A certain group that lived within Academy City had once been a major part of the futuristic city's 'dark side', but currently, they are not performing any particular duties. Instead, they spent much of their time doing various things of no real importance throughout their daily lives while living together in a single apartment.

Incidentally, that group was known as 'ITEM'.

Several things had happened between the members of the group within the past couple months; such as one member being killed, two members falling in love and fleeing to Russia (from yet another member), and even one member being nearly killed before having to replace certain body parts with artificial substitutes.

However, that was all behind them, for the most part. They were able to get along well enough recently without any serious worries. In fact, the most pressing concern within the last few day was the fact that Hamazura Shiage, who functioned more as a slave than a real member, had disappeared for a little over a day to visit Hawaii all of the sudden, leaving behind Takitsubou Rikou—his girlfriend. Promptly after returning, he was forced to pacify her rage by bringing her out to dinner and doing other date-like things.

Coincidentally, the small girl that ITEM was currently taking care of due to several circumstances was also peeved with Hamazura's unexpected absence, so he was forced to bring her along, which didn't help his situation with the first case whatsoever.

This left the last two remaining members of ITEM alone in the apartment, creating a peaceful atmosphere of boredom.

"Since those two went out, all of this food is definitely going to go to waste." Mugino Shuzuri sighed absently as she continued to cook in the decently sized kitchen within the apartment, using enough ingredients and cooking methods to create a dinner for ten. Despite knowing no one was around to eat it, she didn't hesitate to use all of the ingredients for the sake of performing as many minor functions as possible. It was necessary in order to perform her regular maintenance on her artificial arm, which had been blown away by her own power along with her right eye. "Although things might not work out for them and they'll storm home early in an awkward silence without eating. I guess they won't have an appetite in that case, though."

"Don't super worry about those two." Kinuhata Saiai grinned at Mugino over the couch with triumph, turning her back to the television that was currently displaying several consecutive commercials. She had a magazine held in one hand, having taken it from the pile lying on the dinner table. "The movie I sent them off to see is perfect, made by a genius director in Europe. There is no way they can resist the epic romance that even impressed a super movie fan like me!"

"I'm surprised you were so willing to send them to a movie you hold in such high opinion. Since when did you support those two as an item?"

"Well, I still think Hamazura is super Hamazura-y. There is no cure for that. But Takitsubou was super bummed when he disappeared in Hawaii and even I winced at the pathetic souvenir Hamazura tried to bring her. So I just super had to give a helping hand by introducing them to this director's work."

"I guess that's fine then. In any case, you're really obsessed with this director, aren't you?"

"It's not that I'm 'obsessed'. I did some research on her and found out that she's super young, having created work that challenges even veteran film makers. I bet she'll be super famous when she's older, so I'm keeping an eye on her now to prove how perceptive I am to have discovered her early."

This tomboyish girl with short hair only showed this sort of passion when it came to movies. Not just any, though—she held love only for C-rated theater, for whatever reason. It was childish, especially considering what sort of world she lived in, but it was true that everyone had their quirks.

"There's just one thing I don't get." Kinuhata continued as her gaze drifted toward the food that was slowly gathering in the kitchen, looking appetizing and well made. "You've become super good at cooking by now, but you still eat bento, don't you? Why don't you super make something more glamorous than something commonly bought at supermarkets?"

"Nobody eats this much food aside from during special occasions. Do I come across as the sort of person who'd eat impressive looking dishes just because I can?"

"Well I guess it's true that you have to super watch your body as a member of the female species. We can't let Takitsubou-san continue to be ahead in the game when she's wasting herself on Hamazura."

"Speaking of which, no matter where I look on the net for recipes, there's always at least one hinting at wielding the power to increase your breast size. They're all useless, of course. In the interest of remaining healthy and fit, you have to abandon the idea of increasing the size of just one area with fat."

"It must be a conspiracy against us girls."

"Probably."

Mugino casually pushed aside the last plate of meat she made and yawned as she rolled her left shoulder. Rather than worrying about her joints, it was just an effort to flex her fake arm for one last check.

"Kinuhata, I'm going to shower and head out soon. The facility I rarely go to wants to perform an examination on my ability, and I want to get it over with quickly.

