You’re Right, They’ll Expel Me if I Run into the Store with a Weapon!!

“Alright, alright, alright, and stop.”

In the area designated for promotion, a girl in uniform was helping the adult workers while wearing a yellow safety helmet.

“Touka-chan, well done. The uncles here will handle the rest, so you’re free to go now.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you very much.”

“How about becoming our daughter-in-law?”

“No, thank you.”

Touka glanced at the laughing man and turned her toes towards a certain place.

“…”

“Good afternoon, Touka-sama.”

“Sayaka-san.”

Sayaka, wearing a gray career suit and the same yellow helmet as Touka, glanced at Touka.

“How’s work?”

“I just finished, so…”

“Is there something wrong?”

Sayaka looked at a building with an anxious face, and a small worry sprouted in Touka.

“Actually, I was with Hazuki until just now.”

The mentioned name brought to mind the figure of a young girl.

“Your…”

“Could it be…”

Facing a woman with a bitter expression, the girl held a certain conviction.

“I stepped away for a moment.”

“! That person again…”

What came to mind was the smile of a good young man, her master who had just redyed his failed hair coloring.

“Let’s go! That person is definitely up to something!”

“Amano-sama? I heard he has become serious lately…”

“That’s not the case! Even though his proposals appear serious, the reasoning behind them is entirely that of a degenerate’s mindset!”

Saying so, Touka stepped towards the building.

Ignoring Sayaka’s voice, she was determined to intervene and prevent her master from creating new embarrassments.

But,

“——————!”

“Touka-sama!?”

With an explosion, part of the ten-story building collapsed.

The explosion caused a large mass of debris to fall, crushing Touka at the entrance.

“Touka-sama! We need to get rescue immediately.”

“I’m okay…”

A hand extended from the debris. Gradually, from shoulder to torso, Touka appeared without moving the debris, as if slipping through the objects.

“As expected, nothing good comes from what he does!”

“Are you injured?”

“I avoided it using my ability, so I’m okay! But more importantly—”

“—————! ‘Aaaaaaah!'”

“Gaahaah!?”

A second explosion and sudden falling debris caught Touka off guard.

The object that hit her back was human-sized.

Glaring on all fours at what had fallen while screaming, Touka faced the next challenge.

“What did you do this time!?”

“No! I didn’t do anything bad!”

“Why did the building collapse then!?”

Touka vented her anger at the injured good young man, Kozaki Amano, the second-ranked pride of Combat College.

“I really didn’t do anything! I’m innocent!”

“Everyone who’s guilty says that! Confess quickly!”

From the collapsed floor, a giant something was launched, piercing the spot where Amano was.

“This is… a spear, right?”

“You can see that just by looking!?”

A colossal spear, composed of iron and concrete, pierced the ground just inches away from the girl with black hair.

Sayaka analyzed the situation calmly, while Touka screamed at it.

“I’m… going to die.”

The one who uttered a dying voice was Amano, positioned directly above the spear’s tail, surviving with a look of near death.

“Someone’s really trying to kill me here!?”

It was something rust-colored. A giant, whip-like object extended from above, shattering the spear into pieces.

“What is… how did you…”

“Why are you analyzing this calmly!? This is going to cause a lot of problems!”

Facing the pulsating tentacle that sprung from the collapsed hole, Touka worried more about other issues than her master’s safety.

“And… gone, he escaped!?”

No trace of him was left in the wreckage.

“That idiot aaaaah!”

Holding a device in one hand, Touka sped away.

As the panicked girl disappeared, Sayaka stepped into the debris-filled entrance.

A few minutes in, climbing the stairs to the floor with the hole, she found a white-haired girl, entwined with a gigantic tentacle in her right hand, looking outside.

“Hazuki, what happened?”

“…”

“Again, this girl…”

Choosing silence over speaking about unwanted matters, the usual girl was there.

Sayaka touched the rust-colored tentacle and whispered softly.

