Toaru Majutsu no Kinsho Mokuroku SS - Volume 1 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 

A Dull Gray Alley

Skill_Out. 

1 

On the same day, October 3, early morning. 

Inside the rectangular, underground concrete bunker, Accelerator naturally couldn’t tell if it was day or night. But that wasn’t a problem. He stood under a fluorescent lamp casting uniform light below, leaning on his crutch. 

It was a firing range. 

The room was about fifty meters deep, but people could only freely walk around in the front ten meters or so. Everything past that was cordoned off by long horizontal tables barring entry. Past the tables were a handful of human-shaped targets, which were designed to move in every direction along a metallic grid of rails. 

The long tables were divided by thin partitions that separated about thirteen lanes in the firing area. Each lane was about the width of a telephone booth. 

Accelerator was around the midpoint, in lane number eight. 

His slender hand gripped a small gun. A stench reminiscent of fireworks drifted through his surroundings. 

“Beginning drill number forty-two.” 

After the prerecorded female voice announced the start of the exercise, five targets started moving at once. 

Hit them in order, starting from the front. Just shoot them one at a time. 

Leveling his gun with just one hand, he shot them all with precision. 

A series of gunshots rang out in the wide-open underground space. The sounds, already loud, bounced back to his eardrums with even more pressure. 

Accelerator was right-handed normally, but the crutch forced him to shoot with his left. 

“Beginning drill number forty-three.” 

Each exercise lasted around seventy seconds. 

Don’t focus too much on aiming. Always remember to look at the big picture, even movements in your peripheral vision. 

Accelerator just kept firing as he thought. For him, reloading the gun was the bigger hurdle. With his right hand on the crutch, he could only use his left for it. 

He popped out the magazine, then spun the gun around his index finger, which he kept on the trigger, bringing the magazine well faceup. Then, after using his mouth to pull another magazine from his left sleeve, he slid it home before finally spinning the gun one-eighty again, this time using his mouth to pull the slide. 

That took him about two seconds. 

Still too slow, he thought. 

“Beginning drill number forty-four.” 

It was clear he’d tested out many other guns as well. 

I guess my selection standards should focus on reload speed, how much it weighs when I shoot with one hand, and the recoil. 

On the lane table in front of him was a pile of weapons: various handguns for military, personal, and competition use—there were even shotguns, submachine guns, and rifles. 

Empty casings blanketed the area at his feet like a pile of fallen leaves. These, too, came in several shapes and sizes depending on the type of gun; some were metal of a bronze-like color, while others were blue and made of plastic. 

“Beginning drill number forty-five.” 

The targets sped along the rails before they were all struck, one after another. 

Don’t rely on a single powerful shot to get the job done. Being able to easily fire several bullets is way more versatile. 

Though the different exercises varied the targets’ speed and used one of the many switch-off points to rapidly alter their trajectories, Accelerator still landed his shots with accuracy and precision. 

Even an officially trained Anti-Skill officer would have trouble with this kind of combat drill. It hadn’t been long since Accelerator first started using guns, but even with his crutched, unstable posture, he was already handling them like one would a well-worn ballpoint pen. 

However… 

“…Useless,” Accelerator spat, irritated, before the machine could output his records. He hit a calculator-like object on the lane table and cut off the training program. Then he shoved the gun in his hand back onto the table. 

Without turning around, he said, “What do you want, you frickin’ poser?” 

At that, a single sharp footstep rang out as if on purpose. The sound came from behind him. Probably meant to be in lieu of knocking. 

“And here I thought I’d been hiding my presence pretty well. It seems I still lack training.” 

The soft voice belonged to a male. 

Accelerator turned around and saw a young man with a thin frame and brown hair standing there. His name, if Accelerator recalled, was Mitsuki Unabara. But right after he’d introduced himself, he’d claimed both his appearance and name were fake. 

“If it’s all right, I’d like to learn from this. Given that we’re in a firing range, you must not have relied on sound. How did you detect me?” 

“Blah, blah. Shut it already. I’m not here to make you stronger,” Accelerator snapped, but in reality, he hadn’t noticed Mitsuki Unabara approaching. 

At least, not in the sense of using normal, physical sensory organs. 

But… 

Gah. I’m shaking again… 

The hand that had been holding the gun now hurt for a reason other than exhaustion. 

He didn’t know why, but it had been like this since his first meeting with Unabara a few days ago. Whenever Accelerator was near this man, his fingertips would start to tremble on their own. Plus, he felt a slight pressure weighing down on him, like someone had left a basketball on top of his chest. 

At times like these, he only ever thought of one thing. 

Amata Kihara. 

That pelting rain, that dull pain, the taste and stench of blood like iron. 

Last Order. 

A small life, abused by unjust violence, ready to disappear at any moment. 

And… 

…Those black wings that came out of my back. 

It was no more than a vague image, an abstract idea. And he’d first become conscious of them after he’d started working with Group here… No, more accurately, ever since he’d taken down the scientist named Amata Kihara. 

But it wouldn’t do him any good to ask the man in front of him about it. 

Accelerator wouldn’t gain anything by showing weakness. 

“I said, what do you want?” 

“Have you decided on a weapon yet?” Unabara’s smile didn’t waver. “We don’t have much time for you to do a careful investigation. There’s always work to be done, and we need you to get familiar with our processes quickly.” 

“None of ’em really speak to me,” Accelerator grumbled, looking at the numerous firearms on the table. “Might not ever find one I like, even if you collected them from all over the world.” 

“Why not narrow down your equipment list, assuming you’ll be using your ability?” 

“Don’t talk like you know a damn thing.” He rapped the choker-shaped electrode around his neck. “I can’t rely on this.” 

“Why is that? It’s been upgraded since then, hasn’t it? According to the report from Group’s engineering department, they’ve extended the ability duration from fifteen minutes to thirty.” 

“Group, huh?” Accelerator repeated derisively. 

Ever since he’d been dragged here by those powered suits who had shown up after he’d smashed Amata Kihara on September 30, Accelerator had been integrated into a framework by the name of Group. But even now that he was an official member, he still didn’t know much about it. What he did know suggested that Group was a team of four people, including him, who would be acting in concert. However, he had no clue how many other teams like theirs existed, or even if they were the only one. Even those powered suit pilots might have belonged to a different Group than Accelerator. 

His transfer into Nagatenjouki Academy… That was the cover story he’d given Aiho Yomikawa and Kikyou Yoshikawa. Accelerator agreed that it was a good arrangement. Academy City’s top school was a place where it wasn’t strange to have special classes that were top secret. A laboratory for just one person, unbeknownst even to the current students there. 

They’d probably taken advantage of that to register him as a student on paper only. 

They—the ones managing Group. I still can’t quite see the full picture, but it must mean they have both the means and the motivation to go that far. Everything about this is shady. 

He knew that the Group he was in had many subordinate teams, or subsidiaries. Odd jobs, errands, all performed for the sake of just four people: the development and maintenance of equipment, the transfer of personnel, the removal of evidence… There seemed to be a vast number of people in place to do all these things. 

Mitsuki Unabara, one of those on the receiving end of such blessings, stared at him blankly. “Are you not happy with how we tuned your electrode?” 

“Ha. Doesn’t matter if it’s thirty minutes or three days—it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. If something out of the ordinary happens, that’s it. If this thing craps out on me, and I can’t fight, I’m dead.” 

This was something he had become acutely aware of after his confrontation with a powerful enemy—Amata Kihara—while his battery was dead. The dimension of him being safe by relying on something had long since ended. 

From here on, he’d need to fight no matter what situation he found himself chased into. 

“Ha-ha. Then all the work Group’s engineering team put into analyzing that electrode was for nothing.” 

“Fuck if I care,” said Accelerator flatly. “Are you done?” 

“No. Here’s the main reason I came.” Unabara spread his hands. “We, Group, have received a work order from the General Board.” 

“…” 

“Academy City is in the process of shoring up its defenses against the Roman Orthodox Church, but for all the weight they put on anti-Church measures, the city’s inner defenses are growing weaker by the day. In all the confusion, a certain faction is planning an attack on Academy City’s facilities. Our mission is to wipe them out.” 

“Heh. Ha-ha-ha.” Accelerator couldn’t help but laugh when he heard that. “They ruin people like this, slap collars on them, and now the big ‘job’ we’ve all been waiting for is just to take out the trash? Ha, I guess life’s full of surprises!” 

Narrowing his red eyes in amusement, he curled his lips into a derisive grin. 

“They were talking about us filling in for that Kihara shithead, but I never thought we’d get such a stupid job! Ha-ha—guess to them, I’m just as much garbage as Kihara was!” 

