Academy City's first district was lined with administrative and judicial facilities and it did not have the sense of livelihood that other, more normal districts had. It had almost no residences or restaurants. In exchange for gathering together all of the functions needed for smoothly operating such a large city, only the bare minimum of functionality for people to live there was prepared. The extremely mechanical cityscape helped reinforce that image of the district.
A single terribly unique building was mixed in with the mostly consistent cityscape of District 1.
It was an office of the board of directors.
Since it took up an entire skyscraper, it went beyond the level of what one would normally think an "office" was. Since its maintenance was paid for entirely with tax money, it may have been more accurate to call it an "official residence". At any rate, the luxurious building had actually only been prepared for the sole use of one of those 12 influential people within Academy City.
His name was Thomas Platinumburg.
The master of that building was in a splendid and spacious room that was reminiscent of the audience chambers seen in RPG castles. The room took up an entire floor of the building and was used as a reception room. He had no subordinates around. Given his position, it would not have been surprising for him to have had countless guards, but he had sent everyone else away from that large room. He was meeting a guest in his role as a member of the board of directors.
His guest was a mercenary sniper he had personally invited from outside the city.
She was a tall woman. She had white skin and long blonde hair. She possessed a beauty that would have looked more fitting shining under a spotlight than on a dirty battlefield. However, she had a bag large enough to fit an entire person into lying at her feet as she sat on a sofa. The bag most likely contained her stock in trade.
She was a fairly famous woman in her business.
It wasn't quite clear if being famous was a good thing in her business.
"How is Sunazara Chimitsu-san doing, Stephanie Gorgeouspalace-san?"
Thomas spoke two people's names.
Stephanie was the name of the sniper and Sunazara was the name of the man who she looked up to as a mentor.
She obediently nodded in response to Thomas's question.
"His progress is going well. He has not regained consciousness yet, though. Really, it is all thanks to the fact that you lent us an Academy City life support system. If you had not, he would have been gone already."
"Oh, think nothing of it. It was painful enough knowing that your comrade was injured at the hands of someone from Academy City due to an unfortunate turn of events."
The five underground organizations of Group, Item, Block, Member, and School had once fought leading to the destruction of a few of them. Sunazara Chimitsu had been hired by one of them and had been defeated by the member of a different one. Explosives had blown the entire building away and he had been injured to the point that he still had not regained consciousness.
When Thomas Platinumburg had received that information, he had secretly recovered the man and sent him, life support system equipped bed and all, outside of the city to Stephanie.
Of course, he had not done it out of good will.
He had done it to have her feel obligated to help him so he could have the advantage in some business he had to carry out.
"So who is the target you wish me to take out?"
"I have documents prepared elsewhere, but I am sure you will recognize the name. He is Academy City's #1 Level 5 known as Accelerator."
That request was not on behalf of the leading members of Academy City.
It was an exceedingly personal request.
On September 30, Accelerator had fought the Hound Dog unit led by Kihara Amata and the boy had attacked Thomas Platinumburg's residence in order to acquire information. In that attack, he had shot Thomas with a shotgun. Thomas's current action was motivated by revenge.
While it was pure revenge on the emotional side, it would also serve to get any of his subordinates who were growing lax in their duties to shape up.
"Can you do it?"
"If you tell me to, then yes."
He had expected that response. He had made sure his subordinates were not around for the negotiation as a whole, but mostly because he had prepared a trump card.
"When sniping the target, you need not worry about any damages to the surrounding area. I will cover for anyone or anything that gets damaged in the process. …So if you were to put a bullet in the former Item member Kinuhata Saiai who put Sunazara-san in his current state, there would be no real problem."
"Oh, I see. And you have already been so helpful in Sunazara-san's case. Academy City's technology truly is wonderful. That medical equipment truly is something you would never see anywhere else."
"Ha ha. Not all of the city's technology is good, but I am quite proud of the parts that can be used for peace."
