[1] Chance Encounter
Illuminated shops, flickering billboards, the light of streetlamps, they all force back the darkness that descends from the night’s sky.
A nightless city.
By appearances it can be branded a prosperous city, yet there also exists a shadow.
Not a perfect darkness, but by no means bright.
Who’s over there?
Artificial light wasted on pleasure. That underside that continues in the faint light of twilight.
Like a witching hour where strange things occur again and again.
No miracles or special rituals are necessary, you can simply walk and arrive at this different world.
Different from the world ruled by law, a lawless space.
In the great city’s shadow, ruled by violence, tonight there strides a befitting beast.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Nuts to you!”
Looking down at the young man that had collapsed to the ground of a dimly lit back alley, a young girl utters this short English sentence in a ridiculing tone.
Normally you could interpret such as phrase as ‘saying something foolish’ or ‘stop joking around’, but the old usage of the term means ‘drop dead’.
You might say ‘go to hell’ is more appropriate in a situation like this, but to the young girl saying, ‘Nuts to you!’ was a kind of rule.
The katakana pronunciation is difficult to say fluently.
However, the young girl’s English aside, the young man collapsed on the ground that the remark was aimed at obviously bears a fatal wound.
From the torn throat of the young man, a massive quantity of blood is flowing out.
In the young girl’s hand, is a knife dripping with blood.
However, had a person been present to witness this scene, they would have certainly interpreted it thinking; —— Has this young girl really killed him?
The height of the man who has become a corpse, certainly exceeds 180 centimetres. And his muscle mass appears appropriate for his size.
On the other hand, the young girl is at most 140 centimetres. Jeans covering her slender legs. Even with her arms concealed by a leather jacket, from her narrow shoulder width you can judge that they’re surely delicate.
Despite holding a deadly weapon, you wouldn’t think she could kill the man with such a vastly larger build.
However, there is only one girl standing in this place.
She is unaffected by the corpse her eyes were looking down to examine, as she nimbly swung her knife.
With a specially processed knife blade, the blood comes off easily.
The girl folds the knife and pushes it into her right pocket, turning her back on the corpse.
And she immediately quickly walks away at a brisk pace.
From the pedestrian alleyway that’s closed to vehicles, to the two-lane road.
This area is also covered by the traffic control system but parked on the hard shoulder are four wheeled vehicles with the control system disabled through illegal modifications.
At night this area is a kind of lawless zone. The police have no desire to allocate manpower for parking violations. So instead, when the whimsical police decide to appear, no youth is reckless enough to voice complaint when the tow truck removes their vehicle. By not making trouble for each other, the great city’s light and shadow are able to coexist.
The girl surveys the row of cars once, and immediately steps up to the grey box wagon, opens the passenger seat door and gets in without hesitation.
“Good work Nuts, how did it go?”
At the same time as the door closed, the man sitting in the driving seat, who going by appearances you would think is in his thirties, starts talking to the girl.
“The ‘main dish’ didn’t appear.”
The young girl called Nuts, complained in a boyish voice at odds with her adorable outer appearance.
“The leader’s boy has entered into the establishment.”
Began the man in the driving seat, showing her the name of the club.
“The boy looks old.”
The girl’s response was not intended to be biting, and she listened intently to the information the man delivered.
“There’s a metal detector in the store, isn’t there?”
Said the young girl, folding the knife and handing it to the man.
“Yes.”
The man took the folded knife, and then replaced it with a barrette set containing an ornate kanzashi hairpin which he presented to the girl.
Attached near the end of the kanzashi is a fan shaped ornament, decorated with a further tiny folding fan dangling from by a string.
“The kanzashi is made of resin so it won’t trigger a response from the metal detectors. Pull on the decorative string, and the outer resin will peel off revealing a ten-centimetre blade.”
“Only ten centimetres?”
“Why don’t you think of it as a push dagger?”
“I don’t think I’m broad enough to wield this.”
“If it’s you Nuts, I’m sure you’ll manage. Oh, after you pull the string it will begin to decompose after ten minutes so be careful.”