“Don’t take it out on me. It’s your own fault you sank so low.” 

In response, Accelerator reached out with a slender arm and grabbed Unabara by the collar—purposely aiming right for the middle of his chest. 

Using his fingertips—with which he could reverse the direction of any vector if he wanted to, including his victim’s blood flow—he grabbed Unabara’s flesh. 

“Listen to me, kid. Let me tell you just one thing,” Accelerator vowed, expression unchanged as he pulled the shirt he’d grabbed in front of him. “Human lives are flimsy. So flimsy I could break them with a flick of my finger. So be a little more considerate. Or else I might go too far and break something I shouldn’t.” 

“I’ll be careful.” 

Unabara’s tone, in contrast to Accelerator’s words, was smooth, and his mouth was still curled in a relaxed smile. 

“Ugh.” Accelerator released Unabara’s clothing with a grunt. 

“May I continue?” 

“You were going to anyway.” 

“Our target is Skill-Out. You may be more familiar with them than I.” 

Accelerator frowned. Skill-Out was, broadly speaking, an armed group of Level Zeroes. 

Status in Academy City was determined by two factors: academic abilities and esper abilities. If someone was labeled a Level Zero, they essentially led their school life with tests marked with zeroes hanging from their necks, and some among them apparently couldn’t handle such treatment. 

Skill-Out theoretically had around ten thousand members in Academy City. That being said, most of them were people renting dormitories but not going to school, or those who did go to school and left their Skill-Out activities for nighttime. The ones living on the streets without attending classes or living properly in a dorm, the ones who had gained themselves a reputation as a violent group, only made up about 1 percent of the total. 

They had no clear-cut objective. If any young men loitering on the streets at night were Level Zero, that was already enough for people to treat them as members of Skill-Out. Thus, their presence could vary from three or four Skill-Out members gathered in a convenience store parking lot one night—or there could be a mob a hundred strong swaggering on the streets. 

“Whoa, whoa, wait a second. This job just got even more insignificant. Are the higher-ups gambling on when they think I’ll lose it and go crazy?” 

“No, not at all. In fact, there’s been talk about reorganization recently even with Skill-Out. Apparently, a team of Anti-Skill officers who went to suppress them were outplayed and had to beat a hasty retreat, so it’s not really strange this would fall in Group’s lap, given that we’re an unofficial organization.” 

“Hmph,” sniffed Accelerator contemptuously. Was it wisdom or combat strength? Those back-alley delinquents had clearly found a windfall of one or the other. 

“Skill-Out currently seems to be making some toys.” 

“Toys?” 

“Made by hollowing out oak logs and stuffing them with explosives. Five centimeters across, seventy long. They seem to be planning on using them as rockets; we’ve confirmed that they’re generally aerodynamic and have three vinyl-chloride wings.” 

“Hold on. Burning arrows?” Accelerator snorted in spite of himself. “Those are experimental weapons from the Edo period, for crying out loud. What, are they all obsessed with archaeology or something? They can fly maybe two thousand meters, but it’s not like they’re powerful even if they get that far. Maybe they would be if they stuck high-grade plastic explosives in the tip or something, but they probably make all their own explosives themselves, too. If they want to cause trouble with those, they have another think coming—toys like that wouldn’t even scratch the outer walls of research facilities.” 

“Unfortunately, with some preparations beforehand, they seem to be very effective,” said Unabara quietly. His voice carried well in the firing range, surrounded by thick walls. “They’ve been laying traps all over for the last few days. Moving the bikes stationed next to disaster evacuation routes, stuffing garbage into the ventilation near entrances to VIP facilities… What they’re doing is small in scale—hardly a public safety concern, but…” 

“…Since when were we supposed to be cleaning up after a bunch of kiddie pranks?” 

“But each generates an issue with a low chance of evolving into a more severe error, and twenty thousand of them have already been ‘reported.’ And even though we could leave them alone during times of peace, during an orange or red warning, they’ll be detected as errors. In other words…” 

“If these fire arrows ignite, they generate problems.” 

“If they use rocket weaponry, they’ll cause at least a code orange. And as the warning level increases, the twenty thousand ‘bombs’ Skill-Out has spent the last few days scattering across the city will all cause error reports at once. That’s what they’re after. If they can take down the servers maintaining the communication network with all those error reports, they’ll be able to do whatever they please, and Anti-Skill will probably never come. 

“This ‘hole’ probably wouldn’t be fixed in a day or two,” finished Unabara. 

“That’s all well and good, but… Why are you so certain about what they’re going for? If this is all your personal speculation, I will physically destroy you.” 

“No, not at all. We caught several of them and made them talk. We don’t think there’s much doubt.” 

Accelerator fell silent for a moment, but really, he had no right to criticize their tactics. If he wanted to compare records, he was clearly the one who had commited far greater atrocities. 

“They can’t even run amok without doing all this prep work… Considering they thought through all this stuff, they must be a bunch of chickens at heart,” Accelerator grumbled. “What are they after? Attacking military research facilities, stealing powered suits?” 

“No. Those sorts of facilities have their own independent security teams inside. Their goal is probably simpler than that… A rebellion against espers.” 

“Ha. So what? They’ll cut off communication lines, surround the espers, and kill them? Sounds like the kind of thing those numbers-obsessed Level Zeroes would do.” 

Hundreds of people ganging up on a single esper and killing them. Repeat that, and even Skill-Out, a gang of Level Zeroes, would be able to cause significant tragedy. 

“…Should Skill-Out’s plan succeed, at least two or three school districts’ worth of communications will be down. We should assume the casualties will be major in that kind of scenario. 

“But,” Unabara noted, tilting his head, “as you can see, Skill-Out is considering something grandiose, but will it really go that well? With weapons like guns and bodyguard gear, even if they surrounded someone with a dozen or so people… I find it hard to believe they’d be able to defeat Level Fives like you, for example.” 

“As long as parts of the plan look attractive, idiots will go for it even with all the holes. Incomplete combustion—that’s probably how this plan of Skill-Out’s is gonna end. Half-assed plans that bring about half-assed results and half-assed casualties.” 

The ones Skill-Out currently hated the most, and had the most obvious sense of inferiority toward, were Level Fives like Accelerator. 

But it was doubtful this plan alone would enable them to take any Level Fives down. In which case, Skill-Out would probably switch to easier, quicker targets and content themselves with that. 

In the end, they’d be killing powerless Level Ones and Level Twos. 

And the Level Twos… The mass-produced military espers and the higher being who controlled them. 

Who did they plan to target with their nonsensical violence that had no goal or greater meaning? 

“…” 

“This is bullshit,” Accelerator muttered to himself. Returning his attention to Unabara, he said, “Then Skill-Out isn’t the danger here.” He spat on the floor. “The real danger is some religious group exploiting the damage they cause to strike, right? Those rotten General Board assholes aren’t the kind to care about people in the alleyways to begin with.” 

“Very discerning.” 

“Anyway, what are you dragging your feet for? If you know what they’re after, you can just disable the automatic alarms. As long as we don’t get a code orange or above, the communication network won’t go down.” 

“If it wasn’t wartime, we could have done just that. But that’s like telling someone to turn off the antivirus software on their computer without knowing when it might be attacked.” 

“Nothing but enemies inside and out, eh? Really seems like Academy City is on a lot of people’s shit list.” 

“And it’s our job to do something about those people,” continued Unabara, flashing a smile. “It’s too late to rethink Academy City’s security systems. Anti-Skill and Judgment appear to be trying to remove the ‘obstacles’ on evacuation routes and VIP facility entrances—the sources of the errors—but there’s no guarantee Skill-Out will sit around and wait until they’re done. That’s why we need to physically stop them ourselves.” 

“How clever,” he drawled. “In underhanded ways we can’t ask Anti-Skill for, I assume?” 

“Our target’s name is Ritoku Komaba—the current leader of Skill-Out and the brains of the operation,” Unabara explained, presenting a photograph on his phone screen. “He seems to be fairly influential in the darker streets of School District Seven. Do you know him?” 

“Nope. No reason to.” 

“Our mission is to swiftly deal with this Ritoku Komaba and prevent Skill-Out’s plan from coming to fruition.” 

“You think those shitheads will give up and stop just because of that? Their preparations are already finished, aren’t they? If they set off a code orange or above, they win. All of Academy City is at a code yellow right now. They’re close enough to see their goal. Even if their leader dies, one of his lackeys can take over.” 

