Vol 1 Chapter 5 (2/2)

Her smiling face looked like a precipice.

“Until the body is found, it is struck by the waves again and again and again and it sc.r.a.pes against the rock…And the body is sometimes eaten by fish and crabs. As such, sometimes the hands have different numbers of fingers or the face is damaged beyond recognition. It is not too difficult to hide a wound or two.”

Saten could not get out any more words.

It was not going to end with nothing more than having her head plunged into the water. When she thought about the “process” that she was going to undergo afterwards, her vision went dark. She felt a more malicious chill run down her back than one simply from the fear of death.

Still grabbing Saten’s hair, the official pulled Saten toward her from the right as if she were bringing her in to kiss her.

“Now then, are you quite ready?”

“!!”

A transparent liquid spilled from Saten’s tear glands. That had been the last straw. She roared like a beast and tried to bite Olive’s nose with everything she had. She completely seriously tried to bite off the center of the woman’s face, but Olive easily swung her head back and used her other hand to give an upward blow to Saten’s jaw.

A dull sound split through Saten’s head and something leaked into her mouth that tasted of iron. Saten lost her momentum and limply hung down, but Olive pulled her up by her hair and walked over to the ocean dragging Saten along with her. With her consciousness dim, Saten looked up at the official holding her hair.

“…What was…?”

“?”

“What was in there…?”

Saten was asking about the new area beyond the giant door in the hangar. She was speaking of the double doors wrapped in a reddish light and with the huge amount of warning labels urging no one to enter. In the end, Saten Ruiko had not managed to reach the center of the secrets.

“Oh, that,” Olive replied bluntly.

She may have decided there was no reason to hide it after Saten had come that far or she may have admired the fact that Saten had not begged for her life.

“That is where those who are treated as having gone missing are put. I suppose you could call it a kind of laboratory. You are being treated as having died, so you will not go in there.”

“…”

“Liberal Arts City has the ability to naturally deal with any incident, accident, or other irregular situation as a type of show, but there is one thing we cannot erase no matter what. That is the people who are behind the incidents in the first place.”

The sea water was up to Olive’s thighs.

As Saten was being dragged along, it was up to her chest.

“We resolve the incidents without relying on any law enforcement agencies, but that is not because we are covering for the criminals. If we resolve things with our own hands, we can punish them in our own way.”

An especially large wave came in and the water reached Saten’s head.

The salt caused a burning pain to run down her nose and throat, but Olive did not seem to care.

Saten coughed and then tried to ask a question.

“But what are you…?”

“I see no need to tell you every little thing about what we are researching, but you saw a portion of it in that hangar.”

She must have been referring to the flying fish lined up like body bags.

Those special crafts had been made of wood, cloth, and obsidian and they had seemed to head in a different direction than what one thought of as cutting edge technology. However, those oddly-shaped crafts held the ability to more than match the Liberal Arts City Laveze Squadron.

“Strange, aren’t they? They look as if they contain hydrogen engines, but what they actually use is unknown. Multiple crashed ones were disa.s.sembled and their construction was a.n.a.lyzed, but even when the exact same parts were brought together, they did not function at all.”

Olive shook her head.

She sounded like she was speaking of something that did not involve her, so that was likely not the field she worked in.

“The mechanism behind those crafts is not complete. Or rather, they seem to be put together based on a set of laws completely different from the ones we know…They truly are exceedingly irregular devices.”

Olive may have said “they seem to be” because she did not understand what those laws were herself.

Saten’s footing started to get unsteady. Her feet still reached the bottom, but her sandals could not find secure footing either because the rocky bottom was slippery or because of the current in the water.

“However, those are nothing more than one type of equipment. What we want is the power they possess. We want the power possessed by the people piloting those crafts. They seem to have a rather powerful organization because we have not been able to capture one of their people. Recovering the crashed s.h.i.+ps is the most we have been able to do.”

Olive laughed lightly.

“Of course, the longer the fight drags out, the more captured s.h.i.+ps we get, so management has been innocently rejoicing. …I would rather they understood the hards.h.i.+ps of those wearing their lives away on the battlefield, though. They may just be the object of our research, but they are quite tough.”

Was she referring to Xochitl and the others?

Was that the reason they were targeting Liberal Arts City?

Liberal Arts City was trying to find the secret behind some power, and Xochitl and the others were fighting to protect that secret. Was that the true ident.i.ty of the conflict occurring in that city?

But…

What was that power Olive had mentioned…?

“In order to find new filming techniques, Liberal Arts City has called in painters, sculptors, potters, ukiyoe artists, doll makers, and other artists from every part of the world. In doing so, we also ended up gathering ancient knowledge that has nothing to do with the arts.”