At the man’s irresponsible words, a frown formed on Nuts’s young face. However, the man didn’t take back the kanzashi hairpin.
“……If you don’t use it, you’ll have to go barehanded.”
Grimacing she unfastens her hairband, then first unfastens her braided hair before skilfully collecting it up, pinning it into place with the barrette hairclip and inserting the kanzashi hairpin.
Without a moment’s delay a hand-mirror is presented to her from the driving seat, changing the angle of the mirror several times, the girl and said, “It suits me……” letting out a sigh.
“Here you go.”
This time the man presented her with a pouch containing make-up and related instruments.
“That tunic, I think would be just right for the atmosphere.”
And he points at the wagon’s rear seat.
The rear seat has been laid flat, hanging from the ceiling are no less than ten sets of clothing. All of them are women’s clothes, different outfits meant for the young girl’s benefit.
“These don’t suit me……”
The girl unenthusiastically grumbles at the situation.
Nevertheless, the girl understood the necessity of adjusting her outward appearance for the sake of sneaking in.
She rotated her seat to face towards the rear, took off her leather jacket and picked up the floral tunic.
◇ ◇ ◇
It was a popular nightclub for young people.
Into an alleyway devoid of life, a man and a woman exited.
The young man possessed a tall build with a silhouette like a reversed triangle.
The young girl had a small build and was wearing a kanzashi —— Nuts.
The young man’s gait is unsteady. Intoxication, or possibly drugs are showing their effects.
Even so, or possibly, for this reason the hand roused by lust was restraining the girl and stopped them from parting.
The right arm behind the young girls back, was pulling her petite frame close.
His hand is lowered to her waist as to turn her into an embrace, but due to the height difference he cannot reach. Irritated the young man brings his hand up at a crawl and grasps the young girl’s chest.
“It hurts…… Don’t be so rough……”
Escaping the girl’s mouth, a sweet petition.
The young man was cruelly stimulated by this addition, his left hand took hold of the girl’s head and forcibly drew it closer.
“Wait……! Please, wait!”
“What is it?”
The young man was trying to forcibly steal her lips, his poor mood undisguised in his voice as he reproached the girl.
“Hair……”
Wrinkling her brow, the girl complains of pain.
The young man clicks his tongue as his hand releases the girls head.
The girl raised both hands behind her, unfastening the kanzashi barrette.
Her long straight black hair flowed down like a waterfall.
The young man narrows his eyes with a lustful look.
By letting down her hair the girl’s outward appearance gives the impression of regressing by 2 or 3 years, which appears to be to suit the young man’s taste.
Unfastening her hair spread a floral scent.
The young man’s intoxication was becoming increasingly intense.
This time the girl wrapped both arms around the young man’s neck.
However, even standing tiptoe and stretching, there is still no less than a head of difference between them.
The young man made up for it by wrapping his right arm around her waist to raise her, pulling her face close.
The young girl appears to tease by turning her face to escape his lips.
The young man grabs the girls chin with his left hand and turns her face forward.
The girl gives a charming smile.
Unwraps her right arm from around the young man’s neck, pulls the decorative string on the kanzashi, exposes the blade, and instantly thrusts it into the young man’s neck!
From an insecure posture using the strength of only one arm.
Was the blade extremely sharp, or else the girl’s physical strength extraordinary?
The blade is buried inside the young man’s neck.
The young man screams and thrusts the girl away.
It was no different to a reflexive action.
But for all that force, the girl held onto the thin blade and tore the artery in his neck.
The young girl took a step back from the young man.
The blade that had been built into the kanzashi falls out of the young man’s neck, and the blood gushed out with growing force.
The young girl scrubbed her lips clean with the left sleeve of her tunic.
She escaped just before the kiss, but her mood was ruined.
It may be surprising to know she had not lost her innocence.
—— A pure hearted professional killer, if such a thing exists.
The young man pitches forwards and collapses.
“Nuts to you!”
These hateful words she spits out, are they a signal to herself that the job is completed?
The girl throws the kanzashi away, turning on her heel to leave.
The girl however, her steps stop as her body stiffens.
