Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament

Volume 5, Chapter 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You - Travel.

Part 1

Kamijou Touma forgot to breathe.

It happened instantly.

After blinking his eyes once, the middle school girl, Shirai Kuroko, was standing in front of him. He was lucky to even remember the word “teleportation” in that time. But if he relied on that, he would only make things worse for everyone.

The Imagine Breaker power in his right hand would interfere with the teleportation.

So instead, he pushed Alice forward from his lap and raised his voice.

“Go!! Take Alice!”

He didn’t have time to wait for Shirai’s response.

His action must have caught her by surprise because she flinched before she and Alice vanished into thin air. A terrifying roar and impact followed. Kamijou was in the café on the 2nd floor of the Delivery Go Round’s 9th car, but the force of the impact traveled from the flattened first car all the way to the last car in an instant, lifting his feet from the floor. He really was thrown all the way to the neighboring 8th car before he hit the floor again.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He rolled through what looked like a deserted childcare center, breaking through and scattering a plastic jungle gym and slide before coming to a stop.

He had trouble breathing.

He couldn’t believe the horror before his eyes.

But his shock did not come from the pain piercing his body.

“Th-the chicken…” he groaned, forgetting to get up from the floor.

His reusable shopping bag had been thrown from him and the sales items he had bought with his last remaining money were scattered across the floor. The plastic wrap had burst, the soft tray had broken, and the contents were cruelly splattered around. The oatmeal spread across the floor was already soaking up the moisture and getting soggy.

“Eh? Eh? The radish broke? And there’s shards of glass in it all. Wait, why were there mice on this train!? And what is that smushed against the wall there…red cabbage? Nooooo!! The big hard clams were cheaper than the normal ones, but now they’re all broken! And so is the miracle 90yen pack of eggs!? Ah, ahh. Gwaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

Holding his head and wailing wasn’t going to change reality.

Clear tears fell from the corners of his eyes.

That was it. He was going to die. He had failed his attempt at the New Year’s Tokyo survival life. He didn’t have it in him to accept this cruel reality. He only had 49 yen left in his wallet, so how was he supposed to replace all of this? How many times had he mentioned that the ATMs didn’t start back up until January 4!? How would he survive the New Year’s season now? Was he going to have to starve starting today!?

He heard a racket from outside.

“Argh!! These people after the high bounties are just getting in the way. Go move them over into a corner or something! We will pursue the fugitives. Uiharu, you check through the camera records and try to track them down that way as best you can!!”

“…”

Kamijou Touma sat up in the deserted space.

Just before the crash, that twintails girl had mentioned a prisoner transport train. And based on her panicked voice, some of the prisoners onboard must have escaped.

That had been the purpose behind the entire incident.

He took a look out the window and nodded.

He didn’t know who they were, but he would make sure they died for this.

And there was a high bounty on their heads? Then he would use that to build himself a house out of chicken and green onion!!

He grabbed just the can of caviar that had survived with only a few dings and stood up like a man possessed.

He was on the second floor of the train, but the metal stairs down appeared to have been destroyed. But he didn’t care. He just needed to reach the platform. He rushed toward a fully broken window.

“I-I am giving them such a punching,” he muttered to himself. “Someone needs to teach them life doesn’t reward food wasterrrrrrrrrrs!!!!!!”

His rage and sorrow exploded out as a great roar and he didn’t even hesitate to jump out the 2nd floor window to the station platform below.

Except the platform was gone.

“Eh?”

This he hadn’t expected.

His mind went blank, but he couldn’t change his course in midair regardless.

“Um, excuse me!?”

The floor below had crumbled away, leaving a hole large enough to swallow up a small truck. He had lost sight of his landing point, but before he could do anything more, gravity took hold and dragged him down toward the pit of hell.

He screamed as he felt his stomach rising.

“Gyahhhhhhhhh!!”

He probably fell two stories’ worth.

The length of the fall had suddenly grown on him like he had casually hopped over a hurdle to find it was actually a balcony railing.

He might break a bone or two from this.

The fear took hold, but then he hit something with a sticky splat.

“???”

He had…survived?

But what was this? With the floor broken through, he had assumed he would find jagged rubble below, but he instead found a pile of black sludge. He appreciated it since it had cushioned his fall, but he would have preferred something he could identify.

(Does this mean the platform melted? You have got to be kidding me. That thing is made of concrete and a steel frame. This isn’t harmful to touch, is it!?)

After some struggling, he managed to extract himself from the sludge pile and rolled away from it.

The regret rushed in after the fact.

When stranded on a mountain or in other emergencies, people’s stress and exhaustion would give them extreme tunnel vision and they would make overly optimistic predictions. For example, they wouldn’t want to be stuck out in the dark after sunset, so they might think they could make their way down the slope if they felt along the nearby trees and watched their step. But if they actually attempted it, they would end up slipping and falling off a cliff.

In hindsight, jumping from the Delivery Go Round’s 2nd floor window just because the stairs were blocked had been a dumb decision. There had to have been plenty of better options, like moving to the next car and searching for some surviving stairs.

The station platform was on an upper level to match the height of the elevated railway, so the lower level was a clean station concourse containing accessways and shops.

However, the number of customers and employees in evidence was unnaturally low.

Was that due to the break alert? The strange sort of convenience store only found in train stations, the standing soba shop, and the mall-like sales area that combined a gift shop with a bento shop were all abandoned. The excessive number of lights felt unusually bright. The way the automatic glass doors opened on their own and the way an announcement repeatedly asked an empty café to download their official app only made the place feel lonelier.

It wasn’t just the train.

Was something still underway on a large enough scale to affect the entire station building?

“…”

Kamijou gulped.

He waved at the security camera on the ceiling, but there was no sign of any adults coming running.

A special train had crashed and the criminals contained inside had escaped. That was enough to sound like a minor fantasy to a high schooler like him, but what if that hadn’t been a coincidence? The station platform was melted. He didn’t know if an esper power or some kind of technology was to blame, but if someone wanted to make sure they escaped, would they really rely on that alone?

(This sounds bad. Maybe I should have stayed put and waited for Alice and that Judgment girl.)

If the culprit had managed to set up this accident, couldn’t they have hidden some tools inside the building? Or maybe they had emergency kits hidden across all 23 districts of the city?

