Hey, Hey... Don't Mess with Me!

With a kick, he sent the man in the lab coat, who was slender and had a tattoo on the left side of his face, flying more than ten meters. The guy was pretty sturdy; after flying that far and rolling another ten meters, he tumbled around for a while before finally getting to his feet with help from the people nearby.

The look on his face—What the hell? This guy doesn't play by the rules!—was impossible to hide. So he gave the simplest, most direct response.

A rocket... and then the rocket flew right back the way it had come.

!? What the hell was this guy?!

Luckily, the rocket exploded halfway through its flight.

As for why Jiu Ming had targeted this guy? Did he even need to think about it? Everyone else around them was part of a unit, all covered up so their faces couldn't be seen. He was the only exception. It was much like how, in a battle between two armies, the flashier your outfit, the more likely you were to draw aggro.

You're the only one here who stands out, so if I don't hit you, who should I hit!?

This enemy dressed all in pink looks like a worthy opponent—brothers, take him down and loot his gear!!

Kihara Yosuke, the leader of Academy City's dark-side Hound Unit. Who knew what kind of bug had crawled up his ass to bring him here?

Jiu Ming's condition had obviously piqued his curiosity. Kihara Yosuke wasn't just the leader of the Hound Unit; he was also Academy City's most outstanding ability-development researcher, and the man who had discovered and developed Accelerator's ability...

That was very important.

Right now, he wanted to put Jiu Ming on an experiment table.

"What the hell are you?"

Anyone who wasn't blind could see that Jiu Ming was different. His body had grown a little more transparent from the strain, too. "Forget it. Capture him, and take that thing away as well."

The information he had received was that Jiu Ming had appeared alongside Misaka 1 after she had vanished under rather bizarre circumstances.

Whatever the reason, he was confident he could dig the information he wanted out of the head of that experimental animal.

Someone who already regarded people as weeds was even less likely to feel anything special toward a clone.

After giving the order, Kihara Yosuke turned and left. He had already seen Jiu Ming; he could leave the rest to his underlings, whom he didn't care about in the slightest. If they failed?

So what if they failed? As long as Jiu Ming was in Academy City, he couldn't escape. If Jiu Ming were captured that easily, Kihara Yosuke would be disappointed.

"Oh...?" Jiu Ming tilted his head slightly and, sure enough, spotted a figure lurking behind the wall like a wildcat. No—he'd have to revise that comparison. It was a remarkably composed wildcat... Tch! Didn't he leave? Or had he never left at all!?

Seeing a small group of Hound Unit members split off and approach Misaka 1, Jiu Ming struck first, kicking one of them away. The man crashed into several teammates before collapsing limply to the ground.

Bullets?

Conventional weapons didn't affect him... Huh!?

As a bullet passed through him, Jiu Ming froze for a moment. Had his immunity to physical attacks weakened?

Conventional bullets no longer affected him as little as they once had. They didn't do much damage, but it was like the difference between passing through air and passing through water. No matter how much air you displaced, it made no difference; with water, though, a bullet could take some of it with it each time it passed through. Even if the amount was tiny, it was still a loss.

Greater consumption, weaker immunity to physical attacks... Was this a side effect of crossing worlds? Jiu Ming didn't know if things would get worse. As Panel-kun had explained, he really couldn't choose to stay in any world he crossed into for too long.

Jiu Ming didn't care that his immunity to physical attacks had weakened. Even if it vanished completely and he became normal, without the ghostlike immunity, it wouldn't matter. His Soul Body was incredibly resilient, no weaker than the bodies of those ability users who specialized in physical combat. He would still have another kind of immunity to physical attacks—no, if he relied on his body to take the hits, that would be physical resistance.

The serious problem was the increased consumption. If his mental energy ran too low, Jiu Ming would become extremely intangible, like an ordinary person fainting from exhaustion. What a pain.

He stopped relying on his unusual body to ignore the bullets, but he still took them down just as quickly. All they dared to do now was shoot; they didn't dare use any area-of-effect weapons. Even if they timed a grenade throw perfectly, it wouldn't threaten Jiu Ming. He might even be able to kick it right back at them.

The gunfire rang out in quick succession, gradually growing sparse before finally falling silent.

"Hey... don't mess with me." After knocking down the last man, Jiu Ming looked at Misaka 1's bloodstained summer sweater. She was hurt—a gunshot wound. Several figures he had taken out lay behind her.

How had those people gotten around behind her... No, they hadn't gone around. They must have been stationed there in advance!

He'd been careless. Misaka 1 was easy enough to recognize, and unlike the other Misaka Sisters, she had taken off her Military Night Vision Goggles... She looked just like her original body. Of course, even if they'd happened across the original, what could a bunch of cannon fodder do? They'd be dealt with in seconds.