Her eyes meet those of a boy standing at the entrance of the alleyway.
(I was seen!?)
The boy appeared to be very mature, a high school student, or maybe even a middle school student the girl judged.
However, despite that.
The young boy’s eyes turned to the scene of the murder, are calm.
Too calm or rather, cold.
Not only surprise and fear, not a single emotion is showing, eyes like glass, no eyes of steel.
The boy removed his gaze.
Not to avert his eyes away from the terrible spectacle, he simply lost his passing interest, such was his bearing.
With that impression, the boy started to walk.
His figure vanished behind a building.
Finally at her limit, the young girl’s stiffness loosened.
“Oh, wait!”
She cannot leave any witnesses.
Spurred on by such natural impatience, the girl begins to run.
In such a situation, no one will wait if asked to wait.
Rather they’ll assume they’re being pursued, hastening to escape.
That thought, made the girl increasingly impatient.
The street the boy passed through, was a back street with little pedestrian traffic.
But there isn’t much distance dividing here and the main street.
Impatience accelerates the girl.
Leaving the alley, the girl turns to face the direction the boy walked in.
Contrary to the girl’s expectation, she immediately finds the boy.
He’s just walking down the back lane at an ordinary pace.
Not running, a fast pace in of itself but with no sense of haste.
The boys attitude made the girl feel uncomfortable, but she had no intention of prying into the boy’s background.
Afterall she’d be bidding farewell to the other party soon. —— Permanently.
No specialised weapons on hand. But for the girl, taking her eyes of the boy for the purpose of resupplying her weapons wasn’t an option.
The girls build is small for a woman, based on her clothes you’d judge that her arms are thin.
The boy on the other hand, though he has yet to grow into the body of an adult, is taller than the girl, and his body weight clearly beats hers. The way he carries himself is also sharp.
Nevertheless, the girl was confident she could kill the boy with her bare hands. —— She’s not the powerless girl she appears to be.
The girl maintains a constant distance from the boy, focusing her consciousness inside herself.
A mental image of a door sinking into a world’s sea.
She stretches her hand into the water, takes hold of the doorknob and twists, pulling towards herself.
Showing some resistance, the door opens.
Water gushes out from the other side of the door, filling the world of the girl’s mental image.
Information pours from the unconscious areas, overwriting the girl’s abilities and filling her body with power.
The twenty-first century, the century when progress accomplished turning magic from superstition into science.
The scientific study of magic, it began with the study of extraordinary abilities called superpowers.
In the process of establishing magic technology, the system of superpowers was clarified.
All the phenomena in the natural world leave behind information.
The recording medium, nonphysical particles called Psions.
Psions, a particle dictating a substance’s composition, a particle serving as an intermediary for nature’s energy, and any kind of elementary particle and composite particle that alone don’t display reciprocal action. But when Psions form into an organised structure, that structure can take action on a person’s neuron cells and potentially cause changes to the rules.
That phenomena was not only observed taking effect in the cerebral cortex of living humans, or chemically synthesised nerve cells, but also observed in a set of nerve cell bodies to which a crystallization treatment had been applied.
The results of this observation, a close corresponding relationship was proven to exist between Psions and natural phenomena.
Substances that are similar, have structures which are similar.
Substances which are similar, have structures that are similar.
The higher the resemblance between the material phenomena, the higher the resemblance in the Psion structure.
The materials energy itself, that could induce a variety of phenomena, that variation —— caused phenomena to take form to satisfy the Psion’s structure, was named the ‘Psion Information Body’.
Normally, accompanying changes in phenomena, the Psion Information Body takes form. The Psion Information Body doesn’t change, moment by moment new constructions are made, and build up over the course of time.
However, at the moment when extraordinary abilities —— superpowers give rise to paranormal phenomena, it was observed that the Psion Information Body it caused takes priority.
The construction of this non-physical particle distorted natural phenomena.
Namely, the information of the phenomena was overwritten.
Modern magic is based on this discovery.
This is the theoretical basis of magic, and the basic principle of superpowers.
