(They just do whatever they want, don't they?) thought Hamazura Shiage.
It was noon and they were at a family restaurant in District 7, but the girl known as Mugino Shizuri was sitting at one of the tables eating a convenience store bento she had bought elsewhere and she wasn't even trying to hide it. He felt sorry for the short waitress that was nervously standing nearby.
"Huh? This salmon bento seems different from the one from yesterday. Huh?"
Even inside the restaurant, she was wearing a bright autumny short sleeved coat. She crossed her stocking-covered legs as she sat next to the window and muttered those words of puzzlement. Hamazura responded silently in his heart with, "It's the same damn thing as yesterday."
Everyone at that table was rather eccentric.
"In the end, I'm getting kind of tired of canned mackerel. Now curry. Curry would be awesome."
The blonde-haired blue-eyed high school girl known as Frenda sitting next to Mugino said this while poking at the contents of a can, but she must not have been good at using a can opener because there was something that looked like PVC tape stuck around the can and the top had been burned off by an explosive with an electrical fuse stuck in it. Hamazura thought it was a tool usually used for blowing the locks off of doors.
Kinuhata Saiai, the girl sitting across from Frenda, was an obedient-looking girl of about 12 wearing a fluffy knit dress. She was paying no heed to the actions of the other eccentric girls (not because she had the good sense to ignore them or because she was broad-minded; that was just the type of eccentric person she was) and looking through some movie pamphlets.
"An ultra-problematic C-movie by the Hong Kong Red Dragon Film Company… It sounds like you'll be on the edge of your seat for more reasons than one. I'm super interested. I have to check that one out. What do you think, Takitsubo-san?"
Kinuhata was speaking to a lethargic girl sitting next to her named Takitsubo Rikou. She wasn't touching her food and was sluggishly sitting in the sofa-style seat with her arms and legs sprawled out limply while her gaze aimlessly wandered around.
"…A signal is coming from south-southwest…"
These girls were Item.
Item was one of Academy City's unofficial organizations and its primary duty was to stop the "upper classes", including the board of directors, from getting out of hand. There were only 4 of them, but they could influence what direction the city and the science side as a whole took. They were a unit that had the same level of secrecy as Group and School.
Hamazura Shiage was not a proper member of Item.
He was part of its subordinate organization and all the odd jobs and the driving were left to him.
Before, he had briefly been the leader of the armed organization of back alley Level 0s, Skill-Out, but their plan had failed and they had taken a devastating amount of damage. That had put an end to his life of standing above others. Now he spent every day doing subordinate work in the dark side of Academy City.
(Y'know…)
There was something that had been bothering Hamazura ever since he had been assigned here.
(Being the only guy in a group of girls is kind of awkward.)
The table was made for 6 people, so Hamazura sat at the seat closest to the aisle. He had been given drink bar duty.
"So," Mugino Shizuri began a conversation after having finished eating her usual salmon bento. "Before noon, someone attempted to snipe Oyafune Monaka, one of the board of directors. They want us to take action in regard to that case."
"Hey, in the end, I don't have that information."
Frenda made that simple objection and Mugino stopped moving for a second saying, "Mh?"
Then the girl in the short sleeved coat looked over to Hamazura.
"Hamazura. Send the details of the incident to everyone's cell phones."
"Okay, okay." was Hamazura's halfhearted response.
He couldn't complain about what he was instructed to do. This was his job. He took out his cell phone and sent the data saved there to the members of Item other than Mugino.
"Hmm."
All of Item checked the information on their phones.
And what appeared on their screens was a porn video he had downloaded from the internet.
All four Item members immediately snapped their cell phones shut. When they looked at him with scornful eyes, the door of his heart slammed shut. He shut his heart up tight and sent his heart's elevator down to take refuge in his heart's nuclear shelter.
"No, wait!! Let me redo that! This was some kind of mistake!!"
Hamazura Shiage was once the leader of over 100 Skill-Out delinquents and now he was having to explain himself in a loud voice.
But the 4 members of Item responded by…
"Hamazura…"
"In the end, you're disgusting, Hamazura."
"So bunny girls are a super hit with you, Hamazura?"
"Don't worry, Hamazura. I'm rooting for you."
Hamazura trembled slightly at their mild words and made sure he sent the information on the attempted sniping of Oyafune Monaka to them.
When he did, Kinuhata spoke in surprise.
"Oh, this is that super plan of School's. But I was super sure we had taken out their assassination sniper three days ago…"
"They probably just hired a new one. Well, I suppose this means they ignored our 'warning'."
