better way.”

“Super take this.”

Kinuhata grabbed two wireless earphones lying nearby (anything that emitted EM signals was confiscated at the entrance, so were these for the guards or some of the higher-ranking staff?) and shoved them into the nostrils of Safe Keeper Sawaki-kun who had stopped moving after she rattled his brain earlier. Shocked Frenda watched as Kinuhata wirelessly connected her phone to the earphones.

“Test, test☆”

For some reason, Kinuhata’s voice came from Sawaki’s mouth. The sound waves passed through his nose and reflected inside his head to leave through his mouth, so by cranking the volume up to maximum, she had herself a facial speaker.

The man with two wireless earphones shoved up his nose began to convulse and struggle to breathe, but he did manage to speak.

“W-we will get back at you for this. I hope you’re ready.”

“You’re about to die, so why are you talking about the distant future, you super idiot? Okay, let’s end this.”

The two bunnies left Sawaki where he was and moved away in a crouch.

“Hey, hey! This way for anyone who wants a super one-way trip to heaven at the hands of a the cutest bunny ever! Come and get it, you super perverts!!”

Once the guards knew where their enemy was, they all fired in that direction, riddling Sawaki with holes.

While they were all focused on the wrong target, Kinuhata and Frenda moved behind cover to sneak around the side and reach a surviving poker table they could use as a shield. Dual-wielding Frenda fired her full-auto handguns from that blind spot to fill the 10 or more soldiers with bullets and she finished it off by throwing a grenade after removing the pin with her mouth.

“In the end, what movie did you get that idea from!?”

“I don’t use movies for anything like this. Movies are super fun because you can empty your head while you watch them.”

They left the central hall to reach the former bowling alley’s main entrance, but that was boarded up. Frenda reached into her bunny suit and pulled out an explosive that looked like correction tape, but before she could burn through the barricade with that, Kinuhata powered up her fist with Offense Armor and punched the door away.

They heard screeching tires outside.

Below the artificial cloudy sky of the massive underground space, an egglike round hybrid car slid into the rundown parking lot with weeds growing from the cracks in the asphalt.

“A Plinius? In the end, you chose that lightweight eco car for our getaway vehicle!? If someone crashes into us from the side during the car chase, we’ll be knocked clean off the road!!”

“Just get in!!”

“And, Mugino, can we get one more blast for the road? Aim for the third boarded-up window on the west side.”

“?”

“The safe room is through there. I figured we should super burn up all their cash while we’re at it.”

Not only did explosive flames blow out all the boarded-up windows and doors, but the roof was launched straight up. It almost looked like a mushroom cloud. The hybrid Plinius was in the middle of a sharp U-turn, so the blast lifted its left wheels from the ground and nearly flipped the entire car.

Mugino had done it, but her eyes still widened.

“What the hell!? Meltdowner doesn’t fill an entire space like that!!”

“The ''traps'' I left for them would have activated by then, so they must have ignited. They were sprayers releasing aerosolized ethylene oxide into the air. In the end, I created a fuel-air explosive☆”

“…” “…” “…”

They had let the foolish Judgment girl escape and only the villainous staff and visitors remained in the illegal casino, so that wouldn’t be an issue.

Embers, broken pieces of the building, and lots of paper money poured down from the sky while the Plinius moved from the cracked parking lot to the road. Kinuhata and Frenda took a running start and jumped through the open door into the back seat, but that was where Mugino and Takitsubo were sitting. The small Plinius’s back seat was fairly cramped with all four sitting there. In fact, someone had to sit on someone’s lap to make it work.

The driver holding the wheel was a college-aged woman with her long red hair tied back. However, she also wore an apron over a maternity dress and had a very pregnant belly. She was strapped in tight with a seatbelt, but was that safer or more dangerous in this case?

She looked like the last person to be on the dark side.

“Super ehhh?”

“A bigger family means more expenses. Kinuhata, cars these days can be driven by AI, so you don’t need a lot of driving experience to help with dark side jobs. Although the car’s location and ID need to be spoofed since it’s being used for crimes.”

“Super what? If it drives itself, couldn’t anyone be in the driver’s seat?”

“Do not understanding an AI tamer. It’s a lot like creating a secure password or inventing a new recipe. You have to give the exact right commands in the right order to get a Plinius to stop driving safely and start drifting,” explained Mugino.

Kinuhata looked to the pregnant woman with an “I doubt that” look.

“Go, go straight, yay, Plinius-chan, you’re super cute, now just zoom greenly on through this one-way street, then zip around the corner in a really yellow way and take a nice warm turn to the right, wow, wow, you really are cute, Plinius-chan, that was a great job, I could kiss you, next blast right on through that pointy light even if its red!!!”

“You may have a point. I super couldn’t do that. Not the way she’s doing it, anyway,” said Kinuhata, her mouth forming a small triangle.

She thought just using the steering wheel like normal would be easier. She also wondered if this woman could cause a supposedly unbeatable shogi AI to bug out.

A bulletproof sportscar shot out from an intersection up ahead. Likely pursuers from the casino. If they did have three shifts, then not all of them would have been in the casino.

“Uh, oh!”

They couldn’t let the people in the sportscar see the bunny suits through the window, so Mugino and Takitsubo quickly pushed Frenda and Kinuhata down. Once the sportscar was gone, the egglike hybrid car entered the giant looping slope leading to the surface and out of District 22.

Bunny Frenda spoke to Kinuhata while the two of them were still pinned below the other girls.

“''Kinuhata''. In the end, are you hurt anywhere?”

“…”

Frenda gave her a “what?” look, but Kinuhata didn’t give a direct answer.

“Heh heh heh.”

“Again, what!?”

The Plinius reached the top of the slope and emerged outside.

A solid blast of wind and pouring rain struck the windshield, so the small car slid unnaturally to the side. A drum-shaped security robot suddenly fell from the sky, hit the road, and bounced away. It had been easy to forget while underground, but a typhoon was about to make landfall.

But that wasn’t what was Kinuhata focused on.

“Why is it so dark? Damn, I lost track of time while underground. What time is it!?”

“6:30 PM.” Mugino pointed at the LCD screen next to the A/C controls “Honey Queen’s deal with Shokuhou Misaki is supposed to be at 8 tonight at the District 7 Stadium Dome, right? Looks like we’ll have barely enough time to get a look at the place and work up an attack plan.”

===Part 9===

“Wow, it’s really coming down. It’s pounding so loud on the window. But isn’t it lucky this hotel had a vacancy, Lady Carol? I’d be afraid of flooding if we were spending the night in our car during this storm.”

“You have a point. And we had no choice but to move to a new room once the next phase began after Item learned about us. But.”

“But what?”

“Why – in – the – hell – did you get us a room in a love hotellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!?”