Those could contain money, a change of clothes, false IDs…and maybe even deadly weapons.

He heard a sound.

He could tell the burden on his heart right now was bad for his health.

He was scared. But trying to ignore this would only cause the anxiety in his chest to grow. He slowly turned around and tiptoed toward the sound, being careful not to make any noise. He passed through a gift shop laid out like a luxury supermarket and reached a corner of the corridor. He was pretty sure the sound had come from around that corner. He bit his lip and hesitantly peeked around it.

He saw some coin-operated lockers lined up on the wall.

A girl of about 10 with long black hair stood facing them. But the sound had not been her opening and closing one of the thin metal doors. He could see her pulling a flat business bag from the gap between the bookcase-like sets of lockers.

What was she doing? Why hadn’t she run away with everyone else?

She set the bag on the floor, checked its contents, and then reached for her clothes. It looked like a thick work jumpsuit, but it wasn’t. By the time Kamijou realized that was a prison uniform, she had stripped it off in the middle of the station corridor.

He instinctually looked away from her carelessly exposed skin, but then realized now wasn’t the time to be a gentleman.

He had seen something more concerning.

(What is that? A gasmask and a white coat stained with paint?)

When she put on the coat and fastened the collar so it covered a chest unusually large for her height, it weirdly looked sort of like a yukata. She wore the gasmask on the side of her head like a mask at a shrine festival.

Then she pulled out several test tubes filled with colorful liquids.

He didn’t know what those were, but he could easily imagine they were dangerous chemicals.

It may have been one of them that had melted the steel and concrete station platform into black sludge. This girl had been wearing a prison uniform. He didn’t know what crime had gotten her a ride on that prisoner transport train, but he doubted it was safe to directly sniff at those chemicals. And if they really were only chemicals, then Imagine Breaker wouldn’t be any help.

He couldn’t afford to underestimate her just because she only looked to be 10. A gun held by a baby in a stroller was still a gun and a grenade thrown by an old man with a cane was still a grenade. A tool’s power was a constant, so the correct choice here was to remember her location and get away from here. Then he could pull out his phone and tell Anti-Skill or Judgment what he had seen.

He was nervous, but he was afraid to even gulp.

He held his breath and tried to calmly take a step back.

His butt bumped into something in this deserted world.

“Teacher☆”

“Kyahhhhhhhhh!!!???”

He screamed and immediately regretted it.

Smiling Alice stuck out her small arms and grabbed at him from behind while the mystery chemical girl spun around at the lockers.

The situation was on the move.

And it was headed in a deadly direction.

Part 2

Shirai Kuroko had only taken her eyes off her for a second.

(Argh, where did that blonde girl go!?)

Panic filled her on the station platform.

As much as she disliked that wretched ape, he had left that girl in her care.

She finally heard some sirens approaching in the distance. She had been doing paperwork in the station by pure chance, so it was going to take a while before Anti-Skill could get to work preserving the scene. There was probably an Anti-Skill station in a train station this large, but they were probably overwhelmed helping people evacuate.

The crash between the Overhunting prisoner transport train and the Delivery Go Round shopping train was horrific to behold. The shopping train in particular had a few of its cars bent upwards like an inchworm and its platform doors had broken so they jutted outwards.

She had to try to find the ape who had been left onboard, but at the same time…

“Uiharu, start up a new priority task and share this information with Anti-Skill and Judgment! Put in a search request for a girl named Alice!! She looked to be around 12, she has long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she is wearing what appears to be a costume dress. A short-sleeved dress despite the season. I can’t let her be forgotten in the confusion!!”

“Eh?” replied the girl on the phone. “Can’t you give me a photo, Shirai-san?”

“If you need one, find it in the station or train’s surviving camera footage! It’s too dangerous to leave her unsupervised here!!”

The Overhunting was going to gather most of the attention since it carried dangerous prisoners, but the Delivery Go Round included a café, a restaurant, and even a spa with hoses to supply its hot water, so it was packed full of flammable materials. She couldn’t ignore the crashed train either.

(She didn’t return to the train to search for her friend, did she?)

It seemed unlikely, but it was still a possibility. Shirai couldn’t delay the search and then have the girl get caught in a gas explosion. She carefully walked along the platform and checked through the broken windows to see if anyone was onboard.

Her efforts were wasted and she found no one.

Not Alice and not the ape.

She didn’t notice any sounds or heat sources either.

After walking far enough along the platform, she moved past the Delivery Go Round and reached the Overhunting that had crashed into it. She tilted her head, but if those two weren’t in the shopping train, they may have gone elsewhere.

“Uiharu, what data do you have on the Overhunting?”

“Pretty much just the name. Wow, it’s like the entire train just popped into existence today.”

The front car had been crushed like an empty can, but she heard someone groaning from the driver’s compartment. The damage to the platform door actually helped her here. She couldn’t tell how crushed things were inside, so she couldn’t teleport in. Instead, she searched around the door until she found the emergency release lever.

It didn’t do anything when she turned it, but the heavy metal clunk told her where the hinges were located. She pulled two metal darts from the belts on her thighs and teleported them to destroy the metal hinges. The bent door collapsed out onto the platform.

She pulled the two drivers out and noticed two black synthetic leather holsters at their hips. Those held handcuffs and revolvers.

(They don’t look like Anti-Skill who would be authorized to carry those.)

“Uiharu.”

“I already said I don’t have any data for you.”

The young man groaned and provided a report.

“Ugh…this is a special prisoner transport train.”

“I am aware. You were carrying Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, and Benizome Jellyfish. They were all survivors of Operation Handcuffs, weren’t they? I am from Judgement. I was called here to provide support.”

“I can stand on my own. Please help me organize what information we have. Ow.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. We suddenly lost control of the train. It is true the Overhunting is special and prioritizes manual control over the ordinary ATS system, but that’s why it has multiple safety devices like the air brakes and the EM brakes.”

(EM brakes?)

The older woman was still unconscious. After checking her pulse and breathing, Shirai lay her down on a platform bench and wrapped something like a thick plastic zip tie around the woman’s wrist like a watch. It was a rescue tag that shared its GSP data with the firefighters. The presence of the gun was worrying, but it appeared to be fixed to her with a special strap. Just to be safe, Shirai removed the ammunition, borrowed a tool from the young man, removed the firing hammer from the gun itself, and left it all with the younger driver. She didn’t like leaving it with him, but her training and education weren’t enough to let her carry around a gun and live ammunition.