“What is this?”

“…A living creature.”

“Please retract it quickly. It’s still extending from the building to the ground.”

“Understood.”

It was enveloped in white light, starting to disintegrate. From fragments to grains, grains to spores, and spores to nothing, it vanished.

What remained was just a breezy hole littered with debris.

“Can you really not tell me what happened?”

“…”

“What about the repair of this building?”

“Starting now… I can restore it in a minute.”

With Sayaka behind her, Hazuki jumps down through the gaping hole.

Effortlessly landing at the debris-filled entrance, courtesy of her enhanced physical abilities, Hazuki touches a notably large piece of rubble to activate her power.

“…”

A white light spreads around her.

Without changing her expression, all the debris she touched, including the one in her hand, starts to merge into the building’s wall. It climbs the wall pulsatingly, weaving through the gaps like fitting pieces into a puzzle where the wall had been breached.

“…”

With an unchanged expression, Hazuki forcefully kicks off the ground, leaping up to the floor where Sayaka is. When her ascent halts, she is precisely at the targeted floor, gently touching the flat wall.

“…”

The wall curls inward, revealing the woman in the suit.

Stepping through the hole created by the curled wall, Hazuki then seals the hole again with her power.

“As always, that’s quite convenient.”

“…”

“How about the work?”

“Finished… moving to the next area.”

Conveying that the work here was completed and indicating her move to the next job site, Hazuki shared this with few words.

“What happened?”

“…”

Despite the repeated question, the girl remains silent as usual. Sayaka, however, draws a conclusion from this.

“Would you answer if Hiroki were the one asking!?”

Sparks dart around the girl, singeing Sayaka’s skin.

Although the phenomenon lasted less than a second, Sayaka’s eyes recognized it as no trivial matter.

“Is it something related to Hiroki?”

“…”

“That expression is an affirmation…”

Having been closely associated with the girl for a long time, almost like family, Sayaka could make out the subtle changes in the atmosphere for easy judgments.

Placing a hand over her heart, Sayaka swallows hard, sensing the gravity of the situation.

“How much has been revealed?”

“The existence of… Saiki… parts of a concluded plan…”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t know.”

As the girl showed a troubled look, Sayaka placed a hand on her forehead.

“How was the information leaked? Are there any suspects or possible causes?”

“There shouldn’t be any… neither when we went out… nor at the airport… there was nothing.”

She reflected on her meetings with Hiroki since his transfer to Combat College, having met only after considering various possibilities.

Thus, the cause must date back to before his time at Combat College.

Could it be from the days of Saiki?

Or perhaps even earlier…

◆

“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch!?”

“What are you thinking?!”

The girl forcefully steps on the thigh of the man lying face down, her right shoe digging into him as if gouging.

Touka was truly angry as she saw the faint tears streaming down Amano’s face.

“What’s with that anger? The top ranker was blatantly hostile, wasn’t he?”

Giant spears and enigmatic tentacles.

The aftermath was a mountain of rubble and wreckage.

Even Touka, who was stepping on Amano, nearly died.

Naturally, she directed her uncontainable anger towards Amano.

“Really! What! Did! You! Do!”

She questioned him about what he did to the top ranker, putting her weight on her foot in a violent rhythm.

In response, Amano slammed his hands on the ground and cried out.

“I get it! I’ll tell you! My thigh hurts!”

With tears, Amano apologizes as much as he can, and Touka, looking down at him with a stern look, steps back.

“It hurts… I was just curious.”

“Curious?”

Sitting and rubbing his thigh, Amano shares his interest with Touka.

“That girl, it appears she’s somehow connected to him.”

“Him?”

“Ogino Hiroki. The multiple ability user.”

Touka’s eyelids shoot open at those words.

“I got ignored no matter what I asked. So, I tried probing a bit deeper.”

“What exactly did you do…”

“Attack him… When I said that, she snapped and blew me away.”

That was the answer.