“No, they can’t,” said Unabara smoothly, cutting him off. “It seems that their plan hinges on hitting specific locations. As I said before, they’ve been laying little traps everywhere, like at VIP facility entrances and along evacuation routes…but it seems they’re following a specific methodology. They use one explosion to cause a code orange in a certain location, then induce an error in certain areas’ automatic security. After that, the machines will come on by themselves, decide there’s a public security problem in facilities in the appropriate area, then start checking nearby areas in order to move people that way… Then, Skill-Out uses that fraction of a second to immediately expand the error area. That’s their ultimate goal. 

“Incidentally,” Unabara added, “only Ritoku Komaba seems to know where that initial target is. At least, none of the Skill-Out members we arrested had that information. It seems the whole thing needs someone to take the reins for the plan to succeed—and to prevent it from going out of control.” 

“Ugh. He’s just trying to keep his own position secure,” Accelerator sneered before waving a hand lightly. “I’m free to destroy this Komaba guy, but my rampage won’t cause a code red, will it? Unlike you, I can get a little flashy.” 

“If a code orange or above does get declared outside of the initial bombing point Komaba has in mind, their plan still won’t be achieved. Academy City’s security districts are subdivided, so it will probably end with the warning only affecting a very small area. They need careful coordination for the lockdown to jump across a wide area.” 

“…Great. You know all that, but not where this initial bombing point is. We could have had security get there in advance if we knew.” 

“Well, the only way to know would be to ask Ritoku Komaba himself,” Mitsuki Unabara said, smiling. “But don’t you think it would simply be quicker to crush him instead?” 

2 

He headed to the site on wheels. 

Accelerator was riding in the passenger’s seat of a garbage truck. However, the truck’s body had been painted black, and all the windows were heavily tinted. 

“We deal with corpses a lot, too, so a garbage truck is handy in various ways,” said the middle-aged man gripping the steering wheel next to him. “The internals of the packer in the back are made to be used once, then discarded. Every time we do a collection, we abandon it all, including the corpses, and exchange everything for new stuff.” 

What, like a vacuum refill pack? Accelerator thought, utterly amazed. “A garbage truck scavenging for the dead bodies of shitheads? What a bad joke.” 

The truck seemed to be running on electricity rather than gasoline; the engine made almost no noise. It was perfect for covert operations, in a way. 

While looking at the scenery going past the window, Accelerator said, “Anyway, what’s up with the black paint and the tinted windows? We’re not playing chauffeur for some rich asshole.” 

“Well, in our line of work, it’d be problematic if anyone sees our faces.” 

Accelerator was pretty sure that neither the truck nor the driver’s clothing were anything makeshift. Academy City had provided the genuine article for this job. He didn’t know where in the budget leadership was squeezing the money from, but they must have received funds equal to that of an entire school district’s worth of Anti-Skill officers, then poured it all into research and development for equipment. 

The middle-aged man answered him between responses to some kind of conversation he was having over the onboard radio. “You’re one of Group’s members, right? I hear this is your first time.” 

“So what?” 

“Nothing,” said the driver, still looking forward. “Lackeys like me don’t have the ability to do much more than drive you all around like this, but sometimes I get to thinking. Maybe if I wasn’t here, a few less people would fall this far.” 

“…” 

“Of course, I’m sure they could get as many replacement drivers as they needed. Still, I think about it. If I really floored it and got away, maybe I could save a person or two.” 

“Ha. You’ve got grit. The kind of grit that shouldn’t be wasted in a place like this.” 

“Tsuchimikado, Unabara—everyone in that passenger seat says the same thing. I wonder why.” 

It’s because you’re a good guy. One who’s too optimistic, quietly thought Accelerator. 

The recorded female voice on the GPS announced that they’d arrived at their destination. The electric-powered collection vehicle silently drew to a stop. 

Accelerator opened the passenger-side door, then put his distinctly cutting-edge crutch onto the ground before stepping onto the somewhat dirty road. 

He heard a voice from behind. “I’ll come to pick you up in twenty minutes, as instructed. Be careful.” 

“Win or lose, I’ll be going back in that thing, huh?” Accelerator answered without turning around, a thin smile on his lips. “Whether I’m dead or alive.” 

Ignoring the collection vehicle as it drove away behind him, he took careful stock of his surroundings. 

It was just a normal street. The kind you’d find anywhere. 

But the air felt different. He could sense eyes here and there over by the entrance to an alley, stabbing at him with sharp hostility. This would be like a swamp—once he went in, it wouldn’t be easy to get back out. 

When he moved to the alley’s entrance, he found several iron stakes pounded into the ground underfoot. 

The half-rusted stakes came in various lengths, from ten centimeters to thirty, and were stuck in the ground about a meter into the alley from the entrance, packed together. It was like a meadow of iron. 

This must be to prevent the security robots from getting in. 

Accelerator snorted. The oil drum–shaped robots in Academy City were designed to overcome height changes, to an extent. And when it came to things like elevators, the robots could still use infrared signals to search inside. 

But with a deliberate barricade like this set up, they wouldn’t be able to make any headway. After repeating their obstacle avoidance sequence a few times, they would file the data away, saving the location for later investigation and skipping it for now, then go off somewhere else. 

“…” 

He looked up and saw vinyl sheets hung between the buildings, blocking out the sky. Most of them were blue, though red and yellow ones occasionally joined them. He knew they were an ersatz way to cover the sky. Sunlight took on strange colors when it passed through, and those colors produced a mottled pattern on the ground like stained glass. 

These sheets were to evade satellite surveillance. 

Anti-Skill officers and other officers would forcibly remove such obstructions once every week or month. But Skill-Out guys would always put up new obstructions as soon the old ones were removed, purposely making it into a tedious game of whack-a-mole. 

That was how they did things. 

They casually made things, casually discarded them, and casually remade them as needed. 

If their barricades were broken, they’d throw up new ones. If their main base was destroyed, they’d find a new place to stay right nearby. If their organization was crushed, other outcasts would eventually gather and give birth to a new one. 

Skill-Out would never die. 

Like how the cockroach seemed like it would never go extinct, they learned, little by little, and strengthened their resistance. 

A form of evolution centered on the negative. A form nobody desired. 

“…This sure feels familiar,” Accelerator muttered, breaking into a grin. 

The dark alley stretching before him was a lawless area unreachable by either security robot or satellite. Nothing anyone did within this world would be seen. And of course, nobody would come to the rescue. 

“All right, then.” 

As he thought Let’s get started, his phone went off. 

Looking annoyed, he took it in hand. All it displayed was CONTACT 3. 

“Tsuchimikado?” he said. 

“Thought your first battle would be starting soon. I wanted to warn you about something before you began.” 

Here comes the warning, Accelerator thought with an eye roll. “And what’s that, Mr. Mentor?” 

“Don’t trust us,” Tsuchimikado said simply. “Like you or me, all of Group’s members are people who would cause issues just by becoming revealed to the world. There’s no winning in an organization made up of people like that.” 

“…You trying to suggest I’m hoping for a reward?” 

“No. Only that you’ll need to do more than follow the General Board’s rules to outwit them. They’re set up to reap the benefits no matter how you choose to do things. Keep that in mind when you think about what you should do. We both have something we need to protect, after all.” 

“…” Accelerator fell silent for a moment. 

What he thought back to then was a certain girl. One who was probably still in the hospital at that very moment. 

But his expression, his behavior, his words—he suppressed all of it before that reached the surface. 

“That all you wanted?” 

“Yeah, I guess so. Finish up quickly and come back. Musujime should be getting started on her job now, too. You may not need to hear this, but you won’t want to get yourself caught up in that.” 

“Her job?” Accelerator frowned. 

Ka-bam!! 

A high-pitched explosion rang out from deeper down the ever-so-narrow alley. 

It sounded distant, but a burst of warm air hit Accelerator’s face. Maybe the air had been compressed—the atmosphere around him had been laced with dust and dirt. 

For an instant, Ritoku Komaba’s plan crossed his mind…but Tsuchimikado was strangely calm on the other end of the call. After thinking for a moment, Accelerator offhandedly offered his own prediction. “Is Musujime using explosives or something? Also, I didn’t hear anything about a competition.” 

“She’s not after their people. She’s after their money,” answered Tsuchimikado idly. “Skill-Out needs funds to stay active. They seem to have split it up using various ploys, but we’re having her take care of whatever’s here. Better to burn it all than let them run away with it.” 

The explosions continued. 

Skill-Out, however, was used to fights involving those sorts of weapons. They wouldn’t be daunted. You needed a powerful ability to stand on this battlefield alone. 

If he recalled, Awaki Musujime’s ability was Move Point: a way to move objects to other places, unbound by three-dimensional limitations. Was she using it now? 