“Y-you seem awfully comfortable with this,” said the young man.

“I use more dangerous projectiles.”

The Overhunting’s special design could be seen in how everything but the first car remained relatively intact. She even saw some prison guards slowly emerging onto the platform. She was afraid the strange weapon cars would explode, but that fear never came to pass.

(Her name was Alice, wasn’t it? It seems unlikely she would have snuck aboard the prisoner transport train, but you can never say anything for certain when it comes to a curious child.)

“The prisoners were only on the 4th and 5th cars,” groaned the younger driver with a hand on his head.

“Not what I wanted to hear. Those doors appear to be open.”

She checked inside and found a few wheeled cages that reminded her of the ones used to transport animals. Their locked doors sat open and the floor was littered with handcuffs, fetters, and other restraints.

They must have all escaped.

The destruction of the first car had cushioned the rest of the train enough that the prisoners had the strength needed to escape.

Shirai Kuroko checked each name on the tags pasted to the cages.

Rakuoka Houfu, Hanatsuyu Youen, Benizome Jellyfish.

She narrowed her eyes while picturing the criminals who had been aboard the Overhunting. Each of them had played an important role in Operation Handcuffs.

(Rakuoka.)

She bit her lip.

That former Anti-Skill officer had ultimately been arrested as part of the harmful dark side. During Operation Handcuffs, the bitterness had built in her chest the longer she pursued the criminals with him.

He too had escaped the prisoner transport train.

Had he seen it as an opportunity?

But Shirai made the rational decision.

“No, he isn’t the biggest threat. That would be Hanatsuyu Youen the Carrier, who uses other lifeforms to transport harmful substances.”

“Th-three hundred million? Her bounty is well above the rest.” The younger driver stared at the tablet he had kept in an industrial shock-resistant case. The disbelief in his voice told Shirai he had not witnessed Handcuffs. She wouldn’t have wanted to get involved for a hundred times that much.

He looked up with confusion written on his face.

“But she’s only a 10-year-old girl and doesn’t have any special esper power?”

“Did you miss what I said about her using other lifeforms?”

Shirai Kuroko pointed at the large hole in the platform a short distance away. She recognized the dark melted structure. The Carrier had not waited around for law enforcement to make the first move.

“Mosquitos, fleas, ticks, flies, hornets, snakes, rats, crows, stray dogs, black bass, snapping turtles - the list goes on. That monster can control most any urban pest or vermin. That means her weapons are found in every part of the city and her supply is near limitless. With her, you can never assume she has been neutralized just because you have confiscated all of her tools. In a way, she uses the city itself as a weapon.”

“…”

“And there is no controlling her once she has the attractants needed to control animals and the highly toxic chemicals and microbes those animals can carry. The real problem is that she might be able to create those things from the exhaust gasses and waste waters found across the city. If you don’t want that biochemical warfare specialist committing war crimes throughout the city, you need to set up a blockade to keep her from-”

Shirai never finished her sentence.

The platform and the entire station building around it shook violently.

She immediately leaned against the side of the bent platform door. She heard the sparking of severed wires from all around and then she was enveloped in darkness. The lights had gone out across the entire platform.

It was currently 5:20 PM.

This late in the year, it would be dark out by then.

(Hm? I can’t reach Uiharu. But I doubt the base station on the surface is down.)

Shirai Kuroko was isolated down here. She felt her tension rapidly rising.

An explosion didn’t sound like the work of Youen the Carrier who specialized in toxins and bacteria, but during Handcuffs, Shirai had seen her use microbes to produce a methane explosion.

When his tablet lost its signal too, the younger driver complained with the backlight illuminating his face from below.

“Wh-what the hell!? What’s happened now!?”

“Something we would much rather not witness. Unfortunately, we will be forced to do so regardless.”

Part 3

The lights flickered worryingly but ultimately stayed on. Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was finally forced to see the horrors crawling in the depths of Academy City.

It began with a light.

He heard a popping of air far more violent than a bug zapper and saw a white light far more brutal than welding.

“Eh?”

But this did not come from the white coat girl further down the corridor.

The flickering malice came from the side.

He reflexively held his right hand out toward the unidentified threat.

“Teacher, you mustn’t use that.”

Someone grabbed his hand and shoved him to the side.

It was Alice.

A moment later, something brutal indeed shot past in a horizontal line at his chest height. It bent and broke four or five of the thick decorative pillars lined up along the concourse. This wasn’t a strange laser weapon or beam cannon. It only moved in straight lines, but it bent in a zigzag pattern. And it had been launched by a shaky silhouette?

“Ligh-”

After Alice tackled Kamijou out of the way, they both tumbled behind an elevator protected by reinforced glass. Alice was in short sleeves, so the softness of her upper arms reached him directly. The elevator itself was transparent, so it wouldn’t have hidden them if not for a magazine rack covered in free travel brochures. Kamijou sat on the floor staring in disbelief at the scorched empty space where his eyes still saw an afterimage.

He felt a stinging pain in his little finger.

It hadn’t hit him directly, but some kind of secondary effect had discolored the finger a bright red. It was probably burned.

That might not seem like much, but it told him what would have happened if Alice hadn’t protected him.

The pain was minimal, but it meant a lot.

(Imagine Breaker doesn’t work on this!?)

“Lightning?”

For just an instant, he saw a bloody young man sitting on a concrete floor with a smile on his face.

“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

Something scorched the back of his mind like a camera flash.

But he wasn’t sure what it meant. Unlike a dream, it remained so vivid in his mind.

“?”

What was that?

His right hand defense hadn’t worked on the attack or on the afterimage lingering in the back of his mind. Did that meant it could all be explained with ordinary science, like some kind of electrical signal linked to his brain?

He shook his head, pulled his old folk’s phone from his pocket, and held it sideways.

He couldn’t trust his eyes anymore, so he would view his surroundings through the camera app.

The distant silhouette was twisted into something like an S-shape. And for some reason, seven different facial recognition boxes popped up on different parts of it.

In this age where people were forgetting how to even write kanji, it was unusual to lose faith in the answer presented by your phone.

“Wh-what the hell am I even looking at?”

