Welcome to Underground The Secret Organization"s Risky Undertaking
Part 1
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"For now, don"t move."
Toukchan said, after finally coming back to her senses. She then proceeded to extinguish the small fire that was burning in the weeds that were growing under the concrete block wall in the alley by pulling out from her bag a small fire extinguisher. It"s a shockingly sudden turn from "the rise of the extraordinary". Seeing Toukchan spew white smoke from her mini fire extinguisher as if this was a normal thing to do after school helps Shoutkun to calm down a little. He began muttering to himself.
I know, I know. "Is this extraordinary? Is this ordinary? Which is it?" It gives you that kind of feeling. Sorry, but it"ll be bad if there"s an actual fire…
Toukchan calls Kaburagi-san while keeping an eye on Shoutkun. She remains calm the whole time, a testament to the fact that she"s acc.u.mulated experiences that are vastly different from a normal middle-school student"s. Kaburagi-san tells her to take Shoutkun to Amanoiwato. She falsely claims that it"s for the sake of determining if he has the potential to become an ESP"er or not. If so, we"ll extend him an invitation to join Amaterasu. If not, we"ll try to figure out a way to make him keep what he saw a secret. Of course, in reality, it"s a fixed outcome. He"ll be invited to join Amaterasu.
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On the way to Amanoiwato, Shoutkun endlessly asks Toukchan all sorts of questions, but, "I can"t answer, it"s a secret" or "I"m taking you to meet my superiors, so ask them" were her only two responses. However, if you say things like that, you only end up increasing the amount of tension. "The bishoujo transfer student"s true ident.i.ty is that of a flame wielder! What"s more, she seems to belong to some sort of organization that acts secretly!" Is most likely what"s going on in Shoutkun"s head while he"s asking these questions, but Toukchan simply continues to feign ignorance. From my perspective, I could tell that his curiosity had been stirred up.
When they finally arrived at Amanoiwato, Shoutkun hesitated for a moment while Toukchan decisively went in despite the CLOSED sign. A beat later, his hesitation disappeared and his eyes started sparkling, then he followed after Toukchan. Now there"s no more need to stalk them with my psychokinesis. I scowl at Shoutkun as he enters the bar, then look away and continue polishing the gla.s.s in my hand with a sour expression. This is the end of my performance. After that, while Kaburagi-san talks to Shoutkun, I transplant a piece of Nenrikin into him.
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When Shoutkun saw a beautiful woman wearing a extravagant ultramarine dress with frills sitting at a table with an archaic smile1 on her face, he was struck dumb. His eyes were then immediately drawn to her plentiful breast. However, he returned to his senses when he was slapped in the face by Toukchan with her book of sutras. With displeasure in her voice, she told him not to look at her nee-san with such a repulsive expression. She then hit him again with the sutra book, while Shoutkun looked confused. She"s a cute girl, but from the very beginning she"s had such a dark character.
Shoutkun was extremely puzzled, but he eventually managed to read the situation. He listened to Kaburagi-san"s explanation, but still wasn"t able to completely control himself and occasionally glanced at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Kaburagi-san interviewed Shoutkun, and "discovered" that he also had a superpower sleeping inside him. She then asked him to decide whether or not to step into the extraordinary.
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Kaburagi-san told Shoutkun that, to be honest, many people are predisposed towards having special abilities, but, generally, the world"s darkness doesn"t notice them because the power is sleeping deep within them. Usually, it"ll stay asleep for their whole lives, and they won"t have any encounters with the world"s darkness. But, if some sort of trigger causes it to awaken, the world"s darkness will sense those awakened abilities and attack. Toukchan"s powers were half-awakened when she was attacked.
Kaburagi-san continued by saying that Shoutkun was also predisposed to having abilities sleeping inside him. She said that, if he wanted, the boss could use his power to awaken his abilities. If he didn"t want to, then nothing would change. Kaburagi-san additionally told him that the ability to see if people have powers sleeping inside them is rare, and that, as far as she knows, only the boss and herself have it. And there"s nothing they can do about the fact that it"s rare either.
"Even though you"re a minor, if you decide to enter this world, you will be treated as an adult. There are pros and cons to that, you know? In any case, please make your decision…"
"I"ll do it. Please let me do it."
Shoutkun quickly answered. He"s really ambitious. Well, Shoutkun hasn"t experienced how dangerous the darkness of the world can be, so he has no reason to refuse since, in addition to getting a superpower, he can develop a secret relationship with both a beautiful woman in striking attire and a cute girl who slaps him with a sutra book (and a grumpy ojisan who"s always polishing gla.s.ses). It"s typical in your youth to jump right in without considering the consequences. Run, young man!
By the time their discussion was over, the Nenrikin transplant was also finished. It was late, but before Shoutkun went home, he exchanged numbers with Toukchan and Kaburagi-san. The ojisan was ignored, which made him sad… but I guess that"s fine. There"s no need for for us to exchange numbers anyway. Besides, it"s difficult to talk to someone who won"t look at you and always has a sour expression on their face. Toukchan was indignant for a while and complained, "Takahashi doesn"t even know the Five Precepts or the n.o.ble Eightfold Path2. He"s full of nothing but worldly desires." before finally also going home. The situation is over.
What kind of superpowers will awaken inside Shoutkun? Will he be able to adapt to his new powers? Will he become a Buddhist? We"ll just have to wait and see.
