Chapter 03
The Mastermind Struts Upon the Stage.
Into_the_Frequency_Domain.
1
Despite the heavy rain continuing to pound upon everything that lay beneath the sky, the silhouette they had witnessed was unmistakable. The unholy monstrosity before them was a mechanical wonder that neither Umidori, Touma, nor Maria could defeat. If there was any solace at this moment, it was the fact that none of the bodies of the knocked out Skill-Outs were scuffed up from the shattered glass and debris.
"I didn't think you'd show up so quickly." Kuroyoru's mouth curved up into a devilish smile as the thunks of metal on the ground grew louder simultaneously with the growth of the silhouette's size.
Kamijou, shifting his gaze upon Kuroyoru, could, however, see the reality behind that smile. It was plain as day that the girl was only putting up a front. Though, he was unsure whether the pilot of the FIVE_OVER could discern that.
It was hardly their first encounters with the machine or its class, after all. Kuroyoru's subordinate Silver Cross Alpha had one in his arsenal and Kamijou had seen them first hand in both Baggage City, Denmark, and on that mountaintop in District 21. But, for Kamijou, each situation had their own condition that allowed him to make it through in one piece.
"Kumokawa. Take Enshuu and run." They could not defeat the machine. That much was obvious. Even if the puppetmaster had shown up personally and was piloting the machine, there was zero chance of anything resembling a total victory if Kamijou and Kuroyoru had focused on defeat and capture.
"Right." Kumokawa, not stopping to question Kamijou's logic, grabbed Enshuu's hand and began to towards the doorway away from the wall. It was fairly obvious what he had decided in the long term. If they made their objective victory, they would only suffer a crushing loss. In that case, they simply needed to shift their objectives from complete victory to survival and safety.
There was no need to question it loudly.
All they had to do was get to safety and regroup.
Unfortunately—
Before they could move, a glowing orange light smashed into the wall a few feet off to the side from the maid and the young Kihara, breaking it into pieces and leaving a shallow, albeit existent, crater in its place. Though, it would have been far more accurate to say that something had collided into it and torn it to shreds.
"I'd appreciate it if the four of you would just stay in place." The voice of the pilot echoed throughout that alleyway. As Maria looked back to the mantis-esque machine, she saw steam rising from beneath the blade of one of the sickles.
"I'm sure you already realize that you're in complete checkmate here." The voice continued on, declaring its victory. "Even if those two were somehow able to buy you time, I can still seek you out faster than you can escape and shoot you from over a kilometer away. So, just drop the charade and hand Kihara Enshuu over."
"Screw that." As Kamijou spat that out, Kuroyoru began to side-step towards behind the wall, slowly and hopefully, unnoticed. "I already said it. How many times are people like you going to make me repeat this? I'm not abandoning her. That's the end of it."
Unlike Kuroyoru, who had shifted off to the side and disappeared, Kamijou took an entirely different route: forward. The creaks of breaking glass sounded beneath his foot as he took step after step slowly forward through the hole initially created by the machine's first shot.
"I had hoped this would have acted as a strong enough deterrent. But, I can see—" The machine stopped progressing forward and quickly aimed its other scythe to its right, shooting another round towards the building wall next to it.
As the wall of that building collapsed, Kuroyoru jumped out from the side of the fallen rubble and aimed her hand at the machine, forming one of her nitrogen spears and thrusting it. She may not have been the user of such a machine, but she knew exactly where the cockpit lay.
She just needed to pierce through it.
"That I was wrong. So, fall."
As if obeying her, Kuroyoru fell to the ground. A sense of vertigo permeated her brain and her elbows extended as she fell forward with the spears pierced onto the ground. Despite her arm bracing her, she continued to fall straight to the ground, dissipating her spears before her body weight tore her arms and their attachments of her scapular sockets. As she lay on the floor, her elbows, wrists, and fingers all remained completely straightened.
"What the hell?!" She struggled to rationalize what was going on but the combination of the throbbing headache, dizziness, and the pain from slamming face and chest first into the rubble-laden ground prevented her from uttering more than that.
But, that was not all.
The same had happened to Kamijou and Kumokawa in the other building. The two of them had just as unceremoniously fell to the ground, as their consciousness began to flicker in and out with the pulsations of pain and vertigo they had felt.
This isn't gravity! As Kamijou tried to piece together what had happened, one thing was certain. He was on the ground and the machine that had been looming tall over them before was now looming taller.