The phone picked up the crackling of electricity. When the phone started converting that into something like a flat Buddhist chant, he immediately switched off the screen. He shoved the phone into his pocket and felt an odd heat on his thigh. It creeped him out as much as having someone’s severed hand in his pocket.

He held Alice protectively against his side and she shrieked in delight.

Something was very wrong here, but the destructive power of that electricity was real. The lightning itself and the concrete and rebar it blasted into the air could both tear large chunks from his body.

“What now, teacher?”

Alice never seemed to notice the danger despite having the uncanny sixth sense of a small child, so she was still smiling innocently. Maybe she could see some deeper meaning behind all this, or maybe she was just enjoying being held by him.

“Shush, Alice. That thing already knows where we are, but I don’t want to give away our timing from our breathing or something.”

“Is this a secret? Wow…a secret for just the two of us.”

He wasn’t sure how, but the way she held her hands to her cheeks suggested he had tugged very forcefully at her heartstrings.

He heard something, so he held Alice close, held his breath, and pressed against the magazine rack by the elevator wall. He slowly poked his head out around the corner to look further down the corridor.

There was definitely a silhouette there.

It was wavering side to side.

“…is F…san…chan. I am…hind you.”

It was nearly impossible to make out at first.

The mass of noise was too messy to recognize as a voice.

But his instincts screamed that he couldn’t ignore it. Even though anyone in Academy City should scoff at the very thought of something like this.

“Hel…thi…rill…d #G…curr…be…you”

He couldn’t do it.

No one could claim this was an illusion, they were imagining it, or they had misinterpreted what they had seen and heard.

A doll-like woman wore a special dress that clung to her figure but spread out around her ankles.

Her curvy body and blonde twintails were at odds, giving her an unbalanced appearance.

Her head swayed irregularly side to side with long bangs covering her eyes.

The hem of her blue dress was absorbed by the base of a destroyed pillar. No, that wasn’t it. Her unsteady feet were buried in it. She was passing right through the solid object.

Anyone who saw this would reach the same conclusion.

Yes.

No one could say how this could exist in a world ruled by solid physical laws and inundated with artificial tools, but this was undoubtedly something not of this world.

Or more bluntly, a ghost.

“Hello, this is Frillsand #G-chan. I am currently behind you.”

Kamijou knew this had to be bad.

That phrase acted as some sort of trigger. A much worse trigger than the words “kill” and “die” that back alley delinquents used so habitually. He sensed killer intent passing right by him after being released along a path straighter than a bullet.

It wasn’t aimed at him or Alice.

Which meant…

(The white coat girl in front of the lockers!?)

Grinning Alice had asked him “what now” earlier.

This ghost had launched an electric current powerful enough to break through several concrete pillars, even if they were only decorative, and she had also passed through a wall. Worse, his Imagine Breaker hadn’t worked against her attack. That proved she was not an occult being', but that was no reason to relax.

“Hee hee. That’s a ghost. Since she’s making an appearance at this busy time of year, could she be a Kallikantzaros?”

“You’re kidding, right? Are you saying she looks like a ghost to you too?”

He didn’t know what that Kalli-whatever was, but she had definitely said “ghost”. This could not be described with a different word like hallucination, hologram, or retinal projector. It was one of those things where “you know it when you see it” and he now had confirmation that it wasn’t just him who thought so.

But a ghost? Most likely, no one had an exact definition there. But since she was walking through Academy City, could she have been artificially created with the power of science!?

“You have got to be kidding me. Finding a scientific explanation for a ghost doesn’t make this one any less dangerous. In fact, that only makes her more of a threat for me!”

“Mhh, that dress-up doll has really big boobs. Finding a dress that fits her can’t be easy.”

Alice was worried about something else entirely.

This ghost existed here as a scientific, physical phenomenon. That objectivity only made her more dangerous. This wasn’t just the placebo effect and it wasn’t just an illusion or hallucination meant to kill him from shock. She caused very real harm.

There was no point in trying to fight and eliminate her.

Losing would mean his death, but winning wouldn’t accomplish anything. And if that victory meant destroying something or killing someone, then he would be seen as a common criminal. It felt silly to bring it up when discussing a ghost, but that was how real incidents worked. It was all a waste of time. The best plan was to find cover and escape outside the station as quickly as he could.

And since his right hand didn’t work, Kamijou had only one option in mind.

“Alice.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s get out of the station to escape this ghost. You can see the sign pointing to the north exit, right? We’ll run straight down the concourse following those signs and get out of here as fast as possible. But I’m taking that girl with me!!”

He grabbed a bundle of free travel brochures from the nearby magazine rack and tossed it to the other side.

With a dreadful zapping noise, a high-voltage current was released in the wrong direction, shattering a bakery’s window. I’m damaging people’s property already!? lamented Kamijou as he tensed in preparation. A rotting stench reached him from a smoking flatscreen LCD monitor and the speaker on the ceiling swayed side to side like it was cackling. Something was very wrong here, but he couldn’t let it slow him down.

Don’t falter. Shake it off. If they didn’t use this noise as their cue, they would never manage to leave this spot.

“Alice!! Go!!”

Alice’s unnatural affection for him worked in his favor here. He gestured for her to go and she looked delighted to start running with the white fluffball on the back of her apron shaking. He pulled away from the elevator wall too and ran across the concourse. Everything around him scared him at this point because he never knew what would carry the high-voltage current to him. Several of the pillars had broken, so it was even possible the ceiling would collapse without warning. He couldn’t even trust the reinforced concrete. It felt like he had been swallowed up into another world entirely.

Their goal was the ticket gate for the north exit, which was located about 50m away, but Kamijou did not take the most direct route. He instead approached the wall, bringing him toward the coin-operated lockers. He wanted to reach the 10-year-old girl in a white coat stained with colorful paint. That was why he had put Alice down.

He charged in headfirst.

The girl’s surprised face grew to fill his vision.

He spread his arms and rushed at the girl by the lockers in what amounted to a headfirst slide more than a tackle.

And a moment later, he passed right through her.

The girl’s silhouette crumbled away.

The shoulders that looked so slender they would break if he held them too tight, the chest much too large for her age, and the young face that wore a cruel smile surprisingly comfortably all faded away.

He lost his balance like he had crashed into a pile of snow or sand and he collapsed to the floor before he could figure out what happened.

“Eh?”

His mind went entirely blank.

