After holing up in a hotel room for about an hour, the girl in the dress returned to one of School's hideouts. Kakine Teitoku, the Level 5, was there.
"Oh, where have you been?"
"Just gathering some spending money. Scientists are as horrible as ever. They make sure to calculate out just the basic rate; they don't give you a tip at all."
"Hmm. An hour isn't very long."
"It's not like I'm doing anything to be guilty over. We were in a hotel room, but we just talked a bit while flipping through a magazine."
"…You don't do anything sexual?"
"No. I don't need to. I suppose it's mostly a case by case kind of thing, but my customers aren't after that kind of thing. Do you know why rich guys go to stores and give women money? It isn't to satisfy their sexual desire. They want to make relationships with other people outside of work on their own."
"I really don't understand that world," said Kakine.
The girl in the dress spoke half in disbelief.
"You know about workaholics, right? Those people love to work so much that they can't help themselves and they end up destroying their family. For people like that, a relationship they can make using money feels like a form of salvation. Money is the result of work. By buying friends and love with money, they're satisfied because they think they have made relationships with their own abilities and that they aren't completely incompatible with society. I take money and give them some relief about that complex of theirs."
"I see," replied Kakine in a voice completely void of interest.
Hearing that, the girl in the dress lost her urge to explain.
"Oh, that's right. Apparently, Item who was pursuing us has been taken out. There was some infighting which led to #4 Mugino Shizuri going down. Now the organization is finished."
"What? Infighting? So Mugino did manage to get away from my attack… But who took Mugino out? Frenda took our deal and fled, I defeated Kinuhata Saiai, and Takitsubo Rikou doesn't have any direct battle ability…"
Kakine trailed off.
"It couldn't be…"
"Yes. If it couldn't have been any of the main members, it had to have been someone from the subordinate organization."
The Level 0 who had come back to the elevator hall to protect Takitsubo Rikou came to both their minds. Kakine whistled in praise of Hamazura Shiage.
The girl in the dress stared at Kakine.
"How's the analysis with the Tweezers going?"
Kakine Teitoku had a metal glove on his right hand that had clear claws on the index finger and the middle finger. The naked eye couldn't tell this, but inside the claws were masses of silicon that had been collected from the air. Of course, these so-called masses were only 70 nanometers across and an electron microscope was needed to confirm they were there.
"There was something that had always bothered me," muttered Kakine as he clacked the claws together. "That bastard Aleister always knew a little too much about our actions. It was too much for it to just be surveillance from the security cameras, the security robots, and the satellite. It was always a mystery how he gathered his information."
"…"
"The answer is nothing special. He spread about ten million invisible machines throughout the city to do it. It's not surprising he knows every little thing with this."
He was talking about Underline.
They had a spherical body with three wire-shaped cilia on the left and three on the right. Instead of walking on the ground, they floated through the air.
Those miniscule machines used the convection of the air to generate their own power, gathered data indefinitely, used a quantum signal they produced transmitted over a direct electron beam to pass information between them, and created a type of network. Underline was the sole direct line of information into the windowless building so those tiny bodies had to hold information from the darkest depths of the city that would shake the world if it got out.
"Even knowing of Underline's existence, finding microscopic machines isn't easy, and, even if you do capture some, there's no way to get the information out. You have to open up a nano-sized device and attach a cord to it. Not to mention that apparently carelessly 'observing' the quantum signal inside it will cause the information to change."
That was why the Tweezers were necessary.
No matter how small the nanodevices were, an item developed to grab elementary particles would have no problem. With it, getting the information out of Underline was quite possible.
The girl in the dress spoke while looking at Kakine.
"What about the result of the analysis?"
"It was exactly as expected," responded Kakine. "No good. It's true that there is a lot of data in Underline, but I don't think this is enough to compete with Aleister with equal footing. We have to give another push to add to this data."
"So you're really going to do it?"
"…Yes. I will kill Academy City's #1. It's the only way. Being the Spare Plan just isn't enough if I want the negotiations with Aleister to go well. I have to become the central and irreplaceable Main Plan."
"I see," responded the girl in the dress with no real emotion. "Do whatever you want, but I'm not taking any part with a battle against Accelerator."
"Ah?"
"My Measure Heart regulates the distance between people's hearts. So if I take the distance of the person Accelerator is closest to, I may be able to make him hesitate in attacking."
"And?"
"But not everyone reacts to feeling like the person closest to them is enemy by stopping their attack. Some people go into a frenzy and come in with an even harsher attack because they feel that person has betrayed them. …Can we trust Accelerator to not do that? Sorry, but I get the feeling he would attack me no matter where I set the distance to. He's too muddy to read."
"Hmm," responded Kakine uninterestedly.
There was no disappointment in his voice. He must not have expected the girl in the dress to be much help in the battle anyway.
The girl in the dress looked at the claws on Kakine's right hand.
"If you have the result, tell me. I want to know when we can directly negotiate with Aleister."
"Sure thing," said Kakine and the girl in the dress left School's hideout.
Kakine Teitoku stared down at the Tweezers and calmly smiled.
"…Accelerator, huh...FuckYou?"