There has to be something! The fact that he was still on the ground with his muscles tensed meant that it wasn't some force keeping them down. He tried to force his arms to move, but it was as if his body was stiffened to the point where no force he put in could overcome it. Moreover, Imagine Breaker was reacting to nothing.
"Besides, this wasn't up to you to begin with." The voice continued on as the sound of a hatch opening came from the side of the machine's abdomen. "Her salvation and the salvation of everyone else here isn't for any of you to selfishly decide."
A slender feminine figure walked out and grabbed onto a handle with a foot hold below before an automatic pulley brought her down to the ground. At the very least, Kamijou could only assume it was a feminine figure based on the curves he could see. The figure was completely covered from head to toe in a tight bodysuit and a helmet. Given her height, though, she couldn't have been much older than Kamijou himself.
But, despite exiting the safety of the FIVE_OVER, she did not move an inch from where she stood. Umidori could no longer pierce her and Kamijou and Kumokawa, who depended on being able to close the gap and fight in close quarters were grounded completely.
No, there was no need for her to walk.
She simply held her hand out, as if beckoning a downtrodden child towards her.
And said downtrodden child simply began to walk. Kamijou needed to only hear the sound of light footsteps to realize what was going on.
"What are you doing, Enshuu?" Yet, despite the realization, it was not him who spoke. It was not the one from the dark side who was used to betrayal either.
The first to speak was that young maid-in-training who should have been the most repulsed by the young Kihara.
Yet, despite it all, Enshuu continued her slow gait towards the assailant. "Maria-oneechan. It was never meant to be from the start. I'm sure you and Touma-oniichan were fully intent on saving me, but..." At this point, it was patently obvious what she was going to say. "No matter what, I'm an aberration that doesn't fit in either world. Neither as a Kihara nor a human being. Regardless of what I do, there will always be that sensation that something's not right."
Just like when she had walked into the arms of those Skill-Out delinquents, she was once again walking towards someone who would whisk her away to some unknown place. In some twisted way, one could liken it to walking towards a knight in shining armor.
But, what she was looking for was far from salvation.
Someone who could not fit properly into a standard archetype like her could not ask for salvation from either.
She could only wander until her self was worn down to a smooth shadow of its former state.
At the essence, Kuroyoru's offer was merely a stopgap or a patch while Enshuu could figure something out.
"It was the same for Kagun-ojiisan as well." Maria and Touma could no longer see it, but as she spoke of that man, an almost pensive expression began to take root on her face.
"Forget about this all and move on." The bodysuit girl spoke out as she let her hand fall back to her side. As she did, Kihara Enshuu finally took her place next to the woman and turned to face everyone who was now laying on the floor.
"This is farewell, Touma-oniichan. Maria-oneechan."
"Don't screw with me, Enshuu!" It was as if something had boiled over in Kamijou's mind. Unable to contain that seething rage that seemed to be sprouting quickly, he shouted, not to the assailant, but to Enshuu. Even though he could no longer move most of his muscles and his body lay flat on the ground. Even as he could feel the nausea permeating through his consciousness, he still attempted to clench his fist and shout. "Was this really what you wanted?! Regardless of what you do, things will never me right? Screw that! That's just giving up and throwing away all possibilities! Is that really what you wanted? ANSWER ME, ENSHUU!"
His rage was laced with desperation, but no matter what, the sentiment was genuine—one that sprung from that childish philosophy he had truly come to understand over the course of billions of years.
But, Enshuu simply stared back, refusing to answer. Despite it all, she would not validate that rage in the slightest.
"That's a wrap, I see." The helmeted figure simply put her hand in front of Enshuu's face before the girl instantly lost consciousness and fell over onto her.
"Don't you dare leave!" He had continued to shout out as the helmeted figure picked up Enshuu's unconscious form and tossed it over her shoulder.
Yet, under the pitter-patter of the rain slamming on the ground (and them), he heard a sigh. Or at the very least, he thought he heard one through her helmet in conjunction with her chest falling. "Like I said, just forget about this and move on. You are not monsters in the slightest, so you shouldn't try to stick your hands into this quagmire."
That was all Kamijou heard and saw before his eyelids grew heavy and he completely passed out.
2
In another alleyway, many meters away, an eighteen-wheeler truck was waiting with the back door to its Gekota-themed semi-trailer wide open. One would think this would be a cause for alarm, especially in this rainy weather, but the two people sitting in the driver's and passenger's seats seemed to be too busy focusing on a busy message board to really take any issue with that.
