CHAPTER 4
The True Power of the Seventh Among Seven
Third Friday of March
8:10 PM, March 15.
White Day had been relatively uneventful, and now, the day after, Yabumi Haratani was nonchalantly wandering around the shopping district when some real bad dudes—Skill-Out—grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into a dank, pitch-black alley. This was exactly the kind of trouble a manga protagonist would get himself into. In any case, after being punched a few times and having his wallet confiscated, they took his cell phone as well, since it had a wallet function on it. He’d have to contact the service center quick or else he’d be the victim of a massive credit card theft catastrophe. However…
“Sweet. Stopping the phone seems like a fuckin’ pain, so let’s just tie him up around here and buy time, eh?”
“Oh? You sure? City birds are pretty violent. Leave defenseless meat lyin’ around, and they’ll snatch it right up.”
“Digital wallets are so handy. No withdrawal limits, so long as we squeeze the number out of him.”
Gyaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?! I shouldn’t have taken the lady at the service center up on her recommendation to switch to a phone with new features I don’t even use!!
Indeed, for if this had been a shakedown in the past, they would have just taken his wallet and let him go. Truly fearsome were these conveniences of civilization. User-side danger had evolved greatly just by carrying everyday items.
Surrounded by five or six slightly older boys, the cornered Haratani began to think, as any normal person would, about how he was going to bust out of this crisis.
“You don’t have enough guts, dude. Nobody’s gonna be satisfied with that!!”
A loud voice suddenly rang out.
He looked that way and saw a figure standing tall and firm at the alleyway’s entrance.
For just a moment, the five or six young men were quiet, looking toward the figure.
Ba-bang!!
Before he could discern who the figure was, a delinquent boy abruptly took out a gun and fired it.
The mystery figure fell over with a plop. The delinquent tsked, seemingly irritated at the interruption. What the hell was that awful plot twist?! complained Haratani to himself and God.
“Hoowwwraaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!”
But then the shooting victim rose back up with a lunge. Seeing a person bouncing back up like a self-righting doll in just three seconds, even the young men were thrown off.
The stranger, who had clearly been shot in the heart, stomped closer with the strange enthusiasm of someone who had just pulled an all-nighter.
“Shooting me without any warning? You really don’t have any guts. Or is it patience? Is it patience you lack? Given all this, the lot of you must be part of this new generation that gets pissed off too easily!! Haven’t you ever regretted how the media takes huge dumps all over you whenever they can?!”
One of the delinquents, probably thinking, He’s not making sense, so let’s shoot him again, pulled the trigger a few more times. But by now, the mystery figure was only giving jolts—it wasn’t even falling down.
The boy, obviously peeved by this, glanced down at the gun in his hands. “…Why won’t you die…?”
“Because I have guts!!”
“That can’t possibly be all it is!!”
“If you must know, I am Gunha Sogiita, one of Academy City’s Level Fives and number seven of seven. But that barely matters—what we should be discussing right now is the sheer guts bubbling up, boiling within me, like a raging wave on stormy seas!!”
Sogiita—the inscrutable guts guy—howled the proclamation into the skies, his arms outstretched and his back bent over like a bow.
Haratani watched, completely baffled.
The delinquents huddled up a little and began to whisper things among themselves.
“If he’s number seven out of seven, that means he’s the weakest Level Five, right?”
“Then Level Zeroes like us should be able to manage.”
One person couldn’t stay silent at that, though—the number seven in question. “Non, non!! I told you all that Level Five stuff and number seven stuff was just a boring side trip!! What’s important right now is the topic of my guts!! It’s not too late, you know! Listen to what I have to say—ow?! Damn, don’t hit me with a bicycle chain lock! Stop stabbing me with an ice pick! Ow, ow, ow! Stop it, you gutless fiends!!”
The scene was like some kind of joke, but if this was a two-hour-long suspense film, ten films’ worth of footage could have been gleaned from this storm of violence.
And when Gunha Sogiita still wouldn’t die, the belligerent delinquents were instead the ones feeling that things were eerie (though they didn’t let up at all).
“Daaahhhhhrrrraaaahhhsshaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
The instant the enraged Number Seven screamed, a strange explosion went off, centered on him. Bwoom!! It made a noise like a sound effect from a tokusatsu show, mowing down all the villains.
“How dare you do whatever you please!! I won’t tolerate it any longer! I’ll show you what true guts look like, so feast your eyes on this!!”
…Unfortunately for his one-sided burst of enthusiasm, every last one of the delinquents was already knocked out from the first hit. If he attacked a second time in this situation, it would doubtlessly make it much less clear who was the real villain. And aren’t the delinquents the ones who will end up showing their guts now anyway? thought Haratani, somewhat more calmly.
And then it happened.
“Heh. Guess we couldn’t get any more out of small-fries like them.”
A newcomer appeared, beyond the darkness. The shhh of a footstep announced the approach of an urban nightmare born from the underworld of Academy City. One look at the enormous human weapon made Haratani want to ask him if this guy really had fought across at least three countries as part of a foreign mercenary team or if he just looked that way.
“I am Yokosuka the Organ Crusher. It looks like you took good care of these boys, eh?”
Lower-middle-class Yabumi wondered why, if this guy was really so great, he was stooping to back-alley shakedowns and not working on grand plans to topple foundational pillars of the world? Of course, the voice in his mind did not reach this final boss-looking man.
“But it looks like you’ve stuck your neck in where you shouldn’t have. Regrets will do you no good here. Now that you stand before the great Yokosuka the Organ Crusher, an expert at anti-esper combat, you shall—”
“I’m really sorry, but I just farted!!”
“Ah— Hey! Shut up and listen to me until I’m done talking!! So—errr, right. Where was I again? Ah, yes. Ahem. Now that you stand before the great Yokosuka the Organ Crusher, you—”
“Awesome puuunch!”
“I told you to listen to what I’m—blargh?!”
Yokosuka the organ-playing whatever was cut off, suddenly spinning around like a bamboo helicopter. Haratani could swear that Number Seven and Organ Player were over ten meters apart; that weird impact, was it psychokinesis or something? Either way, it was a perfectly clean hit.
“I, blurgh. What…? What was that…?”
“Mm-hmm-hmm. That? Just the true worth of Academy City’s number seven. I created an intentionally unstable psychokinetic wall in front of my body, then used my fist to deliver an impact that broke it, sending the explosive aftermath flying from a distance. If you’ve ever heard of my killer move, the Psycho Cannon, that was it!!”
Ba-baaam!! A new truth revealed to the public.
But Haratani calmly stated, “Nah, that’s impossible.”
“?”
“I doubt you’d get that kind of reaction if all you did was provide a pulse of energy to an unstable psychokinetic wall. I chose psychokinetics as my optional course in the Ability Development curriculum, so I know a thing or two about it.”
“……”
“……”
The puncher and the punchee both fell into an awkward silence.
After clenching his fist and looking at the ground for a short time, Sogiita said, “Then what explains it, and what came out?”
“Hhhhheeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy!! That’s so random! What a sketchy killer move!! Why don’t you try putting yourself in the shoes of the people you take down with that, damn it?!”
“Awesome puuunch!”
“It’s literally the same as be—florgh?!”
Around and around he went, spinning away, the organ-playing Yokosuka.
For some reason, I’m not happy at all that I’ve been saved, thought Haratani, his shoulders drooping.
Organ Player looked like he’d rather die than lose to this nutcase, but he couldn’t do anything about the physical damage. He tried to stand up, but his legs simply trembled, not letting him.
“Ugh. To… To be expected of Number Seven.”
Without a means to fight, Organ Player no longer even had the stamina to escape.
Realizing this was the end of the road for him eventually, he looked up at Sogiita and said, “…Just one thing.”
And then, a smile—a pure one, one you would never associate with a villain.
“Please, at the very least, finish me off with a single bombastic hit. Not that incredibly perfunctory ‘awesome punch’ or what have you—something real, a true beatdown that will make it actually mean something when I get blown away.”
Upon hearing those words, Number Seven nodded quietly.
He slowly clenched his fist…
“Awesome puuunch.”
“The hell?! I told you to stop doing th— Arghhh?!”
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