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MAY 13, 2063 | 11:45:11 AM
ULTIMA CITY, ST. EVANGELINE MIDDLE SCHOOL
Fuuuckk... My ears. It's so loud in this cafetaria, especially when there are clique leaders going around and promoting themselves. One instance of that is when someone handed me a pamphlet.
It was just propaganda about Iyona Hosoe, the leader of the Hosoe Clique. She's a hard ball to break, and she's pretty beautiful. Long red hair and blue eyes that could read into your mind. She is also a Class 7, with future potential to become a Class 10.
"Natsuha, you're not listening to anything, are you?" Ritsune asks while sipping on a cup of tea.
"No, not really. What's up?" I keep my head up, looking at her. I feel like she's going to ramble about something again. "I'm saying, you should pay attention to the stuff you've been given! You need to get better grades!" Oh here we go...
"Say..." I try to dodge the impending rambling of her. "What's all this ruckus about Hosoe-san?" I ask her. I can see her lose focus as she's glued to her phone. "Oh, nothing much. Just a bunch of stupid crap. Don't worry."
"Well, if you say so," I reply, turning back to look at the pamphlets. "What did it say, anyway?"
"Hm? Well, it says that you shouldn't mess with her or you'll regret it. And that you don't want to get on her bad side or else, you'll suffer the consequences of it."
Haha! That's really funny. Most students in St. Evangeline are Class 6 or higher. Just because she is Class 7, doesn't mean you're instantly a goddess.
"Hey, Ritsune-senpai. Don't you run a clique of your own?" I ask her the inevitable question. She drops her phone in shock and looks at me with wide eyes. "Urm... Ritsune-senpai, are yo-"
"Oh! That? Ahahahah! Haha..." She tries to play it off by laughing awkwardly. "You're not going to dodge this question easily, Ritsune-senpai! Or is there some sad backstory behind it that I shouldn't know?"
She's playing with her hair. That means she's uncomfortable. Ah, shit. She could've just told me that she would rather not talk about it. She's unpredictable sometimes.
"Yeah. I do run a clique... well, before. The clique has died down so I have no reason to run it. Besides, there are bigger cliques that I can never top them."
"So wait, you just... gave up? Like that?" I was shocked. Ritsune is not the type of person to just give up when something challenges her.
"Well, yeah. It was fun at first but it got too boring, you know. No matter how hard we tried to find the next big thing, they were always the same. So then, the group slowly broke apart, until it was only a couple of us left." She added, starting a rambling session. I can feel it.
"You remember that clique war 4 months ago? Where the school had to be closed for a couple of weeks because it got too out of control?" She pointed at me, waiting for an answer. I nod reluctantly. It's... a vivid memory. I wasn't really there for the most of it, but I did understand most of it from someone's point of view.
"Well... we didn't start that fight, but we definitely finished it. We went through the entire school and beat every single student that was part of our rival's clique." She turned her head to Hosoe. So that was her rival? "Everybody realized what kind of vicious clique I was running, so most people left my clique when I needed them the most."
Ouh... That's not good.
"It's like they say. We won the battle, but lost the war. That's why everybody's looking at me with a sour look. I really want to punch them!" She pouted, getting angry.
"Hey hey hey! We'll find people and return your clique to full power, I swear! You and your clique will skyrocket in popularity when they find out a Class-10 is in it!" I point to myself to use myself as a beacon of hope and motivation for Ritsune.
"Really?! Are you serious?"
"Of course. Just keep doing your best and don't stop trying. And if you need anything, let me know. If you're feeling bad, you should tell me!" I say with a big smile on my face.
I see Ritsune almost shedding a tear upon hearing that. "I'm so sorry for taking half of your money! I'll pay you back! I swear! I'm so sorry!" I see her lunge at me for a big hug. I react with a surprised, shocked face.
"AHAAAGH!" I scream from the top of my lungs before she falls on me.
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MAY 13, 2063 | 2:02:27 PM
ULTIMA CITY, OUTSIDE ST. EVANGELINE MIDDLE SCHOOL
The students are starting their afternoon classes. The sun is shining brightly and it's perfect weather outside. Our classes have ended. We had a relatively short school day because our afternoon classes teacher called in sick. I was walking around the school area with books in my hand.
"I still have to make a decision..." Ritsune said, deep in thought. What could she be thinking about now?
"About... what?" I ask reluctantly, like a slow-thinker.