Ainame Caroline took a running start, jumped on the canopy bed, and used that springs to leap toward the other girl while shouting at the top of her lungs. But she was still only a 10-year-old. The gloomy high school girl, who had been modified down to the skeletal level, didn’t bat an eye as she caught the whining child by the scruff of the neck.

And she had to make a correction.

“This not a l-l-l-l-love hotel. It is a spa nap room.”

“Yeah, no. It’s a love hotel.”

“It is not. This facility is legally classified as a hotel, not an amusement business like love hotels are. So it could not possibly have been built for such indecent-”

“Lame! You think that counts as an excuse? The wall to the bathroom is made of glass so you can see inside it, the bed takes up almost the entire floorspace, and the vending machine in the hallway was only selling thin rubber products and some kind of slime made from seaweed. Oh, and there wasn’t anyone at the front desk to ensure no one knows who goes in here or what goes on inside. Every aspect of this place says it’s a love hotel designed for couples!!”

“Ugh.”

The gloomy girl’s spirit finally broke.

This wasn’t an issue of phrasing.

Tachiuo Mary blushed and stammered under her mask.

“I-it embarrasses me too, but this was the only place left. All the inns and hotels were already full from people wanting a change of scenery during summer break and then all the tourists rented out what vacant rooms were left to escape from the typhoon.”

“Lame. So lame! I get the issue, but the bad guy’s hideout is supposed to be a lot more wabi-sabi, cute, luxurious, and cool!!”

“Miss Carol, if you keep complaining, I will throw you out into the storm.”

The little brown gyaru flailed her little limbs while lifted from the floor like the crane game.

“Hmph. You don’t seem too bothered by getting so soaked while searching out this hotel. Aren’t your clothes, underwear, and personal possessions all wet?”

“Eh? Well, I knew it would be raining, so I made sure to pack my things in plastic bags before putting them in my bag.”

“Oh, yeah. And those bath posters you love so much are meant to get wet. Still, you should dry them off before they get mildewy.”

A loud commotion followed.

Tachiuo Mary blushed bright as she flung the little brown gyaru onto the bed, fell onto her butt, and backed into the corner of the love hotel room.

“L-L-Lady Carol, um, but, wait, why do you- how did you learn about th-th-th-that!?” shouted Tachiuo Mary, curled up in compact mode.

“Ah ha ha. You crack me up so much☆ Don’t try to deny it. You always spend an eternity in the bath, turning the small bathroom into your own little castle. You go to such extreme effort to hide that 360-degree full-coverage moe planetarium it would be hard to not notice you’re up to something. Lame. That mystery plastic box might have a small lock, but all it takes is a flathead screwdriver to unlock that.”

“Ablhbalvhbasgakfadfb!”

“(How cute. This doesn’t even count as a secret by the dark side’s standards.)”

Tachiuo Mary’s brain had completely overheated. The extreme honestly that led to such an overreaction proved that she had been worth ''taking in''. Ainame Caroline wished she could watch the beet red girl’s reaction a while longer, but then her phone rang.

She glanced down at her phone in its blast-resistant case with bunny ear razor blades.

“One of the illegal casinos run by our support organization was taken out. Lame. Apparently a pair of new bunny girls did it, but it sounds like they had some outside help. And there are signs they got away with some data, so it probably wasn’t about the money.”

“B-b-bwuh!? Lady Carol, don’t you think that was Item?”

“It’s not a problem.”

The tanned girl twirled her phone with the chocolate snack stick wiggling in the corner of her mouth.

And she grinned.

“''If they’re still wasting time there, they’ll never catch up to us.''”

“…”

“Hwa ha ha. Now, then. It’s time we got started too. Hey, murder virgin, you jumped the gun and let Mugino see you before, so you’d better do as I tell you this time. Lame. With your lack of experience, I just know you’ll freeze up when it’s finally time to do the deed, you murder virgin.”

“S-stop saying ‘virgin’ so much. I-I-I can do what needs doing when the time comes, okay!?”

“Stop freaking out and do as you’re told, you gloomy murder virgin!!”

===Part 10===

With the storm raging, travel by car took longer than usual. The solid crosswinds occasionally caused the tires to slip and the view ahead was obscured by all the rain. It didn’t help that the hybrid Plinius didn’t have much weight and horsepower to begin with.

“It’s this bad and the typhoon hasn’t even made landfall yet? In the end, how bad is this storm going to be?”

“Do they super not have storms like this in Europe?”

“Hmm. In the end, the closest thing is the sirocco wind that’s warmer than the cold mistral wind and carries in a ton of rain, but that’s just powerful winds from a single direction. This feels different. Also, Europe’s too big a place to talk about it all at once.”

Frenda and Kinuhata discussed the weather while changing from the bunny suits to their ordinary outfits in the small car.

Their destination was the Stadium Dome in District 7.

“Game 5 has now entered extra innings. It’s fortunate the dome means we don’t have to worry about the weather or time of day, isn’t it? Now, will it be Matsunami or Seijun? Either school could still win this one.”

Takitsubo stared blankly at nothing while listening to the commentary coming from the car navigation screen.

“Sounds like the baseball tournament is still going.”

“Which means Honey Queen is planning to drag that tournament into their dark side business,” spat Mugino.

Of course, Anti-Skill wouldn’t be able to do much even if Item sent them an anonymous warning. This deal wasn’t over guns or drugs. It was over Shokuhou Misaki. There were no laws or regulations preventing any two people from working together, so Anti-Skill would have no justification for acting.

It was approaching 7 by the time Item arrived.

They had an hour until the deal began, which didn’t give them the luxury of taking their time looking over the area and working out an attack plan. They would be lucky if they could even find the person they wanted in the large stadium. Once they did, they would have to adlib a way to stop Honey Queen from contacting Shokuhou Misaki.

Even if that meant killing one or both sides of the deal.

“You don’t need to wait around for us, so go get to a safe distance.”

“Sure. I’ll park somewhere sufficiently far from here and you can call me on my phone if you need anything.”

“Also, super take this!”

“?”

“The data on the flash drive included a prioritized list of people they wanted to silence. An AI tamer like you is super good at internet stuff, right? Can you create an anonymous burner account and super leak this list? The casino is gone, but those people still need to watch their backs.”

Mugino sighed in exasperation and opened the Plinius’s door.

She was hit by a solid wind and the blowing rain.

The official gates would require a ticket to get in, so they couldn’t use that. Instead, they descended an employee-only slope to enter the space directly below the baseball field.

They only had to run a short distance to get there, but the blowing rain had been ruthless. Frenda looked disgusted as she wrung out her short skirt like a rag.

“In the end, the bunny suit might’ve repelled the rain better than this.”

“I am never fighting in a super perverted costume like that again.”

Kinuhata removed her soaked arm sleeves and wrung them out. Fortunately, her shoulderless top repelled the water well. She didn’t even want to think about that turning see-through.

They didn’t see any guards or employees around.

But Mugino didn’t consider that lucky. Something could be up.

Takitsubo looked down at herself.

