Even without clear leads for the moment, Natsume Sonoko didn't think finding Shokuhou-senpai would be particularly difficult.
Academy City was never short on methods for tracking people down. That second-year senpai in her club possessed an ability that allowed her to see into the past.
From a purely search-and-find perspective, she was practically Academy City's own little Sherlock Holmes.
This ability had once been a huge help when Natsume needed to locate her bicycle.
These days, that bicycle was enjoying its retirement in the small garden of the student dorm, though it still occasionally earned a stern order from the dorm supervisor for a thorough cleaning whenever dust built up.
If she asked nicely now, leveraging Sonoko's status as the club's mascot, it would be easy to secure that senpai's assistance.
Speaking of her lackadaisical club, Natsume-san was still just coasting along, idling her days away. The monthly club activity funds she received always seemed to end up spent on the strangest things.
But one prerequisite had to be remembered: Kihara Gensei had to be dealt with first.
In Natsume Sonoko's view, resolving the Kihara Gensei situation would basically take care of the other problems by extension.
Kihara Gensei was the central problem character in this whole incident; Misaka-senpai's issues were really just an offshoot in a sense.
However, what bothered Natsume-san more was this inexplicable feeling that she couldn't handle Kihara Gensei.
This premonition was growing stronger, morphing into a vague, indescribable intuition.
This wasn't false modesty. Even though she had already pinpointed Kihara Gensei's location, the old man knew most of her capabilities and seemed to have loaded himself up with numerous targeted ability 'plugins' as countermeasures.
Couple that with his massively wide-range Mental Out, and even if Natsume-san opted for a surprise attack to avoid a direct confrontation, she still had little confidence in her heart of hearts.
Unless she could take the time to develop her newly acquired perception and properly shore up her weaknesses, becoming someone with no obvious vulnerabilities...
An esper was undoubtedly top-tier among Academy City's student body, but that status felt utterly feeble when the scope was widened to the entire city.
Who knew how many trump cards those who held the city's reins had up their sleeves?
Even Powered Suits, sufficient to suppress ordinary ability users, could be used as cannon fodder by some small dark-side organization.
Unmanned armed helicopters like the Six Wings were just conventional combat weapons. She wouldn't even be surprised if they deployed some super combat machine capable of spamming Railguns.
In such a brutally realistic context, Natsume Sonoko genuinely found it hard to guarantee she could take down Kihara Gensei, even if the old man looked frail enough to be blown over by a strong wind.
Yet, one thing puzzled Natsume-san greatly, making her wonder if something was amiss.
From the very beginning, her ability had never been able to affect the human body. She couldn't even extend her thermal perception inside a person.
Or, to put it another way, many ability users who drew power from their environment couldn't get direct feedback from the human body.
Take the Fourth-Ranked, Meltdowner, for example. If she could extend her ability into the human body and manipulate atoms within to lose their charge, she'd be practically invincible. Natsume-san would give her a wide berth.
This definitely had something to do with humans themselves. Perhaps, like her, they all possessed souls, and souls could effectively block the intrusion of another's Personal Reality.
This was the most reasonable explanation Natsume Sonoko had come up with recently.
It was also one of the reasons Natsume-san always regarded the Sisters as genuine humans.
The Sisters were authentic human beings, that was beyond doubt.
However, there were often abilities that could affect, or even control, the human body.
This didn't necessarily mean their Personal Reality had truly breached the potential restrictions within the human body. It seemed more like a conventional intrusion permitted by reality.
From Natsume-san's understanding, even Shokuhou-senpai needed to use brainwaves or something else as a medium.
Accelerator's surface reflection could negate the senpai's ability, indicating that Mental Out didn't act directly on the human body.
Another example: both Shirai-san and that delinquent girl, Awaki Musujime, could transport steel needles inside a person's body.
But, judging by the principles of teleportation, these spatial ability users needed to detach from three-dimensional space, taking a detour through eleven-dimensional space, perhaps thereby bypassing the soul's protection.
Of course, the spirit of inquiry was commendable, but none of this had undergone strict, scientific verification. Natsume-san was just piecing together examples from her own experience.
One thing was certain: since Natsume-san couldn't extend her ability into the human body, the human form appeared as a vacuum in her mind's map.
She had long perfected her radar map—to be precise, her Vacuum and Thermal Dual-Sensing Radar.
And Kihara Gensei was very strange indeed.
Natsume-san remembered scanning the location where Kihara Gensei had previously appeared. Not only was there no heat signature, but the expected human 'vacuum' phenomenon was also absent, causing her radar map to automatically ignore it.
'Could Kihara Gensei be a robot? Like the Terminator from the movies.'
Natsume-san couldn't help but feel a chill, recalling a Hollywood blockbuster she'd seen.
This was a distinct possibility. After all, this was Academy City, where granting a robot a will might actually be achievable.
Alternatively, maybe she hadn't observed carefully enough last time. Perhaps Kihara Gensei wasn't a full robot, but just loaded with mechanical prosthetics, still retaining some human parts.
But if it was just prosthetics, the problem seemed even worse. To achieve a level where her radar map completely ignored him, he must have modified his entire body. So, could Kihara Gensei even still be considered human?
Thinking this far, Natsume-san's heart began to pound nervously.
No matter what, this man was too dangerous, terrifying through and through.
"Sonoko, your face just paled. Is your injury getting worse?"
Wearing a green Gekota hoodie and ordinary jeans, bare feet touching the dry ground but floating slightly above it due to the metal within the building, Misaka-senpai's condition wasn't great either.
Still, she was slightly better off than Natsume-san. After a short rest, she had shaken off her earlier weakness.
"It's nothing, I'm just worried about something," Natsume-san replied softly, shaking her head. The ointment was working quite well.
Sonoko had also gotten used to her senpai's way of addressing her, even if she didn't particularly favor overly familiar terms.
"Misaka-senpai, I know a second-year senpai. Her ability should be able to help us find Shokuhou-senpai."
No sooner had Natsume-san spoken than she noticed the senpai before her seemed to have thought of something, falling into a quiet, contemplative state.
"Shokuhou Misaki can't possibly avoid all surveillance cameras, so there must be clues. Plus, she still has those nanomachines inside her. Their signals are quite distinctive. Maybe we could build a signal receiver," Misaka-senpai murmured to herself.
She could act as a receiver herself, but the electromagnetic waves around were too numerous and dense, and the signal strength wasn't high. Building a dedicated receiver would be more convenient.
As long as the position was high enough and the reception area large enough, they could potentially pick up signals from over half of District 7.
And the cleaning robots ubiquitous throughout Academy City would provide perfect materials. The construction method could roughly follow the principles of a satellite dish.
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T/N: I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 3 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
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