A woman named Yoshikawa Kikyou was inside the same hospital the Sisters were rampaging around within.
She was a former member of the research group that had planned and carried out the experiment meant to create a new category called Level 6 to exist above Academy City's current classifications of Level 0, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, and Level 5.
By her own admission, she had a naïve but not kind personality. She had created a total of over 20,000 clones and killed over half of those in the process of that experiment. The one doing the actual killing had been a Level 5 student who was the prime candidate for achieving Level 6, but that was no excuse.
Currently, the experiment had been not just frozen but ended after a fatal flaw was found in it.
However, that had not caused everything related to the experiment to just disappear into thin air. The girls created just to be killed and the esper who had been ordered to do nothing but kill them were still human children even if they had special characteristics or lived in a special environment. The mental pressure this brought down on them had to be unimaginable. Their individual problems were bad enough, but there was a rift of absolute depth between them and the relationship between them could only be called a catastrophe. Normally thinking, there was no way the gap between them could be bridged.
But…
"No! says Misaka as Misaka refuses you! Misaka isn't getting down! Misaka is never getting down! This bag is Misaka's territory! says Misaka as Misaka strongly objects while sitting on top of the bag you are holding!!"
"Why you…!! Don't swing around on the bag someone's carrying over their shoulder, you little shit!! Did you forget that I'm still recovering!?"
(The victims in question are as lively as ever.)
Accelerator, the one who had done the killing, was standing on wobbling legs with a tonfa-like modern cane in his right hand and a sports bag strapped over his left shoulder. His colorless white hair and red eyes were his most notable characteristics and he now wore primarily gray clothes.
Last Order, one of the ones to be killed, was sitting seiza-style on top of Accelerator's sports bag with one hand on either side of the shoulder strap like it was a swing. She could only pull this off because she looked like a child of about 10, but she may still have been too much for someone who needed a cane. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a light blue camisole with an unbuttoned men's dress shirt worn over it.
Accelerator had been hospitalized after being shot in the forehead on August 31st, but he was finally being released after spending a month there. Technically, his body had not been healed, but he had undergone all the treatment available. The after-effects of the damage the fragments of his shattered skull had done to his brain were not gone and he still had to wear a choker-style electrode around his neck to supplement a portion of his brain's functions. Without that, he could not even speak or stand on his own two feet. But after the injury he had undergone, it was a miracle he was able to go back to his normal life at all.
And that was why those three currently stood at the main entrance of the hospital.
Yoshikawa too had been shot at the end of the previous month and the bullet had grazed her heart, so she was not exactly in the best condition to watch after those children, but she had taken on the duty nonetheless.
It was not that she had no choice but to do it.
She wanted to do it.
"Okay, listen up. This is the entrance, so stop playing around so you don't trouble the other people here. You can play once we drop off this luggage and calm down a bit."
"Misaka wasn't playing! says Misaka as Misaka forces her center of gravity further and further down and objects with a serious expression!!"
"If that sense of leisure oozing off of you isn't playing, then what the hell do you call it!?" shouted Accelerator while the sports bag still threatened to flatten him. Yoshikawa ignored that exchange and headed out from the entrance and lightly waved at the driver of the taxi waiting for them. He drove up to them with practiced motions.
Accelerator held out the bag Last Order was sitting on toward the driver and said, "I'll just throw all this in the trunk, so hurry up and open it."
"You're treating Misaka like luggage!? says Misaka as Misaka flees to the back seat while trembling!!"
Accelerator tossed the sports bag into the back seat so it squashed Last Order underneath and sat in an open seat.
There was still room in the back seat, but Yoshikawa headed around to the passenger seat so she did not have to deal with the commotion in the back.
Just to be sure, she said to the driver, "They're just feeling a bit giddy after being in the hospital for so long."
"Ah ha ha. It's a good thing for kids to have that much energy."
"Oh, and the small one isn't used to cars so she might vomit."
"!?"
The driver's body twitched at that. Yoshikawa guessed he was new at the job. She could hear the sounds of a struggle as Accelerator grabbed his sports bag and moved as far away from Last Order as he could get. Yoshikawa's warning had only been a bluff meant to make sure the driver gave them a smoother ride, but it seemed it was not as well known a trick as she had thought.
The taxi set off as smoothly as if it was delivering raw eggs.
Yoshikawa informed the driver of their destination and checked the digital clock above the meter. It was just before noon.
Since he had believed the announcement about Last Order vomiting, Accelerator grabbed her face and shoved her away when she tried to approach. As he did so, he looked at the back of Yoshikawa's head with a puzzled look.
