Class 3-1 during morning self-study was taut with the tension of the approaching entrance exams.
The students had each spread out past-exam workbooks from prestigious schools, including U.A., snapping mechanical-pencil leads as they pored over their mistake notebooks. Iida in the front row, especially, had his massive back held ramrod-straight at a perfect ninety degrees, a timer placed atop his mock-exam paper as he diligently practiced pacing himself for the real thing.
Scratch, scratch, scritch.
Then, cutting through that suffocating silence, an utterly incongruous sound continued from the very back of the classroom. The fountain pen nib gliding over the notebook moved at nearly the speed of sound.
Maxwell’s equations, tensor notation from general relativity, and cryptic algorithmic symbols reverse-calculating the interference phase differences in the frequency bandwidths of cellular base stations around the world filled the blank pages densely with black ink.
The hypothesis of “electromagnetic signal synchronization” I had seen in a movie.
What if I could resonate the minute bioelectric currents in my frontal lobe with the phase of surrounding electromagnetic waves and use the entire city’s communications networks and power-grid servers as one enormous “external hard drive”?
It was an insane formula that would surpass the heat-dissipation limit of my black inverted-cross piercing and make it possible to simultaneously bend dozens of laws of physics without overheating my brain.
...If I split the phase-interference frequency down to nanohertz units and match it with my brainwaves, then in theory, I can disperse one hundred percent of the heat.
The very moment I curled my lips into a crooked grin and spun my pen, a shadow fell over me.
Iida, having turned around from the seat in front of me, was staring down at the notebook on my desk.
The eyes beyond his angular glasses—which had been about to recite school rules while chopping the air with his rigid hand as usual—shook violently the instant they landed not on a mock-exam workbook, but on a notebook covered in incomprehensible alien ciphers and bizarre tensor equations.
"...Yu-Yujin."
Instead of his usual anger, Iida’s voice dripped with an unusually deep confusion and shock.
"What... what on earth have you been writing since this morning? Today is the final mock exam in preparation for the U.A. entrance exam. To clear the written-exam cutoff for the Hero Course, you need to rank in at least the top five percent, yet rather than studying, you are doing nothing but scribbling these bizarre doodles...!"
Iida adjusted his glasses and poured out his heartfelt concern. Usually, he would blow a gasket over shirt buttons or piercings, but he seemed genuinely grave, apparently thinking that a classmate applying to U.A. had suffered some sort of escapist mental breakdown right before the entrance exams.
"Even if your usual grades place you among the very best, U.A.’s written exam is by no means easy! Do you truly intend to attend U.A. while making no preparations whatsoever for the entrance exams?!"
With my chin propped on my desk, I flicked the black inverted-cross piercing in my earlobe with my fingertips.
Then I nudged my rimless glasses up the bridge of my nose with my index finger, letting my usual sly, chilling smile spread across my lips.
"Class president, don’t say things that hurt. Who do you think I am?"
I casually tossed the fountain pen into the air, caught it after a spin, and shrugged.
"As far as entrance-exam preparations go, I’m proceeding perfectly, with the dedication of someone carving away their own flesh. I’m running simulations on how to swipe the network servers installed at the U.A. testing site and use them as a data center for my brain cells."
"...W-what did you sayyyyy?!"
At that answer, which so thoroughly transcended common sense, Iida’s face began to flush red again.
"S-stealing...! The very idea of stealing someone else’s server resources is a crime!!"
Veins bulged thickly along Iida’s neck, and red sparks seemed to fly behind his lenses. He slammed down with enough force to smash his desk and wildly swung his rigid chopping hand through the air. It was quite a sight.
"The school’s servers are indisputably public property! Saying you will illegally hack them and occupy them for personal gain is an evil act that goes beyond violating school rules—it fundamentally denies the spirit of U.A. itself!!"
His roar completely tore apart the silence of morning self-study.
But I picked my ear as I rested my chin on my hand, snapped my notebook shut, and stuffed it into my bag.
"Class president, that’s a little harsh. Calling it stealing."
I leisurely rose from my seat, draped my school uniform jacket over my shoulders, flicked the black inverted-cross piercing hanging from my left earlobe, and slid my glasses up with that same slick expression.
"In technical terms, this is called ‘promoting emergency computational-network supply.’ Humanity’s resources ought to be efficiently reallocated at all times."
"Don’t feed me sophistryyyyy! Isn’t that just theft dressed up in fancy words?!"
"Anyway, there are mountains of formulas I need to run simulations on today, so I need to concentrate. Tell our homeroom teacher I’m leaving early because my brain cells are dehydrated from a bad cold."
"What? L-leaving early?! You intend to skip school without permission on the day of a mock exam, without even taking it?!"
Iida went pale and reached for me, but my nervous system had already completed the calculations.
• Set the friction coefficient at my points of ground contact to zero.
• Specify coordinates thirty meters above and beyond the classroom’s rear window; compress local space.
In the instant a blue-white gleam flashed through my pupils—
Crackle—
"Later."