The curiosity turned into conviction, and Hazuki’s anger was the proof of that.

“How did you get to that? The relationship between the top ranker and the multiple ability user…”

Tentatively asking, Amano smiles.

“You know about Sayaka-chan’s true identity, right?”

“An artificial intelligence in a human body. The newest program designed to supplement the first ranker’s shortcomings.”

“That’s right. But that’s not all.”

There was an additional detail missing.

“Sayaka-chan’s mass-produced bodies were blended in as ordinary people in middle and high schools across the country to discover combatants who slipped through inspections. That’s her other role.”

Artificial intelligence exists in machines as consciousness data. Naturally, it’s possible to copy and create copies of it. The mass production of bodies was also solved by the first ranker’s abilities.

“One of those mass-produced bodies, a male version of Sayaka, was in a high school where a combatant was discovered.”

“But that’s not…”

“Right, not Ogino Hiroki. As you know, he was discovered at a bank, so it’s different.”

Cutting off Touka’s words, Amano continues.

“The one discovered was Yamamoto… what was his name again?”

“It doesn’t matter, continue.”

After clearing his throat in response to Touka’s words, Amano makes a statement with almost certainty.

“Yamamoto-kun was discovered at a high school where Ogino Hiroki was enrolled.”

“!”

“They seem to have been questioned about his prior non-detection, attributed to Hiroki’s undisclosed abilities leading to its concealment. This led to various revisions in the plan, all mass-produced bodies were recalled, the physical bodies were discarded, and the multiple consciousness data were consolidated into one. That’s the situation so far.”

Amano places a hand on his cheek, then his eyes take on a serious look.

“The initiative to distribute the mass-produced bodies originated from Hazuki-chan. It was her plan, proposed independently without any orders, which is why there were doubts.”

A plan created by a girl who showed interest in nothing.

For the Combat College, it was a gain, and the plan was executed in cooperation with the government.

However, Amano and a few others who knew the girl found it puzzling.

“Procedural and financial issues prevented the deployment across the entire country, so it was only implemented in selected schools. And then…”

He introduces a new certainty.

“Hazuki-chan was also granted the privilege to select a portion of those schools.”

From there, it’s clear. Amano’s conviction stemmed from the fact that the schools selected by Hazuki were involved.

“Schools with a multiple ability user…”

“Correct.”

Covering his face with a smirk, Amano laughs at Touka’s words.

“It’s scary how things happen by coincidence with Hazuki-chan’s plan, at the schools Hazuki-chan chose.”

Amano is saying it’s not a coincidence but an inevitability. He approached the top ranker and angered her to confirm this.

“There’s no tale of Hazuki-chan drawing near to him, save for perhaps her tidying up after a mission he accomplished… wait.”

There was one.

“Before she did that cleanup, there was another mission. She greatly shortened the required duration to complete it and then left the country immediately.”

“Could it be…”

“It’s possible they met within a range where the Japanese branch’s surveillance was weak. She finished her mission quickly and headed to his location. That’s a possibility.”

“…There has been a relationship from before.”

With the hypothesis the girl has now formed, Amano looks up to the sky.

“There must be something.”

◆

“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”

“Hmm? It’s rare for Hazuki’s device to receive a call.”

“…”

Most communications to Hazuki were handled by Sayaka, who acted as an intermediary. Thus, it was unusual for a call to come directly to Hazuki’s device instead of Sayaka’s.

“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”

“…”

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“Feeling… grumpy.”

The girl, furrowing her brows, was clearly in a bad mood. The reason, of course, was the earlier incident.

“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”

It was as if the girl couldn’t hear the annoying noise, completely ignoring it. However, the woman could not do the same.

“It’s annoying. Either pass it to me or hang up.”

At those words, Hazuki, with an irritated air, took the device from her inner pocket,

“————!!”

“Whoa!?”

Suddenly, a gust of wind knocked Sayaka off her feet.