“And here I thought she was just Group’s mascot. She’s still useful? Thought she couldn’t move how she wants when she’s mentally unstable.” 

“Same as you,” said Tsuchimikado flatly, listening to the explosions through the phone. “She’s boosted.” 

“Really? That’s great. Anyway, should I just take advantage of the chaos to flatten their whole group at once now that they’re lacking leadership?” 

“I doubt any leader will run away so easily while their funds are being destroyed, but the name of our primary target is Ritoku Komaba—the bastard leading all of them. Make absolutely sure he doesn’t get away.” 

“I’m more worried I’ll flatten him too hard. Digging his flesh out of rubble would probably be awful,” Accelerator offered blithely, hanging up. 

After putting his phone in his pocket, with one hand still on his crutch, he placed his other hand softly on his neck. The gesture was one you might make if you were checking your joints, but in his case, his hand landed on his choker-shaped electrode’s switch. 

“Well, then, let’s get started, shall we?” 

He sensed several people appearing. 

About twenty guns and crossbows had just been trained on him—from deeper in the alley, from the windows of buildings, from the smallest shadows. 

Faced with all that, Accelerator smiled very, very thinly. 

“Time to take out the trash. I’ll finish this in ten minutes.” 

And then, he returned to that place he would have gladly crawled through mud to escape from. 

3 

Awaki Musujime was walking down a dark alley. 

Because of the multicolored vinyl sheets stretching from building to building overhead, other colors mixed into the sunlight, casting blues, reds, and yellows onto the road below. The air seemed stagnant, suffused with the smell of garbage and dust. The walls were covered in sloppy graffiti, and she spotted the remnants of a rusting ATM—who knows where they found it—with its lid pried open. Other things were strewn about, too, like a chipped saw and broken lumber. It seemed the incidents around this area never ceased. 

As Musujime walked through it all, she had a camisole-like cloth wrapped around her bare chest and her school blazer hanging from her shoulders. She paired that with a skirt that was incredibly short, too. Overall, her clothing was quite suggestive. 

But no one was able to touch her. 

Not a single person. 

“…Piece of cake.” 

A large man set upon her with a metal pipe, and a skinny woman aimed at her from the window of a building with an arrow. Musujime would deal with both the same. Using her Move Point ability, she teleported nearby rusted cars and metal dumpsters in front of her to serve as shields. Once she’d blocked their initial attacks, she went on the offensive, plunging the corkscrews she carried directly into her targets’ limbs. After that predictable series of events, it was over. 

Musujime twirled the ability-bolstering military-grade flashlight in her right hand; she could also use it as a police baton. The item was mainly to assist her in aiming her ability, though. Her power offered too much in the way of freedom, so her aim would fluctuate unless she set her own standards. 

As she waved the tool in her hand, she spoke with evident boredom. 

“Numbers don’t always give you an advantage, and you can’t ensure victory just by preparing weapons beforehand. I suppose it’s very much like back-alley delinquent groups not to understand that.” 

In contrast to her cool demeanor, her surroundings had transformed into a howling storm. 

She’d raised a miniature tornado all around her in order to block the attacks coming from all directions. It was composed of thick pieces of metal, like manhole covers and iron plates. Move Point didn’t make any noise, but countless bullets were very loudly clanging off the impromptu shields. 

Musujime used her mouth to pull the pin out of a grenade, then tossed it into the now-coverless manhole. 

A muffled explosion reverberated in the underground sewer. 

According to their intel, a trove of reserve cash was hidden down there, enough to purchase expensive handbags. 

“That makes nine… They’re not putting up much of a fight.” 

Ever since Kuroko Shirai from Judgment had turned the tables on her during the incident on September 14, the negative changes in her mental state had put her in a condition where she was unable to use her ability. 

And the reason it had come back to her like this today was… 

…I’d thought the whole thing was fishy when I first heard about it, but I guess this means the engineering department is actually pretty skilled. 

Musujime currently had external electrodes that looked like compresses attached to her shoulders and back. Miniaturized low-frequency vibration machines: Broadly speaking, they were medical-grade massagers that fed electric currents into her body. They measured the agitation of her brain waves, then created pulse patterns that would be most effective. 

She couldn’t exactly call it perfect, but she did admit that it had lowered her stress levels somewhat. 

Of course, walking around the city with compresses attached to your body isn’t exactly the kind of life girls should be leading. 

That incident on September 14 really had been a major factor in why she’d needed to borrow the power of technology to get her powers back. 

Musujime herself had been the mastermind behind that incident, but she wasn’t the only one in the criminal group. She’d asked for dozens of like-minded espers to help her steal the Remnant, a part of the Tree Diagram. Most of them had been taken down by that Railgun and arrested by Anti-Skill. 

She was the only one able to be out in public. 

Academy City didn’t currently have a clear punishment for treason. But she didn’t think anyone would bother to preserve the human rights of lowly traitors who threatened peace in the city. That meant all they needed to do was have the punishment conducted outside the law, unbeknownst to others. In detestable ways that took advantage of the fact that the long arm of the law couldn’t reach them. 

She had to do something about that. 

The ones who had once walked the same path as her were in danger. 

“…” 

Musujime tossed a hand grenade into the opening of a large external air-conditioning unit, shredding all the paper bills hidden inside and tearing apart the unit itself. 

…Hard cash, gold bars, IT bank access card under fake organization names… I have to say, they were going to quite a lot of trouble to spread it all out. I wonder what they did to get all this money in the first place. 

Ritoku Komaba, the leader of this entire area, had apparently outlawed sex trafficking. If he’d purposely cut off one of the quickest ways of amassing cash, that must have meant he had other ways, but… 

None of my business anyway. My goal is to destroy it all, and that’s all I have to do. I just have to take out fourteen more places and go back home, she thought, carefree, swinging the flashlight in her hand around lazily. 

“…I’d appreciate it if you let up a bit, esper.” 

Suddenly, a man’s voice broke into Musujime’s thoughts. 

In the narrow, straight alley, a man as big as a gorilla stood about ten meters in front of her. He must have emerged from the back of one of the surrounding buildings. He clothed his block frame with a cheap jacket, but it seemed like one flex of his muscles would rip it to shreds. 

The man looked like destruction incarnate, but his voice was cheerless. 

Sounding like he was spitting out copy paper, he continued: 

“I’d been keeping our funds separate…to prevent it all from being stolen in one fell swoop. Like a…timid person who carries multiple wallets out of fear of extortion. And as such, I feel as though it’s a touch childish for someone to realize all that and then to go on and strip them of everything anyway…” 

Without responding, Musujime boldly took out her phone. 

She looked at the screen and checked the photo on it. Then she sighed, mildly exasperated. “Ritoku Komaba… Well, well. Looks like I ran into the target first.” 

At some point, the Skill-Out members who had been surrounding her had disappeared. 

Komaba had probably used his authority to get them to withdraw. 

So that they wouldn’t hold him back. 

“Don’t blame me for this, Accelerator.” 

“…That name… I should have abandoned the money and escaped, rather than cling to greed. I hadn’t thought someone of his caliber would be here…” 

Musujime didn’t really bother to respond to anything Komaba said. 

She flipped her phone closed, stowing it in her pocket. 

Then she slowly brought her military-grade flashlight back into position. 

“Move Point… A troubling power.” 

“I can assure you, it’s a little more than troubling.” 

“Yes, that’s true… You’re troubling and annoying.” 

Dark emotions, the hallmark of a Level Zero gang like Skill-Out, crept into his words. 

So what? thought Musujime. He was ten meters away. They were on a straight, narrow road. In this situation, she could easily shoot her corkscrews at him. Regardless of how much stamina Komaba had, he would crumple to the ground before walking three steps. Even if he did have a hidden projectile weapon like a gun, Musujime only needed to summon a “shield” to deal with it. 

“Then I’ll shove this between your eyes and end it for you in an instant.” 

“Before I can even feel the pain, huh…? How considerate.” 

Without saying anything more, Musujime swung the flashlight and sent an order to the corkscrews in her pocket. Ignoring visible, three-dimensional vectors, the corkscrews made use of theoretical eleven-dimensional values to pass through space and appear right in the middle of Ritoku Komaba’s forehead. 

But they didn’t hit. 

“What…?” 

Musujime opened her eyes wide in shock, looking at the corkscrew, left hanging in empty space. A little pain sprang forth in her spine. The low-frequency vibration machines had sent a stronger pulse through her in response to her tension to decrease the stress she felt. 

She hadn’t missed. 

Komaba’s body had simply disappeared. 

Roar!! 

A dull blast of wind, like a dump truck had just passed right by, echoed from directly behind her. 