“I’m soaked.”

“Wow, Takitsubo-san. Your clothes are super see-through. And what’s with that crazy underwear!?”

“Red? In the end, why choose that with that plain track suit?”

“Anyway, did you find a more specific location than just the Stadium Dome? This place holds 50 thousand people.”

They hadn’t, so they had to split up and search.

While it was called a baseball stadium, there was more to it than just the field and the surrounding stands. There were locker rooms and showers for the teams, indoor rooms for pitching and batting practice, and then the control room for the lighting, screens, and music. There also had to be the air conditioning and giant compressors to keep the dome inflated with the power of air. A lot of guards had apparently been assigned to the deal, but just finding the deal’s exact location would be a challenge.

(We have one hour. Can the four of us really look everywhere in that time? There are 3600 seconds in 60 minutes, but there are more than 50 thousand people here. In the worst case, they could shake hands to complete their deal and then escape before we even find them.)

All of that was on Mugino’s mind as she checked around the emergency power that would kick in during a blackout.

Her phone received a call.

“Mugino.” It was Takitsubo

“Did you find them?”

“Something isn’t right on the field.”

“?”

Unsure what that meant, Mugino clicked her tongue and started in that direction. As a dark side worker, she didn’t want to get near the field because of the live TV broadcast, but was the enemy recklessly hiding among the spectators to complete their deal?

However…

“What the-?”

Mugino also noticed something wrong as she walked down the passageway to the stands.

“I don’t hear anything. No cheers and no music from the brass band.”

She frowned as she passed through the spectator gate.

As soon as she emerged, she thought she felt a drop in the air temperature. A chill crawled across her skin.

She found a silent scene.

Someone held a baseball on the mound in the center of it all.

But she didn’t wear the uniform of either team. She had long blonde hair and a flat chest. The small girl wore the sleeveless gym clothes of Tokiwadai and she had one leg up in a poor attempt at mimicking a pitching stance.

“Now, all eyes are on the first pitch. The pitcher shows great confidence as she winds up.”

She clearly didn’t belong there.

Yet no one paid her any heed. There wasn’t even a stir in the stands.

''The 50 thousand spectators, the two teams, the TV staff, and…who else was there? Regardless, everyone in the stadium stood stock still and simply accepted the oddity before them.

Shokuhou Misaki.

The Level 5 said to have the strongest psychological power.

(That…bitch.)

“And there’s the pitch☆ …Oh, it fell too soon and didn’t reach the catcher. Not that it matters. I can just erase that embarrassment from everyone’s memory ability.”

It was like a magic trick. The blonde girl suddenly had a TV remote in her hand and she twirled it like a gunman in a Western.

The small girl reached out her other hand and accepted the mic a blank-eyed female reporter was holding out as if to interview the MVP. And she winked.

“Walking around in the storm in that frilly outfit couldn’t have been fun. Umbrellas are meaningless when it’s this windy and a raincoat would only leave you sweaty. Hee hee. Which is why I used my brain ability and chose these gym clothes since I don’t care if they get wet☆”

The monster pressed the tip of the remote against her lips and winked as she turned to face Mugino.

With one on the outside and one at the center, the two Level 5s’ gazes collided.

“By the way, who exactly are you people? I have photos of the Honey Queen pair and you definitely aren’t them.”

The space around Mugino seemed under a great strain. On the remote’s signal, over ten thousand gazes pierced Mugino Shizuri all at once.

She didn’t even have time to think “oh, no”.

[[Image:Item2_BW4.jpg|thumb]]

She instead organized her thoughts, focusing on anything that would give her an advantage, no matter how small.

(You ''people''. Does that mean she’s aware of at least one of the others? Takitsubo told me something was wrong first, so she must be somewhere around here. But that means that girl might still not know about Kinuhata and Frenda!!)

“If you’re just some bugs crawling around to get in the way of our deal, no one will mind if I squash you, will they?”

With the mystery remote aimed her way, Mugino made the first move.

She fired multiple Meltdowner blasts dead ahead and jumped over the railing in the stands to rush toward the mound.

The sound from all of the speakers combined to form a single voice.

“Screeeeech!! I’ve taken control of the broadcast equipment, so don’t worry about giving away your identity! In the end, nothing that happens here is getting out!!”

(You could’ve quietly informed me using my phone! Why would you flip over one of the cards we still had hidden!?)

All Shokuhou Misaki did was giggle.

Something felt wrong to Mugino, like an invisible hand was stirring up the inside of her head.

She had launched her beams of light.

She had fired several in quick succession, but the psychological Level 5 remained un-vaporized.

(Can she use her power to remove the mental limits on using her muscles? Or…)

“''Did you mess with my mind to throw off my aim''!?”

“What do you think?☆”

The scene around Mugino changed again.

A baseball girl rushed in from the side, so Mugino knocked her down with a flat hand and then took a step to the right to dodge the metal bat swung down at her by another player. The pitchers were lined up a short distance away and they all began pitching fastballs at Mugino, so she formed a round Meltdowner shield to slice through and blow them away.

“Oh? Hee hee. Are you the type to avoid killing the poor, unfortunate ordinary people?”

Little Shokuhou spread her arms in the bright stadium lighting.

“But can you afford to do that? Take a look around you. ''How many more pawns do you think I have''? If I sent all 50 thousand spectators at you at once, their sheer numbers would crush you beyond recognition☆”

“…”

“But I don’t even need to do that.”

She stopped twirling her remote and aimed it straight ahead.

Right at Mugino Shizuri.

“You’re standing in front of me on this open baseball diamond. How exactly do you hope to escape my Mental Out?”

===Part 11===

Even from here, it was obvious Mugino Shizuri was just standing there, unmoving.

“In the end, this isn’t good!” hissed Frenda Seivelun, ducking low.

She was hiding in a VIP booth covered by thick tempered glass. This isolated space was on the third level above the media-only located behind the backstop. The small booth contained leather sofas occupied by baseball managers and pro team sponsors. Frenda was a bomber, but in addition to the stationary types, she also used rockets and missiles. That meant she had a chance to attack if she was hidden at an elevated location, but that advantage wasn’t very reassuring at the moment.

This was still better than her being brainwashed into the enemy’s pawn.

But having the Level 5 Meltdowner effectively switch sides was still about as bad as it got. A single beam attack could easily destroy the VIP booth’s tempered glass and Frenda right along with it.

“Frenda.” Takitsubo’s voice came from her phone. “''Do you know what the enemy is doing''?”

“''More or less''.”

In an attempt to forcibly relieve her tension, Frenda pulled out her virtual drink bottle and enjoyed the flavor of a sweet Starzucks iced café mocha without any of the calories.

It didn’t do much good.

“Pwah. But in the end, we’re screwed if Mugino falls into her grasp. And that open field is about the worst location for this. If I poke my head out from cover to attack Shokuhou, I’ll just get shot by Mugino. And not even Kinuhata’s Offense Armor can stop Meltdowner!”

