Volume 4, Sub.13
Kumokawa Maria awoke with a small groan.
After Oumi Shuri explained the situation to her, she clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“Do you know him?”
“He’s Kihara Kagun, the person I’m after. But this isn’t enough for me to give in. In fact, I’ve made progress now that I know he’s here. The reports were accurate.”
“I don’t know what your situation is, but we need to get moving, too. That bazooka girl is still alive and nothing says she won’t return to finish us off.”
“One thing first.”
Kumokawa Maria stood up and started patting around her showy maid uniform. She also twisted her body around in what looked like an attempt to look at her back, but Oumi Shuri could see nothing there.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for bugs or transmitters. Who knows what he could have done while I was unconscious. If Kihara Kagun knows where I am and what we are saying, he can keep eluding me even if we are in the same field.”
“It doesn’t look to me like there are any chips on your clothes.”
“It may not be something large enough to see. If he used a nanodevice, it could have even entered a stitch in the fibers. ...Damn,” muttered Kumokawa Maria. “I just can’t tell like this. I guess I’ll have to take the clothes off and run a hot blowdryer over them. That should destroy the inner workings of any unseen devices.”
“Can’t you check for the presence of an electromagnetic signal to see if there are any bugs or transmitters? A radio should be enough to detect it.”
“Do you know how an ant informs his comrades of a large piece of food so they can create that long procession?” asked Kumokawa Maria offhandedly. “Pheromones. A scent. The transmission does not need to be electromagnetic. If chemicals are used, electric circuits are not even needed. Academy City has a lot of people that use electricity or magnetism, so the development of devices that get around that has developed pretty far.”
“And what will heating it with a blowdryer do?”
“It will destroy the Data Pheromone system. It’s something like running a blowdryer over wet paint. The paint itself will remain, but the coloration will become something warped and different from what it would be if it dried naturally. The data within will be destroyed. The method is resistant to the cold, though.”
And so they left the control room, walked down the passageway, and checked inside a few doors as they went. They eventually found a staff locker room where they found a blowdryer.
Without hesitation, Kumokawa Maria stripped off her showy maid uniform and spread it out on the floor. She got down on all fours and started using the blowdryer on it.
The area was heated but it must have still been rather cold in nothing but her underwear because Kumokawa Maria rubbed her inner thighs together.
“This uses synthetic fibers, so I’m a bit worried it’s going to end up like a plastic bag.”
“How long will this take?”
“To do it thoroughly is going to take ten or twenty minutes. What about you?”
“You don’t need to worry about me,” replied Oumi Shuri. “The ninja frequently use drugs in combat and intelligence. We have a reagent that can detect this kind of thing. If something was added somewhere on my clothes, a different color would appear in that spot.”
“So it’s like an improved version of the lab coat?”
“Something like that. If any of the microscopic devices you were talking about were actually slipped onto my clothes, they were probably destroyed by the weak acid used for the reagent.”
They continued to speak until Kumokawa Maria had finished heating the entirety of her maid uniform with the blowdryer. She then tried to put it on, but...
“Hot!! This is as hot as the Comedy Hot Bath!!”
“That tells me nothing about how hot it is.”
“It’s from the Ichihanaransai. That’s Academy City’s cultural festival which can get pretty exciting. Damn, it feels even hotter because I got so cold in just my underwear!!”
With tears in her eyes and while practically shouting, Kumokawa Maria somehow managed to get the showy maid uniform on.