Part 5[edit]
(November 10th – Oahu – New Honolulu International Airport Central Lobby – From security camera footage.)
Kamijou and Mikoto had looked for souvenirs in the duty-free shops before even taking a step outside the airport, but Kamijou suddenly made a strange sound and ran off after reading an email on his cell phone. He must not have known the dangers that a major gun-toting country could hold.
“Gyaaaaaaahhh!? Th-this goes well beyond misfortune!!”
“Wait, wait! Are you really going to cut across here!? The announcement about the waxing was a hidden anti-terrorism warning!!”
“I just got an email saying Birdway set up a bomb!!”
Of course, no one would go out of their way to approach an area being odorously waxed by a lawnmower-like device. If one thought about it calmly, it was strange how airport workers were watching alertly from the outer edge of the area being waxed, but the people who had believed the announcement did not seem to sense any danger.
The warning signs and the foul odor were enough for most of the people to naturally distance themselves from the area.
Meanwhile, Kamijou unhesitatingly charged straight into the area covered in half-dried wax.
Mikoto grimaced at the smell and looked down at the clothes she was wearing, but continued on after seeming to have given up on something.
The workers on the outer edge of the area frantically tried to stop them, but the two ignored their shouts.
As he ran on ahead, the boy said, “Honestly, I can’t tell who the real terrorists are here. …Am I supposed to stop Gremlin or do something about this suitcase?”
“Is that the suitcase you mean?”
A number of men were surrounding a large suitcase. They seemed to be airport security, so the police must not have arrived yet.
Instead of heading straight for the suitcase, Kamijou hid behind a nearby pillar.
Mikoto followed him.
“Is Gremlin the group behind all this? Do you think they’re mixed in with those men?”
“…I’m not so immersed in that side of things to know if someone’s a magician just by looking at them.”
Kamijou glanced around and spotted Hamazura and Misaka Worst peering from behind a corner about 70 meters away.
He took that to mean Accelerator was probably close by as well.
Kamijou pulled out his cell phone and moved his thumb across its keys.
“Who are you calling?”
“Birdway.”
After the phone rang a few times, she answered.
“I’ve found the suitcase you set up. There are some people who look like airport security around it. Do you really think Gremlin will show up?”
“They already have.”
“?”
Kamijou frowned and Birdway continued.
“They’re having unexpected troubles on their end, too. They’re trying to make it past the guards using a makeshift spell, but analysing and dispelling it is easy enough.”
“…Are they altering their appearance? Is someone from Gremlin mixed in with those workers…?”
“Not there.”
He heard a sound over the phone, as if she had clapped her hands together.
Immediately afterwards, Kamijou felt a chill as around 20 figures appeared out of thin air.
They were all Western men. They wore the formal dress clothes of Birdway’s subordinates.
“We are not the main dish,” said the man in the center, Mark Space, before he pointed toward an area with nothing in it.
“She is the one you need to focus on.”
“!?”
Nothing had been there just a moment before, and there was nothing there to hide behind, and yet a girl now stood there.
She had blonde hair and white skin. The lines of her body were slender and beautiful, and she had a well-featured face. She looked less like a natural person and more like an ideal girl from a picture book. If you were to describe her, she looked like a princess, though it was mainly her clothing that accomplished that impression.
She wore an odd dress that seemed to be made of countless thin membranes placed one on top of another. The lines of her body were clearly visible through it.
The one aspect of her that did not look straight out of a fairy tale was the figure-correcting underwear binding her entire body, like a diving suit that lay at the core of her elegant dress. It was a type of modern corset that wouldn't be surprising to see on an infomercial.
She was a magician from Gremlin.
This was no longer conjecture or a story heard from someone else. For the first time, Kamijou saw the true enemy before his eyes.
What he felt was not an obvious sense of intimidation.
If he had to put a name to it, it would be a sense of something foreign.
He had an unpleasant feeling that something there should not have existed. He felt somewhat anxious, as if overlooking her now would bring great disaster later. Fear and concern were part of a life form’s reaction to danger, but what he was experiencing felt purer than that. Instead of the powerful emotion of fear causing him confusion, the raw feeling of danger forcibly honed his thoughts.