No objection was raised on the group chat.

Which meant none of them wanted to battle Mugino Shizuri. And that did nothing to eliminate the threat presented by Meltdowner.

They were being attacked by two Level 5s, one physical and the other psychological.

Little Shokuhou Misaki shouted excitedly into the MVP interview mic in her left hand.

“Now, then! It’s time for the rest of you to come on out!! If you don’t do so, I’ll order this girl here to start blasting everywhere she thinks you might be hiding☆ So if you don’t want to die in a mess of melted metal, I’d say the smart thing to do is come on out!!”

“Frenda.”

“I know. If we do as she says, we’ll be trapped. In the end, we’ll have nowhere to run once we’re lined up out on the open field. All we’ll be able to do is wait while she kills us one by one.”

Little Shokuhou Misaki looked all around from atop the mound until her eyes stopped on a single point among the 50 thousand spectators in the stands.

Was she focused on Takitsubo Rikou?

“Hm. You don’t show any emotion ability on your face, but those big boobs bother you, don’t they? Do you keep your hair short and only ever wear a track suit because – hee hee – the male gaze scares you?”

“''What is your name''?”

“What, you don’t recognize me?”

This meant the Takitsubo card had been flipped over too.

Once their hiding place was revealed, they were sitting ducks for Mental Out. And the enemy was already starting to dig into Takitsubo’s mind.

(In the end, I can’t imagine many nightmare scenario worse than having her hijack both Meltdowner and AIM Stalker! Even hiding behind cover would be meaningless!!)

What options were left?

What could they do now?

(In the worst case, I might be able to knock out everyone in the dome with carbon monoxide or with a nonlethal dose of poison gas. In the end, a psychological esper can’t stop a physical gas and even the people she’s controlling will suffocate. That would work, right!?)

“Don’t worry, Frenda.”

Takitsubo sounded calm.

Like she was looking at something on another dimension altogether.

“I don’t think you need such drastic measures.”

A fearsome beam shot from Mugino Shizuri’s palm.

But it was not aimed at the VIP booth overlooking the field or the stands holding 50 thousand spectators.

Mugino Shizuri turned around and immediately directed her palm toward Shokuhou Misaki.

“Wha-?”

It was a close one.

In fact, if Mugino’s aim wasn’t being affected, she would have shot right through the center of the girl’s body.

The burning pain in her cheek caused Shokuhou to drop the mic and grimace.

“How!? What do you think you’re doing!? I used all my command ability to order you to fire on Item’s likely hiding spots!!”

“That’s what I did.”

Mugino was definitely under that psychological power’s control.

And yet…

“''Frenda’s devious, so she’d probably hide behind the weakest-looking person. So her most likely hiding spot is behind you.''”

“Th-then your top priority is protecting me. And your second priority is revealing Item’s location!!”

“''Fine. The fastest way to do that is to beat you into a pulp and toss you out there as bait. Frenda, Kinuhata, and Takitsubo are all very cautious. I don’t want them disappearing and making this a long-term effort, so I need to bait the hook with the best bait available.''”

“~ ~ ~!?”

Her mind was being controlled.

But whether she was told to attack Item or protect Shokuhou, she attacked Shokuhou. And if any one of those attacks hit, Shokuhou was dead. Leaving Mugino out of it altogether would be better than any of this.

“Shouldn’t you super give up and leave before you get burned?” Kinuhata Saiai emerged from the corridor for players. “You claim to have brainwashed everyone in this stadium – including the 50 thousand spectators – and taken control of them, but I doubt even a psychological Level 5 can do that. Which means it’s a trick. For example, ''maybe the game’s already over and those 50 thousand people aren’t here anymore.''”

That would mean Shokuhou was only controlling the two teams and the TV crews, which was only a few dozen.

The rest were all faked.

“Oh? And how can you be so sure?”

“The air felt chilly when I reached the field. If there were 50 thousand people in super one place, it should have been unpleasantly warm from their body heat. The stadium’s A/C super can’t keep up with that.”

The game had entered extra innings, which could have ended at any time. It was entirely possible a team had scored a point and ended the game after Item left their car. Or Shokuhou could have influenced the players or umpire to manipulate the outcome.

Then she had started playing all alone on the empty field.

“And it wasn’t your power making Mugino’s Meltdowner miss. If you could use your Mental Out on her, you wouldn’t have just thrown off her aim a bit – you would’ve fully brainwashed her into your pawn. So how exactly did you mess with her aim?”

People’s senses could be fooled.

Just like the virtual drinks Frenda had tried out for a diet.

As another example, it wasn’t uncommon for people to buy yakisoba or popcorn at a festival or ballgame only to find they didn’t get as much as they expected. The same for a sashimi pack or salmon bento using the package design to disguise how little was inside. A single plastic container no one gave much thought to before throwing away was packed full of techniques to make the product look more impressive than it really was.

Only believing your own eyes was too weak a defense to get by on the dark side.

“Simple, right? By super moving 50 thousand fake people at once, it creates the illusion of the entire background changing. For example, you could stretch the crowd silhouettes vertically to throw off someone’s sense of up and down. Or you could expand or contract the silhouettes to throw off their sense of depth. Mugino was shooting down on the mound from the tiered stands, so that would have been enough to throw off her aim. And you can super do that without any kind of psychological power.”

Something reflected off the VIP booth on the third level behind the backstop.

That wasn’t a mistake – it was an intentional signal. Frenda had cut an opening in the tempered glass and now had a rocket launcher resting on her shoulder.

“For Takitsubo-san, it was even super simpler. You used the kind of cold reading that fortune tellers use to determine someone’s financial situation and complexes based on their appearance and clothing. That’s just a skill. What matters is, whether Takitsubo-san said yes or no, you created a sense for everyone else that she was rattled by you getting it right. You weren’t trying to scare her – you were trying to scare Frenda-san and me into acting without thinking and giving away our positions. Takitsubo-san didn’t give you a response because she realized what you were up to. When you super don’t know the answer, it’s better to change the subject than give a yes or no answer, right?”

“She still should have smiled, though☆”

“And it’s not like a Level 5 to rely on silly tricks like that. I know that all too well after seeing our Mugino. A real one would use brute force instead. Also, you prepared 50 thousand fake people to fill the stands. Which means it wouldn’t be that hard to prepare one more. There’s only one reason you would use those tricks to neutralize Mugino before trying to control her with your power: you were worried your power wasn’t strong enough in a one-on-one confrontation. …Are you even the real Shokuhou Misaki? I super bet you’re someone else entirely pretending to be her.”

Shokuhou Misaki took a deep breath.

And with a tearing sound, she reached up her hands and ripped away her own face.

Her true identity was thinner even than a mask.

“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 ha ha ha HA!”