"You're going to that district, right?" Kinuhata grabbed hopped off of the couch with ease and dug through the pile of magazines quickly before finding the one she was searching for. She flipped it open to the page she wanted fairly quickly, as if she'd been ready to find it, and nodded after seeming to confirm something. "A theater near there is going to be super showing a movie in the 'mystery' genre I was thinking about seeing. It's sort of your basic super detective-style kind of thing. It's showing right before your appointment, so if it's super cool with you, we can watch it before you go."

"So long as I'm not late, I don't mind. It'll let me kill some time."

With that, the two girls headed off to get ready to head out. Their conversation was eerily meaningless and the atmosphere was completely lazy, so it gave one the misleading sense that they were your common roommates. However, the two were well-aware that from the moment that they stepped outside—or even while they stayed in the room—there was the constant chance of an idiot attacking them out of nowhere.

The fact that they could calmly live out their lives nonetheless was a testament to their skill for having survived so long. With the power to handle a sniper alone or the power to turn a tank to scrap metal, only the higher tier of dangerous enemies could pose a threat to them.

They were two veterans of 'Graduates' from the Dark Side, after all.

Kuroyoru Umidori was uncomfortable.

District 10 was exactly what one would expect of a 'back alley underground district'. It was well known that this district was basically the slums of Academy City. It received the least care and was probably the only real blindside of the city, unseen by any cameras or security robots. Though it was the middle of the day, the entire street Kuroyoru walked through was shaded by hundreds of tarps placed over head, stretching from building to building. The street smelled like cigarette smoke and other malevolent air pollutants. It was a commercial district at heart, so all the stores were open with shady looking people visible in each one or loitering right outside the doors. There was no doubt in her mind that these stores were not selling anything legally, though at first glance they were simply normal stores with suspicious auras.

What was impressive was that they could all gather so easily in one place. It was doubtful that you would see this anywhere else in Academy City. This was probably the only street like this in the whole district, too. If Anti-Skill suddenly burst in for a raid, they'd find all goldmine of illegal substances. But at the same time, these people were prepared to fade away in the shortest amount of time while using a superficial cover that would buy them enough time. Either way, something like this could only happen due to the neglect of the authorities, so a sudden raid was pretty unlikely.

That is, unless some jackass doesn't cover their tracks and gives the authorities a reason to visit these slums. Though that would be pretty hilarious to watch in its own right.

The street reeked of darkness and was probably the most congested form of it that you could find without looking too hard. It was far from practical in any way, but it was darkness all the same. As someone who embraced and voluntarily lived in the 'dark side', Kuroyoru felt right at home.

So her reasons for feeling uncomfortable were unrelated to the setting. She had the strangest feeling that she was being watched—and not just by one pair of eyes. She kept glancing around without moving too much or letting anyone notice she was looking, but she could not catch anyone's eyes on her. Nonetheless, she was positive she was being watched by the shady people around her. Possibilities flew through her head—they'd been warned she was coming, they were all conspiring to help the kidnappers, they were mistaking her for someone else, or maybe they knew about her due to a separate incident. All sorts of possibilities, all baseless.

Nonetheless, Kuroyoru didn't dare to throw any of them out. If she wasn't careful, she'd probably be stabbed in the back, caught unawares. She knew all too well how cold and merciless the underworld could be. Even the people who supposedly 'cared' for her in recent days didn't try too hard to stop her from going back to work once she'd returned from Hawaii. Granted, she'd made sure to keep it a secret from Hamazura Shiage, who was the most bothersome of them all. She preferred to retain her independence and continue her work as the foremost member of Freshman.

Her most recent job was pretty simple. A man had been kidnapped by a political group who opposed whatever work the man did. She wasn't sure of the details, mostly because they didn't matter. Her subordinates had gone ahead to secure the man while putting down the self-righteous group of kidnappers and wait for her to arrive to escort the man to a predetermined area.

Kuroyoru had donned the white trench coat that she normally wore with only the hood hanging from her head, instead wearing it properly to hide her body that normally gave off a 'black' color scheme. She pulled the hood over her head to hide her face as well as giving her stuffed dolphin something to hang onto, though it was uncertain how it was sticking.

Since she could not decide what was giving her such a bad feeling, she continued on through the state, ignoring the random men who tried to sell her various useless things, not even bothering to threaten them out of irritation. She'd attempted to contact her subordinates several times since entering the street, but had received no answer. She wasn't necessarily worried about them, but couldn't understand what had gone wrong. Her men weren't the sort to cave under anything but the fiercest pressure. She'd be ripping their fingernails off one by one if she learned that they had been defeated by a group of powerless self-righteous terrorists who weren't even supposed to be all that impressive.