“…Too slow.” 

The flat voice was a harbinger of a dull pain that shot through the crown of Musujime’s head, right around the whorl of her hair, like something heavy had hit it. Through a hazy, unsteady consciousness, she realized Komaba’s fist had swung down right on her. 

Electric currents ran through her shoulders and back. 

The devices had been helping her before, but like this, they were nothing but impediments. 

“Ugh?!” 

Looking behind her, she called forth an abandoned car, then pushed it onto the position where Komaba stood. Not to defend herself, but to crush her target. 

But Komaba wasn’t there. 

He’d jumped seven meters clear into the air from that spot. 

“No need to be so surprised…” 

His legs, in midair, found a rectangular iron pole sticking out of the wall around the second story of a building, where a signboard or external air conditioner must have been in the past. 

Wha-bam!! The kick broke the rectangular pole, sending it flying toward Musujime like a missile. 

“I’m serious about this, too.” 

Musujime couldn’t even hear the tap of Komaba landing. 

The jagged edges of many pieces of the iron pole were all flying at her at once. 

“?!” 

Musujime frantically called back the car that she’d used to attack. 

She’d intended to use it as a shield, but with a high-pitched screech of metal on metal, the fast-moving pieces of iron pierced that defense easily. Unconsciously, Musujime raised her hands to cover her face; one shard skimmed her thigh, and then the terrible makeshift weapons finally gouged deep into the asphalt and came to a stop. 

Musujime looked at the iron rods, vibrating with a shrill noise, and felt a chill run up her spine. 

There’s no point in using shields if they’re broken so easily…!! 

“Don’t look so unhappy.” Komaba gave a low chuckle. “I have to fight against a monster like you. I think a handicap like this is more than warranted…” 

Musujime spotted his face through the glassless windows of the abandoned car, which was rusted bright red. He was standing some ten meters in front of her in the narrow alley, sides blocked by concrete. 

I’ll finish you!! 

Power gathered between her eyes. She nimbly swung the military-grade flashlight that could also be used as a police baton, then called out five of the corkscrews lying on the ground nearby and sent them all at once to the coordinates of Komaba’s body. 

However… 

“…You won’t hit me.” 

Fwoom!! came a loud roar of wind. That was not a sound that normally came out of a human body. Komaba had used overwhelming speed to zigzag left and right through the narrow alley, dodging all the attacks in Musujime’s warping barrage. 

Not only that… 

“Allow me to repay you. I prefer cheap sake to fine wine, you see.” 

After dodging the wave of corkscrews, Komaba swung his leg up. 

“Corkscrews do nothing for me.” 

Phyoo!! His leg lashed out like a whip. It connected precisely with one of the screws left hanging in midair and launched it right back at Musujime with incredible speed. 

“…!!” 

She didn’t even have time to move, let alone use her powers. The corkscrew flew straight through the wreck in front of her, hurtling straight at her. 

Musujime swung her head to the side at the last second, and a glancing blow left a thin, straight mark on her right cheek. At the sharp sound of wind whistling in her ears, the electrodes attached to her shoulders and back sent out incredibly strong signals to help her relax. 

Ow… His movement abilities, they’re beyond human… 

Komaba’s movements were different than a car’s. Cars just moved forward. 

Instead, his had the subtle adjustments that were the hallmark of living creatures. 

“You’ve got Hard Taping under your clothes. That’s how you’re moving like that, isn’t it?!” 

“I should have guessed you’d realize it.” 

Komaba edged out of Musujime’s range, footsteps so soft they were inaudible. 

Even with the wreck between them, Komaba’s leg strength could easily get him over the obstacle and within striking distance. 

To stop that from happening, Musujime used irregular steps, moving forward and back in a random pattern to throw off his sense of distance. 

At some point, the hunter had become the hunted. 

“In my case… It protects the six ligaments in my legs, externally bolstering the muscles in each part of my legs that connect to my femurs, tibias, and fibulas. Additionally, there are metal plates in my shoes that prevent my feet from destroying themselves… Ultrasonic and elastic taping specialized for military use… It took a lot to obtain this.” 

In all likelihood, it wasn’t just his legs—he probably had smaller pieces of taping all over his body, reinforcing it. You needed more than just your legs to keep your balance. Without the whole package, you’d lose your center of gravity when moving at a high speed and topple over. 

“It’s a powered suit, so to speak…but an independent version containing only its mobility features. If you meant to kill me, you should have brought heavy weapons meant for use against armor.” 

“Hmph. I don’t remember Hard Taping being that convenient,” Musujime said, putting a smile on her lips. A cold sweat had, however, formed a thin layer on her face. 

Musujime could move objects through theoretical eleven-dimensional vectors, ignoring the limitations of three-dimensional space, but there was an exception: her own body. Moving it would come at the cost of extreme psychological damage. She didn’t know if she’d be able to pull it off properly, even with the support of the low-frequency vibration machines. In fact, she reckoned the chances were lower than fifty-fifty. If she wasn’t careful, she’d buckle under the mental pressure, which could scramble her memories or lower her decision-making abilities, all while not being able to use her power well. 

There was no easy out. 

Even if she wanted to withdraw and pull herself together, she would need to create the opportunity for it herself. 

As she thought about it, her mouth moved, trying to buy her time. “They don’t make powered suits that big because their power systems are large or because the armor is so thick. All that bulk is dedicated to the systems that keep the pilot safe.” 

Musujime continued vigilantly observing her surroundings even as she spoke. The alley was narrow and straight. If Komaba charged, it would be virtually impossible for her to run away. She had a car wreck shielding her from the front, but she doubted that would be much of a hindrance on its own. 

“Powered suits have far higher mobility than their wearers… They can even move over ten times faster than the average person. But the wearers are never more than human.” 

Musujime wouldn’t be able to avoid or block Komaba’s attacks. She continued her analysis, reaffirming her grip on her flashlight. 

“Hmph… You refer to their physical protection.” 

“Trying to suddenly fully use that mobility while plowing straight forward would run the risk of tearing all the muscles in the wearer’s body. That’s why powered suits have so many safety mechanisms—to prevent that from happening. It’s like the low-frequency vibration machines I’m using. They’re always delivering electrical stimulation to your muscles, keeping you in a constant state of warm-up, shielding you from the potential damage that sudden and rapid movements would otherwise cause.” 

Ultimately, all she could do was use her Move Point power to put down Komaba before his attacks reached her. 

“That Hard Taping of yours doesn’t have any of those safeties,” she asserted, twirling the military-grade flashlight. Komaba’s expression remained the same. “It’s a failed product—it didn’t even get to the testing phase with Anti-Skill. It’s putting a considerable burden on your body, isn’t it? That stuff is doing more damage to you than I ever could.” 

“Heh.” Despite the obvious weakness being pointed out, Komaba still laughed. “I already came to terms with that. Waaay back, when I first swore to fight monsters like you as a Level Zero.” 

His gorilla-like body swelled to even larger proportions. 

Most likely, he’d tuned his body to reduce the burden by as much as possible, delicately and logically, going a step further than pro athletes did. And that body was now transforming into one large weapon. 

“Let’s finish things quick—” 

Damn it. 

“—’cause I still have a lot left to do!!” 

Just as I thought; he won’t back down!! 

Boom!! 

Even while ravaging his own body, Komaba charged toward Musujime at a speed that could keep pace with trains. 

“!!” Musujime automatically took a step back, then twirled her military-grade flashlight. She crashed a giant, rusted signboard into Komaba’s path. 

But at the moment her command was executed, Komaba was no longer there. He kept on running, ever forward, cracking the asphalt beneath him as he raced toward her like a rocket. 

Ugh… He’s so fast I don’t have time to designate coordinates!! Musujime thought, her mouth turning dry. 

A thunderous bang ripped through the alley. 

Komaba’s body had leaped up swiftly, then landed on the roof of the abandoned car Musujime was using as a shield. The rusting red-metal plate cracked and gave way as his legs sank deeply into the vehicle. He ignored it, swinging a shoe up into the air—so that he could crush his opponent hiding behind the wreck with a blow from above. 

She was only a single step away from falling into Komaba’s clutches. 

“Ah, aaaaah!!” 

Feeling a terrible chill, Musujime backed away. 

At this point, she gave up on attacking. For now, she placed a metal dumpster from nearby in front of her. She tried to use the thick metal box, the size of multiple small rooms put together, to stop Komaba’s assault. 

However… 

“Too thin…” 

Musujime then heard a slightly amused voice come from the other side of the supposedly thick wall. 

“…A thin film like that cannot stop me.” 