The official spoke of the ident.i.ty of that power.

“Special powers and phenomena that are removed from the normal physical laws appear here and there in that ancient knowledge. At first we thought it was nothing more than exaggerated legends, but when we looked into it, it almost seemed like a consistent set of laws could be seen in those stories. That was when we seriously started to research it. After all, ancient Chinese herbal medicines sometimes possess effects exceeding those of modern antibiotics.”

It was something that even an Academy City esper did not know of.

It was something that Saten Ruiko did not know the ident.i.ty of.

“That’s right,” Olive said with a smile to Saten who was sinking below the surface of the water. “We are developing espers with a different approach from you in Academy City.”

Saten’s eyes opened wide.

Olive Holiday continued talking.

“To do that, we had to investigate those crafts, those special weapons that should not move under the normal laws.”

Misaka Mikoto and Uiharu Kazari left Saten’s room, rushed out of the hotel, and ran to the railroad that ran across Liberal Arts City. Using s.h.i.+rai Kuroko’s teleportation would have been a faster means of transportation, but taking away the Psychometry girl must have taken some time because they could not contact her.

“I think Saten-san is probably on the easternmost side of Liberal Arts City. The general information on the facility was not on the network, so we would probably have to check the computer cut off from the network for that, but I have the data on just the location,” Uiharu said while running alongside Mikoto.

The hotel they were staying in was also on the eastern side, but given the scale of the city, it was not a distance that could easily be travelled on foot. They did not know Saten’s current situation, but they were headed into a Liberal Arts City facility. They had no time to be optimistic. Raiding the facility and forcibly resolving the problem using Mikoto’s Railgun had to be the best course of action.

They found the station quickly.

Heading back and forth through the air was a special kind of train that was something like a combination of a monorail and a roller coaster. The station was not an unrefined rectangular building. The platforms were lined up next to each other and surrounded by a gla.s.s building.

However, Mikoto and Uiharu were not able to enter the station.

With a tremendous noise, the wall of the building suddenly exploded.

The wall made of multiple pieces of gla.s.s shattered. The roller coaster-like curving rails were torn apart and they fell down to the ground destroying more rails on the way down. When the ma.s.s of constructions struck the white sand, a great sandstorm explosively spread out in all directions.

“Kyaahh!?” shouted Uiharu as she was swallowed up by the sandstorm.

Mikoto manipulated magnetism to bring the iron sand flying through the air under her control and swung it around to blow away the sandstorm.

A white line like the remnants of a contrail seemed to cut through the blue sky from a point in the air leading to the destroyed wall of the building. Something whooshed by in Mikoto’s vision. It was about 20 meters up in the sky. A black form jumped from the beach to an inland waterway.

“A flying fish…!?” Mikoto yelled out upon seeing that oddly shaped craft that looked like two canoes, one on top of the other, with two wings on either side.

Even then, many more Mixcoatls were jumping from the beach to the inland waterways and heading further inland at high speed.

No screams came from the tourists around Mikoto. However, they were not exactly relieved. They seemed to be standing there staring blankly because they were not able to determine if they were seeing a show or a real attack.

“…”

Mikoto gritted her teeth and looked off at the horizon beyond the beach. She could see the multiple curving contrails of the Laveze Squadron fighting the Mixcoatls over the ocean, but the attackers seemed to have the advantage that time. The Laveze Squadron had allowed a real invasion of Liberal Arts City and repeated explosions could be heard.

(What terrible timing…)

“At any rate, we can’t use the train now. Not all the rails have been taken out, but they’re sure to stop all of them just to be safe!!”

“B-but then what about Saten-san…!?”

“Don’t worry. The trains aren’t the only means of transportation. If we can get a taxi…”

Mikoto trailed off as the multiple explosions and rumblings finally broke down the illusion the city had set up. Things had exceeded what one could accept as a show and true fear had set in on the people causing a panic.

As Mikoto and Uiharu stared in surprise, they heard a female voice.

“Hey, what are you doing just standing there!?”

They turned around to find the film director named Beverly.

“It’s dangerous there, so come with me! Hurry!! This is not a show!!” Beverly shouted as she grabbed Mikoto and Uiharu’s hands and tugged.

Mikoto and Uiharu were more fl.u.s.tered than Beverly.

“Wait! We have somewhere we need to go…!!”

“So you’re going to wait for a taxi? You’ll just be crushed to death if you stay here!!” Beverly yelled in response.