After taking several turns according to her gps, she found herself outside the supposed terrorist hideout, which was a featureless door on the side of a building within an alleyway, also covered by several tarps to shade the route from the sunlight.

"The fuck is this?"

Kuroyoru spat irritably at the sight before her. Men in casual clothing that were meant to blend in were scattered across the ground before her, each and every body showing signs of having been beaten by some sort of heavy object. Several metal bats, crowbars, guns, and other typical street fighting tools were on the ground with them, each one broken or bent horribly out of shape, as if these men had attacked the buildings with them like a bunch of idiots.

What bothered her was that fact that, despite the similar lack of defining features all of these men had, she recognized many of them while not knowing many others. This meant that half of them were her subordinates. Naturally, the other half must have been the opposing terrorist group.

Obviously, they hadn't had some epic fight and wound up in a draw after knocking each other out. They weren't dead—they'd been knocked unconscious. Judging by the pools of blood forming from their head wounds, they had been haphazardly knocked out by a blunt object belonging to a third party.

However, the only man present who was still conscious was not holding any such weapon.

He was a tall man wearing jeans and a hoodie. The hood was up and his back was too Kuroyoru, so she could not see his face, but she knew he was not normal from the way he stood over the unconscious bodies. His body language told her that he was a skillful fighter with lots of experience, but that gave no clue as to his motive.

Not that Kuroyoru really cared about his motive.

"Hey, jackass. Are you the one who did all this?"

The man responded to the sound of her voice by turning in her direction, displaying the ceramic clown mask he wore to hide his features behind a creepy misleading smile.

"You're pretty late. You'll never accomplish your job if you're not fast enough. Arriving quickly enough can save a life. Arriving too late is the same as eliminating a life yourself."

"Heh!" Kuroyoru spat as a mocking scowl appeared on her face. "So I'm going to be lectured by a stranger with a creepy mask? As if I care what you have to say! I'm going to rip your flesh from your bone either way, so you'd better talk while you can, before you're only screaming in pain!"

Kuroyoru whipped her hand out and a hydrogen lance sprouted from her palm, extending a couple meters out to cause a small interruption in the stagnated state of the air around them that reeked of smoke, alcohol, trash, and other various things.

The man in the hoodie immediately kicked up a crowbar with one foot and snatched it out of midair to swing it at her brutally. Kuroyoru easily slashed it to pieces with a casual swing of her hydrogen lance and sent the dangerous weapon in the man's direction. He narrowly managed to avoid the full brunt of the attack by twisting his body in a complicated fashion while kicking off of the nearby wall, narrowly letting his back hover directly above the slash for a brief moment before he landed on the ground on all fours.

He immediately hopped back as Kuroyoru continued to swing the hydrogen lance without much care, slashing through the walls of the narrow space between the two buildings, cutting up the door and digging random symbols into the walls. She had decided against aiming directly for the man's vital point since she thought it would be more interesting to let a random strike hit him and let fate or luck kill him or save him.

She only did this because she wanted to see just how skillful he was in combat. Against her level 4 Bomber Lancer, no normal person stood a chance close range, so she had no reason to worry about a counter-attack.

The man's combat ability was impressive, clear from the fact that he hadn't died immediately. Kuroyoru was willing to admit the possibility of him taking both sides out by blind siding them suddenly, but still had her doubts about his chances if they all attacked him at once. You'd need martial arts on par with an ancient Chinese master to handle so many people at once, and you only saw those sorts of things in the movies.

It was as Kuroyoru was bitterly considering this when he was abruptly struck back in the most surprising manner. She'd expected him to perform some predictably idiotic move without thinking due to being cornered, but that didn't include the chance of him smacking her left hand that held her hydrogen bomb away with his own gloved hand.

The force of his sudden attack easily sent her attack flying in the opposite direction she intended it to, slashing through the nearby wall with ease. However, his hand had not been sliced off as soft flesh and material should have been. He gripped the other hand tightly as he stepped in like a pro fighter, preparing to send his left hook into her gut to knock her out.

Kuroyoru stopped playing around by that point. This man obviously had some sort of power, and she'd be in trouble if she underestimated him without knowing what it was.