“…”

“I had a feeling some cheap tech like the Silhouette Screen wouldn’t be enough. But, but. This first battle with the dark side has taught me a lot☆ If I want to face a Level 5 for real, what I need is connections. I need to start by brainwashing all those naughty adults and get my hands on even better next-gen weapons.”

Was it moving paint?

No, were the many spectators and her face created using some kind of extremely thin sheet?

“But whatever the case, I proved I can ''deceive and manipulate a real level 5''. Which means I might have had a chance if I had isolated you from each other first.”

Someone else altogether emerged below the false face. This person had fluffy chestnut hair.

They had no idea who she was.

“''By the way, super who are you''?”

“''Mitsuari Ayu''☆”



(I’m really starting to hate people who use special makeup. Is this a super dark side jinx or something?)

Kinuhata Saiai sighed as she remembered ''something else that had happened quite recently''.

“Oh, right. I would just leave Mugino like that, if I were you.”

“Um? I’ve been doing my best not to look that way, but she’s still shooting those thick murder beams my way!”

“Those attacks only pierce a single point, so as long as her aim is off, you can just let her keep shooting. If you do remove her brainwashing, she’ll realize you were controlling her ''and get super pissed about it.'' Once that happens, Academy City is screwed.”

“~ ~ ~. On the count of three, start chasing your own tail!!”

Mugino Shizuri began spinning on the spot. Like she was running in a meter-wide circle.

It made sense. If Mugino wouldn’t do what that psychological esper wanted her to do, it was safer to have her do something harmless. The girl had given this some thought.

“Pant, pant. How does your handler – are they called a Voice on the Phone? – control her?”

“What super happened to the 50 thousand spectators?”

“Do you really think I would dump them out into the typhoon to walk all the way to the nearest station when the trains might not even be running anymore? I brainwashed some of the staff to take them to the dome’s underground delivery entrance where busses can take them away. I don’t need to control all 50 thousand when I can brainwash the staff into telling the entire group what to do☆”

“Just like it’s super faster to control the headmaster than to control each and every student?”

It wouldn’t be possible to send them all right away with a limited number of busses. Did that mean this girl had left most of the spectators below the Stadium Dome when she knew something like would be happening on the surface?

Good thing they hadn’t let Mugino go nuts with Meltdowner.

“What assurance did you super have none of them would be hurt? The brainwashed staff are just robotically guiding them, right? What if a panicked spectator tripped and got hurt, or what if a bus set out without ensuring everyone was in a safe position and hit someone? That harm is on another level entirely from a deadly battle between villains.”

“I’m confident it’s safe, but I have no objective proof. I’ve brainwashed people so often I don’t need proof anymore. Besides, so what if someone gets hurt?”

“If they do, I’ll super beat you up until you can’t stand anymore and leave you in a park bathroom. ''And I mean it.''”

That response came to mind unbidden. At times like this, it somewhat bothered Kinuhata that she wasn’t sure if her own thoughts came from ''the piece of the #1'' implanted in her or from herself.

“Don’t worry. I too am the kind of villain who knows where to draw the line☆”

“…”

The Mitsuari girl giggled and tapped her gym shorts pocket.

The phone in that pocket stuck out just enough to reveal its 2mm camera lens.

Did she use that to aim her power, rather than the TV remote?

“I do still have the power to control minds. Even if it isn’t as powerful as Mental Out.”

“That super doesn’t matter.”

“''And as long as I damage that loathsome ultra elite’s reputation, then I win in the end.''”

A muddy darkness lurked deep inside the eyes she widened like dinner plates.

Was that her objective here?

Kinuhata didn’t know what kind of bad blood there was between Shokuhou Misaki and Mitsuari Ayu, but that didn’t matter here.

“I’m just super glad we could stop you before you joined Honey Queen,” she said with a sigh.

The girl called Mitsuari looked surprised by this, so Kinuhata gave her a questioning look.

“What? Are you super still planning to resist and join Honey Queen? That sounds like suicide to me.”

“Of course not☆” Mitsuari Ayu gave a muddy smile. “I don’t know where you got the information, but if you knew about my deal to join Honey Queen, then I know exactly what this is all about. It’s too bad really. If they had asked, I would have given them some real help.”

“?”

“It sounds like I was nothing more than bait to begin with. I imagine they had you chasing after a phony deal to buy enough time advance whatever their real plan is.”

Kinuhata felt a chill down her spine.

They had learned about Honey Queen’s deal with Shokuhou Misaki(?) by risking their lives sneaking into the illegal casino run by Honey Queen’s support organization, but if this was something truly important, where failure wasn’t an option, it wouldn’t have been sitting on a support organization computer. While it wasn’t a defense against real psychological espers like the one in front of Kinuhata now, the safest place for that kind of information was in your own head.

“In that case…”

They hadn’t won. They were still in the palm of the enemy’s hand.

How far did they have to go to get a step ahead of those villains!?

“I wonder where those villains are right now?” whispered Mitsuari Ayu while sweetly giggling. She spoke about villainy like it was a good friend of hers. “Because unlike the heroes who will wait for their enemy with head held high, villains prefer to stay hidden and cover their tracks.”

===Part 12===

They had to remember.

Ainame Carolien and Tachiuo Mary.

They had to calmly review what those two had done.

“Sample acquired…”

In the VIP booth, Frenda rubbed her cheek with the hand not holding the rocket launcher.

That was where she had been cut with the razor blade disguised as a phone’s bunny ears.



“We were taken out of the fight by the truck explosion back then, so why did Honey Queen let us go instead of killing us while they had the chance?”

Takitsubo Rikou spoke to herself in the stands filled with fake spectators.

She slowly tilted her head.

“Because they didn’t need to? Did they already have what they wanted from the moment they injured Mugino? Does that make sense?”



Also, Honey Queen had started off as secret data thieves.

Item had completely forgotten about that fact.

“''What about that burglar who died with his neck caught in our balcony’s metal shutter?'' Could he have super been a Honey Queen member?” Kinuhata Saiai muttered under her breath.

But what had that middle-aged man hoped to steal after scaling the skyscraper’s wall?

Since his companions hadn’t hesitated to blow up the apartment after his failure, it couldn’t be any of the furnishings or cash inside the apartment. They had to assume that battle had been meant to make up for his failure.

“Could he have been after Mugino’s hair on the floor? Was Honey Queen plotting to steal Meltdowner’s DNA map? And that super didn’t work, so they attacked to injure Mugino and steal some of her cells – even if it was less than a millimeter of her skin!?”

Ainame Caroline had said from the beginning that she had been the head researcher behind the development of Meltdowner.

She had also called Mugino Shizuri a failure and called Tachiuo Mary a success.

In other words…

“Honey Queen’s super real goal is to use Mugino’s rare DNA map to turn the half-completed Tachiuo Mary into the ultimate Level 5!?”

“If so, I sympathize. ''As the psychological esper who failed to become Shokuhou Misaki,'' I know just how tragic that can be. This city is a cruel place where only one esper with a certain type of power is allowed to reach the top.”