"The job, you silly goose! I did promise you I'd look for a job! That money you gave me won't be spent in vain!" She smirked, taking her phone out like a true enthusiast. She showed me a list of jobs she favourited and was going to select one from.
"Look at that! I'm a woman of my word! Hihi!"
... She really did all of that just to impress me? Eh, sometimes she does go to such lengths to impress her 'beloved' junior. Senpais can be so weird sometimes.
"That's... cool. You'd have so much to choose from." I give her a bland response in a deadpan voice.
"What do you mean by that, you idiot? Don't you know how hard I've been working to get this far? Of course there's a lot of choice for me to pick from, duh!" She quickly fires back.
"'Hard?' That's the worst lie you've ever told me, Ritsune-senpai. Give me that list!" I snatch the phone from her hands, checking the list thoroughly. "Hey, what the hell!"
"... Ritsune-senpai." I slowly turn my face and stare at her soul.
"...E...eh? What's wrong now?! What's wrong with the list!" She yells.
"There is no way you'd get a job like construction work! You're too weak to even lift a hammer, and you don't know anything about it either!"
"WHAAAT?!" She lunges at me to get her phone back.
"Ou- Hey!" I stumble back a little, dropping 3 books on the ground. "Am I wrong?! You're only a Class 7 because you can freeze movement! You've never attended PE in your life, not even once!"
"Yeah, alright! Fair! But I can definitely do something like... construction....... work......." Her head levels down the more she spoke.
"... You didn't hand pick this list, did yo-"
"AAAGH! Fine! I accept defeat!" Woo! Victory feels sweet. "I just wanted to impress you with how serious I was about getting a job! I just generated a list..."
"You can generate a list, but you can't create a career for yourself out of thin air. If you want a job, you should actually try to get one, you know?" I smirk like a bastard.
"I knooow! Stop beating your senpai down..." She pouted. Hah. Construction work? That's laughable. I rest my arm on her shoulder to make her feel inferior. I need to be a level up my own senpai. It would be so cool!
As she feels my arm resting on her shoulder, she sighs, laughing. "You're such a bully." She whips her phone out of her pocket and starts scrolling through her messages. Even though her popularity diminished over the months, she still has some kind of fame outside school.
"I should get going. I got some business to take care of." I say quickly, while picking up the books from the ground and putting them in my school case.
"Huh? What 'business' do you have now? You don't want to spend time with your beloved senpai?" She says in a guilt-tripping voice. I just look at her confused. I swear to god, I want to punch her sometimes.
"... It's not that! It's just... urm... family matters! I'll see you tomorrow, Ritsune-senpai!" I pick my school case back up and run out of the school area, waving her goodbye.
"Huh... What's gotten into her now?" Ritsune said, thinking.
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MAY 13, 2063 | 7:11:43 PM
ULTIMA CITY, NATSUHA'S APARTMENT
Megumu had visited me with additional information about the underground warehouses and buildings that belonged to the Multi-Utilization Project.
First, she handed me a blueprint of all the buildings. A red line was drawn that probably directs to the room where the information is kept. Second, she handed me a first-aid kit to tend to my wounds if I ever need to. And lastly, she gave me some extra clothes and a hat to disguise myself. I'm a popular girl now that I'm Class 10, so those underground dogs will probably realize who I am the second they see me.
She left me a text saying that even though I have all I need to take those fuckers down, I still need to be on my tippy toes, since this project may be conducted by a higher-up of the city. I wouldn't be surprised. The last time I saw a project, it was conducted by some German fuckhead and a white-haired mad scientist who couldn't properly regulate my AFR. I just hope I won't see Divo along the way. He's more than likely in the middle of another one of his dirty work.
After cleaning my apartment with information, I put the disguise on, and walk to the window. Is this really a good idea? I could die from this... I'm interfering with adult's work, and I'm a teenager who still hasn't finished middle school! Agh! Megumu-senpai, if I get traumatized, I'll kill you before you die!
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I sigh, and teleport through the window. My apartment is on the 25th floor, so if I don't act fast, people'll see my splattered corpse on the ground.
I hold onto the building and slowly fall down, before kicking off it and fly-crossing the road. Being Class-10 rocks! I can literally fly around like Spider-Man!
"Heh! This is going to be easy!" I say out loud, building up my confidence.
