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

The Taste of Betrayal

PSI Drive

Part 1

After summer vacation, middle school third-years say goodbye to club activities and dive full-on into exam season. Of course, these students were already starting to study over the break, since it would be impossible to catch up if they only started in the late summer. The same applies to "FK (Freezing Knight)-kun" and "BG (Burning Girl)-chan", even if they now have two names like some sort of character from a manga. In class, the amount of topics they study increases, and things like "How many hours did you study yesterday?"; "I just started going to cram school"; and, "What were your results on the mock test?" start to appear in conversations. No matter how much they may wish otherwise, the shadow of exams is drawing near.

It's my job to put the battles against the humanoid world's darkness on hold so that these fights can continue to act as breathers for these students. Good luck and work hard, exam students.

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While the students were focusing on their exams, Baba was going to Kaneyama Tech every morning and staying until late, working on developing blueprints for a prototype of the PSI Drive. Because Kaneyama Tech and Amaterasu are deeply connected, I decided to give Baba a dog-tag with the Amaterasu crest engraved on it that would work like an inrou¹ from Mito Komon².³ Though because she has silver hair, elf ears, looks like a little girl, and has an inhuman range of motion in her hands, it's already obvious that she's not ordinary. But the staff at Kaneyama Tech don't try to dig deeper, and instead are friendly and cooperative. They've already dealt with strange things like rare metals and methane hydrates being effortlessly pulled up from the sea and suspicious black boxes that somehow make them more energy efficient, after all. The employees know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Especially since these mysterious phenomena are causing Kaneyama Tech to experience rapid growth and become a prestigious venture company. All of them in the back of their mind are probably thinking something like, "We've partnered with ESP'ers, haven't we?", but because they know that if the supply stops, the company will die immediately, they don't dare say it out loud. Also, there's one more reason that Kaneyama Tech isn't likely to betray us. It's young president is madly in love with Kaburagi-san.

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Every morning, Baba leaves the Takahashi household at the same time that Shouta-kun leaves for school. I then pick her up and take her to Kaneyama Tech. I also pick her up from Kaneyama Tech in the evenings. It's not that I have to worry about Baba getting lost or something, it's just that she looks so young, I'm afraid she'll be taken to the police if she goes by herself. I'm also afraid that she may get attacked by lolicons or thugs, since the crime rate in Tokyo is increasing due to the rapid increase of foreign tourists.

Well, since Baba does have good judgement and can run away rather quickly, I doubt anything too bad would happen. The problem is that Baba doesn't have any documentation, so if something does happen, she'll end up raising all sorts of red flags at the police station. I wish Kaburagi-san would come back soon and help me deal with this. We could make her cover story be that she's a young genius from Marineland⁴ who's already graduated from school.

When I pick up Baba from Kaneyama Tech, I also look in on how the development of the PSI Drive is going. It's quite interesting. Baba quickly learned how to use the second-hand tools that Kaneyama Tech bought for her from a factory that was going out of business. She does the micro-processing manually. By coincidence, a skilled mechanic who had been plying his trade for 50 years happened to see her work, and cried out in surprise, "It's better than the work of the top three guys in this company!" Anyway, things are moving along rapidly, and with precision processing techniques, we've begun to do the fine-tuning to work out any kinks in the mechanism. As I thought, even though there's no magic here, Baba is still an elf after all.

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The "PSI Drive" is a mechanism for enhancing superpowers that's made out of platinum and runs on the blood of ESP'ers. It roughly consists of three parts: the engine, the frame, and the fuel.

The engine is made of platinum, is about the size of a single thumb, and is a precise combination of intricately carved and highly detailed parts. Ideally, we would strengthen the platinum by making it an alloy, but if we do that, then it no longer has an affinity with superpowers, so we decided to use pure platinum and reinforce it with an exoskeleton made of titanium alloy. By sending fuel into the engine, the selected superpower is amplified and activated.

The frame is for protecting and operating the engine. Even cars don’t run with engines and fuel alone. They have tires, brakes, gears, steering wheels, and etc. In order to utilize the engine, it takes a mountain of auxiliary parts.

The fuel is, of course, the blood of ESP'ers, but it needs to be refined before it can be used. As a result of a simple experiment using Shouta-kun's blood, it was found that the fuel for the PSI Drive is not strictly the blood of ESP'ers, but just the red blood cells. Components such as white blood cells and platelets turned out to be a hindrance. Even if blood is thrown in as it is, it can move, but it's very inefficient. Therefore, in order to obtain a high-concentration fuel, it's necessary to separate and purify the blood to obtain the red blood cells and then mix them with a preservation solution.

Because red blood cells form the base of the fuel, after 100 days – the lifespan of red blood cells – the fuel is no longer good and can't be used. The purified blood fuel is stored cold, and it's necessary to use a cooling agent when carrying it around. When used, oxygen is injected into the fuel, which has turned red-black due to lack of oxygen, which activates it and causes it to become bright red. It fills the PSI Drive, causing it to take on the abilities that are in the blood. It's also important to properly dispose of the fuel once it expires. It looks troublesome.

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In two weeks, the silver, dagger-shaped PSI Drive prototype was completed. When I saw the internal structure, it made absolutely no sense to me, but it seems that for Baba, it's actually fairly simple structure. According to her, the amplification rate and power are not that great. The titanium alloy used for the frame and exoskeleton is a material that doesn't exist in Baba's homeworld, so she's unsure how that will affect it. There's a chance it could fail and, at worst, it could even explode. We'll just have to test the prototype and see how it goes.

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1. Small box that was commonly used to carry identity seals in ancient times ⇒ Wikipedia: Inrō ↩
2. Japanese historical drama where the protagonist and his two sidekicks would roam Japan in disguise and fight bad guys ⇒ Wikipedia: Mito Kōmon ↩
3. Refers to how, in a typical episode of Mito Komon, after fighting the bad guys, the protagonist would reveal their identity using their inrou ⇒ (at around 40 mins in I think) ↩
4. In case you forgot, Marineland is the place that Kaburagi became the duchess of ⇒ ↩