Why couldn't I have been reborn in a different battle academy harem story? (Self-Insert wants out, Infinite Stratos)

All of the fictional light novel worlds I had to be reincarnated to, I count this as one of the worst ones. Of course, said list excludes any story with a sufficient amount of realism and grim darkness, but if one considers the typical harem "comedy" genre then I was surely in one of the worst stories out there.

Oh, certainly, I did my best in avoiding the typical harem protagonist "flags" and tropes without being an edgy jerkass loner, but I can't help but feel that my preparations will be insufficient to the might of this fully operational shitty harem.

"What the-"

"A decoy?!"

"-I repeat, the target is not at-"

I watched the would-be kidnappers from some random organization that may or may not be Phantom Task fumble about in my home through the cameras I installed.

All from the safety of the little hideaway that I made from my own hands, quite literally.

The amount of dirt I needed to relocate to make an underground room away from home was staggering.

"Well, that's enough of that."

I activated the remote switch and ignited the stored up gas I had placed in various points of my home after my sister left to participate in her mecha-suit tournament.

The home that I had lived in for as long as I can remember in this second life was destroyed by a fiery inferno of my own making. The gas explosion, burns and lack of oxygen killed the faceless goons that had intended to use me as leverage against my beloved older sister.

I didn't spend the years of my second life like some weak-willed idiot that would believe himself powerless against countless shadowy organizations, the militaries of the world, and a sociopathic siscon lesbian mad scientist.

There was no way I was going to take whatever shitty "plot" that "canon" has in store for me.

Of course, I would be singing a different tune if I was born in a different battle harem academy, like say Masou Gakuen HxH. Those girls were hot and kinky as fuck.

The main heroines of this world are just shallow cliched characters with a penchant for violence and jealousy to the point where I consider them utterly intolerable.

Of course, that didn't mean I treated the two token childhood friends, Houki and Lingyin, badly. I simply did what I thought was right (there were a lot of bullies in the area, okay?), without going for the childhood friend marriage promises, "he was always nice to me" cliches, etc... and by also not hesitating in showing all my bad/weird sides to them.

My phone alarm rang. Okay, time to make a move on.

I smashed my phone with a hammer before leaving the place.

I had already worn my blonde wig, fake glasses, hoodie and a bunch of other accessories that would make me look like a simply foreign tourist. When I was ready, I moved out of the base, followed the pre-planned route and blended into the crowd gathering at the shopping street, which had a clear view of the smoke rising from my desolated home.

Using my past-life's ability to be utterly unsociable, I moved through the crowd as if I had somewhere to be, and after a few minutes, arrived at the home of my best male friend.

The obligatory sole male best friend character, Dan Gotanda.

"Welcome…"

"You're unenthusiastic."

My red-haired best friend seemed rather distracted.

"Well excuse me! My friend's home just caught on… fire… ICHIKA?!"

"SHHH!"

"Ichika-kun?! You're okay?" "Ichika?" Oh, thank god-"

His sister Ran Gotanda, along with his parents, immediately ran up to me.

I had spent a lot of time at their restaurant that doubled as their home, apparently, to the point where they could identify me by my voice alone.

"Later! Sheesh, I'm trying to lay low here."

They hurried me to the back of the shop and towards the stairs that led me up to the bedroom. Thankfully, the Mondo Grosso tournament being held right now meant that everyone was either staying at home or spending time at a pub where there was a screen installed, that could allow them to watch the live feed.

The Gotanda family restaurant didn't have such a screen, as such, they were empty during this time of the day. This meant that there was no customers present that would give away my location and my current status among the living.

Just as planned.

And now for the next stage of the plan.

"Dan, could you lend me your phone?"

"Sure, you're going to call your sister?"

"Yeah, in a minute."

Then I began to take his phone apart.

"Hey!"

"I'll put it back together, just give me a… aha!"

Fucking called it. It was bugged.

Guess the militaries and organizations figured that surveillance through those devices wouldn't work after I had made a device to detect them.

