Blue Archive - M.O.T.H.E.R. (Volume 1)

19

The situation was brought under control. Azusa was able to get rid of the drones at the entrance and the other girls took care of the rest. Sensei felt like sitting Asuna down and lecturing her until he was speechless. However, there was no time for such a thing. The security on the east side of the plant had been disabled. The ideal would have been to give Hare time to hack the entire system during the day so that she could infiltrate it calmly at night or, if it was necessary to do something from the control and security room, infiltrate it with a partner. Avoiding at all times a direct confrontation. Asuna's actions had shattered that plan. They had a few minutes to find the machinery that was absorbing the energy of the halos and reverse the flow of energy, or to find the control center of security systems. Sensei reorganized the units. He put four students in each unit. Unit one consisted of Hina, Hare, Hifumi and Nodoka. Unit two would be under the command of Karin with the rest of the girls. Unit two's main job would be to break into each of the buildings, be the distraction, as well as report back if they found or got any leads on the halo-stealing machinery. Sensei along with Hare and the others would try to keep a low profile while Hare did her job and they also investigated. Once inside the plant, things didn't take long to heat up. The unit led by Karin split into two. Karin and Asuna managed to get into three buildings and Azusa in the company of Kayoko into two others. Thanks to the work of those girls, they managed to find the control room. However, the unit was being cornered by the enemy. Sensei would have wanted it not to come to that, with no other choice, making a third unit of one, he sent the heavy artillery to help Karin and her team. A hail of bullets tore through the sea of machines harassing the four students. Hina's eyes and halo glowed with an intense purple light. Azusa's mouth dropped open at the Prefect Team president's display of power. Something went into her mouth all at once. Azusa fell to her knees. Kayoko rushed over to see if she was okay.

''Umm... It's good.''

''Ah? What was it?'' Kayoko also went into her mouth.

Nodoka, with her incredible aim, was throwing small triangular sandwiches into the mouths of the injured girls. In a way, her ExSkill was combining with the sandwich and helping them recover their energy.

''What a good arm you have,'' Said Sensei. "Have you thought about playing baseball?''

''What is baseball?''

Sensei between tears promised her that when they came back he would take her to play with Shigure.

Leaving the support for unit two to Hina and Nodoka, Sensei went with Hifumi and Hare to the security room. The deployment of more drones was stopped. She disabled the restriction to all areas on the surface and located the entrance to the first subway level. The Veritas hacker located the system that needed to be reversed on the second sublevel. Hare tried to do the reversal from that room. It did not work no matter how hard she tried. The screen showed that access had been enabled, but she could not figure out what was not working. Sensei suggested moving and finding out what the problem was. They could not waste any more time. Before going down, Hare checked the security system on the next level. He could not disable it. It had to be done from the level itself.

''I'm sure it's the same with the halo dissipator.''

''No... I'm sure I can access it from here, but... there's something that's preventing it.''

The second year student at Millennium created a map and a route from the first and second subway levels to the place she needed to get to. Sensei informed the girls and proceeded with his two companions to the next sublevel.