Musujime simply watched as the dumpster expanded explosively, starting from the middle. 

Komaba had used his legs, bolstered by Hard Taping, to kick straight into it from the other side like a steel pile driver. 

Did Musujime’s ears catch the booming that whipped up right after? 

Zha-bam!! The bottoms of Komaba’s feet plunged through the dumpster like a garbage truck, crushing the thick metal box in a single attack, tearing it completely apart while scattering its contents everywhere. 

Clank, clank. The awful noise of metal hitting the ground echoed in the alleyway. 

The blasted remains were scattered over an area of ten meters in front of Komaba. It looked almost like a giant dragon had projectile vomited all over. 

He couldn’t even discern a corpse. Just a lot of dark-red splatters mixed in with the rotting trash. Perhaps that purple was her organs. Her military-grade flashlight was there as well. It was battered and gummed up with a bright-red fluid. 

“Hmph…” 

Even upon seeing what was left behind, with matted hairs and blood sticking to the unidentifiable mass, Komaba’s face remained stoic. 

Then, in a tone that still sounded like a printer droning on, he said, “What a shame. It ended before I had to bring my real weapon out…” 

4 

Accelerator silenced the Skill-Out group in ten minutes, as he said he would. 

He hadn’t been using his ability the whole time, though. 

In the first moment, he’d manipulated the atmosphere to produce a gust of wind traveling at over fifty meters per second, sending all the enemies toppling to the ground. Then, with the group’s movements thrown into chaos, he’d cut his ability and put bullets into them. Whenever one looked like they were going to counterattack, he preemptively created another blast of wind, disabling them before silencing them with a bullet. He repeated it over and over. 

It was an easy win, with ten whole minutes allocated for it. On top of that, his total ability-usage time hadn’t even reached thirty seconds yet. 

His fight against the Hound Dogs led by Amata Kihara had shown him how much of a weakness his electrode’s battery was. Accelerator had needed to learn how to conserve it. 

“Let’s see. Wonder where this Ritoku Komaba I’ve heard so much about is. Don’t tell me he happened to be mixed in with these punks.” 

Accelerator put his hand to his neck and turned off the electrode. After looking around and spotting no more enemies, he continued down the alleyway. 

He’d planned to mow anything and everything down with gale-force winds, but after walking merely a hundred meters farther, he saw rusted metal trash starting to dot the scenery again, with the multicolored vinyl sheets blocking out the blue skies. 

Abruptly, Accelerator stopped moving, shifting his weight on his crutch. 

Musujime’s explosions, which had been going off in the distance for some time, finally stopped. 

“Great. Her quota’s filled already? Can’t believe I’m doing overtime by myself,” he murmured, shaking his head with a sigh. 

“In that case,” came an abrupt voice, “why don’t I let you take a break?” 

A little farther down the narrow alley was what seemed to be an active construction site. It was little more than an assembly of girders, looking like a jungle gym, and on one of its middle floors—the fourth floor—stood a large, gorilla-like man. 

When the man spoke, all that came out was a flat voice that sounded like the whispering paper slipping out of a printer. “Accelerator… You’re quite the celebrity… But to think you’d become the General Board’s lapdog and let them deploy you on such a trivial crackdown operation…” 

“That must make you Ritoku Komaba,” said Accelerator, looking up at the steel frame. “Might as well ask. Why’d you put this plan together?” 

“You ask Skill-Out’s reasons for destroying espers… The answer’s not all that interesting.” 

“Pff. The way you talk… Sounds like you’re not only planning on wrecking the city but attacking people indiscriminately.” 

“It’s not indiscriminate… We do have enough decency to pick and choose our targets, you know…” 

“You seem pretty relaxed. Do you know the kind of situation you’re in?” 

“Earlier…there was a woman who said something similar,” Komaba noted, taking something tucked under his pants belt before casually tossing it down from the framework. 

It was a military-grade flashlight, covered in blood. 

With a loud clack-clack-clack, it struck several of the beams on the lower floors, then finally fell to the asphalt, shattering both its protective glass and the electric bulb inside. 

“I killed her.” 

“…” The simply spoken phrase made Accelerator go quiet for a moment. 

Instead, it was Komaba who frowned. “You’ve gone soft… Nothing like the stories I’ve heard… You’ve really changed, then. Those living in the shadows would normally never hesitate here… She stood in the way, and so now there is another person dead. Worrying over what to do with her corpse is what a third-rate operator would do.” 

“You don’t say?” murmured Accelerator, giving a slight grin. “But did you know this? Any shithead who stands in my way—normally, they turn into mincemeat.” 

Grinning, Accelerator put his hand on the switch of the electrode around his neck. 

“Heh…” Komaba breathed out, seemingly without meaning to. “If you’re going to show off…you might as well have gotten ready beforehand…” 

“Do you even know who you’re talking to? I’m Academy City’s strongest Level Five.” 

“And confronting monsters like you is Skill-Out’s way of life.” 

Komaba used his own index finger to tap at his neck. 

“That electrode… It’s sending and receiving some kind of electronic signal, isn’t it?” 

Accelerator cursed and flicked the electrode’s switch. 

He executed a vector change on his leg strength. Smashing the asphalt at his feet, in a breath he soared with the force of a rocket toward the fourth floor, where Komaba stood. 

But Komaba was faster. 

He took out something that looked like a spray can from his inside pocket and launched it with a whiplike kick. The kick was far more forceful than any normal man seemed capable of, and it shredded the can, scattering its contents into the air. 

They glittered, even in the dimly lit back alley: thin metallic strips, each piece the size of a stick of mechanical-pencil graphite. All of them had two thin wings, making the strips look like incredibly small helicopter rotors. 

Hundreds of metallic strips whirled slowly like bamboo copters, hovering in midair. 

“…Chaff Seed, a weapon that jams electric signals. They use a micro-motor and work off the concept of how Dipterocarpaceae seeds native to southeast Asia float in the air,” Komaba explained, his face still stoic. “I originally got it to disrupt radio waves…to get rid of those bratty Judgment kids.” 

“…!!” With a jolt, Accelerator’s upward momentum abruptly dropped. 

Without reaching the fourth floor where Komaba stood, Accelerator plunged onto the steel frame of the third floor below. 

And then, as though the minimum reflection he always had active was gone as well, a shooting pain spread through Accelerator’s back. 

“Gh…ah?!” he grunted in spite of himself. Unfortunately, he had no time to writhe in pain. 

“I saw something similar…a little while ago.” 

Accelerator looked up with a start at the dispassionate voice he heard from above. 

“The attacker using teleportation had similar machines on her shoulders… I’m sure the systems are different, and I don’t know why you would need to equip them… But things like that are usually designed to assist your ability, correct?” 

A shadow fell over Accelerator. 

Komaba had descended from the fourth floor, his legs held together, aiming for Accelerator’s gut. 

If he took an attack like that, his internal organs would rupture. 

He still held his gun, but a bullet wouldn’t stop the giant plummeting toward him. 

“Bastard!!” 

Giving up on offense, Accelerator drew his limbs in close and rolled backward like a ball across the narrow steel beam. 

Komaba’s feet slammed down into the spot Accelerator was in just a moment before with a dull metallic echo. Gonnng!! 

Accelerator stopped his roll, then used one hand to raise up his gun and open fire. But his adversary dodged two or three bullets just by swinging his upper body out of the way. Komaba wasn’t looking at the bullets themselves, but simply moving to avoid wherever the muzzle aimed. 

Spent casings fell to the ground far below, smelling like fireworks. 

“…How crude.” Komaba’s smile widened. “If your ability was working properly, you wouldn’t need to rely on a gun…nor avoid my attack at all.” 

This piece of shit. In that case, I’ll just blow a hole right through your torso! That’ll stop you!! 

Accelerator clenched his teeth and tried to readjust his aim. 

“Hmph… Careful you don’t get thrown off,” Komaba said as he dropped his legs straight down, causing the steel framework on the third floor to crack and break like tree branches. 

…?! This leg strength is…!! 

This wasn’t an attack someone unarmed could pull off, and Komaba was a Level Zero. That must have meant he was using some kind of gear to boost him. 

“…Guh!!” 

With the narrow, already unstable foothold tipping diagonally, Accelerator’s aim veered far away from Komaba. And before he could swing it back on target, Komaba’s enormous frame dove toward Accelerator. 

Still can’t…use my power?! 

The countless Chaff Seeds glittering at the corners of his eyes were still floating in midair, spinning like bamboo copters. They completely saturated the area, so just batting a few away wouldn’t get him out of this situation. 

He cursed as the man named Ritoku Komaba approached. 