She immediately kicked her foot out into the man's chest to put him off balance and push him back slightly, forcing his punch to miss as he corrected his stance. In the next moment, she exploded her hydrogen bomb directly into his torso mercilessly.

She was once again surprised. Rather than been torn to shreds by the attack, the man remained in one piece as he slammed into the wall behind him, smashing through it like he was a wrecking ball.

Kuroyoru flexed her hand in wonder at the phenomena. Her attack that time definitely landed and the power didn't seem any less destructive than normal, so his power couldn't have been to decrease the strength of her attacks.

Whatever it was, she'd learn more by firing more Bomber Lances at him.

Kuroyoru stepped toward the rubble and summoned lances from both of her palms as she glared into the hole she'd sent the man through. She was unsurprised to see him standing, but he didn't look entirely unharmed. He was slouching more than before and something about the way his raised hands twitched slightly involuntarily showed the possibility that he was feeling pain from his landing.

"Hold on." He said with a forcefully leveled voice as he waved his hands in front of him as if to call a time out. "You're part of Freshman, right? We're not enemies."

"Why the hell would I believe that pitiful and desperate lie?" Kuroyoru spat irritably, slightly disappointed by how quickly he caved in. "Are you that positive you won't be able to run with your tail between your legs? Not like I blame you, though."

"I'm serious. Just think about it for a moment; your men aren't the only ones knocked out, right? And your target isn't here, is he?"

"I was thinking about asking those questions while testing how long that strange shield of yours would last with a barrage of point blank hydrogen lances. You're working for some third-party bastards who want in on the action, right?"

"Hardly. I'm just a passing guy with morals, so I lent a hand. Some of your men already fled with that politician while I stayed behind the handle these bastards."

"So you knocked out my subordinates because most of them decided to give you a hard time about trusting you?"

"Very perceptive."

"Those pansies might be good for something after all, if they decided to distrust you rather than just depend on you. Even if it got their asses kicked." Kuroyoru cackled as she lowered her arms while extinguishing her lances. "I bet you'll tell me the reason I can't kill you now is because you have to lead me to the target and my remaining men, right?"

"That's part of it. But even if you ignore that, you wouldn't be able to kill me even if you tried. I'm pretty confident in my survival abilities."

Nothing in the man's voice indicated that he was lying, but Kuroyoru didn't trust him either way. But killing him now and killing him later wouldn't have made much of a difference—he had information she needed, so she'd play along to get as much of it as she could.

"Whatever keeps you from cutting yourself at night." Kuroyoru shrugged indifferently. "Just get moving and take me to the target. If you can't convince me fast, I'll kill your ass anyways."

...

…I have absolutely no idea how many 'supers' to use per paragraph. There; I said it!

This is the first chapter of the second part of my story in-progress. The first part was 'A Certain Dangerous Experiment', which can be found on this site. For those of you who have read it and don't see the relationship between this story and the plot from the last; just go along with it for now and enjoy reading. I've got everything planned out to make sense eventually, so speculate all you want if you so wish.

The main character spot will be predominantly shared by Kuroyoru and Mugino. Why? Because it works out nicely. And frankly, I like Kuroyoru's design. This story is going to be sort of like Baccano and Hoodwinked in that there are as many stories as there are people involved. Or, as a wise frog once said; "If a tree falls in the forest, there will be three stories. Yours, mine and the tree's. *animal crowd laughs*" Getting all these characters properly involved is the real challenge. I want to make this feel like it is something that happened in a canon but is omitted from the main novels, sort of like an SS. So expect a lot of character interaction and convoluted plot.

Which brings me to the topic of date. I don't know if I gave you a date before, but I said A Certain Dangerous Experiment took place between NT3 and NT5-after Hawaii and before Ichihanaransai. In other words, during Baggage City, though that's technically incorrect. NT4 took place in just one day-November 13th. Hawaii took place on November 10th, and since A Certain Dangerous Experiment only took a day as well, I figured November 12th would be the day. Unless I'm mistaken, I think the only thing we know for sure about Ichihanaransai is that it takes place in mid November, which I assume is anywhere from the 15th and on. A Certain Disastrous Investigation takes place on November 14th. Depending on information to come and how I feel, I may assume Ichihanransai takes place on the 15th or 16th. Why is that so important (aside from giving me an extra day for plot to take place)? Meh. You'll see.