Part 8[edit]
“So in the end, what happened?” muttered a silver-haired girl named Bayloupe.
She was riding a small charter plane rather than a large pa.s.senger plane. It was currently waiting in a corner of the airport for its turn to use the runway.
A girl with black hair that had just the ends braided sat across from Bayloupe.
Her name was Lessar.
“What do you mean?”
“The end with the UAV, right?” added a blonde girl named Floris who was sinking into a ma.s.sage chair. In annoyance, she pushed another girl, Lancis, off of her lap. “With Misaka Mikoto? That j.a.panese girl put up quite an effort, but did she really make it in time?”
“Right, right.” Bayloupe leaned against the wall. “Even though she got the UAV’s route out of Code EIC’s core and got the information to Academy City, would the defense units really move that quickly? After all, it’s just the word of a middle school girl. I doubt they would immediately send out all their forces.”
“Normally, they would act too slowly, the UAV would get its detonation signal out, and…boom!”
Bayloupe and Floris spoke back and forth, but then Lessar spoke up.
“Well, maybe that was their intention from the beginning.”
“?”
“Maybe the higher ups of Academy City had already predicted there were dangerous elements within the cooperative inst.i.tution and they wanted an opportunity to draw them out. By carefully monitoring the Russian shopping mall, they could find all the dangerous people involved with the organization.”
“Which would mean…”
“Maybe they were constantly monitoring the whereabouts of the Solntse and the UAV using a different information source. By letting the situation develop as far as possible, they could see just how much strength the dangerous elements had. And as a result, they also managed to draw out another cooperative inst.i.tution supporting the shopping mall. Not to mention actually capturing Peter Wellgo.”
“Uehh,” someone groaned.
“Would they really go that far for that?” asked Bayloupe.
“In that city, they would.”
“But the Solntse is a hydrogen bomb.”
“In Academy City, even that isn’t too much for them,” replied Lessar lightly. “I don’t know how sharp their higher ups are, but they might have been thinking about a possible future war between magic and science. This could be seen as an elimination of enemies on their own side before such a war begins.”
All four of them fell silent.
The word “war” weighed heavily on them.
“Well, if there is a war, Russia would be a likely candidate for the main battlefield.”
“And the other cooperative inst.i.tution is from France, another dangerous location.”
“So they were laying the groundwork by getting rid of the unnecessary inst.i.tutions before the fighting begins. With all the higher ups gone, this shopping mall will likely be completely shut down,” said Bayloupe with a grin. “I suppose we’re lucky no British cooperative inst.i.tution was eliminated.”
“I wonder about that. At least our part in helping resolve this situation might help fool them a bit.”
Suddenly, Lancis spoke up for the first time.
She was twisting her body as if an invisible hand was tickling her side while she flipped through something like a small book.
“…Hee…hee hee. It found it.”
“?”
“The Coronation Sword. I…hee hee…just got a signal from the spiritual item…heh heh…automatically carrying out the excavation. It found it. It will…hee hee…start the actual exaction now, but this is most likely it. Heh heh.”
“Hmm,” Lessar smiled thinly.
It was a devilish smile.
It was a smile that indirectly showed that she was aware of her own ill will.
“If the revolution in England succeeds, I doubt the cooperation of Academy City will matter anymore, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. After all, we are a group that does what is best for England.”
They received permission to use the runway.
The pilot slowly moved the charter plane.
They arrived at one end of the straight runway and started accelerating for takeoff.
As the airplane took flight, Lessar said, “I guess we need to start seriously preparing for war.”