There Was No Secret Organization to Fight with the World's Darkness so I Made One

The Strongest Superpower: Lv.1

Part 2

After the transplant, Kaburagi-san’s face relaxed as she pressed her hand over her heart,

“I’ll even be a magical girl if this is successful, right?”

While Kaburagi-san is delighted, I feel guilty about the transplant not going right. I am at a loss what to ask.

◊

During the follow-up observation, I consulted with Kaburagi-san, who has officially become my assistant officer, about the location of the secret base for our secret organization. To start with, my proposal for our base to be in Antarctica was rejected. Because transportation would be extremely inconvenient. There’s about a 14,000 km distance from Japan to Antarctica. The fastest I can go via psychokinesis is Mach 10, but even so a one-way trip would be around 1 hour, a round-trip 2 hours. If you think about the commute time, while it’s somewhat inconvenient, it’s still within the acceptable range, but if I fly through the sky at Mach 10, I’ll be a conspicuous idiot because of the shockwaves and explosions, and I’ll still be conspicuous even if I’m moving underwater because I’ll cause an ocean current to occur. Given that we also have to transport our daily necessities regularly, Antarctica is far too far off to be realistic.

So let’s live in Antarctica instead! My proposal would call for throwing away a convenient life in Japan? Kaburagi-san shut it down by saying just a few words. No convenience stores, mail order is undeliverable, living in Antarctica for even one month would certainly be unpleasant. So, the ‘Antarctic Secret Base’ idea is on hold for the moment until we are able to acquire something like a teleportation system or a spatial transfer door.

The idea of a magical castle hidden by a barrier, which was Kaburagi-san’s recommendation, was also rejected. First of all, I’m not able to use things like a [Barrier] that makes things transparent. It’s possible to make a [Psychokinetic Membrane] that reflects light like a mirror, but it would be impossible to conceal something a huge as a castle with a mirror trick.

◊

The next thing is that our funds for building our secret base are insufficient. Kaburagi-san’s total assets are said to be 1.5 billion1. Even of you add my savings of 1.2 million2 including things like the cost of land, construction fees, and interior design costs far exceeds our budget and then some. I also thought of using my psychokinesis to build the base, but I’m not familiar enough with architecture to do so. I’d probably be able to make something that looks good enough, but one earthquake and it would most likely become a mountain of rubble.

Kaburagi-san is a millionaire, but that’s only at the scale of an individual. She’s not rich enough to cover the construction costs of a large secret base. Besides, from the start, I don’t know what to answer with if the contractor we hire for construction asks us point blank about our ‘secret’ base. The contractor we hire could also leak a lot of secrets, such as the blueprints of the base and its location.

In the end, we decided to buy an already existing building, make its outward appearance be some sort of company or store, while secretly having it be our secret base. We were able to agree that this idea is the most realistic.

◊

Frequently, secret organizations will set up a building that on the face of it is a store and have the base in the basement, though, we’re not setting up our base like that just for the sake of being stylish. There’s a legitimate and rational reason for it. Right now, it’s just me and Kaburagi-san, with no other acquaintances, but hereafter, we can’t bring people to Kaburagi-san mansion, especially since we plan on increasing the amount of secret organization members.

Therefore, I went out and bought an underground bar in a narrow street just behind the main street of Kita-Senju in Adachi, Tokyo3 with the ‘pocket money’ Kaburagi-san gave me, and decided to make it our base. Kaburagi-san’s strong point is making a 18 million wad of cash *pon* appear… If I said to Kaburagi-san that I wanted to expand the basement of the underground bar, she would make an amazed expression and say, “Being able to say things like that is Sago-san’s strong point”, so we’re the same in regards to that.

The bar would always have the CLOSED sign put up and the two main doors locked so that only secret organization members can come and go from it. I’m quite satisfied with keeping the ‘other side’ of our secret organization actually hidden from our secret organization’s base, but Kaburagi-san seems a little dissatisfied with the idea. *Ma~*, it’s not meant for women. We’ll be moving in soon.

◊

The good news came a week after transplantation. [Nenrikin] became attached to Kaburagi-san, and she was successful in awakening her superpower. She said that when she woke up in the morning, for some reason or another she was able to use her superpower, and she felt a peculiar tired feeling and growing pains! There’s no doubt that it’s not just physical fatigue and muscle aches. According to Kaburagi-san,

“If I were to express it in chuuni terms, ‘The hidden soul penetrating the shell caused a feeling like waves of chaos were being produced’”.

It doesn’t seem like you heard that expression somewhere!

It’s really a good thing, but I was openly displeased. It seems that the superpower that Kaburagi-san was endowed with via the [Nenrikin] transplant is not psychokinesis. Apparently, in the process of [Nenrikin] getting transplanted and attached to Kaburagi-san, a mutation occurred.

