Aftermath of the Kidnapping Incident
The dazzling lights flooded my vision. The rays were so intense they felt like they were cooking my brain, and when I let out a groan, whoever was standing by my head carefully began dimming them.
Once the lights had softened enough for me to open my eyes, I looked up to find a man with stitches crisscrossing his entire face shining a small light across my eyes and probing every inch of my face.
“─No problems here.”
“……Who—”
“A doctor. Can’t you tell?”
The man who had introduced himself as a doctor ran a few more checks, then stood up as though finished and called for someone. Moments later, familiar faces came pouring into the room.
Regalia, Aile, Vira, and the rest of my colleagues from the Evils organization.
“Dr. Magical Medical. Has the treatment gone well?”
“It has, Chairman. There was no need to summon me for injuries this minor. Any neighborhood doctor could have handled this with ease.”
“I simply want to give my subordinates the very best.”
“As someone on the receiving end of payment, I shouldn’t say this, but it almost feels like a waste of money.”
“Then will you discount your fee?”
“I’m afraid not. In any case, the treatment is complete, so I’ll take my leave……”
The moment the heavily stitched man left the room, three people rushed toward me. I stared at them with an awkward expression.
“S-Scientist… I’m so sorry!”
“……For what?”
“It’s all my fault……”
Aile’s eyes glistened with tears as she hung her head, convinced the whole mess was her doing. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t wrong. If not for her, I never would have gone to such a crowded place, and I certainly wouldn’t have been knocked unconscious by falling debris from a collapsing building.
But I wasn’t the kind of scientist who lived by cold reason alone, devoid of blood or tears. Scientists like that didn’t survive in an industry where budgets were won through politics and emotion. What mattered wasn’t pure logic but empathy. Collusion. Compromise.
“─Sorry. I don’t really remember what happened right before I passed out.”
“Y-you don’t?”
“I remember you asking me to go to that Magical Girl Comic event with you… but everything after that is a blank.”
A well-intentioned lie. Fortunately, Aile didn’t seem to notice. The exact opposite of the two people standing behind her, who were both wearing expressions of utter disbelief.
Aile opened and closed her mouth several times, sniffling, before finally speaking in a tiny voice.
“……Nothing happened at all.”
“Really?”
“Y-yes… You, Scientist, you… f-fell down in the shower room and that’s how you got hurt—!”
“No, that’s not what happened.”
“Y-your memories came back!?”
Aile, oh Aile… My plan to comfort her with a harmless lie had been completely demolished. She was such a hopeless socially anxious otaku that she couldn’t even take the hint when it was handed to her on a silver platter.
I let out a sigh and shook my head. Then I turned to the boss. Regalia was looking at me with an expression that said, Are you quite finished with this farce?
“Scientist. Enough with the unfunny performance. We have much to discuss.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“I-it was all acting?”
While Vira burst out laughing at Aile—who still hadn’t realized it was all pretend—Regalia calmly explained what had happened after I lost consciousness.
“The kidnappers have all been sent to the villain detention facility. They will likely never leave that place for the rest of their lives.”
“They’re still just kids, though?”
“Precisely because they are children. Being born with such talent and still choosing that path means there is no hope of rehabilitation.”
The kidnapper who possessed the rare ability of teleportation had chosen the villain’s path despite his gift. His future was rotten from the root.
And unlike Earth, where criminals’ rights somehow outweighed victims’ rights, it seemed that once you became a villain here, you were thrown into a facility you would never leave again.
I could understand why they chose to imprison dangerous villains rather than execute them. They couldn’t very well give heroes a license to kill. After all, the only real difference between heroes and villains was whether their powers were used against civilians or against other villains. There was nothing stopping someone with a government-issued murder permit from slaughtering ordinary people.
“Why do you look like that? Are you the type to feel sympathy for children? Do you wish for me to show them mercy?”
“No, that’s not it… It just seems too lenient to simply lock them up.”
“……When you say it, it sounds rather terrifying. Please refrain from saying anything further.”
I nodded in understanding. After all, no matter how powerful a corporate chairman she might be, she was still a child. Some topics were probably too stimulating for young ears.
I leaned back against the bed and looked at Vira. She still seemed to have something left to say to me.
“Vira? What brings you here?”
“Well, I……”
“Since you failed in your duty as my bodyguard, shouldn’t you be fired?”
“That’s… um… well……”
My words must have struck home, because Vira could only open and close her mouth without managing a proper sentence. Objectively speaking, I wasn’t wrong.
Watching the usually outgoing social butterfly shrink in on herself exactly like Aile was doing, I somehow started to feel better. I even wanted to tease her more. This isn’t good—I’m not that bastard professor.
“Why the long face? Cheer up. People might think I did something wrong.”
Seeing Vira’s expression rot in real time, I briefly wondered if I had gone too far. But I felt no remorse. If another chance to mess with her came up, I fully intended to take it.
When she still refused to relax, even Regalia joined in on the teasing.
“Scientist. While Vira did commit an error this time, she is by no means an inadequate bodyguard. On the contrary, she will reflect on this incident and strive even harder. This one guarantees it.”
“I know, Boss. Otherwise you wouldn’t have assigned her as my bodyguard in the first place.”
“However, this incident is beginning to make me wonder if I may have misjudged……”
“Y-Young Lady…!”
While Vira fell into despair from the shock, Regalia and I met each other’s eyes and burst into laughter. Only then did Vira realize she had been tricked. Her face twisted in humiliation.
Facing Vira’s glare—her expression warped like some vengeful demon—I gave a light bow.
