Welcome to Underground Calm Down, Right Arm of Mine!
Part 2
While I was contemplating things, Shoutkun took out a lot of chemical heating pads that you would ordinarily use in winter and stuck them on his chest. He also took a roll of bandages and wound it around his arm. He stretched a few times, checked that everything was fine, and then adjusted the positions of a few of the heating pads and the bandage. I see, clever. Certainly, if the cold air he"s emitting is around -10°C, he can counteract his ability even if it goes out of control with around 10 or so heating pads.
Even though he"s keeping to Amaterasu"s policy of not letting the extraordinary interfere with his ordinary life, I wouldn"t have blamed him if he had taken today off, you know. Though I am relieved that he"s now become enthusiastic about maintaining a regular life. He"s gone from one extreme to the other, but at least now he seems to be reflecting on his actions a little.
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…It"s just that.
That is, how do I say it?
The current Shoutkun should be saying things like, "*Ku~*, calm down, right arm of mine!" or something.
He looks like he should be saying extremely overdramatic things like that.
Well, that"s really the situation, though.
How much more interesting do you feel Shoutkun would become if he did? And what would happen to the ordinary part of him?
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After he arrived at school, Toukchan came into the cla.s.sroom and found it strange that the cla.s.s was 50% noisier than usual. She first glanced at Shoutkun, who had transformed into half chuuni and half delinquent and was receiving a barrage of strange looks. Toukchan slightly looked like she was about to cry. She grabbed Shoutkun by the nape of the neck and dragged him upstairs to the abandoned rooftop landing. She asked questions in rapid-fire while driving him against the wall with a *kabedon1*.
"What is that appearance? Are you crazy? Did you get hit in the head? Are you all right? Should I chant some sutras?"
"You don"t need to chant sutras. I just got to know the truth of the world, that"s all."
When Toukchan heard Shoutkun"s answer, she was awfully surprised.
"*E~*, you attained enlightenment2!?"
"I wasn"t enlightened."
"? But you said you know the truth of the world, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then, you were enlightened!"
"I wasn"t enlightened."
"⋯⋯?"
Ah! This conversation is out of sync. I really want to step in here. If only Kaburagi-san were here. Well, such a thing would probably confuse even Kaburagi-san. Toukchan said to Shoutkun,
"I don"t understand what"s going on, but you should stop it. You"re definitely going to get scolded for that hair, and it"s against the rules to wear colored t-shirts under our uniforms."
"I thought you would understand. Because you"re serious about finding the truth. The truth of fire, I just feel it in my heart."
It seems that Toukchan is unable to get a grasp on his thoughts, but, you know, I was listening with warm feelings, because Shoutkun hates these kind of nonsensical statements. Toukchan took her hand off the wall, looked Shoutkun in the eye from a short distance away, saw they weren"t clouded, and nodded in admiration.
"*He~*, somehow or other, I understand. In other words, even Takahashi, no; Shouta, you"ve also become ‘one who seeks the way", right? You"ve increased your virtue, yes?"
It seemed that Toukchan judged that there was no problem with what she was hearing. She lightly patted Shoutkun on the shoulder, then returned to the cla.s.sroom. Shoutkun obediently followed after her.
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On that day, while in the bathroom, Shoutkun stared fixedly at the fire from his lighter. Also, during break, he was summoned to the vice princ.i.p.al"s office and was interrogated and scolded by both them and his homeroom teacher. However, during cla.s.s, he had a serious att.i.tude. He didn"t even nod off once; instead, he diligently took notes.
It seems like the defeat event generally had a positive outcome. But still, one day we may have to face the fact that Shoutkun already can"t return to what he was before. We"ll figure it out, somehow.
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Well then. I can"t move forward if I continue to reflect on the defeat event forever. Shoutkun"s "calm down, right arm of mine" incident has pa.s.sed, and I know now that I need to continue researching Nenrikin transplanting. But in order to do that, I need to conduct more experiments. For these experiments, I would have to fully transplant Nenrikin, observe the results, then remove the mutated Nenrikin. But experimenting on humans is probably a bad idea. And even if I experimented on mice first, there would still be some anxiety over applying the results to humans.
Therefore, I decided to experiment on monkeys for the time being. I used my psychokinesis to search for various wild monkeys all over the world. I then transplanted Nenrikin to them, and then kept records on them while observing the results on the mutation process. At the end of the experiment, I peeled off and completely removed the mutated original source of superpowers while observing their reaction. There was a movie about how monkeys ended up ruling the world and drove humanity to the brink of extinction when they were given powers and went out of control, after all3. I need to carefully clean up after myself.
I chose several different groups of monkeys, such as j.a.panese macaques and western lowland gorillas, transplanted Nenrikin into them, then monitored and observed them. I will focus on collecting the data, and entrust the a.n.a.lysis of it to Kaburagi-san, who returned in a grand fashion after becoming the d.u.c.h.ess of Marineland. By the way, Kaburagi-san laughed hard when she found out about how Shoutkun completely changed in only 3 days. Well, she"s either laughing, or she caught a cold.
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The monkeys mutagenized Nenrikin without exception, but only about 20% of them showed signs of being aware that they had superpowers. And of that 20%, about 90% were shocked by their strange powers and never used them again, while half of those who weren"t surprised at first seemed to think it was interesting, but then soon got bored. Those who were aware of their superpower, were interested in it, and used it intermittently… in other words, those who trained their powers made up no more than 1% of the entire group of monkeys.
However, I did manage to heighten the sense of touch for my original source of superpowers by doing things like transplanting Nenrikin to a large amount of monkeys, observing the mutation process, touching the mutated Nenrikin with my psychokinesis, shredding it, and performing inspections of it. For example, Nenrikin feels like a normal muscle when you touch it. Stoprotein pulsates like a machine, *kachi-kochi*, and Burninglutamine buzzes, *buni-buni*, and is warm. Ice-steroid is like well-chilled tofu. If it"s rough, it"ll be [Electrocushin] , if it stretches like gum it"ll be [Speedopamine] , etc., etc.
Furthermore, thanks to Kaburagi-san, who divided out the fine correlations for each condition based on the sensation I described when I touched it, it became possible for me to roughly guess what kind of ability the original source of superpowers had mutated into without touching it now, so long as I knew what one that was similar to it felt like. It took me less than 2 months to completely finish my experiments, but because I had help, the results were good.
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Additionally, I figured out how to tear off a piece of the original source of superpowers from monkeys all at once, so that it merely results in a moment of pain, but I still can"t stop heartbreaking screams or the repeated occurrences of fainting. At least one good thing came out of the experiment though. Poachers of rare species of monkeys kept somehow being handed over to the police with evidence of their crimes, as well as with both arms and legs broken. The situation hasn"t been completely resolved, as second and third groups of poachers may appear, but for now, at any rate, there"s no doubt that a moment of peace will come to the monkeys.
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Thanks to the sacrifices of the monkeys, we were able to immediately capitalize on our results, and set out in search of an ESP"er with healing abilities, as they will become absolutely necessary in the fight against the world"s darkness… which will intensify in the future.
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Footnotes:
1: "Kabedon" is slang for slamming your hand into the wall and standing in front of somebody to stop them from leaving. It"s popular for males to use it when cornering a love interest ⇒
2: Enlightenment is a Buddhist concept where one either receives a small glimpse at the true nature of the world or enters a permanent state of being "awakened" ⇒
3: Pretty sure this is a reference to "Planet of the Apes". I prefer the cla.s.sic over the reboot ⇒