There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), So I Made One MYSELF!
世界の闇と戦う秘密結社が無いから作った（半ギレ）

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Chapter 12: Joining Forces

Volume 5: † The Double Wings of Shade †

On the other hand, the terrorist that Baba had converted into a fanatic had not been informed that Mikyou-chan was an esper. He had been told that there were espers among the students, but no details had been given regarding specifically who it was and what he or she could do.

This was why the terrorist actually freaked out when Mikyou-chan’s shadow rose up and started swinging at him. He screamed and opened fire.

He could hardly be blamed. A short, tiny girl with a pale face who clearly looked sickly and fragile had suddenly called forth a monster made of shadows. Anyone would freak out. It was like trying to catch a hamster quivering with fear and then suddenly finding yourself being attacked by a zombie. This was true horror right here.

Of course, a shot fired in blind panic was going to miss. And in the first place, the terrorist was using blanks, so it didn’t matter. In any case, the panicked shot went wide.

Mikyou-chan used her shadows — which were only strong enough to lift a 500 mL bottle of water — to entirely envelop the hysterical terrorist and massage him all over. From a third person’s point of view, it looked like the terrorist was being vored by a wriggling black shadow while screaming at the top of his lungs. It made for one very disturbing scene indeed.

Although he was only being massaged and not actually being hurt, the terrorist still continued emptying his magazine and shouting himself hoarse. He even pissed his pants.

He was understandably terrified.

I could watch on nonchalantly only because I knew how lousy and weak Mikyou-chan’s power was. The terrorist, who did not know that, was scared shitless. He had found himself assaulted by a monster beyond human comprehension, swallowed up by said monster, he lost his sense of sight with everything going dark, and now felt like he was being rolled around by a tongue before what was surely a fate of being ground and torn apart by teeth.

Yeah, now that’s scary. If this happened to me, I would 100% start shooting telekinetic blasts in every direction.

However, the two were now technically at standstill.

Mikyou-chan was a weak and sickly girl. She had no experience with martial arts and she did not have any self-protection tools — such as a stun gun or knife — on her. She had started off strong, immediately trussing the terrorist up and starting the massaging, but she now seemed at a loss for what to do next.

After hesitating for a while, Mikyou-chan grabbed one of the chairs in the room and brought it over, staggering with each step. Then she brought it down on the part of the wriggling shadowy mass where she thought the terrorist’s head was.

Of course, no one would get knocked out by such a weak attack. In the first place, the man was wearing a helmet.

However, I needed the plot to progress, so I used telekinesis to give him a powerful punch the same moment the chair landed to forcibly remove him from the story. After all, this is just a fight in the tutorial stage. Let’s keep things moving.

“Did I… actually knock him out?”

Seeing the terrorist go limp, Mikyou-chan called her shadows back and peered at him warily.

After warily observing him from a distance for a bit more, she lifted the chair and brought it down on his head one more time. Damn, you sure are merciless.

The first thing that Mikyou-chan did once she was sure the terrorist was out cold was make sure Ebi-sen was all right. She kneeled down and checked his pulse and breathing.

After confirming that he was fine and heaving a sigh of relief, she then cautiously went over to check what the terrorist had on him.

He turned out to have a combat knife, twenty rounds of blanks, twenty rounds of blanks in magazines marked as “live ammunition,” rations, an emergency kit, a wireless transceiver, and a copy of the terrorists’ plan of operation.

Mikyou-chan started reading through it while maintaining a wary eye on the unconscious man.

The printout went into detail describing the terrorists’ plan to capture the real guards who were supposed to play the role and infiltrate the school by taking their place. They would then kidnap students with influential parents, demand ransoms for all of them, and then flee the country.

After reading the plan through, Mikyou-chan gave it another read. Then she gave it a third read.

Then she pulled her smartphone out and, with a shaking hand, dialed 110¹.

However! Oh no! There was no connection!

This was because signal jammers (price: ¥4,980 / US$45.14) had been planted all over the school. Some had been hidden inside the air conditioners that were newly installed in every classroom, some had been buried in the ground while the sprinklers in the schoolyard had been replaced, and some had been installed under the pretense of performing maintenance on the light fixtures and making the school building earthquake-resistant. Of course, because it would be a waste not to, we did plan on retrieving all the jammers after the event.

Mikyou-chan paced around the classroom in a fluster, eventually finding a half-used roll of packing tape inside the teacher’s lectern that she used to wrap the terrorist up in. Then she pushed open the door of the room ever so slowly, checked that the coast was clear outside, and snuck outside with silent steps.