As I super hop onto buildings and onto the other, I see one of the marked buildings in the distance. My smile turns into a frown and I become serious. "There it is. That'll be the first one I'll destroy."
I super jump onto one of the rooftop of the nearby buildings and jump off of it quickly after, making sure I landed on the rooftop of the marked building safely and quietly.
I manipulate the buoyancy of my body to make myself weightless for a quiet, silent landing. "Hah! They'll never hear that." I whisper, grinning. I went around searching for any trace of other SPECs in there, but unfortunately I didn't find anything useful aside from a door that lead to the top floor of the building. I go down the stairs, only to find the top floor being abandoned, with old looking doors and black tinted windows and rooms that corroded because of human inactivity.
"Why aren't they using this floor? Did I fall into some kind of trap..? ...No. They don't even know I'm here. Isn't it meant to be unbelievable that a little teenager girl goes around destroying buildings?"
I see an empty elevator shaft. Is it safe... No! There's no way it's going to be as simple as me taking the stairs and alerting the workers. "Hmm..." I think out loud. I'd imagine the blueprint that Megumu showed me and project it into the real world. Oh, how amazing OCR's are. "There... It's 5 floors down... It's literally down into the earth."
The information is stored inside the basement. Typical underground experiment intel storing behaviour. Of course it would be stored in the basement.
I look at my surroundings carefully and slowly make my way downstairs, until I found myself in front of a metal door made from reinforced concrete; I grab onto the door handle, twisting and turning it open, before entering in slowly. As I turn my hand into a light emitter, I see a tank. Something like a gas tank. The one where you see in movies, how they create clones... It looks like one of them. Is that how they transfer the OCR of someone else's, into the person inside those tanks?
"What the actual fuck..." I mutter. This floor was also abandoned. It looked like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie. Like hell or whatnot. "It stinks as well, what the hell happened here?"
I close my eyes and try to calm down for a moment. I turn both of hands into light emitters and further lighted up the room. As I look down on the floor, I see a dead man. "Hu- WUAAHH-" I let out a little scream and stumble back. I feel scared. What the actual fuck happened in here?!
As I start looking around again, I find another body next to me. And another one. And another one! And another one!! How many bodies?! Wait, there's no time to be thinking about that now! The intel... I need to gather intel!
I'd hastily make my way out the room and find my way back to the door that led to the staircase. I'd take the stairs down and hide behind the door. I hear people. I think this is the ground floor. It's pretty loud. My heart beats faster and harder with each step I took. But... those bodies. What the hell are they hiding? What... is this experiment that they're trying? I haven't seen a pile of bodies stacked into each other like that since... Agh! Snap out of it, Natsuha! The intel!
"Identity Manipulation." I mutter. I forgot I could manipulate my own identity. I just need to cloak my AFR with a worker that is a SPEC, and take the name and badge number. I'd peek into the little window of the door. I see a worker coming towards the door. Bingo! I'll be taking your identity.
The worker opened the door and took the stairs down. Looks like he's going to the basement. I try not to make any sound as I follow him down to the basement. My knees make a cracking sound suddenly and the worker hears it. Fuck.
The worker stopped on it's tracks, and looked around. Does he suspect me? I'm literally crouching beside him in the darker spot of the staircase. The worker looked down, and caught me. He stares at me, I stare at him back.
"FREEZ-" Before he could take out what seemed like a taser, I kick his ankle and then punched him in the face, making him fall. "EUHG!" He lets out a grunt. I kick his face, knocking him out.
My heart rate elevates and I start worrying. Great. Someone's going to find him and alert the entire building. But I don't have enough time to drag him to hide him in a closet or something. I take his badge and cloak my AFR with his, before opening the door with his badge number and greeting the other workers. They think I'm the worker that I just knocked out! Oh, I love my ability so much.
I wait until they all go their way again and sneak out of here, to the room that leads to the huge arena-like experimentation room that had all the information.
"Hey! Are you authorized to enter that room?" A worker approached me. Oh no. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
"Y-yes. I'm one of the operators of the project." I stutter a little bit as I make eye contact with the worker.
"Name and badge number." He stared directly into my soul.
"..."
"...Euh..."
"Name... and badge number?" I look at him, confused and sweating. His eyes seem unamused. "Your name, please."
I can feel sweat dripping from my forehead onto the floor. If I were caught now, I'd be dead on the spot probably... How do I get out of this situation? What should I say? Oh! I just realized I had his name and badge number.
