1_Prologue_ Radio Noise

PROLOGUE Radio Noise Level2 The wind is strong. It is twilight. A girl lies flat on her stomach, concealed on the roof of a building. Her eyes narrow slightly. A mismatched rifle sits in her hands. No, it goes beyond the simple concept of being mismatched. The rifle, after all, is 184 centimeters in length. It is largely in excess of the girl’s height. The Metal-eater MX. It is derived from the Bullet M82A1, an antitank rifle legendary for blowing up an armored car from two klicks away during the Okinawan War. They say that when it was created, it had such enormous recoil that it didn’t need a full-automatic function. The Metal-eater, however, is an experimental type, onto which rapid-fire capabilities had been forced. It is a brutal enough gun that its recoil alone could crush a flimsy helmet into tiny pieces. Somehow, however, the girl’s slender body moves in perfect harmony with it. Impact is not something to be repressed but something to be accepted and redirected. By the end of her fourteen-day training via Testament, she could compute the shock released by the Metal-eater and calculate the most efficient means of redirecting it. The girl holds her breath and stares down the cold, impersonal scope at her target, six hundred meters off. Exiting a convenience store, lit up from within as if to attract gnats on this summer night, is a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy. His figure is as thin as a sewing needle, and white hair sits atop his feminine, delicate skin. He brings to mind the expression, “He’d blow away in a stiff wind.” Those who witnessed him would receive from him the impression of the tip of a knife. It’s to be expected. The data banks spoke of his undefeated record in official combat, of course. However, he had never suffered even a glancing wound, nor had he ever blocked or avoided anything. The concept of blocking an opponent’s weapon is not a part of his existence. He is the incarnation of the sharp edge of a slim, narrow sword, forged to the extreme—its only objective is to rip through enemy flesh. The girl does not know her target’s true name. His code name is “Accelerator” or the “One-Way Road.” The young man who goes by this name stands at the pinnacle of the Level Five Superpowers, of which only seven reside in this single, great Ability Development agency with the moniker Academy City. The crosswind is strong…Adjusting aim three klicks to the left, the girl says to herself, twisting the screw on the side of the scope. The boy swinging the plastic bag from the store back and forth in boredom—he is her target. If the girl was to confront Accelerator directly, she wouldn’t stand a chance of winning. No, in all Academy City, there isn’t a single opponent who could stand against Accelerator in a fair fight—or perhaps in even all the world. On the other hand, that was all. If you can’t win in a fair fight, then don’t pick one. In the end, using supernatural abilities is no different from operating your arms and legs. As long as one isn’t a Level Zero incredibly inexperienced at controlling their powers, their activation can be generally split into two varieties. One is when the esper himself gives a command to use the power. One is when the esper’s body senses danger. This makes things simple. Even espers were beatable as long as one didn’t let on that they were attempting to kill one, then took his or her life with a single attack from the dark. Originally, long-range sniping was a method used by Academy City’s Judgment to arrest berserk espers. Though they used rubber bullets to end their consciousness, the girl will use armor-piercing rounds to end his life. “Building winds…An eddy from three o’clock; adjusting aim one klick to the right,” she said under her breath, making further adjustments to the scope. Lead bullets actually blow around easily in the wind. On top of that, in spots with many buildings packed in close to one another, the wind doesn’t blow in a simple line. It streams around the structures in various directions, and when the flows of air run into each other, they create eddies and scatter everywhere. Missing was not an option. Her opponent was the strongest of the Level Fives. The moment her initial shot went astray, cluing him in to her ambush, would essentially be the very moment she was defeated—no matter how much distance separated them and no matter how far away she fled. She places her finger on the trigger. Her motions are without hesitation. Despite the fact that the boy at the end of her scope is human. Despite the fact that if she pulled this trigger, a .50 caliber antitank shell would rip through the air at twelve hundred kilometers per hour, altering the layout of his upper body at a speed faster than sound…Though logically she understands these ideas, there is not a trace of doubt on her face. But one directive had been placed on her slight shoulders: To destroy Accelerator, the most powerful Level Five, with a precise shot from the distance. … Her ears listen to the sounds of the wind. Eddies collide, and suddenly, the wind begins to glide in a single direction. It would be for no more than two seconds. However, as soon as she is certain that the complex building winds have stabilized… She pulls the trigger. With a roar like a fireworks factory exploding, a handful of bullets tears through the air. Ridiculous as it may sound for a sharpshooter, she had actually fired on full auto. She forces herself to take the impact, which is heavy enough to topple a grown man. In the span of one second, she sends twelve shots down a path so precise it could thread a needle. The girl ignores the fact that the cartridge had been emptied in just one second and tracks the fate of the boy in her sights. The flow of wind had settled, and the bullets would not miss. Every one of the twelve rounds she fired would be absorbed by the boy’s back, and his needlelike, slim body should be torn to shreds. Yes, that is indeed what should have happened. It was in that moment that the rifle in her hands exploded. The rounds that made contact with the boy had ricocheted. The shells had done a perfect one-eighty, like a videotape rewinding. They had politely jumped back into the barrel of her antitank rifle like a kendama and blasted it to bits. However, the girl does not possess the physical ability to allow her to ascertain the bullets flying toward her. These are the only things she knows: first, that some force had destroyed the antitank rifle; second, that uncounted pieces of shrapnel had stabbed into her whole body; and third, that something had pierced her right shoulder, which had been pressed against the Metal-eater’s stock. It severed her arm like something chomped it off. In addition, she knows that Accelerator had been hit by her rifle’s bullets but still doesn’t have a scratch on him. Finally, she knows that her attempt to snipe him from afar had failed and that Accelerator was now aware of her presence. That’s all she needs to know. In fact, it’s more than enough. An intense pain assails her, as if her head were being doused in boiling water, but she pays it no mind. She doesn’t have the time. She drags her wrecked body toward the building’s emergency stairwell. Now that her sharpshooting had failed, her one-in-a-million chance to win has vanished. Therefore, she was not fleeing in defeat in order to regroup. Her flight is nothing more than her survival instincts trying to prolong her remaining life by a second or even just a moment. His footfalls are silent in the twilight. The hunter confidently and soundlessly begins to close in on the girl on the verge of death. The hunter and the hunted. Their roles were reversed in the blink of an eye, and thus the curtains opened on a murder drama.