Whoosh—
Iida’s grasping fingers swept through empty air, and only a faint lingering trace remained in my place.
As the classroom windows rattled and Tokyo’s cold winter wind surged inside, Iida’s scream, frozen as he reached into the air, shook the entire school grounds.
"Yu-Yujiiiin—!! Come back here at onceeee—!!"
.
.
.
Folding and stepping across the air over Tokyo three or four times, I landed in the courtyard before Ryukyu’s agency in less than a minute.
I pulled the notebook containing the electromagnetic synchronization formulas I had just scribbled down from my bag, tapped it with my fingers, and flung open the lobby doors. My destination was the underground training ground. Whenever the circuitry in my brain cells sparked with inspiration, I could not rest until I had calibrated its zero point against live data.
"Oh my, Yujin? You’re here already?"
"Wasn’t today your school’s mock-exam day?"
The senior sidekicks in the lobby asked in bewilderment at the sight of me barging in wearing my uniform. Their murmuring drew open the director’s office door, and my aunt came rushing out with an approval folder in hand.
"You... what time do you think it is, crawling in here in your school uniform? Your mother has been making a fuss since dawn because today is your final mock exam for U.A. What happened to your test?!"
My aunt widened her golden eyes, preparing to deliver a back-smashing strike, and I casually fired back as I pushed my rimless glasses up the bridge of my nose with my index finger.
"Don’t worry, Director. Thanks to me giving up on today’s exam, all 240 third-year students at Somei Middle School have miraculously risen by one rank in the school standings. Wouldn’t you call that Nobel Peace Prize-level mercy and sacrifice?"
"...W-what?!"
"Then, in commemoration of my contribution to world peace, I’ll be using the underground training ground."
"Hey!! Yujin, get back here—!"
Faced with the outlandish sophistry pouring from her own flesh and blood, my aunt went white, clutched the back of her neck, and staggered as though she might faint.
Leaving behind the chaos of sidekicks clinging to her from behind, shouting, "D-Director, please calm down!" I expertly swiped the master key card and threw open the heavy soundproof door to the underground training ground.
Hiss—bang.
The heavy titanium door shut, cutting off the noise from above as though it had never existed. Both hands buried in my pockets, I walked to the center of the empty simulated training ground.
Fiddling with the black inverted-cross piercing hanging from my left earlobe, I levitated the formula sheet I had taken from my bag into the air.
Tokyo communications network frequency phase-interference synchronization test.
A blue-white gleam churned thickly in the depths of my pupils. I swallowed as I stared at the hologram of equations suspended in the center of the underground training ground.
Align the black inverted-cross piercing in my left earlobe and the bioelectric potential in my frontal lobe with the phase of electromagnetic waves above Tokyo.
Fine-tuning frequency bands in nanohertz units... initiate external distributed-computing cluster link.
Bzzzt—!!
The instant my entire pupils flooded with brilliant blue-white light, radio signals from the nearby base stations poured into my mind like an immense latticework. The same unimaginable computational processing speed as before.
But the device in my earlobe showed no sign of heating up, and far from the usual boiling overload in my head, it merely maintained the optimal cool temperature.
A perfect proof of the theory. But in the moment I became intoxicated by the thrill of success and failed to shut down the resonance frequency—
Whiiiiine—kraaaash!!
A momentary electromagnetic phase distortion surged back to the surface and struck Ryukyu’s entire jurisdiction.
Traffic lights and streetlamps went out all at once, while the navigation systems and smartphone screens of moving vehicles went black and dead.
Even the fluorescent lights in Ryukyu agency’s main building snapped off with a pop, and a bizarre ten seconds of silence fell over the heart of Tokyo.
...I’m fucked.
The instant cold sweat ran down my back, I reversed my frontal-lobe circuitry within 0.1 seconds, forcibly recalled the electromagnetic pulse that had burst outward, and restored the city’s power grid to normal within ten seconds. But there was no undoing what had already been done.
Ten minutes later, on the first-floor lobby of Ryukyu’s agency.
The urgent voice of a news anchor rang out from the emergency-restored television screen.
[Breaking news. This afternoon, an unprecedented incident occurred in Tokyo’s city center, in the area under Ryukyu agency’s jurisdiction, when a temporary EMP phenomenon of unknown origin paralyzed city functions for ten seconds. Police and the Hero Association are considering the possibility that an unregistered, dangerous Villain may be responsible...]
As the sidekicks in the lobby whispered among themselves with pale faces, my aunt’s golden eyes slowly—very murderously—turned toward me as I crawled out through the underground training-ground door.
"..."
"...Director. The durability test results for Tokyo’s power grid were extremely favorable—"
Smack—!!
Kraaaash—!!
Before I could finish speaking, the Dragon Hero’s full-power back-smashing strike landed and shook the lobby floor.
"You little bastarddddd—!! What Villain?! You’re the damn Villain!! Die by my hand right nowww—!!"
The mysterious EMP terror incident in central Tokyo came to an end amid the terrifying sound of a middle-schooler rolling across the office floor and screaming, while a top Hero swung dragon claws at him.
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