Due to the Mixcoatl missile destroying the rails, a large number of people were rus.h.i.+ng from the station. People that could not tell the rails had been destroyed wanted to get away as quickly as possible, so they were rus.h.i.+ng for the station. The two opposite flows of people collided which stopped the waves of people all at once. This only spread the chaos further. The river-like flow of people spread like its banks had collapsed.

As the commotion spread to where Mikoto and Uiharu were, Beverly forcibly pulled on their arms. The three of them hid in some nearby shelter at about the same time as the main pathway became utterly filled with people.

Beverly wiped away some sweat and sighed.

“The people trying to flee inside the buildings and the people who believe that being inside the buildings is more dangerous are colliding. The roads are no longer functioning. It’s like trying to walk through a packed train. The ma.s.s of people has become a wall.”

“No way…”

“If people can’t walk through, how is a large vehicle supposed to get through? I don’t know if this is a terrorist attack on the city or what, but at the very least, the city’s transportation has been completely cut off.”

Their last hope of a car could no longer be used. The ma.s.s of vehicles attempting to flee did nothing more than congest things further.

Mikoto was reminded again of what an odd place that was. The grand movie set the Liberal Arts City officials had created was noisily crumbling away.

(So a car won’t work either…)

They could not wait for a taxi with the way things were.

Mikoto and Uiharu felt like they were in a scene from a disaster movie.

The ma.s.s of panicked people was spreading in their direction. It was like a giant tsunami made of people.

“Dammit,” Beverly spat out. “I had thought those strange s.h.i.+ps were odd. Unlike the other attractions or shows, it felt like they had no gimmick with which to purposefully guide the mentality of the guests. But if they aren’t part of a show, then what is going on in this city!?”

She seemed confused, but they didn’t have time to deal with her confusion.

Mikoto bluntly asked a question.

“Beverly-san, can you drive a motorcycle? There’s somewhere we need to go.”

“No, I don’t have a license and just look out there. The roads aren’t functioning as roads at all. I’m not joking when I saw you could end up getting crushed to death out there. Getting inside a large building and waiting for the disturbance to die down could save your life.”

“d.a.m.n,” Mikoto spat out.

They could not use the trains or a car. Even walking would be difficult.

Danger could be closing in on Saten while they were stuck there, but forcing their way forward held the risk of getting swallowed up by the waves of people and being injured or worse.

Mikoto pictured the map of the area in her mind, thought for a bit, and then turned toward Uiharu.

“Uiharu-san, let’s head back to the hotel.”

“No!!”

“Don’t be mistaken. We’re doing it to save Saten-san.”

Mikoto grabbed Uiharu’s shoulders and stared her in the eye. She spoke in a slow voice so that Uiharu’s mind would not be swallowed up by the surrounding commotion.

“Kuroko should be somewhere in the hotel. We need to find her and use her teleportation to head to where Saten-san is. Understand?”

After seeing Uiharu nod twice, Mikoto looked over toward Beverly.

“What are you going to do, Beverly-san?”

“…I’m worried about the rest of your crew as well, but I think it would be better to wait for things to die down a little before heading for the hotel. Things are just too harsh right now. I really want to stop you from going, but…” Beverly trailed off for a bit. “Did something happen to that Saten girl?”

“…Yes.”

Hearing that, Beverly gave a large sigh.

“Then I have no choice.”

“?”

Mikoto frowned and Beverly spoke in a voice sounding like she found what she was doing to be a bother.

“I don’t know the situation, but it seems you have a plan as long as you manage to get back to the hotel. Are you going to call in a helicopter somehow? Well, I won’t ask for the details. …All I can do is use my filming techniques that read the hearts of the guests in order to lead you to the hotel without getting swallowed up by the waves of people.”

“Beverly-san…”

Mikoto gave a bow of thanks.

Beverly turned it aside with a smile and then grabbed Mikoto and Uiharu’s hands.

The area out in the open had turned into a flood of people.

Beverly spoke while looking out on that h.e.l.lish scene.

“…This might truly be bad.”

Saten Ruiko did not understand what Olive had said.

What was it she had said?

“Those flying fish are the products of psychic powers…?” muttered Saten, but then she shook her head.

That wasn’t it.

It was true those flying fish were removed from modern aviation and sailing technologies and that they may have been developed under completely different laws, but Saten Ruiko felt that was different from the scientific psychic powers she knew. Saten was not a genius scientist. She had only gone through school in Academy City, so she did not know every little thing about the processes or chemical formulas that were used to develop psychic powers.

However, because Saten Ruiko had gone through school in Academy City, she could detect a vague “scent” in the theories behind those things. On that intuitive level, she did not detect that same “scent” from those flying fish or from Xochitl. She felt like those things functioned due to some theory independent from the ones in Academy City.

