[flavor taken from the Index light novel]
It seemed something had happened to Kinuhata Saiai.
That was what Hamazura and Takitsubo finally realized after the terrorist attack was over and they had snuck out of the private salon building while Anti-Skill was investigating.
“…I have an email from Kinuhata on my phone.”
Takitsubo had shown Hamazura the email on the screen of her cutely designed cell phone. It said, “I’m going to help you escape, so stay where you are for a bit.” It had been some time since the email had been sent, but they had seen no sign of any action taken by Kinuhata.
In the end, the two of them had escaped the private salon building on their own.
“Hey, have you contacted her yet? I hope she didn’t go in there and we missed her.”
“I’ve been calling Kinuhata, but I can’t get through.”
Takitsubo was staring at her phone with a vacant look in her eyes.
Hamazura couldn’t be sure if it was due to the lingering effects of the Body Crystal or if that was just how she always was because she had already been using Body Crystal when he had first met her.
“Hamazura, what do we do now?”
“Well, Kinuhata is a Level 4 and she’s tougher than both of us. She did send us that email, so it might be best to stay put and wait for her to contact us. It would take something really insane to kill someone like—”
Hamazura trailed off because an area of District 3 suddenly exploded.
It wasn’t a building that was blown away. It came from underground. The ground a distance away suddenly split open and crimson flames spewed up from beneath.
It wasn’t just one explosion.
As more explosions followed, more and more flames came up from within the earth. The asphalt was ripped apart and cars parked on the street were swallowed up. Luckily, very few people were around due to the terrorists at the private salon, so it didn’t look like any people were swallowed up.
To Hamazura, it somehow looked like the explosions were slowly approaching them.
His trembling lips moved as he watched it.
“Oh, come on!! Why does something ‘really insane’ have to happen now!?”
He had no proof that Kinuhata was involved with those explosions, but it was likely that something like that involved the people from the city’s darkness that Hamazura and Takitsubo had once been part of.
“And what’s exploding anyway?”
“Hamazura, it might be the underground mall.”
Takitsubo pointed over towards a large crowd coming from a department store. They seemed to be frantically trying to flee due to the black smoke coming up from underground.
Hamazura looked around and found the entrance to the underground mall that was connected with the ticket gate for the subway. He headed down the stairs that was spewing black smoke like a smokestack and he found an orange light down blow.
It was like the fires of hell.
The area Hamazura was in had not been enveloped by flames yet, but the blazing orange light from further in was being reflected off the tile floor and ceiling as well as the glass walls making a thick barrier of light. The air itself was unusually hot, so it felt like he was inside a giant oven.
He didn’t know exactly what had happened and he had no proof that Kinuhata was there.
He faltered.
That storm of flames was much too dangerous to enter in order to search for someone who might not even be in there. However, it would all be for naught if he became surrounded by flames before he even decided what to do.
(What do I do? Do I go on or head back…?)
“Hamazura, over there!!”
Takitsubo pointed towards something on the other side of the orange flames. It was a human form. The small figure was stuck where it was due to a wall of flames blocking its path.
Seeing that, Hamazura shouted the figure’s name.
“Kinuhata!!”
Hearing that, Kinuhata looked over towards Hamazura in shock. She was not relieved upon seeing his face and yelled back looking even tenser than before.
“You need to super get down!! Just getting behind cover isn’t enough!!”
As soon as he heard that, Hamazura noticed a much taller figure beyond the flames along with Kinuhata.
That figure held something long and narrow. It looked something like a machine gun and the figure was turning it in his direction.
“!!”
Hamazura jumped over at Takitsubo knocking her to the floor. The heated tiles burned them, but that was the least of their worries.
A large number of bullets flew from the other side of the flames.
They cut across a horizontal line at about the height of a human waist. And it seemed the bullets were not normal rifle bullets. They didn’t just tear through the glass walls; they tore through the concrete pillars near the stairs, too.