The 10-year-old girl simply wasn’t there. Nor was there a large LCD panel or anything like that. The image came apart into countless small specks that crawled all over his hair and skin and even got in his mouth.

“Ew!? Peh, peh. The hell? Why bugs!?”

Part 4

Hanatsuyu Youen had been cautious.

Of course she had. The 10-year-old girl with a prison uniform resembling a thick work jumpsuit was pressed against the exit of a station convenience store located right next to the lockers.

She hadn’t been careless enough to march on over and collect her emergency supplies right away. She had instead created a 3D image of herself using the bugs and pests she controlled with synthetic nectar and chemical compounds and then kept an eye out for any possible pursuers.

(Dragonflies and clearwing moths are just two examples of insects with clear wings. The human eye is easily fooled if you can bend light. So by using the transparency of their wings, it isn’t hard to display an image of myself a short distance away. Combine that with animal fur and feathers and, similar to an AR fitting room, I can even display clothing that isn’t really there.)

Simply put, she had in fact removed her prison uniform, but not in front of the lockers. The white coat and gasmask had been additional data she created by adding extra colors on top of the 3D image created from reflected light. Jewel beetles and morpho butterflies were just two examples of creatures that used structural coloration to manipulate light like the grooves of a CD. If she wanted to, she could display an adult version of herself or even a giant version who towered over the skyscrapers.

However.

This situation went well beyond anything she had expected.

First of all, what was that ghost?

She knew the Overhunting’s crash was no accident and someone had caused it on purpose. So whether she stayed on the train or tried to escape, she couldn’t escape that person’s plans if she didn’t make a real effort to do so.

But what was this?

She had been expecting to be the target of Academy City’s higher ups, Anti-Skill, or some other goody-goody spouting nonsense about justice and hoping to score some points, but this came as a complete surprise.

If anything, this supernatural being reeked of the shadows just like she did.

(This isn’t just an image. Could they have been a part of Handcuffs too?)

Hanatsuyu Youen had not seen the madness on December 25 through to the end. She and her twin Kaai had tapped out early in District 18, so she didn’t know the full picture. This thing may have reached a deeper darkness on that day.

But more than that, what was wrong with that incomprehensible pointy-haired boy!?

He was the exact opposite.

He was like a bright and shining sun, so she feared she would get burned if she approached too carelessly. He had just tackled the false image she had placed in front of the lockers, but surely he hadn’t been trying to protect a complete stranger from that artificial ghost’s attack, right?

The atmosphere changed.

The sticky darkness was cleared away.

“Eww!? I won’t deny I was a little excited to see a naked girl outside all of a sudden, but did she have to be an illusion filled with bugs!? Is this some kind of divine punishment? Peh peh. Not in the mouth!! They’re so scaly!! Ugh, bleh, bleh!!”

“Hee hee. The girl wants to hug you too☆”

Youen could not believe what she was seeing.

The mystery high school boy was writhing on the floor and a picture book blonde girl named Alice was leaping at him with a beaming smile and arms spread. She didn’t seem to care he was crawling with bugs.

Then Youen’s eyes met the boy’s.

This had all been a shock, but she had still been careless.

And. Still swarmed with clear-winged creatures and a picture book girl, he yelled to her from the floor.

He directed no anger or fear her way.

“Cough, cough!! Y-you there. I don’t know what’s up with that ghost or these bugs, but this place is dangerous!! The north exit is right there, so get out of here if you can still run!!”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure how to react.

He was serious.

This dyed-in-the-wool idiot was telling a prisoner he had never met before to escape. He didn’t even seem to realize she was the one who had chemically gathered the bugs to create that false image.

Her twin Kaai wouldn’t have hesitated to give an additional order that decomposed his entire body. Kaai shuddered with joy when she defiled herself by accepting the city’s corruption, so she hated nothing as much as an embodiment of the sort of hotblooded masculinity that forced his fastidious idea of justice onto everyone else.

But Youen was not Kaai.

She had always wanted them to melt away together, but Kaai had already left her. And not because some third party had torn them apart. Kaai had left of her own free will.

(…)

Youen bit her small lip.

She thought a moment about why her twin had left her.

“Okay, fine!!”

She sprinkled around a chemical compound made from the wastewater found around here and sent another command to those decomposers. With a sound like adzuki beans rolling inside a tilted box, she sent the swarm of bugs away from the mystery boy and toward the electrified artificial ghost. She put her prisoner uniform back on while shouting to the boy.

“This way, normal person. If you don’t want to die, then grab that business bag and coat and follow me!!”

Something so small could still alter someone’s destiny.

Part 5

The situation was on the move.

The clear-winged bugs swarming Kamijou peeled away from him like iron sand being drawn to a magnet. The creepy, spine-tingling feeling immediately vanished.

“Don’t go, buggies!”

For some reason, Alice reached her small hands out after them. On closer inspection, the insects fluttering in front of her were a type of moth. It was hard to believe, but were fairy tale girls not afraid of bugs? Kamijou grabbed her wrists to keep her from accidentally crushing the bugs in her grasp.

He had heard someone ask him to follow her.

He grabbed the requested items and obeyed.

“Let’s go, Alice!!”

“Okay!”

It was faster to hold smiling Alice under his arm than to pull her along by the hand. She flailed her arms and legs the entire time, but she was clearly enjoying herself. On his way to the station convenience store’s entrance, he crashed into the black-haired little girl in a colorful prison uniform. They collapsed inside and landed in a pile.

A high-voltage current shot by like an optical weapon, blowing away a vending machine and capsule toy machine in front of the store and shattering all of the windows. Kamijou’s mind dulled as the fear of death took over, but that actually helped keep him moving. Maybe a paranormal phenomenon had caused the air conditioning to malfunction, but he didn’t have time to worry about the warm air that felt like the inside of someone’s mouth. They crouched low as they cut across the inside of the store, pushed open a staff only door with a shoulder, and escaped into the staff only space in the back. He was scared, so he wanted the unfamiliar girl’s opinion on the matter.

“Do you have any idea what that ghost woman is!? When I aimed my phone at her, the facial recognition went haywire!!”

“Sigh. This is Academy City and she seems electrical, so I would suspect some kind of virus or cyber attack.”

Could that really explain all of this?

The attacks that looked like ultra-high-voltage electricity seemed more like strange masses of data to him. His malfunctioning phone and the images that appeared in his head when it shocked him seemed like a small part of what was happening here.