From the depths of the young girl’s consciousness, on the other side more and more, taking information from her unconscious into her own body, not altering the structure of the tissue but enhancing its functions.
An extraordinary ability to enhance the body. A physical-boost superpower.
The girl was the owner of this extraordinary ability, a superpower user.
The girl’s body enhancement didn’t raise the body’s strength, it elevated a person’s athletic ability. Deflecting bullets and jumping down from the roofs of multi-storey high-rise buildings without dying, that isn’t the form of superhuman ability she possesses, it’s a paranormal ability to elevate the athletic abilities and perception faculties. Moving at the speed of a bullet or bending a steel frame, it doesn’t reach such flashy levels.
Nevertheless, it had the force to hold someone down comparable to that of a bear or gorilla, the speed and power to kill a tiger or lion without the use of firearms, bows and arrows or other projectile weapons. —— Not that she’d done such things.
This ability, this was the basis of her judgement she could kill someone without a specialised weapon.
This simple ability was her pride, but she didn’t boast of her speed. Wielding techniques installed into her body she increased her bodies abilities.
That wasn’t something to be conceited about.
“!! What……What was that!?”
But despite the girl attacking the boy from behind, in the next moment, she found herself thrown to the roads surface.
The boy’s cold eyes look down on the girl.
Like steel, that gaze. The girl couldn’t read any emotion at all from those eyes.
Enduring the pain, the girl stood up. She had grown accustomed to pain. Laying down and saying it hurts, you’d become unable to experience pain ever again. Instead of paralysing the nerves, it meant you’d die. She lived in a world where ‘if you don’t fight back then you’ll lose your life’.
The girl retreats in a half-bent posture as she recovers from her sorry state, the boy watches on expressionlessly.
The boy, he appears to have no intention of attacking.
In her mind the girl muttered ‘this isn’t good……’. Her miscalculation, she failed to judge him. The boy is standing casually, but she cannot find an opportunity to take advantage of.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to do.
She just commenced the attack, and the only mental image she can deliver is of her crawling on the road. The girl has power and speed, but she lacks sharp claws. She can’t smash a concrete block with her fists.
—— This wasn’t an opponent she could defeat barehanded.
Run away, is what the girl’s survival instincts were screaming.
The witness’s mouth must be silenced, resisted the girl’s sense of self-preservation. The girl was caught in a trap of her own making.
A little while ago she at least had the kanzashi. Even if she regrets it now, she threw it away previously so it’s too late. Even if that wasn’t so if her partners words were correct —— the chance of a mistake being non-existent —— it’ll have begun to slowly decompose. Even if she obtained the weapon, it wouldn’t be unusable.
Too close to draw back, no opportunity to attack, she can only taste regret as the boy glares.
This stalemate, it didn’t last long.
The boy’s consciousness also seems to have inclined in the direction he won’t be able to leave the girl be.
The boy casually steps towards the girl.
The sound of a small motor, a grey box wagon rushes in.
The station wagon tries to kill the boy by running him over, the boy evades by lightly jumping. He doesn’t appear to put much force into his foot, yet the boy’s body leaps nearly ten meters into the air —— away from the girl.
The box wagon’s tire grinds to a sudden stop.
“Nuts! Get in!”
Without sparing the time to reply, the girl automatically opens the door and leaps into the passenger seat.
With the girl riding inside the station wagon abruptly takes off.
The boy didn’t interfere as the grey frame faded into the distance.
◇ ◇ ◇
In the station wagon’s passenger seat, the girl exhaled loudly. The back of the seat she was leaning on, its surface was damp with cold sweat.
The time the girl and boy spent glaring at each other, it was less than a minute.
Counting from when she realised the boy had seen her work at the crime scene, not even five minutes had passed.
In that short time, the three hours the girl spent preceding this—— the time it took for the girl to make contact with the target in the nightclub and kill him —— the fatigue she felt had doubled.
“Nuts, what was that boy from before?”
The man in the driving seat asked the girl as he drove the car manually, not automatically.
“He saw the crime scene”
“You failed to kill him!?”