Fwoom!! 

The wind howled. 

Komaba had crossed several meters in the blink of an eye, even with unsteady footing. 

And then— 

Using his unyielding legs, he attacked with a kick that could crush Accelerator flat. 

“…!!” Accelerator immediately twisted, but the kick struck his gun, sending it tumbling below. Komaba must have been after the weapon the entire time. Accelerator couldn’t have reacted to that speed. 

“…Paint the walls red.” 

And this time, Komaba pulled his own gun from his pants belt. Two fat magazines were stuck into the gun in front of the trigger. A large gun with an odd shape. 

Accelerator wouldn’t be able to dodge something like this just by swinging his head to the side. 

Damn it!! 

Making up his mind, Accelerator sent himself into a sideways roll, falling from the steel beam. 

Next was the second floor. 

But since he’d dived without looking below him, he messed up the timing of his landing and crashed into the beams without properly breaking his fall. Because of that, he fell down another floor with a dull bang! 

He’d gotten cushioned once during the drop, but he’d still dropped from the third floor all the way to the ground. The pain was far too terrible for him to grit his teeth and bear it. In fact, it hit Accelerator all the harder because he’d never trained himself physically, as he always relied on his ability. 

“Graaaaah!!” screamed Accelerator, holding his shoulder. 

Komaba ignored his cry and pulled the trigger. 

Accelerator managed to somehow avoid the bullets by rolling across the grimy ground. 

The power of the bullets Komaba had fired was insane. They penetrated steel beams in the way, making the thick metal explode from within. Transformed into so many tiny fragments, the shrapnel poured down on Accelerator from above. He rolled evasively again, but they still sliced his skin up. 

“Tsk!!” 

Searching for something, Accelerator’s eyes darted across the ground. 

…! There it is!! 

Then he grabbed the gun Komaba’s kick had sent hurtling from above. 

He rolled faceup, took aim at the steel framework above, and pulled the trigger. 

Bang!! came the sharp discharge. 

But Komaba wasn’t there. The bullet, shooting through empty space, struck the edge of one of the vinyl sheets blotting out the sky. It fluttered wildly into the air. He must have blown off whatever was holding it down. 

“…Checkmate…” 

He heard the monotone voice that only formed words mechanically from diagonally above him, in his blind spot. Komaba had evidently already moved to another beam. 

“I’ll give you one last choice… Where do you want the killing shot to be?” 

“…A smart weapon, huh?” Accelerator grumbled bitterly, though he wouldn’t be able to move his own gun in this situation. 

Komaba’s voice rang from outside his vision. “This smart weapon of mine uses infrared waves…to accurately measure a target’s composition, density, hardness, and distance… Then it chooses the optimal charge of gunpowder for the target’s destruction… The synthetic resin hardens, instantly forming a bullet. It can penetrate pure steel—or lodge a round in a block of tofu. If you have a preferred way to die, tell me quickly… I’m confident I can create most kinds of corpses with manual control…” 

“How about that?” Accelerator murmured. 

If he fell here, Komaba would ruin communication lines by exploiting a hole in the code orange alert, then take advantage of the chaos to launch indiscriminate attacks on all espers in the vicinity. But that would yield no real results. Skill-Out’s strength, in the end, would not be enough to take over all of Academy City. 

That was why their violence would stray far from their original targets, changing instead to appropriate “enemies” that even they could defeat. 

Toward “enemies” that were easier to handle, instead of the ones they truly despised: the Level Fives and the General Board. 

The skin on Accelerator’s face crawled. 

The law of dark alleys, built not on good and evil but on strength and weakness. Being presented with that once again made Accelerator’s insides churn in pain. It was all too familiar to him; he wanted to vomit. And in order to fight against this, he had parted ways with the world of light and jumped headfirst into Group. 

Accelerator gritted his teeth. 

…Was this how he planned to lead Skill-Out? 

Your habit of being cautious when other people say nice things to you is one you want to keep, I think. Especially if you know how much what you’re protecting is worth. 

…Was this how he planned to rejoice in crimes done for his benefit? 

…It may not look pretty, but all you can do is pay it back one coin at a time. Eventually, your efforts will open the way for you. If anything, unlike me, you have the strength. There are plenty of ways for you to repay it all at once. 

…Was this how he planned to bring misfortune to innocent people, one by one? 

I’m back, says Misaka says Misaka, giving the proper greeting… Ow! Why do you keep karate chopping me like that?! cries Misaka cries Misaka in an exaggerated fashion, cradling her head!! 

Was he going to utterly undermine the happiness of others just so he could be satisfied and blow off some steam? 

“Get the hell out of here with that garbage.” 

With those words as a signal, bullets leaped from the muzzles of two guns. 

5 

And so, the battle was decided. 

The results were clearer than fire. Accelerator’s ability was blocked by the metallic Chaff Seeds scattered through the air, and his lifeline, his gun, was pointed in an entirely different direction from his target, Komaba. 

On top of that, Ritoku Komaba had been pointing his smart weapon’s muzzle right at him from a blind spot. A perfect checkmate, in chess terms. In their current positions, Accelerator’s attack would not reach, and the enemy’s would take his life without question. 

One bullet ripped into soft flesh. 

The smart weapon’s projectile tore through his side with a crunch. Even the remnants of clothing that peeled off were covered in blood, before entering gravity’s hold, not even permitted to float, and falling to the ground like raindrops. 

A moment later, a searing pain ran through him. 

But he couldn’t even put a hand to his wound. 

“Why…?” he murmured naturally. 

The taste of blood spread through his mouth, and eventually, the red fluid began to seep from the edges of his lips. 

“…Why has your reflection come back?” 

Looking at Komaba, who was coughing up blood while still up on his vantage point atop the steel framework, Accelerator, lying flat on the dirty ground, smiled thinly. 

“What are you, an idiot?” 

His smile was thin, ultimately thin, exceedingly thin—the very definition of the word. 

It was like someone had sliced open his face with a razor blade. A smile hungry for blood. 

“Chaff jams signals by scattering fragments of metal in the air. It’s pretty simple to fix. I just had to move the drifting metal strips. By giving it ventilation, for example.” 

“…That… Wait…” 

Komaba looked overhead. 

One of the colorful vinyl sheets they’d strung up between buildings to shield them from satellite surveillance had flapped completely upward—because of Accelerator’s bullet having blown off the clasp. 

Because of the sudden draft of wind that had blown in, the Chaff Seed formation ended up thinning out. The winglike pieces were able to stay in place to some degree, but they weren’t advanced enough to resist such a strong gust of wind. What had once been a tight, uniform distribution of chaff now had a gaping hole. 

“Anyway.” 

Bam!! came the sound of something hitting the ground. 

Accelerator, lying faceup, must have transformed vectors somehow or other—because he rose up like a doorframe swinging open. 

“For a Level Zero, you got guts pickin’ a fight with a Level Five! Show me that again, eh?!” 

“…Damn!!” 

Komaba sluggishly reached for his inside pocket. Special gun, unrelenting leg strength—it didn’t matter what it was. With Accelerator’s vector-transforming abilities back in play, Komaba had no chance of winning, no matter what he tried. 

Which meant he was probably trying to spread some more Chaff Seed around, then use the chance to withdraw and regroup. 

“Too slow, idiot!!” 

Accelerator kicked a pebble by his feet. 

That was all he did. 

Nevertheless, the vector-transformed pebble traveled as fast as a bullet and shot straight through Komaba’s palm. Crunch!! came the noise, finally, a moment after his hand’s flesh had burst. 

“Gaaahhhhhhh?!” 

Komaba dropped the container of Chaff Seed and keeled over, clutching at his ruined wrist. But when he did, he lost his balance. Still hunched over, he began to fall from the third story of the steel framework. 

It would take more than that to kill Komaba. He had the leg strength to bend steel beams. As long as he could regain his balance, it would be simple to make a gentle landing on the ground. 

But that was exactly why Accelerator showed no mercy. 

“Ha-ha! Let me have some more fun!!” 

Boom!! Transforming his own leg-strength vector, Accelerator shot forward like a rocket. Then he grabbed Komaba’s side just as he was about to land and slammed the large man as hard as he could into the nearest steel beam. 

The attack had even involved Accelerator transforming Komaba’s descent vector, redirecting it to send him straight ahead. 

The impacted thick steel beam warped unnaturally with a kreee!! Komaba’s huge frame twitched and trembled. The contents of his pocket, including his phone and spare Chaff canisters, scattered all over the ground. 

“Gh…rgh…?!” 

Komaba coughed up blood, but right as it was about to hit Accelerator’s face, it splashed out to the sides, not a single drop of it sticking to him. 