"Name's Tetsuya Tsukamoto. And my badge number is TI27-VN83NF04OSNF49." Gosh, what a mouthful. He looks over the badge for a few seconds, making me worry he would recognize it or something. He finally hands me back the ID card. "You may proceed," he said shortly afterwards, leaving me relieved.
I swipe the badge card over the sensor and open the door. The door leads to a long, long staircase down. There are no windows, and it's pitch black. I use my hand as a light emitter again. It's getting quite hot down here... I think I'm going to faint soon if I'm not careful. I keep going downwards until I reach a hallway with many doors along the sides of it.
"Ah, are you kidding me! More doors?" I out my frustration out loud, but it looks like the hallway has some noise cancellation barriers around that prevents sound from travelling through walls. Maybe that helps with the experiments. If I were a project leader and I had to choose to ensure the project remained top secret, then noise cancellation is the way to go.
But... I don't understand why that door wasn't more secure. A swipe with the card can allow you in. It's that simple. Unless someone wants to get rid of evidence easily.
I decide to check every single door, hoping to find something interesting. My first door is locked though. I try using my hand as a key, but nothing happens. I guess there's no way to unlock it unless the card is used again.
I move on to the next door. This one opens too. Inside, there's an empty room with nothing inside except for some papers on the table. Are these the information I need? I look through the papers, skim-reading some of them. I read 1 paper, 2 papers, 3, 6, 9... but all of them don't have any information on the Multi-Utilization Project. Rats! I thought I had them.
I sigh, frustrated. I put the papers back where they belong and close the door. Next door...
I open the door and walk in. It's another empty room. I take a look at the wall behind the table. There's a big white board with words written on it.
"Nagisa... Hidegouchi..." A name. But more names are written under it. "Kiranosuke Shirato, Sayami Otsuka, Kumika Ishimaru, Masako Hasegawa, Kiyoshiro Uchida, Shiroshi Yamaguchi, Armin Urk, Akira Nakao, Eiji Sakai..."
What? I've never heard of those people before. Why are their names here? I try to tie the pieces together. Could it be... No. Could they be the names of the dead people a few floors above?? Fuck! What kind of **sick** experiment did they undertake?! Those bodies... They... They were mutilated... destroyed, annihilated... "UGHV-"
I vomit violently onto the floor. The thought and the imagination of those bodies makes me sick to the core. Whoever's thought of this experiment, must pay.
They must pay.
As I leave the room with a really bad aftertaste, I walk to the opposite door. But as soon as I open the door, an alarm sounded. "Fuck... Fuck fuck fuck!" They probably found the worker I knocked out! I need to do this quick.
I'd run all the way to the last door of the hallway and barge in. I see an empty arena-like room sealed off with thick metal doors on both sides. I'm here! This must be the basement room!
"Alright, alright... Think! Natsuha... think! If I was a project leader, where would I store my most important files..." I think out loud. "Hmmm... The server room?"
I head down the stairs and find myself in front of a large door that reads 'SERVER ROOM'. I turn the knob and enter inside. The room is full of servers, hard drives, cables, etc. I scan around for a while until I notice something odd: A bunch of people wearing battle suits are running through the building like crazy. I close and lock the door behind me, only hearing footsteps.
It'll be a matter of time before they find out this room is locked and will probably try and force it open. I gotta look through the files quick.
I start going through the servers' contents, but then I get distracted by some weird noise coming from outside. It sounds like someone's yelling or screaming... Then there's a loud boom followed by several gunshots. Oh shit! Is that gunfire?! This shit became 100x more serious real quick! Alright, quick!
I force every single closet open and try to find even a small sheet of paper, but to no avail. I check each and every cabinet, drawer, cupboard, box, and shelf, but nothing useful comes up. I'm starting to lose hope when I hear another loud explosion.
"E-" I'd cover my mouth before I could let out a big yell. The explosion shook the place a bit, and I see a couple of hard drives and sheets of paper falling to the ground. "Fuck! Fuck! This is all working against me!" I think out loud again. I think I'm panicking.
I take a deep breath and calm down. There's got to be something useful in this room! I see a hard drive lying on the floor. It's marked with a black label that says 'project_no2MU'.
"Bingo!" I pick it up. MU must be the abbreviation of Multi-Utilization Project. I walk to the computer and have the hard drive ready. I'm so happy it's an external hard drive, otherwise I would've had to disassemble the computer and waste a whole lot of time.
