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

The Craftsman Piece by Piece Carefully Completed the World’s Darkness

Part 1

As a result of struggling against my reputation for wild chunni delusions, and occasionally getting into heated debates with Kaburagi-san, the secret organization’s name and 5 provisions were decided on. The secret organization “Amaterasu”1 is established/in operation and is based on the fundamental principles provided by the five articles.

These are the five articles of the secret organization!

The secret organization’s existence should be kept secret! If there’s a stock listing or an official website, then it’s no longer a secret organization!The secret organization fights the world’s darkness! The secret organization defeats the bad guy.The secret organization mysteriously has financial clout and personal connections! Kaburagi-san, I appoint this to you!Members should have special abilities! If it’s for the sake of increasing the amount of ESP’ers, I’m not afraid of tearing off [Nenrikin] (voice trembles).Members should live dual lives; both ordinary and extraordinary! No matter how much power you have, those who can’t keep an ordinary life can’t protect an ordinary world!

And that’s all.

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Though the management policies five articles have been decided, and currently, we’d be able to to start secret organization activities once the world’s darkness has been prepared, Kaburagi-san said she wanted just a little more time so she could accomplish her goal. It seems that she wanted to work on using time stop a little more.

I am the secret organization’s boss who’s public face is that of the master of the bar “Amanoiwato​”2, and Kaburagi-san is the investor and vice-president of the secret organization “Amaterasu”. We two people are instigators, and offer youths battle, romance, and drama as ESP’ers belonging to a secret organization. I, who was unable to obtain the extraordinary, even though I spent much of my bygone school days eagerly waiting for it, and Kaburagi-san, whose ‘lost youth drama’ involves being tormented by cruel nicknames such as “Deburagi”3, want the secret organization members to experience this on our behalf.

Members are able to enjoy a ‘superpowered youth drama’ with laughter and tears and will feel like they stepped into a novel or manga. We will watch and remember the time when we were students while healing our wounded hearts, causing us to become warm and choked up with emotion. Everyone’s happy. I’m willing to make the effort to construct the stage for that objective. Kaburagi-san agrees. That’s why we have this preparation period.

Kaburagi-san, the No.2 of the secret organization “Amaterasu”, is the one who gives various instructions to the general members. The members will absolutely feel disappointed if Kaburagi-san obviously hasn’t mastered her time stop ability and made it powerful. She has the ability to stop time, but she can’t move while it’s stopped. It’s too stupid. With the objective of providing a strong sense of character to the members, Kaburagi-san’s goal is to act like a beautiful witch that will guide young ‘mahou shojou’(s) in the so-called ‘way of Kaburagi-san’, so it’s essential that she trains and masters stopping time.

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When it seemed like she wouldn’t succeed in becoming able to move within the stopped time, she went to talk to the physics professor at her former school, Tokyo University. Kaburagi-san received some advice from him, and when she tried approaching it from the theoretical side by buying a collection of books on time and space, I could see signs that she was successful. The theory is not so difficult. Because the light source and the watch put in the mouth do not stop, we realized that for some reason things inside Kaburagi-san’s body don’t stop even if it’s not an actual part of her body.

Therefore, to start with, she should strongly inhale in order to greatly expand her abdomen and cheeks. Then she should stop time while in that state. While time is stopped, she should de-inflate her abdomen and cheeks, and then expand them again. Only this. If she does this, then she’ll be able to move her abdomen and cheeks within the part of space that’s expanded. It’s limited to her abdomen and cheeks, but for the time being she can move within the stopped time. After that, it would be good if she can continue to expand it by memorizing “the sensation of moving within stopped time”.

At first, Kaburagi-san was doubtful and felt my advice relied too much on intuition, but then immediately changed her mind. As I said, when I felt that the burden on [Nenrikin] was different, I always experienced growing pains as a result. It felt like I was using a different muscle than usual. Therefore, it seems I’m also able to understand the sensation of moving within stopped time.

In the words of Kaburagi-san; “If using time stop until now was like walking, hmm, then, for some reason, now it’s like skipping”. In short, a little know-how is necessary, but it’s not difficult once you understand the method, is what she seems to be saying.

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Once Kaburagi-san grasped the sensation, she zealously trained every day until [Stoprotein] was cut off, *pikuri*, due to exhaustion, and she also became unable to move, and in one month she became able to move freely in the stopped time.

While completely naked.

… It seems that it’s still a little difficult to get clothes out of the stopped time.

It would seem like becoming able to freely move, even if it’s just her own body, is great progress, she said she could even move while wearing heavy makeup. So turn thick makeup into stockings, stockings into underwear, underwear into a dress, and wearing clothes will become as natural as moving not too far in the future, you know. The day you graduate from practicing while in the bathtub every night is near, so do your best, Kaburagi-san!

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Well, that doesn’t mean that I had a lot of free time while Kaburagi-san was in training.

The first thing I did was develop and refine the ‘world’s darkness’. In the beginning, I was planning to try and appropriate ‘bad guys’ like yakuza and scammers, but I abandoned that plan, since it would be a violation of the five principles to fight against the ‘darkness of society’ instead of the ‘darkness of the world’.