I expected her to go look for Shige-jii, but instead, she headed for the teachers’ office.

Fair enough, that’s reasonable. I’m not sure I can say the same about how she’s just left Ebi-sen lying on the floor next to the trussed-up terrorist though.

Eventually, after frequently starting and stopping to listen for sounds, flinching at faraway gunshots, and waiting ages at corners, Mikyou-chan safely arrived at her destination, having spent ten minutes making a trip that would have normally taken only two.

The teachers gathered in the office exchanged looks at Mikyou-chan’s arrival. A few of the younger teachers failed to properly hide the bothered look on their faces. Hinokage Mikyou, this girl who had transferred in under Kaburagi-san’s auspices, was well-known among the teaching staff, for better or for worse. She was mentioned in the teachers’ meetings every once in a while, too.

The faculty members signaled each other with their glances, shoving the responsibility around until it finally fell on the young homeroom teacher of Year 1 Class 1 to talk to Mikyou-chan.

“What’s the matter, Hinokage-san?”

“What is wrong with this school’s security?”

Mikyou-chan, who seemed to have recovered her bravado after making it into the teachers’ office, thrust the plan she had picked up in the teacher’s face.

After scanning through it, however, the man merely chuckled. Then he turned and passed the paper around the room.

“Ahhh, so that’s how they’re doing this.”

“What’s this?”

“Oh wow, the ‘terrorists’ are pretty gung-ho about this too.”

“Wait, let me see.”

“Ah… so in other words, we’re supposed to pretend like they’re the real thing?”

The teachers seemed to be having fun exchanging opinions on the plan. Not a single one of them took it seriously.

Just as Mikyou-chan was about to boil over with irritation at the adults’ carefree reactions, the Year 1 Class 1 homeroom teacher turned to her again.

“What did the so-called terrorist say?”

“I’ve been telling you, he was the real thing! Why don’t you get it?! I took that directly from the terrorist’s body after he was defeated! He had real rounds! The school is in real danger! Take this seriously!”

“Oh, the terrorist was defeated! Oh wow. By Ebina-sensei?”

“No, it was me. But that’s not importa—”

“Listen, this is not a drill for taking down terrorists. It’s a drill for running away and contacting the police. You really weren’t supposed to do that. What did Ebina-sensei say? Was he the one who told you to bring this sheet of paper to the teachers’ office?”

“Ebi-sen got attacked and knocked out. That’s why—”

“Oof, so he got the red card.”

“THAT’S NOT IT! I’M TELLING YOU! THIS IS REAL!!!”

“Right, right. Of course it’s real. And we’re in danger, right? You know what, Hinokage-san, you should probably hide in the principal’s office. Uh, vice-principal, the principal’s office is set as the safest place, right?”

“LISTEN! TO! MEEEEE!”

“Hinokage-san, you should watch your tone when you talk to us teachers.”

As Mikyou-chan got increasingly worked up, the teachers’ reception got colder. She was being treated like a problem student trying to cause a commotion by pretending that the drill was the real thing.

“NNIIIIIIIIIIIII! Never mind!”

Mikyou-chan rushed out of the teachers’ office in a rage.

The Year 1 Class 1 homeroom teacher tried to chase after her, but for some strange reason, the door wouldn’t open and he lost his window of opportunity.

How strange, right?! Even though Mikyou-chan had just opened and walked through it mere moments ago! Maybe she banged it shut so hard that the door got jammed!

Finally, after the detour, Mikyou-chan snuck to the janitor’s lounge where Shige-jii was supposed to be. With everything that had happened, it was now an hour into the event.

When Mikyou-chan surreptitiously slipped into the janitors’ lounge, Shige-jii welcomed her with a chair, tea, and rice crackers.

“Hey there. Is this — what do they call it these days? — ‘playing hooky’? Let’s see… do you feel like cake?”

“This is not the time for cake!”

Shige-jii, who had been able to open his fridge and take out a slice of cheesecake that had been left here for Mikyou-chan’s sake, turned around with a questioning look on his face.

“The terrorists are real. The school’s in danger. I’m not lyin—”

“Tell me more.”

Shige-jii immediately took her seriously when he heard the agitation in Mikyou-chan’s voice.

We’re finally getting into the real fight against the terrorists!

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Footnotes

1) The Japanese number for the police. Can be 911, 999, or something else depending on where you live.