“Do you…reason to…one? Of…you…”

What was that partial phrase burned into the back of his mind? Who was that bloody young man he had seen?

It was like the ghost pursuing them didn’t realize she was leaking some kind of message.

As far as he could tell, being hit by Frillsand #G’s lightning attacks burned a scene into the back of your mind. If that artificial ghost couldn’t converse in the normal fashion, that might be one of the few ways she had of conveying information. But all of this was speculation. None of it seemed worth stepping in front of that high-voltage current that could easily cause his entire body to burst.

They still weren’t safe. The back of a convenience store was a curious place for Kamijou who had no part-time work experience, but the rows of drinks kept behind the glass doors apparently continued on back to here. The cans and bottles would slide down a gentle slope to restock the shelves.

The high-voltage current pierced right through those glass doors and plastic bottles. It was on a collision course.

“Ugh!?”

He groaned and felt a pain in his heart, but he belatedly realized nothing had happened to him.

Something was dancing through the cramped space. It was floating in the air as if to protect Alice who he held under his arm, but what was it? A weapon? An oar? It was a long flat panel painted pink.

“A cricket bat,” muttered Youen in a puzzled voice. “Were you hiding that under your apron?”

A second and third blast of electricity flew their way, but the bat(?) soared this way and that to block them with sparks flying. Every time, pink feathers scattered from the bat and it squawked like a bird. At times, the oar-shaped bat’s outlines started to distort.

Kamijou had not seen it emerge, but if Youen was to be believed…

“Um, hey.”

“What do you need, teacher?”

“Alice, are you doing this?”

“?”

She smiled and tilted her head in his arm.

Bending at all would be nearly impossible with that large board under her apron and he hadn’t noticed her having any trouble moving before. Had she actually pulled it out at some other time like with a stage magician’s handkerchief, or could she manipulate space like Shirai Kuroko? He couldn’t say when he didn’t know anything about Alice.

Regardless, they couldn’t stay here. Deflecting the attacks wasn’t the same thing as shutting them off at the source. With another earsplitting boom, a beam of light shot right past them and scorched the wall.

“Yikes!!”

“It’s electricity. That means we need to avoid anywhere that’s flooded. This way.”

In that case, Kamijou didn’t like the idea of any water on the floor at all or any twisted wires. He also wanted to avoid stepping on the broken glass. He never really thought about how sturdy the soles of his shoes were.

But he also had a more fundamental question.

“Who are you? I’m super afraid of the answer, but isn’t that a prison uniform?”

“I am Hanatsuyu Youen. I am glad you don’t recognize me because it means you’re one of those ignorant normal people. One piece of advice: do not search my name online. You will regret it if you do. Checking the news articles won’t be too bad, but if you dig deeper than that, your search history might get you put on a watchlist of dangerous individuals.”

With a cruel smile that looked weirdly at home on her face, Youen crouched low and approached another metal door. It apparently led to a corridor for workers to transport supplies. The narrow windowless concrete corridor felt so much like an underground tunnel that it was easy to forget how far above the ground they were.

Kamijou set down Alice so she could walk alongside him and she spoke to him with a smile.

“You seem accustomed to electric attacks, teacher.”

She wasn’t wrong since he happened to know an electric girl with a short temper, but he had never imagined that girl’s dysfunctional communication style would one day save his life from something as crazy as a ghost.

“Ideally, we could escape outside the station with this corridor not found on the public diagrams, but I doubt it will be that easy. Whether or not we can defeat her, we need to be ready to break past that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” suggested Hanatsuyu Youen, sounding only mildly concerned.

Then Kamijou heard a rustling sound.

He looked over to see the black-haired girl of around 10 had unzipped her thick prison uniform and stripped it off in the middle of the corridor.

She did it so naturally he nearly overlooked it, but then he jumped.

“Whoa!? Wh-what the hell are you doing!?”

“Just return that coat and mask. Oh, and the bag.”

“So there really was a girl naked outside? It wasn’t just a weird hologram made with bug wings?”

“I guess that was a horrific way for it to end for you. You can overwrite the memory with this.”

He couldn’t tell how serious she was as she pulled something like a thick belt from her business bag. It looked like the ammunition for a machinegun in an action movie, but it instead contained countless test tubes carrying colorful liquids.

Alice jumped up from behind Kamijou and (imperfectly) covered his eyes and spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“S-she is shorter than the girl but still has big boobs!?”

“Heh heh. Sexy, aren’t I?”

Youen wrapped the belt around her body (which was unnaturally curvy for a girl of her age), pulled the white coat’s collar together like a yukata, and used a medical corset to fasten it in place like a thick sash.

“There, now I’m ready to fight. And the color of the reagents suggests the chemicals are unaltered.”

“Really?”

“I don’t have to worry about money either. Cash is easily acquired by selling rare insects in violation of the Washington Convention. Or I could soak some random weeds in hallucinogenic insect venom and sell it in the back alleys for at least 100 thousand yen a gram. Heh heh. I have everything I need to earn some running away money.”

“Why do you have to add these lengthy and very concerning explanations?”

It might have been cute if she wore a black lace eyepatch and gothic lolita fashion, carried a “demon sword” decorated with black roses, and was at the age where kids loved Legendary Ultimate Eternal Almighty Magic more than food, but this girl didn’t seem so harmless. Youen wasn’t trying to steal the initiative away from an older boy like Kamijou. She was speaking to herself and checking over each of her abilities to ensure she would be safe.

“Sigh. I thought I was over this, but now that I’m out in the city, there’s so much I want to eat. Like Red Town’s kiwi gyoza.”

“Is Los Angeles just taking over my life now? I don’t have many good memories of that city.”

Anyway, they needed to get outside.

This hidden corridor had no windows and it took a few right-angle turns along the way. It was probably laid out to weave between the rectangular stores bordering the concourse. The twists and turns made it hard to see very far ahead, so they were forced to nervously peak around the corners. Fortunately, they never found any kind of ambush.

After a few turns, they came across something different: a metal shutter and a human-sized metal door alongside it.

Kamijou’s face lit up and he approached it.

“There, that’s it! We can get outside from here!!”

“?”