The real threat was even worse than Honey Queen acquiring Shokuhou Misaki.

They wanted to upgrade one of their own to surpass Mugino Shizuri.

But instead of creating a brand-new 8th Level 5, they would create a superior version of the same type of esper to ''forcibly replace'' Mugino Shizuri with Tachiuo Mary, whether Mugino liked it or not.

If they let this continue, Item truly would have no way of winning.

It would only be a matter of time before they were killed.

===Between the Lines 3===

The din of the storm was loud and unstable in the convenience store that night.

“Um, where’s the bento I just bought? You recommended I get it warmed in the microwave…”

Tachiuo Mary stared at the floor and mumbled behind her mask.

The part-timer girl loudly chewed her gum and gave Tachiuo Mary an irritated look.

“Eh? Don’t ask me. There’s nothing in the microwave.”

“But I know you put it in there.”

“I did not!”

“But, um, I paid for it. So can’t you at least give me a refund…? Here’s my receipt.”

“Doing refunds is pain in the ass, so nope! Leave me the hell alone. I get paid the same wage either way, so why should I bother with any of this crap? What, you think I should slave away for a loser like you? You’re hilarious. Oh, but that’s not a compliment, so wipe that grin off your ugly face. …God, this pisses me off. My rock-paper-scissors luck is so bad I lost during this stupid typhoon of all days and got stuck working the night shift in place of that plain mom.”

The part-timer’s complaints were absurd, but a line was forming behind Tachiuo Mary. Everyone had to be on edge with the typhoon so close to making landfall, but when they began clearing their throats and clicking their tongues, Tachiuo Mary felt like she was the one who had done something wrong.

Then again, maybe the problem was her inability to stand up to the ill-tempered part-timer.

The part-timer decided everyone was on her side, which only encouraged her.

“And what’s this refund nonsense? You want me to open the register and put change in your hand? Bwa ha! What, do you use physical money in this day and age!? It’s not the 20th century anymore, so get with the times. That’s almost as funny as your face! Bwah ha ha!! What, did you just arrive from the 20th century after building a time machine!?”

Now was not the time to let this get her down.

Tachiuo Mary heard a dull thud from behind her. Ainame Caroline had been hanging around the downloadable games section, but she had just thrown a kick directly into the crotch of one of the bastards who had loudly clicked his tongue at the back of the line.

And it didn’t end there.

The 10-year-old girl grinned with the skinny chocolate snack stick wiggling in the corner of her mouth.

“You crack me up☆ It’s so funny I’d love to hear it all again. If you really think that’s appropriate behavior, you won’t have a problem if I stream it for all the world to see, will you? Oh, and can you give me a good, clear shot of your nametag? Let’s see, Harusawa Märchen? Yeah, I’m sure the world won’t see any reason to make fun of a stupid name like that☆ But, hey, at least you can find satisfaction in bringing the entire human race together as they ruthlessly mock you☆ Hwa ha ha. Okay, all you bored people stuck in your room during the typhoon: I’ve found your main character for the day♪”

“Eh? Uh, hey, stop that! You aren’t really streaming this, are you!?”

“Not only that, this would make it out no matter what I do. Ah ha ha☆ See that ATM? I know it’s got the store’s logo printed nice and big on it, but on the inside, it’s a reused Kazusawa Bank model. That means its security camera records sound too. To prevent people from withdrawing money with a scammer on the phone. Hee ha ha. Lame. Did you not know since the audio’s almost never used?”

“Go to hell!!”

“Oh? So being a bad employee wasn’t enough and now you want to create some even more shocking footage of you grabbing a 10-year-old by the collar? Ha ha ha. So an employee’s life is about to ruined by the very security camera the store paid good money for? That’s what I call funny! No, don’t even try rushing to the back to destroy the footage. It’s an online system, so all the data’s being sent to both the security company and the franchise HQ. Oh, shit. I bet this will go crazy viral, so I need to set up a victim support fund with a throwaway account. I’ll get rich off of this☆”

The terrible part-timer froze in place.

By this point, the other customers in line had already snuck out without buying anything. Which couldn’t be fun with the storm raging out there.

“And you kept badmouthing the 20th century, but you wouldn’t have the world you live in now without it, so how about you show some respect? Lame. And boring too. What is it with idiots and drawing arbitrary lines and rejecting everything outside those lines? You’re a waste of breath and possibility, so how about you apologize to the 20th century? Hey, are you even listening? What happened to that attitude of yours, anyway?”

“Ma’am.” A handsome young man emerged from the back of the store with a gleaming smile. “Are you familiar with the concept of customer harassment?”

“Huh?”

“A customer making extreme demands or behaving in an intimidating manner is a recognized form of harassment. I will not let you harm our employee any further.”

The gum-chewing girl looked to the older part-timer like he was her prince charming.

However…

“Hmm. So when does your shift end?”

“Excuse me?”

“No, it won’t even take that long. The typhoon’s about to make landfall, so even this 24-hour convenience store will be closing soon. I’m willing to wait until the HQ sends their notification.”

A silhouette was visible outside the store.

But this was no ghost.

A noticeably unsocial person stood in the pouring rain just 2cm away from the glass. And he wasn’t alone. There were plenty more. The intellectual delinquents covered all the windows on the road-facing side of the store. They were following orders, but their anger was visibly growing by the second while they were forced to wait out in the storm.

The stupidly misguided prince charming began to sweat with his smile frozen on his face.

The gum-chewing girl had already made herself scarce.

They soon heard a shrill scream.

Had that idiot thought there wouldn’t be anyone at the back entrance?

“As you can see, mister, you can run if you want, but it’s game over if you leave the store☆ Hee ha ha. A cool grownup knows how to complete the job he’s given. And phones aren’t allowed on the clock, right? So I’ll be taking that. Oops, how clumsy of me. I dropped it and stomped on it♪”

There had been a correct answer. If he had grabbed and lowered his foolish coworker’s head and apologized along with her, this could have ended peacefully. But who was it that that ultra moron had decided to threaten instead?

“God. It’s the bad examples like you who ruin it for the 99.99% of convenience store workers who actually do their job day in and day out. If only you 0.01% of idiots didn’t think you could half-ass it just because it’s a part-time job and you can quit if anything goes wrong. But in a single bad decision, all the trust built up by the others goes right out the window.”

Left all alone, the worker glanced over at the stationery section. Was he thinking of writing a large SOS on some paper and showing that to the security camera? Or did he think someone would come rescue him if he pressed the alarm button hidden below the register?

Despite what Ainame Caroline had said to tease the awful gum-chewing part-timer, a dark side pro would always neutralize the security system before taking action.

“So what was that about not letting me harm your employee, little boy?”

This true idiot had chosen this path for himself.

Ainame Caorline grinned as she spoke.