“j.a.pan’s Academy City has monopolized cutting edge technology and has almost completely kept the field of developing psychic powers to itself. Also, they are quick to defend the data on their technology with everything they have. Even if we were to dissect the body of an esper such as you that was developed there and we did manage to get some detailed information, we would be pulling various triggers. …Management does not want that to happen.”

Olive Holiday did not notice it.

She was an outsider, so she did not notice that difference in the “scents”.

“But we do not need to use that cutting edge technology. If we use a more roundabout method that does not involve information on Academy City’s techniques, we can acquire that information in our own way. That is why we needed to rea.n.a.lyze everything in such an a.n.a.log way. If all we do is bring together ancient traditional knowledge and build up a new technical field, no one will stop us.”

Technology that was known as “new” was usually something that Academy City had been involved in researching or developing.

Liberal Arts City…no, America was trying to escape that limitation.

They were trying to create a new standard to act as a foundation that was different from what Academy City had created.

For example, electricity had become a foundation of life and technology was needed to generate that power. Improving power generation technology could have two different meanings.

The first was to raise the efficiency of thermal power generation or nuclear power generation in order to create electricity while using fewer resources and having fewer adverse effects.

The second was to find a new form of energy that had not been focused on up to that point.

In the latter case, it was not too rare for hints to have existed since ancient times. For example, power generation using the excess energy used when people walked on their own two feet was being seriously considered.

Liberal Arts City may have been attempting to develop psychic powers based on a different foundation in a similar way to that.

But that official was wrong about something fundamental at the very beginning.

Saten Ruiko knew because she was part of the science side.

Olive Holiday and Liberal Arts City as a whole had come in contact with something different from psychic powers.

“Xochitl is…” Saten opened her mouth.

However, before she could say what she wanted to say, the official casually moved her hand that was holding her hair and shoved Saten’s face into the seawater. The sudden action made a large amount of seawater enter Saten’s mouth and when she started to choke, the seawater started to enter her nose.

Because of her handcuffed hands, she could not struggle properly.

Her sandal-covered feet slipped on the rocky ground under the water making it difficult to stand, much less kick.

“Let’s…end…this…now…”

She could hear a distorted voice from above the surface. She somehow managed to move her head as she tried to get her head above the surface even if her grasped hair or even scalp was ripped off in the process. In reality, she did not have that much strength and her limit was causing a slight creaking pain in her neck.

For a while, she felt no pain from not being able to breathe.

The surprise caused by the pain of the salt water stinging at her nose and throat may have been winning out.

But at a certain point, the true pain came.

Instead of increasing at an even rate, it quickly shot up like the curve from a quadratic function. Saten’s body thrashed about. Tremendous strength entered her head that was being forced under the seawater. Olive had been holding her with only one hand, but she had to grab Saten’s hair with her other hand to deal with it.

Her arms bound behind her back expanded a surprising amount due to her muscles.

A creaking noise came from what must have been the handcuffs.

But…

(…)

The instant some clear bubbles leaked from her lips, all strength suddenly left Saten’s arms and legs. Her extremities ceased functioning because her body lacked the oxygen needed to move.

Her lips opened.

She could not force out the seawater that came rus.h.i.+ng in to fill the gap.

She had been suffering due to the carbon dioxide her own body had produced and once the seawater filled her body, she was wrapped in a feeling different from before.

(…isn’t…)

Saten blankly thought while her eyelids lay half open because she could not even move them freely.

She was merely left with the doubts that had been left at the surface of her consciousness.

(It isn’t psychic powers… It’s something…else…)

Her limbs floated around her.

Saten Ruiko’s life was disappearing.

And then a large amount of the seawater that was causing her suffering was blown away along with an explosive noise.

Something like a bomb had been dropped on the ocean’s surface nearby.

It took quite some time for Saten Ruiko to realize that. The shockwave did not spread only through the air. The shockwave spread through the water and harshly struck Saten’s cheek forcibly calling back her disappearing consciousness. Her body was removed from Olive’s hands and thrown out onto the ocean’s surface.

With her dim consciousness, Saten saw a white line that looked like a contrail.

However, it was much thinner than one from an airplane as if it belonged to a missile.

“Gwaaaahhh!?”

That shout must have come from Olive.

Before Saten could turn her head in that direction, more explosions occurred. They mercilessly destroyed the stone outcropping above their heads and caused a large amount of rock to rain down from above. A missile contrail tore through to the back of the コ-shaped rocky area and blew up the disguised entrance.