“I’m not able to use psychokinesis that in any way resembles pushing or pulling something. I can use my superpower, but nothing happens when I use it. I wonder if I don’t have an ability…”

Kaburagi-san’s shoulders were drooping, so I tried to encourage her.

“At first, I was a fucking small fry whose psychokinesis could only handle 3g. Even if it’s a weak superpower that you can’t even notice, if you train, it will grow.”

“Really… you’re right. It’s true that side effects will immediately surface as well if someone has superpowers but isn’t used to them.”

◊

Kaburagi-san is trying to persuade herself, but it appears she still is unable to clear away her anxiety. Thinking that she wasn’t good enough, Kaburagi-san bowed her head in a lovely manner and said,

“Sago-san, I, the fact is that I think…”

“Hmm?”

“I wonder a little if things will work out well. When the transplant failed there were various things that it was pointless to think about. But aren’t things like this normally disturbed by the superpower going wild or a hostile organization attacking or other such things occuring?”

… *Fu* —. If I think about it, what she said is possible. But you’re still too inexperienced, Kaburagi-san. If that sort of ‘cruel yet dynamic and heartwarming’ event occurs, I’ll still make something like my self-produced, self-starring secret organization, though it’ll be an imitation, so it won’t be as good (aggravated expression4).

“Remember, Kaburagi-san. That sort of interesting event that you’re expecting to arrive won’t happen, since this world is shit. The event going on right now won’t cause anything to happen.”

“…I see.”

She seemed to be fully convinced.

◊

When I awoke my psychokinesis, in no time I hit upon the idea to harvest data as a way of measuring the limits of my superpower, but Kaburagi-san’s data, since she’s rich and a Tokyo University graduate, is a completely different thing. We have expert-level measurements of various numerical data from borrowing equipment for experiments from her university kouhai’s5 laboratory (we skillfully hid the fact that we were verifying superpowers), and by providing ‘financial assistance’ to a private clinician, we were able to use medical equipment in our examination as well. I was taught what we were verifying, but to be honest I didn’t understand half of it since it requires an extremely high level of specialization.

While spending every day doing verification, I also continued the same form of training my psychokinesis, and Kaburagi-san also grew her superpower while repeatedly experiencing psychic pain and fatigue. Then, little by little, signs of her superpower began to appear.

◊

When Kaburagi-san uses her superpower, for just a moment the area in front of her eyes becomes dark, and she becomes unable to move. It seems that the first time it grew dark and she was immobile was much too short, so she was unable to perceive it. What I don’t understand very well is that, even if I watch Kaburagi-san use her psychic power, it doesn’t appear as if the surroundings become dark or that Kaburagi-san stops moving. It’s been 3 weeks since she awakened her superpower and she says that it appears she can experience this for 0.5 of a second, so if I observe her I really should be able to understand it.

No way, is it a “causes the illusion of being unable to move or see anything” superpower? No, no, that sort of thing is too ridiculous. That sort of superpower would do nothing but cause injury to the user…but it’s scary that I can’t say that it’s impossible. Superpowers aren’t always useful. Awakening ‘evil’ powers is really no that unusual.

◊

Every day Kaburagi-san broods on this with a complicated expression, but one day at lunch, when the old-fashioned grandfather clock dimly rung out a tone at noon, she opened her eyes and looked around. She slowly took off her expensive-looking wristwatch, and, for some unknown reason, immediately spat out what was in her mouth. She then compared the time on the wristwatch to the time on the grandfather clock, and finally nodded.

“What is it? What did you discover?”

“I figured it out, my superpower is stopping time. And when I stop time, I’m the only one who can move.”

“*E~*…WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!”

What is this! It’s amazing! Isn’t stopping time the strongest superpower! That’s unfair!

Hey, hey, Kaburagi — ! Mine’s good too!

“I’ll trade you my psychokinesis for it.”

“I’m not able to move around within the area where I suspend time because my clothes and the air come to a stop, light comes to a stop as well and it’s pitch-black, so how am I supposed to see anything then?”

“Ah —”

I see, so it’s like that. If you say it that way, it makes sense. So except for your own time, everything else stops moving altogether.

As I thought, it’s completely incredible… being able to stop time is getting more and more, ama…zing… I think? It’s terrific, yeah… great…

⋯⋯⋯.

I expect it to grow a lot from now on! Kaburagi-san is going to do nothing but ‘time stop’ training!

Footnotes:

1:Assuming this is in yen, which would be approx. $14 million USD

2:His savings come out to approx. $11 thousand USD so in USD they have a total of $14011000 as their “budget”

3:Commercial area in Tokyo, read more here ⇒ Kita-Senju

4:What’s written here is (半ギレ) or (han gire), which also appears in the title. In the title, it’s translated as “in exasperation”. After some googling, I’ve found out that “han gire” essentially means an angry/annoyed expression, especially with “popped-out” veins. Go here for an explanation ⇒ Cross Popping Veins

5:Kouhai = person’s junior, underclassman