"!!"
"Beep beep beep..."
A large group of small robots that looked like multifunctional automatic skateboards installed beneath giant iron buckets kept circling a large drink vending machine. The surveillance cameras and alarms mounted on them kept flashing.
"Beep..."
"Academy City vending machine 7-1165 has confirmed an abnormal situation..."
"Beep..."
"Signs of human damage detected on the vending machine..."
"Suspect responsible for the damage: currently unknown..."
"Repeat: Academy City vending machine 7-1165 has confirmed an abnormal situation. No suspect responsible for damaging public property has been found!"
Unfortunately, what that group of clumsy robots searching for suspicious targets failed to notice was that, on an overpass in the distance, two middle-school girls wearing the sailor uniforms of an Academy City school had watched them for a while before turning around and walking away, chatting happily with the drinks they had obtained for "free."
That was right. This was Academy City!
It was said to be a gigantic city within a city, located inside the capital of some art-film nation in the Pacific, and built over several decades by the chairman of the Board of Directors, Aleister Klaue.
This "City of Schools" contained dozens of universities and hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools, along with more than a thousand research institutions of various sizes. Its population was nearly 2.3 million, eighty percent of whom were students. It truly lived up to its name of "Academy City": it was unquestionably a city composed of schools, students, and scientific research institutions!
It gathered the world's most advanced technology and could entirely be called a massive experimental city combining education, research, daily life, and practical application. Moreover, it was said that the technology used within the city was at least twenty or thirty years ahead of the outside world!
Of course, aside from