The man’s voice, it’s full of genuine surprise. He has a good understanding of the girl’s skills and her extraordinary ability.
It had been four years since the pair teamed up. During that time since the girl began working her prey had exceeded fifty people. Among them, they understood that included changing the fates of fellow murders. And the failures, they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even if they didn’t get the opportunity to set a trap, they never failed to kill the target or left behind evidence. Going by results or ability, you’d say she was one of the most prominent and resourceful people in the organisation.
That she failed to silence someone. Moreover, a high school student at best, and a middle school boy at worst. For the man, what she said was astonishing.
“……Perhaps, was he a magician?”
The one explanation he could think of, the man’s questions piled up.
In this world, magic exists. This century, the existence of magic has clearly been proven. It’s not possible to say that it’s become an everyday skill anyone can use, but it’s use has become a valuable weapon to the army, police and people belonging to society’s underworld.
A grade school student possessing a gun can shoot and kill a strong giant of a man, a person who can use magic —— if a magician, it’s not strange a middle school student could fight off a professional killer.
“I don’t know.”
The girl sullenly spat the words out with resignation. From when she was struck by that first counterattack, she considered that possibility. However, whether the boy was a magician, or possibly even a psychic like herself, she couldn’t be sure.
The girl was ashamed of herself, and also irritated.
“Croco, can you investigate his identity?”
The girl asked the man. ‘Croco’ is the man’s codename. His real name is Wanizuka. Wani = Crocodile abbreviated to ‘Croco’. Also thrown in is the meaning of someone who works behind the scenes such as the assistants in a Kabuki (Japanese Drama), the ‘Kurogo,’ (a black robed stage assistant).
“There should be a record of his face in the cars driving recorder, if the targets face is unclear……”
For the sake of protecting privacy, the images from a driving recorder automatically masks the faces as required by law. But if the recorder is isolated from the network, then illegal modifications to remove the masks aren’t difficult.
“Just where to find them is good. Find out.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
“In this situation proceed to ensure their mouth is silenced, that’s what I expect the President will say.”
“……Understood.”
The man, he also understood they weren’t able to let the boy go. But the cause of his hesitation wasn’t because of feelings of guilt that the victim he was hunting down was a member of the general public, but at recalling the ominous impression of the boy.
Really, a good partner would set up a simple action to erase the witness.
The girl is the organisation’s killer, the man is the person that supports her. Should they not at least seek a decision from the President, the organisations top manager?
However, that would coincide with confessing a serious failure on the job to their superiors.
The positions of the organisation’s killers are not guaranteed. Let alone their positions, not even their lives are guaranteed. Under the pretext of having been seen working, it may come to light that the lizard had been caught by the tail. In that case, he and the little lady would share the same fate.
That possibility is by no means small.
Investigating to confirm the boy’s identity. If it becomes clear he has a dangerous background, at that time, it’ll be a good idea to consult the organisation.
The man considered how to escape the situation.
◇ ◇ ◇
The moment the boy could no longer see the box wagon, all interest in the girl was lost.
He attends a private middle school in the metropolitan area, but he isn’t an ordinary middle school student. In some ways, he’s the same as the girl murderer.
At a fast pace, he resumes walking. At an elevated pace from before, the aim being to recover the time lost being pointlessly entangled with the girl.
The boy’s pace didn’t slow, advancing no matter how many times the complicated roads twisted. His manner of walking had not a moment of hesitation to be seen.
Before long, at the backdoor of an old worn out building he came to a stop.
The iron door was painted entirely grey, with no information being displayed. Not only the door, from where the boy is standing you can’t tell what the building is even for. However, there are traces of people coming and going. It indicates the people connected with the building really make use of it.
The door’s automatic electronic lock is locked. But the door itself is an old-fashioned door opened and closed by hand, the dead bolt lock built into a western style doorframe to stop it from moving back and forth.
As the boy approached the door, he displayed some strange movements.
Extending the index finger of his right hand, moving it along the boundary of the door and doorframe.
Directly next to the lock.
He didn’t touch the door or the doorframe, he had no tool in his right hand. Nor was anything concealed in the fingertips of his black gloves suddenly pop out.