“''I’m willing to wait until you’re done working. Then we can talk this out outside, okay?''”



“Ugh, I’m soaked. How did that goddamn typhoon get me so wet when it’s only 10m to the curbside parking?”

Ainame Caroline shut the 4-wheel-drive truck’s door and tossed a towel over her partner’s head before worrying about herself. Then she used her small hands to dry the other girl’s hair. She was only wearing a bikini top and a miniskirt with suspenders. She hadn’t chosen it for that purpose, but it was a convenient outfit for getting wet.

“So Tachiuo-chan.”

“Uhh.”

“That was super boring!! How many times do I have to tell you you’re my greatest success, so you need to hold your head high with pride!!”

“But…I’m not worth all that. I even kind of agreed with what she was saying…”

“What happened to the confidence you show in front of your bath posters?”

“You saw that!? Why would you bring that up here!? Just kill me now!!!”

“Lame. You’re such a pushover I bet someone on the side of the road could trick you into trading everything you own for some supposed magic beans. And it isn’t even a case of you being too trusting. You know it’s wrong, but you still let it happen. When someone makes fun of you, they might as well be making fun of me. And I won’t let that stand. Got that?”

“…Yes.”

That was also why Tachiuo Mary was following Ainame Caroline.

Back in the peaceful world, everyone had looked down on her as the gloomy girl in class.

Her school environment hadn’t been as horrific as the bullying seen in manga or anime, but the most popular people in class still decided for everyone what was cool and what was creepy or childish. It should have been a matter of each person’s personal taste, but if you stepped outside the bounds determined by the most popular, you were branded “weird”. And no one else wanted to meet the same fate, so the rest of the class would start downloading and dumping money into a game they didn’t actually care about. And once the most popular got tired of that game on a whim, all of that effort had to be thrown right out the window. Then the process repeated. It was a modern version of the invisible rails that had existed since the days of black-and-white TV, where, if you wanted something to talk about with your peers, you had to have seen whatever popular show had aired the night before.

Tachiuo Mary hadn’t been able to keep up with it all.

She had fallen off the rails.

She hadn’t been able to ignore how foolish it was to endlessly dump time and money into a character she didn’t even like and how depressing it was to be unable to afford to buy and enjoy the things she really wanted.

And once the slave ceased to till the fields of someone else’s kingdom, she had lost her place in the class. An unsociable Level 0 had no influence on her own. And when that high school girl ''was slowly melting away into nothingness within a peaceful world void of bullets or blades,'' she had been rescued by a 10-year-old researcher who seemed to have stepped straight out of a manga.

Ainame Caroline had said she wouldn’t let anyone make fun of her.

That meant she believed Tachiuo Mary deserved respect. It meant she had the right to build her own kingdom, no matter how small it might be.

And Ainame Caroline had improved Tachiuo Mary’s power.

In Academy City, esper development was everything. After the previously shunned Tachiuo Mary had rapidly grown to Level 4, the most popular person in class could no longer drive her out of the classroom and had been driven into a corner of the classroom herself. Shallow social skills hadn’t been enough at that point. Tachiuo Mary hadn’t seen it herself since she hadn’t been to school lately, but she had heard that girl had been unable to bear her new circumstances and ultimately transferred to another school.

Tachiuo Mary had found a place she wanted to be. Maybe it was a world of villains, but she felt comfortable there.

Ainame Caroline might think everyone on her team was equal, but it wasn’t remotely true. Honey Queen belonged only to her. Tachiuo Mary was satisfied listening admiringly to the stories of the girl’s exploits. She loved hearing about things she couldn’t do herself.

“We are Honey Queen. So if anyone spits on anyone on the team, we will strike back. And we’ll immaturely use every bit of power we have as a dark side group.”

At that point, the pouting 10-year-old brown gyaru lowered her voice.

“Mugino’s Item mocked Minokasago-chan. So this doesn’t end with just stealing the sample we need. We will use everything at our disposal to crush those four.”

Item would probably have no idea who she was talking about.

Minokasago Ryousuke was ''the burglar who had died with his neck caught in their balcony’s metal shutter.

He was on the dark side, but he was also a pacifist who disliked fighting. He had joked that he only wanted out of his dead-end office job, but he had obviously been downsized. They had let him join because they had needed ''an adult guardian'' if they wanted to arrange a bank account, a car, and so on. He had been an excellent cook and had gone out of his way to handle all the housework. He had even washed their underwear without asking, which had resulted in a blushing Tachiuo Mary chasing him around in tears.

Before Honey Queen had taken action, Minokasago Ryousuke had bowed down and asked for just one chance to do things his way. Not for himself, but to preserve the lives of the enemy. He had smiled and insisted they could avoid fighting Item and peaceably achieve their goal if he successfully burgled the sample.

And this was the result.

The team had taken in the abandoned adult to give him another shot at life. And now look at him.

Mugino Shizuri had mocked that timid pacifist and disposed of his body as no more than a nuisance.

She hadn’t left him even an ounce of dignity.

What was wrong with wanting revenge for that?

Level 5s were rare, with only seven in Academy City. They were well-known figures. But that didn’t give them the right to trample on the lives of the unknown.

So Honey Queen’s temper had been pushed beyond the boiling point from the very start.

Mugino hadn’t just unwittingly stepped on someone’s dignity. She had stepped on a landmine loaded with the explosive known as a taboo.

“This is the all-out war you wanted, failure. Don’t even try to complain about it at this point.”

Ainame Caroline sensed a worried aura coming from the gloomy girl.

She was aware she had a habit of obsessing over her own destructive thoughts to push herself toward victory.

Tachiuo Mary was usually so timid, but she always let these worries come to the forefront even if it would make waves. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t live in a peaceful world and truly shined here on the dark side.

Ainame Caroline sighed and consciously switched gears.

“Well, maybe I’m the cute culprit we should blame for this one since we wouldn’t have gone to the convenience store in the first place if I hadn’t thrown a fit because I was so hungry with no restaurant or shop in the love hotel,” cheerfully conceded Ainame Caroline while reaching into the convenience store bag and pulling out a chocolate sandwich and waffle, which she wasn’t quite sure if she should classify as a snack or a meal. She also stuck a straw in a bottle of sweet caramel iced coffee that appeared to be a collab with some kind café or another. “Anyway, we have Mugino Shizuri’s skin tissue. What happened to Minokasago-chan is a shame, but you’re still alive and kicking. Ohh, we’re so close! I can almost taste it!! Once I use Meltdowner’s DNA map to update the flaws in the fragments of research data I managed to steal, I can use the completed data list to perfect your body!!”

“Hee hee. Lady Carol, what will you do once you have perfected me?”

Ainame Caroline briefly fell silent there.

But after a moment, the 10-year-old brown gyaru opened her mouth again.

Her voice sounded somehow dry.

“I had a sister.”

“You did?”