"Where are we headed?"
"To the school someone I know works at. I have arranged for us to meet there. You're planning to quit your current school, right? I'm sure you know what that means."
Most of the students in Academy City lived in dormitories. There were some who did things like freeload at a city bakery, but those were very rare cases.
Leaving a school (technically they were psychic power development institutions that included schools) meant losing your place to live in that school's dorms. Accelerator was constantly targeted by Academy City's delinquents and they would also trash his dorm room, so he had no problem ditching that residence. Every single piece of furniture had been destroyed, so there was no value in the place. However, losing his only real place of shelter was still a big deal.
The reason Accelerator had chosen to leave that school despite that risk was…
"I don't want to have anything to do with that Level 6 shit ever again."
The organization that had directly carried out that experiment had been destroyed, but the disappearance of the research institution that used the Sisters did not fully free them from its curse. It was on a different scope, but his school had a special classroom. He was the only student in the class and it essentially functioned as a square cage to isolate him as an experimental animal.
If he truly wanted to leave that bloody world, he had to throw away all of that. The lab, the school, the dorm…everything.
From now on, he would have to choose a school that did not have such powerful intent behind it. He had no idea if there really were any researchers who would not leap at the chance to experiment on a test subject as desirable as Accelerator, but he would do his best to find one.
Accelerator and Last Order were such special beings that they would never find a place to live outside of Academy City.
And if he stayed in Academy City but did not attend a school, his only choice was to live in the back alleys as a member of Skill-Out. If Academy City's strongest Level 5 chose that path, it would only lead to complete destruction.
Accelerator grimaced.
"So did the board of directors decide to leave us under your control? I suppose this is perfectly suited to your field of research."
As a research member involved in the experiment, Yoshikawa had once helped produce Last Order and the other clones and had helped with the maintenance of Accelerator.
Even after the research related to Level 6 had been stopped, he was still Academy City's strongest Level 5 and excellent research material. If Yoshikawa could research him and find some new way to use him for psychic power development, he would be very valuable indeed.
Accelerator sensed the influence and planning of someone from behind the scenes.
Most of the people Accelerator had ever met could be summed up with the term "monster". As long as it allowed him to escape the curse of that sort of adult, he decided it might be easier to leave the decision to Yoshikawa. Of course, if he ever disagreed with her methods, he would just crush her and try elsewhere.
But…
"No," replied Yoshikawa Kikyou without even turning around.
"What?"
"I am not your next supervisor. Think about this rationally. With my research job gone, I am essentially unemployed. Also, after the experiment itself and August 31st, I have been involved with an incident related to you twice now. If the board of directors still decided to assign me as your guardian, they should all be fired."
"…Then what? Are you only here to run an errand for the strange new researcher that we're being handed over to?"
"You certainly are deeply suspicious. But given the environment you've grown up in, I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise. However, that view is incorrect in two different ways. First, I am planning to hand you over to someone you know. Second, this person is not a researcher."
"…"
Accelerator narrowed his eyes as he carefully thought through what Yoshikawa had said.
He did not trust her.
He did not like having that kid next to him, but he was willing to crush any enemy even with that handicap. It would be faster to thoroughly crush an enemy that showed itself here than to spend a long time constantly being on guard for some unknown attacker.
(…This is getting boring.)
And then the perfectly innocent girl known as Last Order gave a carefree remark.
"The only person I know who isn't a researcher is Yomikawa, says Misaka as Misaka raises her hand to give her answer."
"That's right," replied Yoshikawa happily.
Yomikawa was a woman who worked as a member of Academy City's Anti-Skill and was one of Yoshikawa Kikyou's few friends in the public world. Accelerator and Last Order knew her as the track-suit-wearing woman who had looked after the two of them in the hospital while Yoshikawa was still incapacitated from her gunshot wound.
Accelerator clicked his tongue as that possibility had not come to mind until Last Order mentioned it.
Hearing that, Yoshikawa said, "Oh? I thought maybe you would relax a bit when you heard the answer."
"Then how about you give me some more thorough answers?"
"Well, you will see whether I am lying or not when we arrive. It may be best if you actually don't fix your bad habit of being cautious about the naïve words of others. Especially since you know the value of what you must protect."
Yoshikawa was not giving in at all. Accelerator looked out the car window in annoyance as a means of averting his gaze from the passenger seat. Last Order alone seemed oblivious to the exchange and said, "Eh? So it isn't Yomikawa? says Misaka as Misaka starts tugging on your shoulder."