"In the end, didn't we debate about why they were targeting Oyafune Monaka back then, too?" Frenda stabbed into the contents of her mackerel can with a fork as she spoke. "Oyafune's on the board of directors, but in the end she's useless. She doesn't have much influence, so there's no value in killing her. And yet…"
"School went out of the way to replace their lost sniper and they ignored our 'warning' in order to assassinate Oyafune," Takitsubo added to what Frenda had said absentmindedly.
Mugino nodded casually.
"There's no value in killing Oyafune Monaka. And yet School forced themselves to snipe her on schedule knowing full well we had our eyes on them. Why would they do that? …Yes, Hamazura-kun!"
Hamazura jumped in surprise at her words.
(Hah!? Why did she bring me into the conversation as if she wants me to say something interesting!? Don't focus on me in a situation like this!!)
"U-um, well!! Wait a second! It's on the tip of my tongue. Just give me a bit and I'll have it!!"
He gave a nice energetic answer, but didn't actually say anything in it.
And the 4 members of Item responded by…
"C'mon, Hamazura…"
"In the end, it's really disgusts me how flustered you are."
"There are a super lot of different types of disgusting, but you're the worst kind, Hamazura."
"Don't worry, Hamazura. I'm rooting for you even when everyone's calling you disgusting."
The girls sighed in disappointment. Hamazura the Level 0 kneeled down on the ground and stopped moving.
Mugino ignored him and spoke.
"Well, as we said, there's no value in assassinating Oyafune Monaka. There's no denying that. And yet School still chose her as their target. So maybe they chose Oyafune as their target because there's no value in killing her."
"Because there's no value in it? I super don't understand."
"Oh, you know. Maybe School didn't care who it was. Maybe as long as it caused a disturbance, they wanted a VIP whose death wouldn't have much of an effect. In other words, they chose the VIP with the least security." Mugino sounded like she was enjoying this. "Other VIPs…well, let's just think about the board of directors. No other member was making an outdoor speech around this time. And that bastard Shiokishi wears a powered suit 24/7. There was no way they could successfully snipe someone like that, so I'm thinking they chose someone easier to target. And, frankly, Oyafune Monaka had fairly lax security."
"…In the end, I feel sorry for Oyafune."
"If I'm right, what was School after? This is why a system to ensure the safety of VIPs is important."
Mugino puffed up her obviously large chest as she spoke.
"Starting with the 12 members of the board of directors, there are a lot of people and organizations recognized as VIPs in Academy City. Their security is better than the usual security and, when their lives are in danger, people are called in from all sorts of places. The roads their ambulances need to travel on are blocked off and big-shots from various medical industries gather at the hospital for them."
"In other words," Mugino paused for a second, "what do you think would happen if someone attempted to assassinate a VIP?"
"A lot of people would be called in to protect the facility where they would undergo treatment. Special researchers and equipment, anything necessary, would be brought in. Ah, hahhh. It looks like School wants to do something amid all that confusion."
"What a boring method," Kinuhata added.
"It was true they could create an 'opening', but it lacked certainty. Calling in more security would have little effect on District 23, or the 'windowless building'. All this would do would change their possible targets from 'facilities that could be attacked' to 'facilities that were temporarily raised to an attackable level'."
"It could be some kind of insurance. If School got serious, they could break into most facilities."
"But," Mugino added, "in order to carry out that insurance, they had to get a new sniper in a hurry and carry out their plan of assassinating Oyafune Monaka. They must have been pretty high strung getting everything in order."
"So, in the end, Oyafune Monaka was just a bit of security and School is still planning on attacking their real target wherever or whoever it may be?"
"Yes," Mugino quickly nodded.
Hamazura timidly spoke up.
"…Wait. So was that really an 'attempted' assassination?"
"It probably didn't really matter. Even if Oyafune died, it would take a lot of manpower to perform CPR, do an autopsy, and analyze her body. She is the very highest of VIPs as one of the 12 members of the board of directors, after all. They would use all of Academy City's mysterious technology to deal with it."
"Uegh," Hamazura responded in disgust.
Mugino continued on as if he had never spoken.
"We need to see what facilities have insufficient security due to the attempted assassination of Oyafune Monaka. …No. That's not enough. We also need to see what would have changed had the assassination been successful. School must have been creating a situation where they could move whether the sniper succeeded or failed. So there should be a facility that has its security reduced in both situations. And that's most likely where School will show up next."
Mugino Shizuri forcefully stood up from her seat.
She spoke to Hamazura without ever looking over towards him.
"Hamazura, go find a car for us. It looks like we're going to need to head out soon."
It pissed Hamazura off how self-importantly she said that, but he couldn't object.
He was just here to do subordinate work.
"Damn it. I was once the leader of over 100 Skill-Out members…"
Those words accidently leaked out.
"That's true. Your point?"
(…God damn it.)
This time he swore in his heart rather than out loud and left the family restaurant to go find a car.