“Nya ha ha!”
After a few seconds, the gunfire stopped.
That storm of destruction had not actually been meant to kill Hamazura and Kinuhata. The tall figure’s target was probably Kinuhata. The tall figure—most likely a woman—aimed the large gun at Kinuhata and spoke.
“You use nitrogen to create a barrier, so I thought I could seal that by doing something about the air. Getting rid of nitrogen is rather difficult though because it makes up 70% of the air.”
(Did she do this…?)
Lying on the floor, Hamazura tried to collect as much information as he could. She may have used the propane gas at the surrounding restaurants to turn the underground mall into the sea of flames it currently was.
The way she held the gun reminded him a bit of the Anti-Skill members he had seen in his more delinquent days.
However, Anti-Skill fought to protect the children so they would not go that far to fight an esper.
(Is she part of the city’s darkness like us? That giant gun is clearly different from the more easily hidden submachine guns the terrorists used…)
The enemy knew what Kinuhata’s power was and she was trying to take advantage of a weakness in it.
Hamazura pulled out his small handgun.
It was easy to carry around, but its small size meant it had poor accuracy at longer ranges. To make sure he hit, he needed to be no more than 30 meters away.
(Her machine gun is clearly the better gun. If she notices me trying to shoot, she’ll send a stream of bullets this way truly intending to kill me. What should I do? How do I get closer without her noticing?)
The woman did not wait for him to think it all out.
“But if an explosion is triggered with certain requirements met, it can create vacuum-like circumstances for an instant. Of course, it’s an exceedingly local phenomenon. It’s only a hole a few dozen centimeters across.”
“!? Hamazura, super get away!!”
“If I fire a bullet through that hole, you won’t be able to use that shield of yours, will you?”
Multiple explosions occurred at the same time.
They seemed to be surrounding Kinuhata’s small frame. The overwhelming flash of light filled Hamazura’s vision and the shockwave headed towards him and Takitsubo like it was moving through a tube.
Hamazura immediately covered Takitsubo’s mouth and nose with his hands and clenched his own eyes shut. Breathing in that wave of heat would destroy one’s throat and organs.
After the scorching wind passed by, Hamazura finally opened his eyes.
Beyond the flames, the tall figure was pointing its machine gun at Kinuhata.
According to the enemy, Kinuhata Saiai could not surround herself with her shield in a local vacuum. If a bullet were shot through that hole, it would tear through her defenseless body.
“Kinuhata!!”
No response came.
All he heard was the dreadful repeated sound of gunfire coming from the tall figure’s machine gun.
WindwardAway has been killed.
WindwardAway
Welcome to A Certain Scientific Railgun Mafia, WindwardAway! You are Kinuhata Saiai.
Role: Town X-Shot Untargetable
Age: 12
Gender: Female
Height: 148 cm
Esper Power Level: 4
You’re a 12-year old girl who was part of the Dark May Project when you were younger. The Dark May Project was an inhumane experiment where child espers had their minds altered by forcibly inserting some of the first-ranked, Accelerator’s, thought processes into their brains. This would grant access to specific parts of Accelerator’s abilities at the cost of mental stability. Due to the Dark May Project, your esper ranking was boosted to Level 4, although you were forced to adopt a verbal tic where you have to say “super” in nearly all of your sentences.
At the moment, now, however, you’re part of the mercenary group known as ITEM. Your esper power is Offense Armor, which allows you to create an extremely thin nitrogen barrier around you which allows bullets or any other penetrative object to simply fly right past you. This allows you to become a very dangerous combatant, as most enemy’s forms of attack against you are ineffective. You can easily turn the corners on them with your handheld missiles. At the moment, your leader, Mugino, has ran off in pursue of the second-ranked, Dark Matter. What will you do?
Abilities:
Offense Armor (one-shot/night/passive): The first time a player attempts to target you this game during the Night, that ability is prevented and you will lose a shot of “Offense Armor”. You will learn when this happens.
