บท 320: Experiment Animals Worth 10,000
"Are you kidding me, Porter?! You [elegant swear word]!"
Late at night, a loud, angry voice suddenly echoed through a quiet neighborhood.
Several bedroom lights turned on in response, as people who had just fallen asleep or were already sleep-deprived were startled awake by the unexpected outburst.
"Sorry, sorry,"
Though most residents couldn't pinpoint exactly where the shout had come from, the person directly next door knew all too well. Standing at his door, Daniel apologized repeatedly to his irritated neighbor.
"Alright, just don't do it again. I just got off the night shift, and then I hear you yelling."
Daniel's neighbor yawned, then asked curiously, "So, you're a Porter fan too?"
"You too?" Daniel's face lit up.
"Of course! I haven't missed a single one of his works. I often end up cursing him too." The neighbor puffed out his chest proudly, then asked with interest, "So, what got you so riled up? Was it Cautious Hero? Or Madoka?"
"No, it was Railgun," Daniel answered honestly.
"Railgun?"
The man paused for a second, confused. He hadn't watched that series. After a moment, he realized Daniel was talking about A Certain Scientific Railgun and asked, a bit puzzled, "What's wrong with Railgun?"
Not being a fan of light yuri stories, the neighbor had skipped Railgun, thinking it was just a laid-back slice-of-life series. He couldn't imagine the Porter turning something like that into a dark, tragic story.
"Oh man, don't even get me started! It was all lighthearted at first, but then it turned really heavy later on!"
"Seriously? It actually got dark?"
"Yeah, but it's pretty interesting."
"..."
And so, Daniel and his neighbor stood at the door, chatting about Railgun. They went on for quite a while, only stopping when the neighbor's door opened, signaling it was time to call it a night.
Once back inside, Daniel let out a deep breath, still fuming over the plot twist from earlier.
The Porter had really pulled a fast one.
After Misaka discovered her clone, she and the clone teamed up to rescue a kitten stuck in a tree.
Misaka, hoping to uncover the secrets of the clone's purpose, followed her and managed to decrypt a code with the help of Uiharu, which led to a shocking revelation: Academy City was attempting to create an unprecedented Level 6 esper.
If the city followed the standard educational process, it would take at least 250 years for an esper to naturally evolve into Level 6.
But there was a way to speed it up.
The plan was to enhance the esper's abilities through combat, by staging 128 battle scenarios where Misaka—yes, the original—would be killed 128 times. Of course, Misaka was human, and killing her was irreversible.
So, the scientists came up with another method.
They would create 20,000 clones of Misaka, set up 20,000 battlefields, and kill these clones to achieve the same result. Each clone, known as a "Sister," had their own thoughts and feelings. They liked kittens, and they spoke in their own quirky way, but their only purpose was to be slaughtered.
It was heartbreaking.
The most horrifying part? The deaths were brutal. In one chapter, Daniel witnessed one of the Sisters have her leg ripped off by the experiment's target.
These were living, breathing beings!
Even though Daniel had been through the tragic events of Fullmetal Alchemist's Chimera arc, seeing these lively Sisters meet such gruesome ends was still gut-wrenching.
He couldn't shake the memory of the Sister cheerfully bidding Misaka farewell with, "Goodbye, Sister."
But that goodbye had been a final farewell.
He vividly recalled the moment when the dying Sister, in spite of her agony, crawled towards the fallen president's badge that Misaka had given her, cherishing it in her final moments. Even as she was crushed under the weight of a steel beam, she was likely thinking back to the brief, happy time she spent with her "big sister."
It was, undoubtedly, the best memory of her short life.
And the most tragic part? This experiment had been conducted 9,982 times already!
Over 9,000 Sisters had already been killed, each on a different battlefield, facing different, possibly even more gruesome deaths.
And the horror didn't end there.
In later chapters, Misaka's Sisters arrived on the scene to clean up after her battle with Accelerator, revealing that they were also responsible for cleaning up their own dead. How twisted could things get?
Even more chilling was how, when Misaka confronted them about how they could accept their deaths so calmly, they responded with blank expressions and emotionless words.
"We are artificial bodies with artificial hearts. We are experimental animals, priced at 10,000 yen each."
Hearing them refer to themselves as mere "experimental animals," Daniel's heart ached.
To him, these clones seemed far more human than the scientists who had conceived this monstrous experiment.
"Phew, I have to admit, this story is getting more interesting now."
After letting out a deep breath, Daniel nodded to himself. Compared to the earlier, lighter chapters, the current story, though darker and more tragic, had captured the fans' attention.
With renewed energy, Daniel opened his laptop and began typing up his review.
After all, his fans had asked for his thoughts, and he wasn't going to let them down:
"Watching this story unfold gives you a clearer understanding of just how immoral and illegal cloning really is. We should be thankful that no such experiments exist in our world..."
...
It wasn't just Daniel. Many other manga critics, who had previously been indifferent to Railgun, were now receiving requests from their fans to review the latest chapters.
Discussions about Railgun's new developments were popping up all over the internet.
"Dude, did you guys see the new Railgun chapter? The plot twists are insane!"
"Railgun? I dropped it after the first chapter. I can handle slice-of-life, but without a male lead, I couldn't care less. What, did something crazy happen later? Did the Porter realize no one was reading and suddenly throw in a male protagonist?"
"No, there's no male lead, but there is a guy who rips people apart..."
"I never expected this light yuri story to turn out like this. Totally caught me off guard."
"Stop being so cryptic! What happened?"
"Basically, they're running an experiment to kill 20,000 girls, and they've already killed over 9,000."
"..."
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