After all, they had kept a couple of cameras inside the darkened interior of the container. Had there been any need to deal with an issue, they could have done anything from within the truck tractor.
*beep* *beep*
A loud alarm sounded off from the radar they had installed on the dashboard.
"She's back~"
"That was faster than expected."
Pleasantly surprised, they quickly flicked on the switch to turn power to the container's lights on and watched as a mantis-like mechanical monstrosity hovered towards the entrance in reverse. As the entirety of its body curled into a more compact form, it easily entered the semi-trailer, slowing down until the far end of its abdomen docked into a socket in the wall right behind the tractor.
With that, it powered down and let its feet gently land on the floor as the door to the semi-trailer closed.
"Welcome back, Kizuna." The girl in the driver's seat said through the microphone in the trailer. As the girl's surname reverberated through the speakers in the trailer, the cockpit of the powered suit that had just entered opened up. "We have some minor disturbances. A certain someone isn't taking your warning into account and has already destroyed two of the monitoring stations."
"Begin heading back to point 9S." The person inside issued an order as she jumped out of the cockpit and onto the matted floors of the container. "Forget about him for now. He'll be on a wild goose chase for some time if that's what he's chosen to go after."
As she spoke, she reached for the zipper on her bodysuit and proceeded to undo it, slowly letting her naked form come into view before finally removing the whole thing and tossing it onto a hanger on the side. As her form came into view on the cameras, she felt the initial push of the vehicle beginning to move.
"Was it alright to leave them all unconscious? They could come back to interfere with us," the boy in the passenger seat asked, looking at the combat log on the suit.
As she removed her helmet and let her long, wavy hair out, she walked towards a nearby towel and began to wipe her now moist skin off and continued to speak. "They're not our targets. Besides, even if those Skill-Outs failed to uphold their end of the bargain, we can still show them what we promised. Which reminds me. Please do contact them and let them know that the capture was successful, would you?" The girl called Kizuna pointed her finger as if gesturing a gun at the inside of the cockpit and winked to nobody in particular, seeing as the girl sitting inside it was still unconscious, before picking up an outfit that she had laid out in the trailer beforehand.
"So, what's Ayumu-kun's status?" As she started putting on her new clothes, she began to start asking questions.
And the response she heard was exactly what she had hoped to hear.
"He should already be accessing it."
The girl looked at her hands for a bit as they trembled ever so slightly in conjunction with the rhythmic movements of the truck.
"The ith District."
3
"She's gone." Othinus seemed to speak as Index continued to walk underneath her umbrella. They had been searching alongside Kazakiri for Touma but the obvious had ended up happening. They had been unable to find him, so, they began to head to the first place they could think of any significance—the hospital.
Or at least the would have had they not halted partway there near a market Index had been banned from for gorging on the free samples.
It was hardly the visibility (or general lack thereof) in the rain that prompted Othinus's words. Kazakiri Hyouka was genuinely gone. She had frowned while Index decided to take refuge underneath the market's awning and look out into the street ahead of them.
"She'll be back." Index, confident of her friend's eventual return decided to stand back for a bit and wait.
"She probably will be, but is it smart to just wait around like this while the human goes who knows where?"
"But if we don't, Hyouka will get lost." Index seemed to be adamant, much to Othinus's dismay. The two of them knew too well that Kamijou Touma would not sit still if he was indeed caught up in something. That was how he always was.
As she stood, with her feet planted on the ground and ready to be as unmoved as a great oak, an eighteen-wheeler truck with Gekota plastered all over the semi-trailer drove by on the generally empty road.
Othinus, hearing the loud sounds of the wheels kicking up water, gave a quick glance, narrowing her one eye, to the passing vehicle before it was finally out of the distance where either Index or she could hear any sounds from it.
"We'll move once she returns. Besides, it's not like I won't end up finding Touma sooner or later, right?"
While Index was hardly incorrect, there was something about how much the nun was taking for granted that Othinus found off-putting.
But, as her own mobility was only so great, she had to defer to the great tyrant in white.
"Fine."
Besides, she would be able to find her understander eventually. One way or another, all paths would lead back to Kamijou Touma for those two.
Interlude 03
She had already flickered out. Kazakiri Hyouka was fully aware of that. Even as the city around took on a form without shadows and the characteristic feeling of weightlessness and stagnancy in the air, she still held on to the umbrella she had been carrying when she had left the Kamijou Residence.