"The injury is not life-threatening at the moment," Misaka replied through the pain.

"...Let me take a look." Jiu Ming scratched his head, feeling helpless. He was good at killing people; saving them... Saving someone was easy enough. The trouble was healing them. He didn't know any medicine. You had to prepare for something when you needed it.

Jiu Ming didn't need medical knowledge himself. Injuries to his Soul Body healed quickly, and even when severely wounded, he could keep his shape intact. You could tell by how transparent his body was.

In other words, as long as his soul wasn't scattered and he still had strength, no matter how badly he was hurt, he could keep his full shape and fight to the very end.

When Jiu Ming lifted the hem of Misaka 1's sweater to expose her abdomen, the girl turned her expressionless face slightly away. That was supposed to be embarrassment, right...? But her composed expression gave nothing away.

Her fair skin was stained with thickening blood. The bullet had hit somewhere that wasn't vital. After confirming that she really wasn't in immediate danger, Jiu Ming breathed a sigh of relief, then found himself at a loss again. The wound wasn't a through-and-through...

Wait, this girl's constitution was pretty good. The bullet hadn't gone all the way through... All right, having a bullet lodged inside was a problem, too.

"After discussing it, we have concluded that you are the creature known as a pervert. Misaka reports the conclusion she reached with the other Misakas."

"Huh?" Jiu Ming's mouth twitched. He was doing this for a perfectly legitimate reason! He was just checking a girl's wound. How did that make him a pervert?

"Wait... the Misakas!? You discussed it...?" Was this the beginning of the entire forest looking down on him?

"You've got it all wrong. I'm just checking the wound, completely innocently!" Realizing his protests sounded pretty weak, Jiu Ming couldn't be bothered to say any more. "Bear with it. I'll get the bullet out."

Under Misaka 1's calm gaze, Jiu Ming's hand passed strangely through her abdomen. Meanwhile, there was another rather chaotic "discussion" in the Misaka Network. Jiu Ming didn't know what they were saying. Even if he had, he wouldn't have wanted to know.

Being a ghost had its perks. For example, he could find the bullet's location with ease. If someone else put their hand inside a slender girl's body and felt around for a bullet, wouldn't that count as murder?

He gently pinched the bullet between two fingers. The part of his fingers touching it became tangible. Jiu Ming couldn't make his body tangible while it was inside another object, but when he touched the bullet, it had pushed aside a little space inside that "object," allowing him to make part of himself slightly tangible.

Even though it was less than the thickness of a sheet of paper, it was enough. The bullet came out perfectly, just as if it were being pulled back along the path it had taken in. The girl didn't make a sound throughout the entire process, and her expression barely changed, but her slightly trembling arms and legs honestly betrayed her pain.

Lacking emotions didn't mean lacking physical sensations. She had no shortage of pain!

"Hmph..." Jiu Ming gave a quiet grunt. The bullet flew from his hand and shot into the wall nearby. "Now to stop the bleeding... Oh, damn it. If only I'd died a few more times back then, I could've learned those martial artists' pressure-point techniques."

The bullet was out, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. Having a physical body was such a pain!

Even if a huge hole had been blasted through him, he wouldn't bleed... He was a ghost immune to poison and bleeding.

Quite a few of the opponents Jiu Ming had fought had been martial-arts types. Many of them had been injured and bled heavily, but a few taps near the wound would stop the bleeding at an absurdly fast rate. Even if it only worked temporarily, it could save a life in a pinch. What more could you ask for?

"Sorry." Jiu Ming tore off a strip of the white undershirt beneath Misaka 1's summer sweater. Whatever else, he could at least wrap the wound. The result of Jiu Ming, who had never handled anything like this, tending to her was that the girl's already slender waist was cinched even tighter...

Well, this would have to do for now. They needed to find a hospital, fast.

A rush of footsteps approached. Jiu Ming took a breath. "No matter what, I'm really not in a good mood right now!"

"I can walk," Misaka 1 said after Jiu Ming picked her up. Then she added something hurtful: "Misaka feels that her waist is being squeezed painfully, but doesn't want to ruin the other person's good intentions, so Misaka can only pretend that nothing is wrong."

What the hell...!

Time to find a hospital!

"Cannon fodder! It's time to mow you down!!"

The men approaching were met with a ferocious declaration and intense killing intent, leaving them all terrified. In an instant, they were hit with n negative status effects, and their fighting strength plummeted until they really were little more than weeds to be cut down.

Then the person in question ran off, leaving behind a wind-like silhouette. After a few leaps, he was nowhere to be seen—not even a ghostly shadow remained. But there was no need to worry. They had their own special tracking... or, more accurately, suicide techniques.