“I don’t think she was very smart. The adults who only know how to judge people based on their test scores tended to look down on her. But I think she knew a lot more ways to live a cool life than I do. She had a lot of friends too.”

Perhaps the 10-year-old had picked up the gyaru fashion by copying her older sister.

Even if Ainame Caroline didn’t feel worthy of it.

“She was the kind of high schooler who wanted to have as much fun as possible, but then she spent so much time in the kitchen making charaben. Did she think I would like them? They were really just triggered an explosion of embarrassment beams the instant you opened the lid. But still, day after day, she would get up early in the morning and make one for me. She spent so much time on it instead of the things she really wanted to do, but she always made sure to smile for my sake. That’s just the kind of person she was. She could look at her younger sister – who was so much smarter than her – and happily smile. Pretty cool, right? It’s easy to say you appreciate the people closest to you, but actually doing it is something not even Edison or Nobunaga could do. And she did it so easily.”

How much had that everyday action saved this little monster? It was no exaggeration to say her sister had given her everything she lacked as a child prodigy.

Ainame Caroline used her empty hand to toy with her smartphone.

The camera app was filled with charaben photos.

She had felt bad destroying them, so she had gotten in the habit of taking a photo before eating them.

She would not let anyone make fun of her teammates.

Ultimately, that was a value she had picked up from seeing her sister protect her so many times because, even if she was a monster, she was still family.

“Your sister sounds very nice.”

“She’s dead, though.”

Ainame Caroline said it so readily – so quickly – that there was no real emotion in the words.

“One day, she went out to the neighborhood supermarket and a wind turbine’s blade flew over and killed her. Like a pixel art shoot ‘em up where an enemy bullet comes in from off screen and kills you without any warning whatsoever. They claimed it was an issue of aging public infrastructure, but I didn’t buy that for a second. I did everything I could to hide the dark side from my sister so I could protect her from it. But not even my Thoughtography predicted that one. There was no avoiding it.”

“…”

Her sister hadn’t done anything wrong.

It hadn’t been a malicious crime, nor had she been a criminal.

But there were still horrific deaths that no one could avoid.

“These were my sister’s.”

She snapped her suspenders.

She was a researcher in Academy City, which worked tirelessly to eliminate the occult, but she still couldn’t throw out that piece of sentiment.

“It does limit what outfits I can wear, though. Ah ha ha☆ But I want to keep her with me a while longer.”

“Lady Carol…”

“I turned 10 this year. You realize that means I was only 5 when I began working on developing Mugino Shizuri’s power, don’t you? And I had of course already graduated college then.”

Ainame Caroline gave a dry smile.

“Hwa ha ha. Obviously, that’s not actually possible. ''So I used advanced technology to cheat my way into my degree''. That 3-or-4-year-old genius girl was blessed with a talent for deceiving everyone around her☆”

It couldn’t have been that easy.

She would have had to perfectly predict what questions would be on the exams, extract the necessary information from the textbooks, either hide the answers in tiny text on her pencil or eraser or print it on her palm with a special ink mixture, and then convert those things into tech capable of fooling Academy City’s high-tech exam supervision security. That would take more than 5 times as much knowledge as passing the exam the ordinary way, so, to be blunt, it would probably have been easier to just study normally.

Nevertheless, Ainame Caroline chose that method and pulled it off flawlessly.

She enjoyed choosing the riskier and less direct option.

She didn’t resort to cheating at the last second because she found she wasn’t smart enough. No, cheating was second nature to her. For her, it was as much a part of the process as needing to go to the testing site to take the exam.

She was a genius through and through, but in a bad way. She didn’t even need to make a conscious decision to fool people.

It made sense that, when she developed her own power based on the data gained from Mugino Shizuri, she ended up with Thoughtography, which manipulated electrons but was effectively an entirely different power. Because that was how her Personal Reality worked. Simply put, ''her power let her use a tool to learn the future and cheat in life.

“Of course, these techniques are considered a good thing when it’s an adult, like a politician giving a soapbox speech or a scientist reinforcing their knowledge. And while I’m the kind of monster who can make these excuses for days, my sister would waste her time studying kids anime and getting up early in the morning to make charaben for me…even though I never asked her to. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Ainame Theresia was a better person than me. If her kindness had been allowed to grow with her to adulthood, I just know she could have changed the world. It’s not fair that she died.”

Ainame Caroline sounded so very lonely, like a child left behind in a strange city.

Perhaps she really was wandering in the darkness after losing her purpose in life.

The researcher, who had conquered the gap between prodigy and dropout through cheating, said more.

As twisted as it was.

She was completely earnest.



“''What is a human life''?”



“''Does heaven really exist''?”



“''That’s what I want to know.''”



She wanted to repay her beloved sister for everything.

That had always been Ainame Caroline’s motivation.

That was why she had gathered her partners and developed Tachiuo Mary.

Mugino Shizuri was too destructive to do the job. Once an esper reached Level 5, it was hard to change the course of their power development. That was why she called Mugino a failure and called her current project a success.

“I have heard a legend of ''a Kihara'' who specializes in researching life, but the stories about them are all so exaggerated it’s hard to sort the fact from the fiction. I didn’t want to waste my time chasing a phony legend, so I decided it would be faster to build what I needed myself.”

Once she had completed Tachiuo Mary, she knew she would have the answer she sought.

She also needed to avenge Minokasago Ryousuke who had gone along with her selfish plan.

“Ha ha ha. We have Mugino Shizuri’s skin tissue. It cracks me up, really. Those cells are all I need to have a complete DNA map. We’re so close, so let’s go find our answers. I can’t bring my sister back from the dead, but I can at least know her soul went to heaven. And I’m not talking about finding some psychological peace of mind in the thought of it – ''I will scientifically prove it to be true.''”

Something was making dull clattering sounds.

The sounds came from the back of the 4-wheel-drive truck. A box of reinforced plastic with an oblong, coffin-like shape lay there and some groaning sounds were coming from it. It was actually a battery-powered wine cooler with the between-bottles cushioning and latches removed. It looked large from the outside, but it was a tight fit ''when two people were crammed inside''. The two lovers in their convenience store uniforms may have been gone past shouting at each other and started physically biting.

“Um, Lady Carol. What are we going to do with them?”

Tachiuo Mary didn’t have time to stop it.

The 10-year-old brown gyaru snatched a .45-caliber handgun from the intellectual delinquent in the driver’s seat, held the grip that was much too large for her small hand, and artlessly fired two shots into the plastic box.

After the two loud bangs, the clattering sounds stopped.

As did the moans.

“It doesn’t matter if those two complete morons knew who we are or not. They chose their fate themselves. Ha ha ha. How boring… On the dark side, you’re allowed to kill someone if they insult you for no reason☆”

Ainame Caroline grinned.

Tachiuo Mary froze in place with a timid look on her face.



That small girl earnestly wanted to know everything she could about the concept of life.

But did that mean she didn’t know anything at all about it at the moment?

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