Hamazura Shiage returned to one of Item's hideouts.
"You're late, Hamazura," said Mugino Shizuri in a carefree way.
They were in a section of a high-rise building in District 3. It was a facility full of indoor leisure items like a sports gym and a pool. The grade of the users was fairly high. To even enter the building, one needed a member ID and the rank of one's ID needed to be checked to use certain specific facilities. Apparently, it was a major sign of status among the upper echelons of the city to be a member.
Hamazura and the others were in a VIP salon.
The individual rooms could be reserved on a yearly contract and only someone with a "Two Star" membership ranking or above could do so, so the room had a very upper class feel to it.
In the area that was called an individual room even though it was easily more spacious than a 3LDK, Mugino was sitting on a sofa.
Hamazura looked at who was gathered there and asked a puzzled question.
"Where's Frenda?"
"Gone," responded Mugino readily. "Dead or captured, I don't know. And it doesn't look like we're going to have time to replace her, so Item will have to function with only three. Well, School is down to three too, so it works out. It won't be hard to take the fight back to them, because we have Takitsubo."
Mugino had said three.
Hamazura frowned at not being counted, but bringing it up wouldn't accomplish anything.
"Hamazura. You're hurt," said Takitsubo while looking at his face.
"It's nothing," he replied. "What are you going to do now? School stole the Tweezers, right?"
"That's right," Mugino readily admitted. "That's why it's our turn to go on the attack. Takitsubo's AIM Stalker can search for the location of any esper whose AIM diffusion field she has memorized. We fought them once in the particle engineering lab, so we can track them down. Item's reason to exist is to stop the upper classes and the secret organizations from getting out of hand. Let's do our job."
Hamazura looked over at Takitsubo.
As usual, the girl had her arms and legs sprawled out limply. Perhaps her insecure way of speaking was due to feeling the effects of others' AIM diffusion fields all the time.
"Is searching for Dark Matter fine?"
"Who's that?"
"The second Level 5. He's the bastard who leads School."
As Mugino answered Hamazura's question, Takitsubo took out a small case with a white powder in it.
Kinuhata looked at the clear case oddly.
"You have it super hard, Takitsubo-san. You can't even activate your power without Body Crystal."
"It's not so bad. This way actually seems normal to me," said Takitsubo as she ever so slightly licked the white powder.
Light returned to her eyes.
As if this was her normal state, Takitsubo Rikou stood up and stretched her back.
"Beginning AIM diffusion field search. Ending pick up of approximate and similar AIM diffusion fields. The results for the single AIM diffusion field will be reported. 5 seconds remaining until end of search."
She spoke like a machine.
And she came up with the correct response.
"Conclusion: Dark Matter is within this building."
Before everyone there could react in astonishment, something happened.
The door to the private salon was kicked in from the other side.
A single man walked in.
Seeing him, Mugino Shizuri spoke in annoyance.
"Dark Matter…!!"
"I'd prefer it if you called me by my name. It's Kakine Teitoku by the way."
The man had odd "claws" made of machines on his hand.
"The Tweezers…"
"Cool, ain't it? I came here to declare my victory."
"Ha. You're just the Spare Plan who wasn't chosen by Aleister. Just a bit ago, you were running away all over the place, but now you're this confident?"
"Oh, right. I forgot to thank you for what you did back in the particle engineering lab. Thanks to you, I lost one of the 4 proper members of School."
"Did you forget about the sniper we killed a few days ago? Did you replace him?"
The conversation between the two Level 5s suddenly cut off.
The cause was Kinuhata Saiai. She lifted up a nearby table in one hand without even getting up out of the sofa. The girl who looked only 12 took the table that was covered in decorations making it have to weigh a few dozen kilos and threw it forcefully at Kakine Teitoku.
There was a loud crash.
The table smashed to pieces, but Kakine's expression did not change.
"That hurt," he said so naturally it made you think he might be telling the truth. "And it pissed me off. I'm smashing you to pieces first."
As expected, Kinuhata did not accept that.
She ran to the wall and destroyed the salon wall with her small fist. She then grabbed Hamazura and Takitsubo's hands, winked at Mugino, and leapt through the broken wall.
On the other side was a similarly constructed luxurious salon. There were people in it, but Kinuhata knocked them out with her fist. When they exited into the hallway, a man that looked like he was from School's subordinate organization was there, but she took him out with her fist, too.
Kinuhata Saiai did not have superhuman strength. Her power allowed her to freely control the nitrogen in the air. Her power was so exceedingly great that she could control compressed masses of nitrogen in order to lift up a car or even stop bullets. However, her effective range was very small. It only extended a few centimeters from her palm. This made it look like she was lifting things with her hand.
"Hamazura. Please go get us a car super fast," said Kinuhata. "One of reasons School is here is for Takitsubo. Since they knew where our hideout was, it's super safe to assume they know all our other information. Most likely, they found out what a problem Takitsubo-san's power would be for them and came here to take out our only way of tracking them."
"Her searching power?" said Hamazura.
Just from how destructive they looked, he thought they would be more worried about Mugino or Kinuhata…
"Even if they don't kill everyone in Item, our actions will be super restricted if they take Takitsubo-san out. Her presence or absence determines whether we are the chasers or the chased. If I were them, I would go for her first."
"…"
"On the other hand, this means that as long as Takitsubo-san is fine, we can turn this around. So get her in a car and take her super far away from here. If you hide somewhere that isn't one of Item's hideouts, it'll take them a while to find you."
As Kinuhata spoke, she took a stun gun out of her pocket.
She put it in Takitsubo's hand.
"The way you're always staring off into space is super dangerous, so at least have this as a weapon. And with this, you won't die if you accidentally set it off."
They heard an explosion.
It came from the salon Mugino and Kakine were in.
"Please go. You need to super hurry," Kinuhata said as she pushed Hamazura and Takitsubo from behind.
Before he could say anything, the small girl ran off towards the battlefield.