But one of Youen’s eyebrows shot up like she had felt her phone vibrating in her cleavage. She chose one of the colorful test tubes and pulled it from within her coat. She viewed the surface of the neon yellow liquid inside.

“Wow, it’s rippling,” said Alice in delight.

“Microwaves? No, the reagent’s coloration colloid particles are reacting, so it must be terahertz waves. That’s not good. Hey, you! Get away from that shutter immediately!!”

“?”

For some reason, Youen glared harshly at the concrete next to the shutter instead of the shutter itself. Kamijou had taken a step ahead of her, so he looked back her way in confusion.

Just then, two loud noises tore into the thick security shutter.

The cause appeared to be a pair of metal darts.

The destruction was focused on the top of the shutter. The upper left and right. That destroyed either the device to roll up the shutter or the latches holding it in place because the shutter dropped to the floor like a dramatic unveiling ceremony.

The view outside opened up.

A girl with twintails stood in front of them wearing strange goggles over her eyes.

“Who is this girl?” shouted Alice on reflex. “She has strong pervert energy!!”

“At the very least, I’m not as weird as you and your short sleeves this time of year!!”

She twirled the short metal darts rapidly between her fingers, keeping them in constant motion.

“I was right to leave that driver back at the platform.” That middle school girl - Shirai Kuroko of Judgment - readied several metal darts that could destroy even the toughest and strongest material when she teleported them through space. “Hanatsuyu Youen!! You are under arrest for escaping custody and on suspicion of property damage to the station building!!”

Terahertz waves were special electromagnetic waves that could be used to scan through objects, so they were used in airports in place of magnetic metal detectors and X-ray scanners that could cause health problems. The special waves had an extremely high frequency and a nature midway between light and radio waves, so they could easily search out the number and locations of people on the other side of a wall.

No toy could be so dangerous in the hands of a teleporter who could ignore all three-dimensional restrictions to directly attack any point in space. Currently, there was no hiding from Shirai Kuroko.

The situation could hardly have been worse, but Youen actually smiled savagely and shoved Kamijou to the side. Her other hand held several test tubes full of colorful liquids.

Before she even popped the rubber caps off with her thumb, the city’s shadows were already crawling through the ceiling duct and the drain at the edge of the floor.

“My, my. You survived December 25 but still didn’t learn a single thing from the darkness?”

“Do not attempt to resist. My darts can break through any and all defenses.”

“Can they? That inability to ‘strike with the back of the blade’ as it were sounds like trouble for a justice exhibitionist like you. I doubt you use those goggles all the time, so how long does the battery last? A few minutes perhaps? But I’m one of the bad guys, so I won’t hesitate. You really should have considered what it means to oppose the Carrier who controls every last urban pest and vermin. Oh, right. You had to tap out back on the 25th, didn’t you? Abandoning your partner in the process.”

“Hanatsuyu Youen!!”

“You stole Kaai from me. Did you think I would just let you get away with that? No matter how powerful your attack is, destroying individual points isn’t enough to hold back a torrent of death. I will sweep you away with a solid wall☆”

They both held deadly weapons at the ready and they both stepped forward as if to provoke the other.

Kamijou didn’t like the look of this. This wasn’t a clash between a sword and a shield. It was sword against sword. When two people who protected themselves with a deadly force clashed and neither side got scared and put their weapon away, there was no stopping a battle where one side or the other ended up in a pool of their own blood.

Even if they were only trying to defend themselves and had no intention of killing the other.

Even if they would look down at their bloodstained hands and let out a bloodcurdling wail of sorrow once it was all over.

He couldn’t let this happen. He had to find some way of stopping it.

(Oh.)

He wasn’t sure why he made the decision he did.

But the moment after he shoved Youen aside, the metal dart appeared out of thin air and stabbed into his body.

Part 6

The point of scorching heat rapidly spread until his entire body was on fire.

Kamijou collapsed to the ground. He clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t hold in the scream. His body felt like a vortex of agony, so he wasn’t even sure where the injury was on him.

“Gah, ahhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He couldn’t even get up and the hand holding his shoulder was mostly a reflexive thing. It was only then that he realized the metal dart had pierced his shoulder.

The disgusting feeling of the metal sticking in where it didn’t belong was more powerful than the simple pain.

Hanatsuyu Youen’s jaw dropped as she stared at him screaming and shedding meaningless tears. Shirai Kuroko pushed her terahertz goggles up to her forehead and rushed over.

Alice may not have understood the gravity of the situation because she laughed and mimicked his screams in genuine delight.

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing, you ape!?”

“Don’t ask me. But if you feel even a twinge of regret after seeing this blood, then stop teleporting those things at people. You’re both using way too much deadly force! Why does Academy City insist on bringing everyone closer to death the higher you go!? I’m starting to think it’s the ordinary Level 0s who are the safest and most at peace!!”

Meanwhile, Youen finally regained her composure and whistled with her hands clasped behind her head.

“Wow, this wasn’t my fault. Maybe I should go tattle to the teachers.”

“You villain!!”

“Here’s the thing, justice exhibitionist. If you don’t want him to die because of you, then you’d better step aside right now. I’ll fix this silly blunder of yours.” Youen held a hand to the center of her unnaturally large chest and winked. “If you need sterilization or disinfection, I can produce some ethanol or Bifidobacterium. If you need a pain relief chemical, I can extract it from a mosquito or tick. The quickest way to stop bleeding is to control the coagulation and sewing up a blood vessel requires some sturdy animal thread, right? There are so many options there, from silkworm silk to spider silk. The silkworm is praised as the most plentiful beneficial bug in the world, but it’s really just a grotesque moth larva. This is sounding a lot like my area of expertise, isn’t it?”

“You…?”

Shirai Kuroko couldn’t find the words.

She seemed to know Youen form somewhere and it appeared to come as a complete shock that Youen would choose to save an injured person’s life.

However…

“N-no!! Unlicensed medical procedures are against the law! Especially if we are talking about unhygienic surgery using urban pests and vermin!!”

“Sigh. Yet again, justice proves it kills more people than us villains ever could. I can’t imagine why this softhearted idiot would protect me, but this means I owe him twice. And I don’t care what you say - I’m not going to let him die until I’ve repaid him with interest.”

“…”

“Paying back your debts sounds like a system unrelated to good and evil to me.”

The two girls’ gazes clashed while they crouched on either side of collapsed Kamijou.