Even that, he rejected. 

“And that’s checkmate. Bet you can’t even feel your lower body anymore.” 

“Urgh…” 

“I’ll give you props for not letting go of your smart weapon during all that. If you still want to have at me, then go for it. Watching that kind of suicidal behavior is amusing all its own.” 

As Accelerator spoke, he still grasped his target’s side, dangling it, the edges of his lips turning up. 

“Level Zeroes may be pretty weak, but that doesn’t make a person evil.” 

So that he could relish the act of sullying even this man’s final moments. 

“You guys only get treated like pains in the ass because Skill Out and other people like you are making fools of yourselves. Gaining rights? Securing safety? You morons. You never noticed how your own actions tightened the noose around your neck?” 

“…Heh.” 

Despite his teeth being dyed completely red, Komaba laughed. 

“Let me…ask you something.” 

He laughed in a voice that sounded like he was coughing up printer paper. 

“What if there were rotten espers who recently picked up the fad…of attacking harmless Level Zeroes, as you call them…without reason… What would you do?” 

Accelerator’s brow furrowed, unamused. 

“Issues of character are never factored into one’s merits as an esper… Some of them are horrid creatures, beings who want nothing but to gloat and wield their immense power on the weak… I’ve seen several, dozens, of espers for whom that is their only talent…” 

Komaba wasn’t even begging for his life; he was just looking Accelerator dead in the eyes as he spoke. 

Skill-Out. 

The original reason for their formation was to protect people from powerful espers. 

“Let’s say, for instance…that it became a fad for people like them to attack Level Zeroes outside Skill-Out’s ranks just to one-up one another… What would you do?” 

Something on the ground glowed. 

It was his phone; he must have dropped it when Accelerator had slammed him into the steel beam. The flip phone had opened up from the impact of its landing, and the screen had blinked on, coming out of standby mode. 

On the home screen was a low-resolution photograph. 

It showed a small girl, about elementary school age, and Ritoku Komaba, standing by her with an uncomfortable look. 

The very ideas of back-alley and Skill-Out had no place in that peaceful scene. 

Or perhaps it was something Komaba had endeavored to cut himself off from. 

This bastard… 

The reorganization of Skill-Out. 

The goal of the incident—and its results. 

That photo Komaba carried with him. 

“I knew if I kept acting out, things would eventually end up like this, but…” 

Accelerator looked up again at the voice. 

“…In the end, you showed me something great. That will have to be enough…” 

Komaba watched Accelerator’s expression, then smiled, his mouth covered with blood. 

What had Komaba just gained from the change in the Level Five’s face? 

With sluggish motions, Komaba placed the muzzle of his gun right up between Accelerator’s eyes. 

“It seems…that you and I…are in a similar position.” 

There was no hesitation in Komaba’s face. 

“A souvenir. Carve this pathetic sight into your heart.” 

Bang!! A gunshot rang out. 

Accelerator’s reflection made no exceptions. The bullet bounced back, plunging into the smart weapon’s barrel, shattering the entire metal weapon to pieces from within, then continuing on its straight trajectory toward Komaba’s face. And then his face was gone. Something hit the ground with a graphic splurtch. The torn-off pieces looked like a rice bowl dish without the edges. A crude container sprouting skin and hair, made only to hold in a brain. 

Accelerator witnessed it from point-blank range. 

From a position closer than anyone else. 

“…” 

He let go. 

The body fell to the ground, its limbs bending awkwardly until the whole thing collapsed. It wouldn’t be saying anything more. There would no longer be any resistance from this man who had stood in his way as such a troublesome enemy. 

That marked the end of his job. 

His first mission had ended smoothly. 

6 

“Excellent work,” said Mitsuki Unabara over the phone. “Transporting the corpse, destroying the evidence—we’ll collect the spent casings and bloodstains. I’ll also send the black collection vehicle to give you a ride back.” 

“Don’t bother,” said Accelerator shortly, gripping the phone. “I’ll get back on my own. Don’t need any favors from you bastards.” 

“Feel free, but please avoid running into anyone you know. It’s important for us to blend in; standing out will only cause problems. It would be against the interests of everyone, not just us.” 

“Quit saying everything like you’re better than me. I’ll kill you,” Accelerator threatened offhandedly before hanging up. 

…Chaff, eh? I’ll need a way to counteract artificial EM interference. Maybe I could carry around bombs or something that would blow away anything in the air that shouldn’t be there? 

Internally considering what he’d have to do in the future, he looked at the filthy ground one more time. 

There lay Ritoku Komaba’s corpse, the upper-half portion of his face gone. And the military-grade flashlight, which had been rendered unusable from the impact of its fall. 

Accelerator snorted, unamused. “I know you’re alive, Awaki Musujime,” he declared. 

He heard the clacking of footsteps from deeper into the alleyway. 

“I watched part of the show through a building window… When did you notice me?” 

“Hmph. It was completely obvious.” 

It had been right after he’d dropped himself to the second floor of the steel framework to avoid Komaba’s gunfire. 

Once Accelerator had landed on the ground, he’d picked up his gun, which had fallen earlier, and begun his counterattack. There was just one thing that was strange. Only a moment of inspection was necessary to realize it had simply been too convenient. The moment he fell down, his gun had been right next to him, within arm’s reach, something that should have been impossible in any other circumstance. Musujime had used her Move Point ability to bring it close to him ahead of time. 

“You’re such a damn pain…” 

“Oh? Is that how you talk to someone who just saved your life?” 

“…You want me to kill you or something?” 

“I should say the same to you.” 

Musujime offered a thin smile, then brought her face close enough that he could feel her breath. 

Her eyelids were opened wide as dinner plates. 

“Are you forgetting something? The only reason I’m in a place like this to begin with is because you stuck your nose in places it didn’t belong that day. If not for you, I would have gone back into hiding, regrouped, and organized arms and personnel again. And then I might have been able to attack the detention facility and rescue my comrades.” Musujime spoke slowly, a thin smile splitting straight across her face. “Heh. Heh-heh. If you use that power to help me and contribute to Group, and that leads to the freedom of my comrades, then sure, I’ll forgive you. But if you hold me back, in any way, you’re dead. Try not to undercut your own worth any more than you already have. Otherwise, I’ll impale your whole body with corkscrews.” 

“You sure know how to bark, woman,” answered Accelerator like she’d said something ridiculous, cracking his neck. “I should ask you if you really understand this. You’re nothing more than luggage I demolished in a single attack, so don’t get cocky. Get that through that malfunctioning brain of yours. If you waste even a second of my life, I’ll use you to paint the alley.” 

“…” 

“…” 

The two glared at each other for a short time, but then a car horn went off several times in quick succession. The black collection vehicle must have reached the entrance of the alley. 

“What a waste of time,” Accelerator spat. 

“You got that right.” Musujime nodded smoothly, backing off. 

This wasn’t the right moment. 

“How’d you trick Komaba?” 

“It was actually pretty easy. The sheer power of his kick wouldn’t have left behind a corpse to begin with. I used a dumpster as a shield. It was from the back of a restaurant. They used it to discard pig bones and organs and stuff. 

“I did throw up somewhere in the middle, though, since I had to move my own body with Move Point,” she added. 

She told him that to add to the detail, she’d pulled out some of her own hair and wrapped it around the flashlight. She’d probably used Move Point to cut the hair, too. Despite being able to pull off such delicate handiwork, she wasn’t able to move her own body very easily. 

“…A dumpster with viscera in it just happened to be nearby? You’ve got the devil’s luck.” 

“Yes. If I’d been unlucky, I would’ve used a different shield. Like a Skill-Out member. I consider myself fortunate that I didn’t have to resort to that.” Musujime picked up her military-grade flashlight from next to the corpse. “You did a good job breaking him,” she said, sounding bored. “Unabara got in touch with you, right? What did he say?” 

“To go back on the dump truck. That was what the car horns were, right?” 

“Yes. My collection point was a little far away, huh?” 

“You stay here and take the truck instead of me. I’ll get back on my own.” 

Musujime frowned dubiously at that. “Oh. Where might you be stopping by? It’s a little early for lunch, I think.” 

“That candy-ass man asked the same thing. It’s nothing important.” 

Accelerator held another phone in his hands. 

A plastic model, one that was no longer covered in blood. 

On the home screen was the picture of a little girl smiling. 

He pressed a few buttons and found several phone numbers. 

They were tagged as LEVEL ZEROES IN DANGER OF ATTACK. 

Accelerator ran his eyes down the list. 

As he did, he relaxed and said, “Just overtime. Unpaid overtime.”