“Sorry, Vira. You just had such a perfect ‘please tease me’ face that I couldn’t resist……”
“……No. You weren’t wrong, were you? Yeah. It’s all because I’m pathetic. A disabled woman without limbs gets her arms and legs back and suddenly acts like she’s on top of the world. That’s the real crime, right?”
After a few more exchanges, Vira began spitting out self-deprecating jokes. The mood was turning heavy. Fortunately, Regalia wasn’t about to let the atmosphere sour.
“Vira, enough. What will you do if the scientist actually builds a bodyguard android? You’ll be out of a job.”
“Ah, yes, Young Lady. But no matter how capable Eight is, there’s simply no way he could build something like that……”
“Indeed. I suppose you’re right?”
The two of them stared at me with eyes full of suspicion. I stared back at them in disbelief.
“There’s no way I could make something like that. It would violate labor laws.”
“Mm— As expected…… Wait, what?”
“What law did you say it would violate?”
“Labor laws. Making robots that steal human jobs is a violation of hu— Ah.”
I realized a beat too late that this wasn’t Earth, and such regulations didn’t exist here. In other words, I could create such robots with zero restrictions.
The moment they understood this, their gazes grew colder and colder. They were the murderous eyes of workers terrified of losing their livelihoods.
I said I’m not going to make one.
Fortunately for the workers of this world, I had no intention of creating such a robot. If I were to make something, at most it would be—
—a self-defense tool.
What is the most important factor in a self-defense tool meant to protect one’s body? Performance? Naturally, the ability to reliably neutralize a threat is crucial, but practicality and stealth matter even more.
Everyone knows that carrying a gun and shooting anyone who approaches is the safest option. The problem is that doing so would get you labeled a madman and thrown in jail.
Therefore, the most important quality in a self-defense item was practicality—something you could use without facing social condemnation. The next most important was stealth—something that wouldn’t look like a weapon to anyone who saw it.
If it looked threatening at first glance, the opponent would try to snatch it away or disable it immediately. It had to be something that didn’t feel dangerous even to the person facing it.
A watch or bracelet would be perfect.
But a man wearing a bracelet seemed far too flamboyant, and anything that looked expensive could easily be stolen, so I ruled it out. That left the watch.
Even in an era where people could check time down to the millisecond, watches were still widely used. Robbers and kidnappers might confiscate a hostage’s phone, but they rarely bothered taking their watch.
In other words, it was the ideal self-defense item.
The biggest threat is teleportation. That has to be blocked without fail.
Fortunately, I already knew a method to prevent it. I had proven it worked in this world not long ago. It was the quantum space-folding phenomenon discovered by Professor Emilia.
In the past, Professor Emilia had won the Nobel Prize in Physics by proving that quantum wave interference could cause space to fold. Later physicists developed the technology to block spatial movement based on that discovery—the very same space control technique I had used against the kidnapper.
For the barrier… maybe just enough to block one attack?
If I could prevent teleportation, I wouldn’t need to worry about blocking attacks myself. Vira would be there. Her superpower was the strongest shield in the entire Evils organization—humanity’s absolute pinnacle. Any attack she couldn’t stop probably couldn’t be stopped by a mere self-defense gadget anyway.
Besides, I had zero desire to walk around every day wearing something as uncomfortable as a full suit just to prepare for attacks even she couldn’t handle.
So blocking a single strike was sufficient. What remained was the counterattack—the ability to subdue the enemy.
This was the part I agonized over. Exactly what level of power should I set it to?
“Hmm……”
Enough to pierce Vira’s barrier in one hit? Rejected. There was no way to generate that much output from a device small enough to fit in a watch.
Enough to make Aile feel pain if she were hit? Also rejected. Without her magical girl outfit, Aile was just an ordinary high-school girl. While it was true that high-school girls in this world were as tough as tanks, I couldn’t use her as a baseline in a world where superpowers existed.
Which meant the only person I could test it on was—
“─So that’s why you came looking for me? Scientist.”
“Yeah, pretty much. Feel free to refuse if you don’t want to.”
I stood in front of Galrm, fiddling with a tiny pistol. It was small enough to hide completely in my palm. Later I would embed it inside a watch, but for testing its power, I had shaped it into something easy to fire.
When I pointed the gun at him, Galrm grinned as if to say, Go ahead.
“There’s no way a toy like that could possibly hurt m—”
Peeing—!
The beam that shot from the pistol pierced straight through Galrm’s abdomen. He stared blankly at the hole in his stomach and touched it. I looked at him and said,
“I’m shooting now.”
“……You already did.”
“Tell me when it hurts too much to bear. Or when you feel like you’ve been properly subdued.”
I pulled out the new pistol with increased firepower. I had made it slightly larger than the previous one for easy distinction. It was still only palm-sized, but Galrm swallowed hard before speaking.
“Heh, hehehe— Yeah. Something like this is still just a—
Pyuuung—!
“……For a toy, that’s actually pretty spicy—”
Piiiing—!
“Hey, at least let me finish talking—”
Jiiiing—
When I raised the gun that had now grown beyond palm-size, Galrm quickly lifted his hand.
“—I surrender.”
“Ah, sorry. I already pulled the trigger.”
I smiled lightly and fired. A massive hole appeared in Galrm’s stomach. Just as he had said, he couldn’t endure it. Foaming at the mouth, he collapsed on the spot.
While pouring a red recovery potion into his mouth, I confirmed exactly what level of firepower was needed to subdue an opponent.
The first size should be enough.
He had been off guard, but the fact that he couldn’t move after a single hit was proof enough. Truthfully I had already known the firepower was sufficient back then…
I just wanted to shoot it once. It was definitely not because of any personal feelings. Absolutely not.