I'd plug the External Hard Drive to one of the computer's USB ports. I boot up the computer and I'm met with a authorization wall. I knew it... Wait. I could try this...
I put in the badge number of the guy I knocked out as the authorization code and... Holy fucking shit! It worked?! My luck refuses to expire, hahaha!
"Eat shit, you no-brainers! I jacked into your interface like I cut a cake! So easy!" I laugh as I scroll through the contents. I find a bunch of folders with names like 'Entry 001, Entry 027, Entry 182' and... 'The Red Seventh'...
Weird names. But then again, this is a world of weird names, I guess. The folders have folders within them with even weirder names. Huh? A series of folders titled with 'Sacrifice'. I open them up...
There are pictures in these folders, lots of them! One shows some sort of lab... No wait, it's an operating room! Another folder has several pictures of some people in white lab coats with stethoscopes around their necks... Is this... how they transfer the OCR's of the innocent people they siphoned into the test subject?
I feel an overwhelming sense of anger building up inside me. These guys are trying to do horrible experiments on people! They're trying to turn them into... what? SPECs that can use multiple abilities at once? Why would you use humans as lab rats for something only YOU want?! I punch one of the closets hard, destroying it.
The men behind the door started kicking it. "I've no time..." I go into the last folder that says 'Info'. I click on it and I'm met with a PDF file.
I open it and directly transfer it to my phone for a later view. The door breaks open and the men fly into the room. Shit... Do I gotta fight? I have no clue if these guys are SPECs or just normal humans... I'm guessing they're just normal humans, otherwise this would be hard for me.
I try to run to the exit but there's no escape... I'm out of options. I have no idea what these guys are capable of! They can use different abilities, maybe even more than one at the same time! I can't take the risks.
"COME OUT AND PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!" I hear one of the men yelling at me. They open fire.
"AI-" I take cover, going behind one of the closets. I'm out of options! I just have to hold on for a bit! If I can get out of here with information, then that's great! I'll come back to destroy this building anyways!
I peek around the corner and see two of them shooting at me from a distance of about 30 meters away. "HNG!" I let out a grunt, throwing the closet towards them. One of them ducks under it, but the other got severely hit by it, flying back outside of the room.
I manifest my AFR to use my abilities. A man rushed at me and shot lightning from his fingers. A electromaster, it seems. I punch the ground, manifesting a repellent barrier and then turning it into a spike shooter. Those people must be a Class 5 and below, their AFR don't overpower mine.
I send a wave of spikes towards him, but he retaliates, sending each of those spikes a lightning bolt that repels them back. "WHat the- A-" I duck quickly as a spike flew towards me. That was a close one. Had I not dodged that spike, my throat would be sliced open. I can't let my guard down now. The electromaster comes back at me again with another lightning blast from his finger... He got too close though so my repellent barrier was useless... It got blocked by his hand as he shot his attack...
I dodge out of the way before he could land another hit on me... But his hand came flying towards me. I grab it with my hand and kick him back as the men behind him opened fire again. I manifest a repellent barrier again but those bullets pushed through. Are they anti-SPEC bullets or something?
As I fire up a beam, one of the bullets fly through my right arm. "ARGH!" I take cover again. I can't win this. I need to escape before I get hit again! The electromaster flew through the closets and short-circuited them, making it explode. I would get hit hard by one of the explosions.
"UGHF-" I let out a big grunt as I fly through one of the dark tainted windows out of the room. I'm pretty injured. I have bruises and cuts on my legs. It... hurts. I hurts a whole fucking lot.
All of them storm out of the room and aim at me. They're really hell-bent on killing me. Why do I have no choice of surrender? I'm a child!
...I just got an idea... If the electromaster starts attacking me again and uses his ability, I'll replicate it and shock everyone here, buying me enough time to escape this place!
As I expected, the electromaster attacked me again. Bullets came with him. He fires another lightning bolt, which I dodge and weave. I jump up to his level and grab his shoulders, climbing on top of him and manipulating buoyancy to double my weight. "Have fun getting crushed!" I yell at him, but...
I get shocked by him. I can't... move my body.
Fuck.
Is this how I die?
My AFR can block those bullets when I'm in a dire situation, but I don't know how many.
Please, not like this.
The electromaster lands on his tippy toes before me, laughing.
"... Is this where I die?