I had removed them with the family's permission, then took the "weird bugs" to my older sister, who then proceeded to fly all the way to the main military base in Japan for some "words".

Of course, as always, these fuckers don't give up that easily.

"I hope you didn't have a girlfriend Dan, cause someone, somewhere, knows your best pick-up lines."

"The fuck?! Oh wait... I'm way too young to have a girlfriend."

"Not with that attitude."

"Dude…"

If I was the old me then I wouldn't have been able to manage the minimum level of competency required to deal with these advanced technologies. Thankfully, even though I've been reincarnated as the embodiment of a black hole, my mind was operating at a higher level than the norm.

The single reincarnation perk that I supposedly had, was the typically heightened intellect needed to be a decent IS engineer at my age.

Or in this case, I'm basically Macgyver.

I didn't have the mad genius needed to make badly designed mecha suits, but I was smart enough to learn and master what I wanted so long as I put my mind to it.

This was to the point where I could make gadgets to fulfill all sorts of purposes with the right material. It was nothing OP, but it was better than nothing.

After disabling the bug, I waited for my sister's match to be over, before calling her phone as she returned to the hangar where her personal belongings were stored during her fights.

"Who the hell is this?"

"Chifuyu-nee, it's Ichika. I'm alive, don't leave the arena no matter what. See you later. I have the high ground!"

"Wha-"

I hung up on Chifuyu Orimura, my sometimes harsh yet very loving older sister, and left the Gotanda family before they could stop me from leaving.

I went to the designated area, far enough from the town and away from electronic surveillance, then dug up the sack I prepared beforehand that was filled with food and water.

I opened up the canned luncheon meat (my guilty pleasure) and gulped down the contents of the bottled water to sate my thirst.

And from my hiding spot, I waited hours under the trees, until finally, I saw a shooting star across the night sky-

-coming closer right in my direction.

I knew she would figure it out.

The object landed right outside the abandoned playground.

I came out of my hiding spot, climbed up the slide and stood at the top.

"It's over Chifuyu-nee, I have the high ground!" I exclaimed while putting on a cheeky grin on my face.

My beautiful and sexy totally blood-related sister (or clone, not too sure how the plot goes) had stored up her mecha suit in the strange hammerspace that came along with it.

She sighed before matching my smile as she walked towards me.

"What's with you and gaining vertical superiority? Honestly…"

"Well, weren't you the one that said that having aerial superiority was a key factor in your battles?"

"Rather than learning that from me I'm pretty sure that you learned it from Obi-Wan."

"Got me there."

I got myself down from the slide that I had outgrown at this point.

As soon as I got down to the ground, my sister rushed at me with superhuman speed and gripped me into a tight and loving hug.

"Ichika! Ichika…"

"Hai hai, Ichika-desu."

She went from cry cute to angry onee-san in two seconds flat.

"Brat! Idiot! What were you thinking?!"

"I did what I had to do. My gut feeling told me that something bad was going to happen, so I rigged our home with traps after sneaking out the real important stuff, made them believe I was still home, then when they came in, I blew it up."

"How?"

I shrugged, "Gas leak."

"Your gut feeling told you to make our house into a death trap?"

"Well, it's the same gut feeling that predicted a couple of stuff right. Like, say, your best friend from school turning out to be a psycho lesbian mad scientist creating a mecha suit that can only be turned on by women for unknown reasons?"

I made such predictions for my sister in order to establish a bit of "cred" just for this moment.

"... Haaa… I suspected as much." She let me down and rubbed her forehead as if she had an incoming headache, "Well, the most important thing is that you're safe."

"Same! So long as I have Chifuyu-nee then I can take on the world!"

If there's a main female character that I like (Dan's younger sister doesn't count since she's a side character, and those are actually reasonable here), it is most definitely, my older sister.

After taking care of me for as long as this body can remember, it is only natural that I repay her back by being a good little brother in return.

"I-idiot! Don't say such things!" Her tone wasn't very harsh at all, "... At this rate then you'll really end up taking on the world."

"Okay…. Soooo, did you win?"

"Hmph! What do you think?"