It’s dangerous to use superpowers to beat the hell out of human beings. The perception that ‘if they’re bad guys it’s fine to beat them’, can change into the perception that ‘it’s fine to immediately beat up guys I don’t like’ and turns it into nothing more than a selfish lynching. Middle and high-school students at the peak of mischievousness who have received power won’t be able to continuously remain cautious and have self-control. I had self-control, but I realize that I’m a special case.

In addition, even bad guys are still human, and if the day occurs where they accidentally kill them with psychokinesis, their mind will be greatly shaken, and it will be extremely difficult to return to everyday life. This is a violation of Article 5: “Members should live dual lives; both ordinary and extraordinary”. That’s not good, you know?

Besides, I don’t want such troubles like, “*Ku~*, what is this, I killed someone…” If this was a manga or a novel the heroine would comfort and encourage the grieving protagonist and they would calm down, but this is reality. Comfort can be counterproductive, encouragement may echo in vain, and things may get worse and lead to catastrophe. I don’t want to make more sparks than necessary. Using humans as ‘the world’s darkness’ is NG, yep, NG. In conclusion, I don’t want to see a blood-stained, serious youth drama that’s at a level where it won’t end happily.

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After humans, I next considered mannequins. It’s not human, but it is human-like. It’s easy to produce individual differences with clothes, faces and accessories. The weirdness of a moving mannequin is also highly appreciated. But it’s no good. I had Kaburagi-san buy some for me to test, and through a test run I discovered they could be controlled with psychokinesis, but it turns out that concealing and procuring them is very troublesome.

Disguising a mannequin as the world’s darkness huh, but where will I put them while they’re not attacking secret organization members? The display window of a department store? Divert them to a back alley garbage dump? The mannequins are pretty big. They stand out regardless of where you put them. It’s necessary to frequently order large amounts due to stupid things – like them breaking during planned battles for members or them being removed/demolished if you carelessly leave them somewhere – which is very suspicious.

Tidying up is also a hassle. What should I do with a mannequin that’s been defeated and broken? If I just leave it there, the broken mannequin will be left scattered all over the back alleys and deserted rooftops. The combo of it being considerably conspicuous and suspicious may result in there being an investigation, and secrets may be exposed. At least it’ll become an urban legend.

Having said that, for the sake of argument, what if I also tidied up after the battle? Diligently picking up and gathering together either the body parts of one mannequin – which are the same size as a human’s – or the wreckage of numerous body parts; putting them in a trash bag, carrying them home, and then throwing it, *dosa-dosa*, all in with the oversized trash…that’s incredibly suspicious, you know? It’s also tempting to secretly dump it illegally into the sea or mountains. However, it’s probably nothing but a nuisance to the general proprietors’ of the mountains, having nothing but mountains of mannequins and other horrors illegally dumped in mass quantities in the remote mountain ranges. There’s no good place to dump illegally in this world. The game system that conveniently makes corpses vanish is great, right?

That’s why the mannequin plan is rejected.

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Because the plan for now is for the bar “Amanoiwato” to be the center of our secret organization activities, and the Tokyo metropolitan area is also an easy place to procure supplies, I want to make the world’s darkness based on things that are easy to hide. I even thought about a way to make an all psychokinetic world’s darkness with a purely psychokinetic doll, but there’s no sense of it having been brought down if there’s no debris left over.

After considering various methods, I decided to use my psychokinesis to create a black membrane and put water and a stone roller into it so it would become slimy. The stone is the nucleus, the water is the physical body, and the psychokinetic film is the skin. I can easily adjust both the size and shape, and it also has the appeal of being easy to defeat if you can crush the stone nucleus that can be seen through the black film. When defeated, water and stones will be showily scattered around, and there’s not even a need to deal with the aftermath since it’s only stones and water.

Above all, it looks like ‘the darkness of the world’. It’s black, it gives a creepy impression, and it’s soft body is easily stimulated when moved. If an ordinary person who doesn’t know anything encounters it in the darkness at night, they would most likely lose their resilience and let out a scream, though that’s not the case once you get used to it ⸻ I’m addicted to such superb lines.

By the way, the ‘world’s darkness’ is a collection of humanity’s dark desires and demand for powers that dwells within a stone, since it wants power it therefore seeks out ESP’ers and tries to eat them, is the setting. With setting, it wouldn’t be unusual even if they appear to spring out inexhaustibly. We can explain why the darkness of the world often causes battles with ESP’ers and doesn’t damage the general public.

If an ESP’er were to lose and be eaten by the world’s darkness, it would probably attain great power and indulge in assaulting ordinary humans. If the world’s darkness is set to become violent when bathed in fear, we obviously can’t carelessly reveal its existence to society. The general public’s fear and disorder will cause the world’s darkness to go on a rampage! The world’s darkness can’t be revealed to the public, the story is that it lies quietly hidden in the dark.

Thus, the ‘world’s darkness’ was completed, and since it was well-received by Kaburagi-san, it was decided as the enemy of the secret organization.

Footnotes:

1: Amaterasu (天照) means ‘shining in heaven’, it’s the name of the goddess of the sun in Japanese myths and the Shinto religion ⇒ Amaterasu

2: Amanoiwato (天岩戸) meaning ‘cave of the sun goddess’, is the cave that Amaterasu was driven into in Japanese myth ⇒ Amano-Iwato

3: Replaces the ‘Kabu-’ in ‘Kaburagi’ with ‘Debu-’ which is slang for chubby/fat, essentially calling her a Fatty