Some falling rocks approached from above Saten as she floated face up, but for some reason a few missiles flew from the side and accurately destroyed the falling objects.

“…”

After lying there blankly for a bit, Saten finally managed to muster up enough strength to stand up on the rocky footing with her sandals. The seawater was at about waist height. She felt a bit sick and put a hand up to her mouth. The seawater must have injured her on the inside because there was a bit of red mixed in.

Olive was nowhere to be seen.

Saten doubted she had run away.

She may have been behind some of the fallen rocks or she may have been crushed and had sunk down to the bottom.

Saten ignored her.

The natural desire to try and rescue the woman did come to her mind.

Her senses seemed numbed as she forced her body to move. She looked around with unnaturally jerky movements and saw one of the flying fish on the edge of the ocean. It was the mysterious craft with a body made of what looked like two wooden canoes and four wings. It went around destroying everything in the area before lowering its speed and slowly approaching Saten.

The top canoe slid backwards like a bivalve. Peering from within was a brown girl wearing a distinctive traditional outfit.

“Xochitl…?” Saten muttered, but the other girl did not respond.

Xochitl left the flying fish and stepped down into the seawater. She then grabbed Saten’s neck with tremendous speed, made a 180 degree turn, and slammed Saten’s back into the side of the flying fish she had been within. Saten’s breathing was stopped once more and Xochitl pulled a blade from her pocket and stuck its tip against Saten’s temple.

“…I thought I told you not to get involved in this. If you were brought here, you must have learned something you shouldn’t have. You did, didn’t you?”

Xochitl seemed to be mad.

Saten did not know why she was mad.

“Xochitl…”

That was why Saten naturally said what she did.

She responded to the question honestly.

“You’re from a different world than us…aren’t you? But they are invading that world… That’s why you’re fighting…isn’t it?”

Saten moved her lips that had gone pale from being exposed to the seawater for such a long time. Her red, bloodshot eyes faced directly forward. Possibly due to slight cyanosis due to her difficulty breathing, all of her skin had turned white-ish.

“They have probably been silencing people like me this whole time… You’re fighting to stop that…aren’t you, Xochitl?”

“Dammit,” Xochitl spat out.

She removed her brown hand from Saten’s neck. Having lost her support, Saten sank back down into the seawater and Xochitl frantically grabbed her arm.

“Liberal Arts City is done for,” said Xochitl. “Xiuhcoatl will soon be on the move. Once it hits here, 87% of the city will be burned away. Everyone, regardless of whether they are the bad ones or not, will sink into the ocean along with the city.”

“Xochitl…?”

“The tunnel for the linear motor train connecting this city to the American mainland has been destroyed. The heliports across the city have been taken out as well. However, Liberal Arts City has plenty of huge lifeboats. There are enough of them to carry out the one million tourists here with room to spare. If you do not want all those people to die, you need to find a way to get those lifeboats running.”

“What do you mean? …What is Xiuhcoatl…?”

“…”

Xochitl did not answer Saten’s question.

Xochitl could tell strength had come back to Saten’s legs, so she let go of the girl’s arm. She then lightly pushed on Saten’s chest moving the girl away from her.

Xochitl spoke as she got back inside the Mixcoatl.

“I can’t tell you everything, but I gave you the hint you need to make the right choice.”

Before Saten could say anything, Xochitl closed the body of the Mixcoatl. The craft made subtle movements to turn away from Saten and then it shot off toward the ocean at high speed away from Saten. Xochitl had said nothing more even as it disappeared from Saten’s sight.

Using the tips of its four wings, the Mixcoatl raced along while floating just above the ocean’s surface.

A different Mixcoatl approached from the side moving almost parallel to Xochitl’s craft. Her comrade named Tochtli was aboard it.

“Did you get your message across?”

“Shut up. I haven’t gone against our mission. Our goal is to completely destroy the information on our techniques that is being a.n.a.lyzed in secret in this city. We weren’t ordered to kill the tourists.”

“Ha ha. That girl is waving at you.”

“…”

Xochitl fell silent.

Suddenly, a number of stealth fighters from the Laveze Squadron a.s.saulted them from the sky. Xochitl and Tochtli’s Mixcoatls moved to the left and right like they had been repelled by each other and they counter attacked in unison while the Laveze Squadron’s judgment was dulled.

“Well, let’s get to our real job,” Tochtli said.

“Sure. If just having them a.n.a.lyze the information on our techniques is enough to bring misfortune to so many people, then we have to stop it.”

Missiles fired from above the sea and from up in the sky mixed together and exploded.

The two Mixcoatls cut through the black smoke and headed once more toward Liberal Arts City.