Of course, there was no doubt that she won.

My sister was the strongest Infinite Stratos pilot in the world.

"The medal?"

"Bah, I rushed out of the place after the match. They can courier it to me later."

"The organizers are gonna hate you for ditching the medal ceremony and losing them advertising revenue."

We continued to talk and joke around together like the siblings we were and continued on with our lives together, as always.

"Ichikaaaa…"

"Yes?"

"Beer please."

"Okie dokey."

I tossed my sister a can of beer from the fridge.

Despite not even looking at my direction, she caught the beer can as it flew towards her from the kitchen, opened and drunk from it without her eyes ever leaving the TV screen.

It's been several years since the incident and my sister has been the same as always.

Well, with some exceptions.

I guess all those years of being really bad at acting childishly, outside of topics relating to Star Wars and the fact that I had no problems planning out a deadly trap for my enemies had eventually, made her see me as a young man instead of an unreliable little brother.

She has dropped most of her strictness, and instead, picked up the habit of expecting better of me when it comes to managing my life.

That wasn't much of an issue considering that I was able to make a living to support our lifestyle while also managing the house by myself.

While the obvious "hot trends" of my old world weren't prevalent due to the misplaced gender discrimination (women acted as if they called all the shots while the economy, politics and major industries remained in the same hands) I had still managed to discover the right markets to exploit.

My current income was more than enough to support our current living costs. It was all thanks to my superior programming, art and "writing" (lol) skills (in other words, just enough to make people shell out money).

I managed to make a few money-making apps, gacha game franchises in collaboration with a few firms and got a light novel series about a guy getting Isekai'ed into a new world where men are discriminated against (yet rises in social standing regardless, basically a rip-off the mob character story) published.

That last one just got an anime adaptation this season. The people, both men and women, were eating it up. Due to the weird way this world's society functioned, that story of mine (which I based off something I read in my previous life) basically became the SAO of the anime industry.

Thankfully, being in an anime world meant that certain laws on managing money is out of wack, in this case, even a kid like me can become rich and handle money however I wanted so long as my guardian (Chifuyu) allows me to do so.

In Cecilia's case, I suppose both her parents getting assassinated (not that she knows that, she thinks it's an accident) after refusing to return the IS core they used to save Cecilia's future meido Chelsea from certain death counts as "full guardian approval", in regards to her capability to spend her wealth.

Oh, and a deal with the government to be their representative candidate too, I suppose.

"And that's all the dishes. Whew!"

After I finished up with the washing in the kitchen, I sat down next to my underdressed older sister, who was watching… anime?

What the hell, she never watches anime! All she does is watch news and documentaries.

"Hey that's-"

"-that's my little brother! This show isn't half bad! You did good."

Oh god, my sister is literally watching that very anime adaptation.

"Glad you liked it..."

"Hey, Ichika."

"What?"

"That older sister character, you know, the one that isn't a complete ass to her younger brother like the others? Don't you think that she's suspiciously familiar?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Her name's an anagram of mine in English."

"You have it all wrong."

"How cute!"

She likes to tease and mess with me way too much at times.

Due to being a different person from the canon Ichika, I guess it shouldn't have come off as a surprise that my relationship with Chifuyu was a tad different.

Now that I was self-sufficient, I could simply quit school and avoid anything to do with the damn Infinite Stratos suits. Chifuyu does seem to approve of it so long as I can continue to prove to be a responsible and intelligent adult.

And if I'm correct, she may also prefer that option as working from home means that she gets to spend more time with me that way. Well, I'm of the same opinion.

I was well on-track to skipping the high school assessment test that got the canon Ichika locked in with the IS.

A month later, a fucking remote-piloted Infinite Stratos suit broke into my house, kidnapped me, then flew me all the way to Japan's military compound before finally stuffing me into the piloting area without my consent… in front of every important Japanese military personnel, including my older sister.

"Fucking Tabane."

I cursed out loud.

Chifuyu threw down her cup of tea and cursed her name too.

I hate that mecha-bunny bitch so much.