But despite being pulled away to this phase, she still smiled somewhat. She had an anchor in Index who would be waiting for her prompt return.
So, she stood with the umbrella futilely shielding her from the shimmers as a few of the districts residents passed by her, with some changing shape to more familiar forms for a high school girl.
No matter how much she had tried to come to terms with it, she could never truly find that as anything other than discomforting.
However, there was something that stood out in this world even more than the girl with the umbrella in a rainless world.
"So, this is the ith District."
In the middle of the empty road in front of her stood a boy. He was wearing loose cargo pants, a hoodie, and goggles that covered his eyes. If one looked at his chestnut brown hair, the image of someone who had just gotten out of bed would come straight to mind. Unlike the remainder of the world around them, there was an almost solid presence to him.
Yes, a solid presence in a world where the residents felt almost ephemeral.
Such a paradoxical existence in this phase was something that should have only been held by that girl and that so-called Holy Guardian Angel.
And, so the world around her changed—more accurately, the residents did. Their formed all changed into those of Anti-Skills, complete with riot gear pointed towards the newcomer.
Despite the world around him going on alert, though, the boy did not flinch in the slightest. He maintained a light smile as he looked at Hyouka.
"Do not worry. I'm not here to do you any harm."
Kazakiri Hyouka was rarely the type to get angry. However, there was something about that boy that was hidden behind that smile. No matter how much he tried to mask it, it was a pungent sensation that was reminiscent of that which had permeated the city on September 30th.
"What do you want?" she asked as she clenched her fist and grit her teeth.
"Getting here was enough to count as a success. Kizuna should be happy to hear that the plan can now proceed to the next phase."
"WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?!" The pressure she was emitting was something she had only directed towards that Holy Guardian Angel as they watched the conclusion of World War III on high. The boy before her was a threat to everything she held dear. That was evident from whatever miasma he was trying to mask. So, she took one step forward onto that road. And then another.
And she reached out her hand towards the collar sticking out from that boy's hoodie, as if uncharacteristically trying to threaten him. But, before she could make contact, that boy's form began to grow transparent.
He only said one word right before his form was completely erased from that phase, before Hyouka could finally take hold of him.
"Happiness."
With his existence gone from the phase, so was his miasma. Along with that, the girl's own pressure, now left unopposed quickly dissipated as her knees grow weak and she collapsed onto the ground, supporting herself with her hands.
The people around her who had all changed to suit her need at the time turned back into different people of varying backgrounds and simply continued on about their daily lives.
She was frustrated.
Once again, the world had fluctuated for her convenience. Once again, she had impacted and put the lives of the phase's residents in danger due to her own incompetence.
And she hated it. The tears streaming down her face were proof of that.
But, beyond that all, there was something that was clear here.
"They're in danger."
The friends who she cared so deeply for were in danger. There was no time to delay. She could not let her frustrations block her.
So, she stood up and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her school uniform.
Even if her eyes were still puffy from crying, she could not let the ramifications of this breach stand. She would protect that tiny world she held dear.
A/N: I live once again, resurfacing from the depths of pathology and med school to throw yet another chapter. As you can probably tell, real life gets in the way and makes writing a very slow process. But it gets done so, it's hardly the worst case scenario, though it's still one that can be improved.
That being said, I've been generally on the nose with previous chapter subtitles, so I'm kinda hoping that the meaning behind the current one doesn't fly over everyone's heads.
I've also finally gotten to introduce this fic's villain...antagonist...her. Kizuna, as she shall be referred to for now, is a weird case, even by Academy City standards, and I was hoping to give her a certain presence-not an intimidating one, actually, but one that's far more terrifying than intimidation. We'll see how that plays out as I get to characterize her. On another note, I can say I have hopefully given enough clues to deduce her ability at this stage, and she is an Esper. I wonder how many will figure it out already.
For what it's worth, I hope to give all the characters that have shown themselves some substantial enough character development.
After NT21 and the beautiful and genuine work of art that Aleister's Arc has been, I have way too high a bar to live up to. Though, I guess it's my fault for using that as my bar~
The first act (not of the archetypal three-act structure, mind you) of the story has now come to a close.
With that, I set my pen down till the next chapter.
...Goddammit, it's another K name. It's an odd fixation, but it's something I can't help but find glaring.