The act seemed to have no meaning.
But when the boy pulls on the knob, the door that should have been electronically locked readily opens.
Inside the backdoor is a gloomy staircase.
The boy doesn’t hesitate to go towards the basement.
In less than five minutes, the shape of the boy reappears.
They boy’s outward appearance, it hasn’t changed from before he descended into the basement. Not a scratch on him, nor was his attire disturbed.
He passed through the backstreet with the same composed manner of walking until he exited ‘outside’.
To the bustle unacquainted with the night, the nightless city.
Not to be confused with the other word ruled by lawlessness, this is the world ruled by law and order.
As he slips into the flow of people and proceeds along the main street’s sidewalk, a compact white sedan stops besides the boy.
A common colour, a common design, not a car that blends into the darkness but one that blends into the street, the boy doesn’t panic, and doesn’t hesitate to get into the car.
“Special Officer, no, today I should have called you Tatsuya-kun. How did everything go?”
“The entire spy unit has been erased. The Data the agents of the New Soviet Union had has been deleted, the storage recovered. It should be good enough so can you reconstruct the data please?”
“I understand.”
Into the hand extending from the driving seat, the boy places a cartridge with a built-in electronic data storage device.
“However, why is Second Lieutenant Fujibayashi here?”
The boy asks the young woman in the driving seat. Today’s job had been mandated by the main house. Not an illegal mission from the military. She’s a soldier so for her to come to meet him, it’s unexpected.
“Captain Sanada called me, he really wanted to come himself, unfortunately he wasn’t available to handle this.”
The female officer in plain clothes replied as the sedan departed. She had a bittersweet smile as if to say, ‘not enough human resources.’
This female officer’s name is Fujibayashi, just as the boy had called her. Her rank is Second Lieutenant. She’s attached to the National Defence Force’s 101st Brigade Independent Magic Equipped Battalion. The ‘Captain Sanada’ she mentioned is a technical officer in the same Independent Magic Equipped Battalion.
At the Second Lieutenants remark, understanding floated across the boy’s facial expression ‘to an extent’.
“Trident functioned without any problems.”
“Then, can I take that as both the C.A.D. and activation sequences worked as designed?”
“Yes.”
The boy nods.
C.A.D. —— Casting Assistance Device. Hardware for assisting with magic activation.
The software records magic activation sequences.
The C.A.D. outputs the magic activation sequence in a form the magician can use. The magician reads activation sequence and converts it into a magic sequence, based on this magic sequence —— the magic’s structure is assembled.
The boy who has the ability to use magic = a magic technician, a magician.
Trident is the name of the boy’s personal C.A.D. which the Independent Magic Battalion’s Captain Sanada had remodelled from the latest C.A.D. produced by a private corporation, and also the name of the magic only he is able to use using this C.A.D.
“Really. The Captain is going to be delighted.”
That escaped the female officer’s mouth, she didn’t appear to wholly agree.
The white sedan follows the traffic control system, becoming part of the flow of cars. The boy rides in the car, escaping Shibuya’s unchanging night.
During the night of Wednesday the 7th of April, 2094AD.
The Shibuya Shopping Ward was hit by a sudden outbreak of serial murders.
The victims were members of a street gang operating in the Shibuya area, underlings of organised crime who appeared to be involved with the buying and selling of illicit substances.
There are no witnesses to the incident. Information was obtained, one of the men was observed with a small female middle school student just before the murder, but high school and middle school students are often patrons of street gangs in the buying and selling of narcotics. And so was disregarded as too weak to be related to the murder.
The police put the incident down to a dispute with another street gang, or possibly a hostile Yakuza organisation who decided to give a warning, and so established a full-time investigation team. Violence between youths may be commonplace in the district, but they judged serial murders were not something they were able to ignore.
That same night, from among the asylum seekers who fled from the Great Asian Union, ten people who were active in the Shibuya area disappeared. Recently, they had been marked by Public Security as a group of interest due to contact with agents of the New Soviet Union, and because there was no one to report their disappearances, the case was never handled by the police.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login