Academy City had become quite busy, too.
In her dorm room, Misaka Mikoto was sitting on her bed. Her roommate, Shirai Kuroko, was not there. It seemed she had been needed on some job for Judgment.
They had the day off school.
It wasn't because a typhoon was blowing in.
The odds were "still" low, but the odds of a Russian ballistic missile or bomber making it to Academy City were not zero.
While Academy City and Russia seemed intent on fighting each other, the Japanese government had responded negatively to the idea of war. That wasn't exactly surprising. After all, Japan did not have an army, so they couldn't just decide to go to war. The Russians were acting on the assumption that it was a worldwide war, so America's attempts to deter them were ineffective.
Seeing that they had no chance of victory in all-out war, the Japanese government has pressured Academy City to quickly give into Russia's demands and avoid the war.
In response, Academy City had presented an extremely simple video.
It was footage of ballistic missiles exploding outside the atmosphere.
It wasn't just one or two missiles.
More than thirty of those fast moving shadows were flying through the sky at once and they were all shot down by Academy City interception weapons.
"We will not force you to do anything," said an Academy City spokesperson on the mobile 1seg broadcast. "However, we have no duty to protect anyone who is not our ally. Russia has already fired ballistic missiles without warning. Fortunately, none of them have been confirmed to have been loaded with nuclear warheads, but we do not know when that taboo will be lifted. We would like to take the course of action that we believe to be correct. But then, the country of Japan has the Aegis ships and PAC3s acquired with a large amount of tax money, so perhaps this is not all that much of a problem for you."
(…That's practically a threat.)
Academy City was saying it would remove its air defense network from the rest of Japan if they tried to interfere. It was true that the many American-made interception weapons the Self Defense Force had desperately been supplied with were excellent, but they could not compare to the Academy City weapons that were 20 or 30 years ahead in technology. Even a child knew the American weapons were not 100% accurate and they were in a situation where missing even once would bring tragedy.
Academy City was more or less threatening them using the Russian missiles, but the general populace didn't care. They just wanted to make sure those missiles did not fall on their own heads.
Thanks to that, the people were putting major pressure on the politicians. They were pressuring them not to provoke that city. They were begging them to allow their own cities to remain in the safety zone. With that flood of people's views, the politicians couldn't do anything which left Academy City able to do whatever it wanted.
The proclamation of war had been announced to the entire world and Mikoto had looked it up herself on the internet.
She knew that an aberrant city like Academy City would not give in to its demands.
However, she still felt an odd discomfort. While urging the people on with an indirect fear, Academy City was remaining a clean "ally of justice" that was protecting the people without getting its own hands dirty. That purity was very weird as if everything had been washed away with bleach. Mikoto found it odd that there didn't seem to be something hidden down below it all.
(Something, hm?)
Mikoto looked over to a different cell phone from the one she had been watching the video on.
This one had a Gekota strap on it.
She had called a certain spiky haired boy's number countless times, but she hadn't gotten through at all. And that boy had recently said he was in London when the coup d'etat was going on.
She had thought it was some kind of joke.
But…what if…?
What if that boy still hadn't returned to Academy City?
Mikoto decided it was worth looking into.
Ever since the proclamation of war, usage of the airport in District 23 had been restricted for civilians. And given the timing of the coup d'etat and the war, it may have been difficult for him to have come back.
Academy City seemed like it was cut off from the disturbances occurring outside, but it was actually at the center of the war.
If that boy was outside of the city, his level of danger shot up considerably. She couldn't just ignore that possibility.