But they didn’t have all day.

Kamijou was still groaning in agony from the deep wound and the unsettling feeling of the metal in his shoulder, but he still managed to reach out an empty hand to draw Youen’s attention by tapping her on the side of the hip.

He couldn’t get his voice out even though the wound was in his shoulder.

His position lying on the floor had allowed him to notice something before the others.

The artificial ghost’s face had just appeared out from a nearby concrete wall.

Whether it was natural or artificial, that was a real ghost. That meant the laws of physics might not apply. But could she really just pass through solid walls? That was cheating in a different way from teleportation. A foe that could do that without warning could sneak up on even by the most experienced combat veteran!!

Did Shirai and Youen even notice the bug zapper sound?

Unlike with the train crash, there wasn’t time to leave Alice and Youen with the teleporter.

Frillsand #G released a massive high-voltage current in all directions.

The white light was brighter than welding at close range and the rumble of the concrete walls and ceiling coming down shook the boy’s eardrums.

“Shi…rai!!”

All he could do was shout her name and give her a shove.

A moment later, something blurred and he saw another scene on top of reality. He wasn’t sure why, but the phone in his pocket heated up so much he feared it would burn him.

He had misinterpreted what happened last time. It wasn’t being hit by the high-voltage current that sent the strange hallucination into his mind. Yes, his phone and the station’s devices hadn’t malfunctioned because they received a direct hit from that thick beam of electricity.

The entire area around the artificial ghost was faintly electrified.

(My…hair? So that’s it. Static electricity or something is surrounding the entire surface of my head.)

The scene played out in hellish slow motion, but he still had no way of avoiding the ghost’s attack. Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate it. It was possible he could reduce the risk of death from the agonizing shock if he let the hallucination take over. Even if it only increased the odds he could get back up and fight back next time.

A moment later, the mass of high-voltage electricity pierced straight through the center of Kamijou Touma’s body.

Part 7

An old man’s voice rang through a dizzyingly vast but suffocatingly claustrophobic concrete space.

“The Vanishing Tunnel does not actually exist.”

He was answered by a young man who seemed threatened and driven to the edge.

“Do you want my research notes on Frillsand #G?”

Whose memory was this?

It wasn’t the old man’s or the young man’s. Neither one seemed to consider the presence of whoever’s eyes were watching them. Like they thought that person had already left the scene.

Maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.

The scene felt like a dream. Like the viewer didn’t have the ability to interfere in what they were watching.

“I’m no barbarian.”

Maybe that was why that person could only watch. Even though they knew the scene was headed toward disaster.

“A few of them.”

The old man pointed toward several small children in gym clothes. In the realm known as the dark side, those lives would be consumed in the name of combat or research.

“Just select a few at random.”

The young man had challenged the city’s darkness in order to protect them.

He had even pretended to be a Kihara to bolster his insufficient strength.

Even giving physical form to a pipedream like an artificial ghost and finetuning it as a weapon may have been a part of that goal.

So.

Even if he was backed up to the precipice of death, he had only one possible answer here.

“Go to hell, you son of a bitch.”

The observer had known from the beginning how this would end.

Finally, a dry gunshot rang out before their eyes.

They couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Not one thing.

Part 8

The ringing noise filling Kamijou Touma’s mind rapidly faded and reality rushed back in.

The high-voltage current might have actually stopped his heart for the few seconds his sense of time had been out of order.

“Gah!!”

The white light was replaced by color.

Sound crept back into the great pressure.

His limbs trembled. If he didn’t clench his teeth, he was afraid his convulsions would make him bite off his own tongue.

Something was messing with his mind. This was very bad. He had underestimated the risk. If this kept happening, he was afraid he would lose track of what was his own memory, what was a meaningless hallucination, and what was external data placed in his head.

In the instant of the blast, his senses had been so confused he forget whether he was standing up or lying down. Everything felt fake, like he was swimming through a strange liquid. But even in that state, what little of his mind was still functioning worked to rejoin reality.

The destruction of the concrete wall was very real.

However, that was not the result of the electric storm released from Frillsand #G’s body.

“Gwoahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

A deep roar shook the ground below them.

The concrete wall across from the one the ghost had emerged through was smashed apart by some great force. It must have been a punching fist or a tackling shoulder. The giant mass of muscle that emerged grabbed Frillsand #G and smashed through the opposite wall to disappear again. The attack made it easy to forget this was a straight corridor. It felt more like a crash at an intersection.

But aside from that, Kamijou forgot all about the pain in his shoulder while lying on the floor.

He was truly shocked.

That had been nothing but muscle.

Pure muscle had overpowered a scientific ghost?

What even was that monster? It looked like someone had taken the body of a storybook ogre and pasted on the head of a skinny middle-aged man with a combover and glasses. There probably were girls who read shoujo manga as a child and honestly wanted a sparkly guy who was disproportionally tall for the size of his handsome face, but there was no way anyone wanted that macho body with a tiny middle-aged head on top.

Yet someone seemed to recognize that otherworldly image.

Shirai Kuroko rubbed her eyes and grimaced before shouting into the hole in the wall.

“Rakuoka Houfu!! What do you think you’re doing!?”

She was only answered by repeated flashes of light and deep zapping sounds coming from the hole. The battle must have been fairly one-sided. A vending machine equipped with AI and a camera malfunctioned such that a female voice kept repeating “Facial recognition failed. Please take a step back.” while drink bottles spewed from the bottom.

Alice approached dazed Kamijou with a smile. She bent over and rubbed the top of her little blonde head against his stomach. The two pointy curls that resembled animal ears actually hurt a fair bit.

“Teacher.”

“Yes, that girl’s intuition is correct. The ghost is the greatest threat, so escaping the station is our top priority if we want to survive.” Youen spoke on Alice’s behalf. “I say we let the justice exhibitionist play her stupid role while we do the smart thing and get the hell out of here. Can you stand? If not, I can surround you with bees or ants and force you onto your feet with them. Go, creepy-crawly powered suit☆”

“No need!!” he insisted, springing to his feet. Having tens of thousands of ants and bees covering him too thoroughly for cutaneious respiration and tugging his arms and legs around like a puppet was the stuff of nightmares. But it turned out intense fear worked great to eliminate less-important pain and suffering. He doubted his sanity was going to last long like this, though.

“Hey, where do y