"Indeed. It is amazing how you were able to put a tiny transmitter in Sunazara-san's body. It seems to work slightly differently from a nanodevice, but you truly cannot find devices that small implanted inside someone's body elsewhere."
Immediately afterwards, a chill permeated every inch of that huge room. No, the air had not actually changed. That was simply how it felt through the filter of Thomas Platinumburg's fear.
"Please wait," Thomas said holding out a hand. "You have no idea how important the information that could be gained from the technology used in that life support system is. It is targeted for use outside the city meaning it is at a lower grade, but even so it has incredibly valuable information on Academy City technology inside it. We wanted to send Sunazara Chimitsu-san quickly but safely to you. However, having the technological information in the system would be a major problem. That is what the device is for. If we had not put that inside him, we could not have sent him to you so quickly."
"Oh, I see."
What Thomas Platinumburg did not realize at that time was something he had no real reason to have noticed, but it was still a fatal oversight.
Stephanie Gorgeouspalace did not usually speak so politely.
She was purposefully altering her speech patterns in order to force down her overflowing emotions.
"So the fact that the grain of rice-sized transmitter also had a mechanism inside it that sends out a special stimulus that allows four of Sunazara-san's organs to be stopped with a single signal…is merely a safety measure?"
Drops of cold sweat started dripping from Thomas's body.
But it was too late.
The next thing he knew, Stephanie's form on the sofa blurred from high speed movement and was suddenly standing right in front of Thomas. Her right hand was stretched out, directly stabbing a quill into his stomach.
Thomas did not even feel the pain of his skin and flesh being torn.
The pain was the least of his worries.
"You can have this back."
As she pulled out the quill, Stephanie held a small radio in her hand. Thomas assumed that she had embedded something in the wound and that the radio's frequency was set to send a signal to that something. This thought brought such clear fear of death that his primitive sense of pain went completely numb.
"You made a mistake in trying to add in your little trick. If you had just handed Sunazara-san over and then come to me with your request, I would have readily acted as your pawn."
"…Wait…"
Thomas Platinumburg trembled as he stared at Stephanie…or more accurately, the thumb held up against the radio. He threw off the façade of polite speech and made his final piece of negotiation in a cracking voice.
"…If you…cause trouble here, you won't be able to carry out your revenge… If you…help me…you can easily get revenge for Sunazara…"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Stephanie responded without seeming to think about it at all.
She seemed to be bringing the conversation as a whole to a close.
"The target of my revenge is everyone in Academy City."
Immediately afterwards, Stephanie unhesitatingly hit the switch on the radio.
The transmitter embedded in Thomas's wound quickly responded by creating a special electrical stimulus. The man's organs were functioning normally, but this quickly stopped four of them from functioning and reliably ended his life.
He screamed in his death agony.
Stephanie did not even look in the direction of the body that had fallen to the floor motionless as she put the radio in her pocket with a disinterested look on her face.
She heard footsteps approaching.
Most likely, the guards who wore black suits had heard their master's scream. Her estimate based on the guard density she had seen on her way to the reception room was that there were about 200 of them.
However, Stephanie's face did not grow even slightly cloudy. She opened the fastener on the giant bag at her feet while humming and pulled out her stock in trade that was stored inside.
It was not a sniper rifle.
It was a light machine shotgun.
It was a special gun based on the type of rapid-fire machine gun that could be carried around but was usually used while fixed on a tripod. It had been modified so that it only used shotgun ammunition. When fired at close range, the light machine shotgun held enough destructive power that it could transform an armored vehicle into what looked like a crushed can. It was Stephanie's personal custom gun.
The reason a supposed sniper like Stephanie had taken out such a dangerous weapon was quite simple.
"Sunazara-san always shot small and compact weapons from a distance."
Unlike when she spoke with Thomas, Stephanie Gorgeouspalace's speech patterns returned to normal with a bit of yearning mixed in as she muttered to herself.
"But it seems a hell of a lot easier to just get up close and fire like crazy!"
The large door to the room opened wide.
At the same instant, a disastrous storm spread out from the light machine shotgun.
Her revenge began.