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Now. While we were waiting for the Nenrikin mutation to become established in Shoutkun, Kaburagi-san and I hurried to find some means of raising money in order to replenish the funds for our secret organization, since we expected to run out of money soon. Kaburagi-san"s stocks/virtual currency/future trading is all on a personal scale, and can"t keep up with the expenditures that the activities of a secret organization with multiple people generates. If our current spending continues, she definitely won"t be able to fund us. Moreover, it"s not like the defeated world"s darkness drops money. Our secret organization runs at a large deficit.
Since we both finally have the superpowers we always longed for, Kaburagi-san thought of ways to utilize them to earn income, with the restriction that we couldn"t use it in a way that would cause an uproar just so we could make easy money. I also tried to think of a plan, but I couldn"t come up with anything good. Even though I said that I would think of a plan to make money, my only experience in making money since entering society was being a "gear" as a slave to a black company, so I don"t really know much about it. The only two ideas I thought of were raiding a yakuza hideout or robbing a bank, since I"m confident that I wouldn"t leave any evidence, but such visibly absurd and strange phenomena are bound to create wild rumors, you know? Even if we"re at our wit"s end, earning money through illegal means is NG.
Therefore, Kaburagi-san reasoned out seven feasible ways for us to make money:
Recording video of rare animals. In the deep oceans of Antarctica, it"s difficult to record video, so videos of the animals living there are valuable. Private transportation. At Mach 10, even the Statue of Liberty can easily be picked up and carried. Private s.p.a.ce enterprises. Things like rocket launches and man-made satellite maintenance. Psychokinesis is the complete multi-purpose solution. Mountain rescue. Using psychokinesis for high-speed search and rescue, we would be able to reduce the cost of such an expensive method. Gathering meteorites. It seems that meteorites are worth a lot to scholars. We could make a lot of money just by gathering rocks that are floating in s.p.a.ce. Support for wind farms and hydroelectric generators. After all, the only difference between the two systems is the source of power turning the turbines. I can use my psychokinesis to turn the turbines instead. Underwater resource salvage. It"s not profitable to enter the ocean depths through a pipeline? I can do it with my psychokinesis. ◊
Let"s verify that these are actually feasible. To start with, for the first four, there"s the problem of credibility, in addition to the fact that they won"t make us a lot of money right away.
#1 – "We will deliver to you video tracking of animals whose ecology has yet to be fully understood due to their environments being difficult for humans to access. For example, giant squid that live in the depths of the ocean, or even snow leopards that live up high in the mountains!"
Scholars may be watering at the mouth over the possibility of having such data, but the credibility of it is low. "How did you shoot such amazing videos?" I can"t think of a good answer for that. At worst, they may even suspect that it"s all CG. Fabricated materials are a common occurrence at things like academic conferences and the like, after all.
#2 – "We will deliver to you, at speeds up to Mach 10, large amount of various materials, such as oil tankers that originally would be carried by train! No fuel or transportation costs! It"s fast and it"s safe!"
But there"s still low credibility. Carrying small items is also a possibility, but then we wouldn"t be able to earn a lot of money quickly. It"s possible to earn a large amount of money, but no one would entrust such work to an inexperienced transportation contractor who won"t reveal their transportation method. They would suspect you of things like overdue deliveries, theft, and transport failure. Large-scale transportation is inflexible and many companies already have a transportation company they"re invested in and refuse to change. Being a new business in that field is tough.
#3 – A derivative of the transportation idea, the s.p.a.ce industry. Via psychokinesis, easily launch a few tons of cargo into s.p.a.ce and have it enter geosynchronous...o...b..t for only 7 billion yen (approx. $64 million USD)! Seven billion yen, for something that is incredibly simple for me to do! It"s too easy! There"s no job on Earth that has a daily wage of seven billion yen. That sort of thing goes beyond merely being profitable.
But, there"s still the issue of credibility, in addition to the fact that it would be difficult to get it up and running immediately. We would be launching into s.p.a.ce things like supplies for a s.p.a.ce station, experiment materials, artificial satellites, observation rockets, and etc. It would probably take a significant amount of time to see results. An of course, it goes without saying that no one would easily entrust to a d.a.m.n suspicious s.p.a.ce launch company their valuable "child" that they poured a lot of money, time, technology, and pa.s.sion into.
#4 – Mountain rescue. I would only have to use my psychokinesis when a mountain climber gets into trouble and rescue them, I would have a lot of free time, which is nice. It"s difficult to climb tall snowy mountains, like Mt. Everest or K23. If I use my psychokinesis, things like "not being able to send out a search party due to weather" are irrelevant. Because I would be using psychokinesis instead of just doing a visual search, it may not be a safe and reliable rescue, but it I"m fairly certain I would still be able to rescue them.
But here too, there is no credibility. The rescue team is the last lifeline. That means mountain climbers have to be able to trust and rely on them. We would guarantee that the quality of the work would be worth the large amount of money the psychokinetic mountain rescue would cost, but we probably wouldn"t get requests immediately. In addition, being entrusted with human lives is a heavy burden, and honestly, I"m not very comfortable with it.
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Footnotes:
1: Archaic smile – smile similar to those on ancient Greek statues; smile with slightly upturned corners of the lips. Image ⇒ Greek Statue: Archaic Smile
2: Both are Buddhist teachings/principles. The Five Precepts prohibit killing, theft, s.e.xual misconduct, lying and disrespecting your elders. The n.o.ble Eightfold Path is the eight principles Buddhist should have in order to achieve liberation/nirvana. The list is here ⇒ n.o.ble Eightfold Path: The Eight Divisions
3: K2 is the second highest mountain in the world. It"s also known as Savage Mountain ⇒ K2 Mountain