Super! (one-shot/day & night/passive): When Day or Night begins, if there are 8 or fewer players alive, you will gain an additional shot of Offense Armor and lose this ability.
Win Condition: Eliminate all threats.
In addition, WindwardAway has left a last will.
WindwardAway's Last Will
I didn’t fully explain all of my reads in the thread because I spent the entire day drafting my last will and revising it :P so now you know.
If you have to skip most of this, read the tl;dr at the end and then jump back up if you want to find the individual reasoning.
Thoughts:
I’ve been FPSing and I had a feeling the wolf team would know my claim seemed fake but also think I was bulletproof, so I’m sorry if I confused town unnecessarily in my quest to reap some wolf reactions. I never had any active abilities and was also trying to protect Kii by not claiming this item because it comes from town in 90% of worlds, so that’s why I kept saying I was holstering.
I do know that no actions reached me on N1 but at least one did on N2, and I don’t actually know how many (or any other info for that matter). I was actually planning on FPSing as a motion detector early in the game until Luk claimed it and then I had to think of something else (RIP Luk, sorry I yeeted you btw).
I thought Zone and lol were almost guaranteed town on D1 for doubting my ascetic claim and being willing to waste an action on me, since wolves would not know and probably not want to waste their actions. So for the people who said it’s dumb to claim since wolves will avoid targeting me except for the kill, you’re entirely right. But I wanted to use my claim to town clear people instead. I think I’ll probably die before f8 and you’ll see this post instead of my ever gaining a second shot of untargetable, but I was banking on getting killed before that point anyway by trying as hard as i could to box wolves in early through RTs and FPSing.
Kii is only wolf if my reads are completely wrong. If I push and vote out a wolf and then I die he is 100% cleared because wolves would know he gave me this last will item and would not willingly let me flip.
Isolde defending Whysper and Jake earlier looked yuck and that’s why I said the three of them could be a team, easily with Hippo as power wolf, but Isolde’s handling of Zone is fairly towny.
Hippo is only a wolf if there are exactly three packwolves and he’s LW, and in that case he’s probably paired with Wazza and had to call Jake out on TMI or it would’ve looked weird. But also, Hippo sussing Kiiruma for a masonizer claim makes perfect sense in a world where Hippo is town and has access to a private chat with a non-wolf player (in this case, Arctic), so that adds up very neatly and is hard to fake. Also ngl, what Hippo says Arctic’s reads are almost definitely come from town!Arctic unless the entire slot is hunting their pack. But I don’t think it’s likely and I think Hippo is also clear from D3 wagonomics (will explain further down).
Idk what Brad is doing with his weird post tic since I don’t think that’s in the lore for this flavor. But I don’t think it’s a LW soft so he might have gotten restricted by someone else or is trying to activate an ability by doing so. I kinda think he actually is town but I don’t know why I can’t lock it in. Maybe he’s the executioner, but that would imply that Bio was active enough to want me dead on D2, which I don’t really think is realistic unless he treed and the target got randed.
Zone being covered in paint is weird. If he’s town then the painter is definitely a framer. If he flips scum then the painter is probably an IC for our purposes. But I don’t really think w!Zone would claim that he knows he’s covered in paint before his name shows as red. He’d be more likely to feign ignorance and push that there is a framer as soon as his name shows in red, regardless of the painter’s alignment.
I do suspect Atlas of being the painter, and i have mixed feelings about his read on Zone and what he said about his ability (pretty sure he insinuated it was NAI or he didn’t seem to know whether it was useful). So if he’s the painter I don’t really know if it’s a hard dome, and he didn’t vote Zone until the last half of the day. If he ever claims painter, I’d personally just monitor his read progression on Zone to see whether there’s any indication of TMI or if he really doesn’t seem to know what to think. If he claims not to be the painter, I guess this doesn’t matter.
