decoration. It was made of metal plates linked together rather than leather. On it was a key ring that had a black, metal cylinder hanging from it, about forty centimeters long and three in diameter. It looked like a military-grade flashlight you might see on police officers.
Shirai somehow expected her to be in high school. She couldn’t rely on her outward appearance to tell her age, but high school kids just looked older to middle school students. Something about her didn’t give Shirai the impression that they were alike.
The girl had the white luggage next to her.
The one that Shirai had just been sitting on a moment ago.
“So it
was
teleportation?! But…” She hadn’t touched the luggage. Or maybe she’d immediately teleported behind her and then went back with it. Even then…
If this is just teleportation, then something’s wrong
, she thought, alarmed.
Shirai, buried in thought, snapped out of it when she heard the girl laugh. “Oh, you figured it out already? I should have known an esper with a similar ability would be quick on the uptake. I’m a little different from your type, though.”
Shirai frowned. A similar ability. A little different.
“My power—it’s called Move Point. Unlike your shabby ability, my movement doesn’t need me to touch the object. Amazing, ain’t it?” That dispassionate voice…The girl looked down at the suit-wearing men on the ground behind Shirai. “These people were useless. That’s why I assigned them this random job to grab the luggage. I didn’t expect them to be so useless they couldn’t even do
that
, though.”
Useless
.
People
.
Grab
.
Random job
.
Assigned
.
Those words all clued Shirai in to the fact that she was somehow related to these men. She raised her voice and cautioned her. “You would commit violence against me despite knowing who I am?” The armband displaying her position was already bloodstained from the wound in her shoulder and turning black.
“Yes. That is exactly why I could be so calm with this, Miss Kuroko Shirai of Judgment. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have revealed my hand so easily.”
Shirai didn’t know what was in the luggage. And she didn’t know what this person was after, either. But she still understood; this girl, looking at her wounded state and laughing, wasn’t about to let her go home quietly.
An enemy.
Yes, this was not a girl standing before her, but an enemy.
“Gah!!”
Shirai spread her feet wide. The recoil caused her short skirt to flutter. Her exposed thighs revealed leather belts around them, with dozens of metal darts inserted in each one—just like bullets in a gunman’s belt in a western film. They were her trump card. Deadly darts that she could instantly warp to a target with teleportation and send into an enemy.
But the girl moved before Shirai was able to.
Her slender hand inside the blazer hanging from her shoulders went to the military-grade flashlight packed on her metallic belt and pulled it out in one breath. She spun it around in her hand like a baton, then waggled it just a tiny bit above Shirai, as though beckoning.
A change occurred.
The men Shirai had brought down and arrested vanished and warped in front of the girl. She held the ten unconscious people out in the air as a shield.
However…
“That won’t help!!”
Shirai fired the metal darts at her thighs anyway. The numerous darts crossed space soundlessly, ignoring the linear distance in between them and the target—in other words, passing right through the men—and reappeared directly where the girl was standing. She was aiming for her shoulders and legs, firing carefully so she wouldn’t hit her joints.
Her teleportation ability didn’t move things in a straight line but rather from one position to another. There could be as many hostages in between them as she wanted; it didn’t pose a problem. And when the darts all appeared out of nowhere inside the girl’s body, they would tear through her tender
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