I think Atlas is cleared from something that I don’t remember, I really wish I knew but it was probably association reads? Also, people keep saying he’s been doing nothing but if you look closely at his responses to people in the thread, he’s been asking what I think are good questions and pushing for answers in a way that I think would be counterproductive for wolves because it would likely be interpreted as sort of annoying and not very useful.
I’m clearing Gorta off his interactions with me and his way of approaching the game. I’ve wolfed with him, I’ve wolfed against him, he’s wolfed against me, and I should be capable of reading him correctly at this point. So this time, I tried encouraging him to solve with me to see whether it felt genuine and to make sure he was interacting willingly. What I liked about his interaction was that he was putting an effort into his reads, and even if I disagreed with his takes, he wasn’t jumping on me for it, and also not rushing to read me immediately despite interacting with me. He displays a certain sort of caution I haven’t seen in any of his scum games that I’m willing to townread. I don’t have to trust his read accuracy just because I townread him, but I also don’t want to read him off his read accuracy because I know it can be hit-or-miss when he’s town and lacks TMI.
So, from my D1 reads of (Hippo/Jake/Isolde/one of Whys/Helz), I’m looking at (Wazza/Whys) as a very likely team, probably throwing Hippo into townreads now, could add Helz back in. If that’s the case then we’re missing a powerwolf/deepwolf which might be Night cause idk who else fits the bill besides me or possibly Zone (who has been focused on voting himself out for half the game so idk about that). Isolde could be wolf if Wazza is wolf, but I don’t think Isolde is a wolf with Night (I forget why I wrote this tbh, I’ve been drafting this will since SoD3 but the reasoning was probably something to do with Night voting Isolde so many times).
I think there is maximum one wolf between Night and Hippo, and probably exactly one. Socially I feel like Night is townier, but mechanically Hippo is more useful (wow this is A Read), and I also think Hippo’s push onto Whysper when he could’ve just stuck with the Jake/Wazza wagon is towny because there was still a realistic chance of it flipping instead if Hippo hadn’t pushed for Whysper. I don’t think his progression on Whysper’s slot was actually that towny, but maybe he talked it over in more depth with Arctic and that’s why (or he was bribed, which would be funny), and he’s fairly clear off wagonomics alone so I’m still not going to touch his slot. He probably dies tonight anyway so I doubt I need to think about this too hard.
Wazza is most probably a wolf, sorry about the rand and sorry we’re basically never the same alignment. :/ I don’t think Jake was towny except for that one instance where he could have pushed on me quietly for the executioner and chose not to for whatever reason. He lied out of his ass about his claim, his lie about his claim, and idk what else, and I find it to be incredibly counterproductive townplay but reasonable for a wolf who’s backpedalling in a panic. Also, Whysper (and Isolde) defended Jake’s slot against my push on D1 and stuck me toward the bottom of her readlist for “pushing LHFs” as I recall. Tbh I think I was just correct and Whysper was trying to get me off her buddy. As for Wazza, yes, I read her posts and I interacted with her, but I don’t think she’s town either. I considered what she might do in this situation as town versus as scum, and I fully believe she’d try to save her slot the best she can after replacing into a wolf slot, including voting her partner to clear her name if she has to. So I am going to assume that all of her votes have been wifom so far if she’s a wolf and not bother reading into them. I think Hippo is right that, despite claiming she hasn’t read everything yet, Wazza seems to have a bit more information than expected of someone who just got into the game and hasn’t backread the thread. Additionally, her argument that the executioner would give info on me after I flipped was dumb as shit and I’ve been trying to point that out but she kept misconstruing what I was trying to say. I was saying that the executioner did not need to give info after my flip because I would literally just flip with all the info you could possibly need - town, x-shot untargetable, “offense armour” etc. - assuming the executioner hopefully isn’t also a janitor. There’s no possible additional info you could get on me post-flip because I flip town, and the executioner said something like “for now, just kill wind and I’ll try to contact you later with info” which is sketchy because that’s like hiring a hitman to kill someone and promising you’ll tell them what the person actually did once they’re already dead lol. So yes, my conclusion is that Jake was wolfy, Wazza is wolfy, the slot is wolfy, yeetus deletus.
Helz has been a slot that I thought was very plausibly a wolf on D1 at roughly the same level where I was reading Whysper (outer PoE I think at that point). I think he’s seemed kind of out of touch with the thread, probably due to being busy as he said, but he also hasn’t particularly seemed like he was able to “catch up” in the way that wolves do when they don’t read the thread but still check scum chat. I think it’s possible he could be the executioner especially if Isolde’s action might have messed him up, but that doesn’t explain why the message went through when Isolde probably blocked him unless there’s a one-night delay (which could explain why the message that Night got looked host-generated). Anyway, the only thing Helz currently has going for him is not jumping to townread Kii for whatever the item was. However, I gave this some more thought, and it’s actually kind of wolfy that he’s basically denying a townclear to Kii and addressing it toward other people by saying it’s a silly item for a scum inventor to give out but it’s absolutely not clearing and we should never think that. At the same time, it makes Helz look better for flatly denying Kii’s masonizer fakeclaim, so I could see a wolf doing this for towncred while simultaneously denying a clear.
Whysper flipping wolf with the ability to control someone else’s action very, very likely explains what happened with Isolde and Zone. Isolde had already hinted the letter “J” from his role, I believe? And wolves generally don’t prioritize killing Seth because he’s Seth, so if they had a way to tamper with his action without needing to kill him, I believe they would have done so to ensure a free kill (but likely didn’t expect that Eli might have BG’d the target). In that case, I suspect that if Whysper hypothetically controlled Seth’s action and redirected him to me, I would’ve been alerted that I was targeted, and Whysper’s redirect would’ve gone through because she wasn’t targeting me but rather forcing Seth to target me. However, I believe Seth said his action was “successful”, so maybe this doesn’t really work and he could’ve been redirected elsewhere. I do, however, think Whysper targeted him on N2 and caused Zone’s action to go through and Seth’s to succeed without a redirection notice since it was a puppeted action. So someone else probably got blocked and it was likely whoever the executioner is, meaning that wolves know now. Of course this is all hypothetical, but as I said, I knew there had to be another loophole on how Seth and Zone could have a mech conflict without either necessarily being scum. And also, this probably means the wolves did not know who the messenger was before, if they accidentally blocked them, as I doubt it was their intention and they tried to block someone they thought was a useful PR (like, for example, Helz if they thought the item he got from Kii was useful, but if Seth said he blocked him on the night that Jake received a message then it’s not him tbh).
On the topic of the executioner or whatever they are, I had a thought. Since it’s likely Whysper controlled Seth and sent him into the executioner, wolves probably did legitimately slip during the day about there only being 3 pack wolves, because it’s plausible if the executioner is a 3p that there would only be 3 wolves. So look back on that and see what you can find from that discussion. I know Brad only listed 3 and I thought it was a slip, but someone else did, too, and I’m too lazy to find who it was again. Isolde was asking me for my reads in the case that it was 3 wolves + 1 but I don’t really consider it indicative of TMI since he was also in the discussion where we were talking about the number of wolves, and thus was already aware we were looking at people for TMI on it. Only if he was hard pushing a 3-wolf team would I say it was potential TMI.
tl;dr -
Town, not touching: Kiiruma, Gorta
Town, not touching unless LyLo: Atlas, Hippo
Townlean?: Isolde, Zone
Nulltown?: Brad
Outer PoE: Night
Inner PoE: Wazza, Helz
Neut hunting isn’t a priority, scum hunting is, but the executioner is a bit annoying :P because they theoretically could be clogging up my PoE or hiding in my townreads.
It is now Day 4 of A Certain Scientific Railgun Mafia.
With 10 alive, it takes 6 votes to execute.
The deadline is 2022-02-27T19:00:00Z.