Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche left behind the famous words: “When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” But in truth, that line comes as part of a pair. The full thought is:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.”
Cool. Not just cool, but right on the mark.
It seems Paula either didn’t know this quote or didn’t take it seriously enough.

Paula was everywhere, doing everything. Her doppelgänger’s range and basic capabilities were expanding rapidly, and she used that growth to extend her reach beyond the school, covering the entire district. And there was no shortage of people in need: women being cornered by predatory men, men getting swindled by women, lost children, homeless folks shivering by the roadside, and so on and so forth.

Paula poured every moment of her time into helping as many as she could save. The residents—who had been mourning the death of Benjamin, the neighborhood’s beloved guardian—began to rally behind the new hero who had appeared in his place: a magical girl with pink hair.
She wasn’t some flashy vigilante toppling great evils, but she was always kind, always cheerful, cute, and gallant. A beloved neighbor, there to lend a hand whenever someone needed it. Of course people adored her. “Pinky,” who appeared and vanished like magic, was quickly becoming a social media sensation.
And because Paula sometimes showed up in person to help, Benjamin’s niece herself was getting recognition.

Everything seemed perfect. Too perfect. And maybe that was the problem.
Paula was working herself too hard.

Beat up a quick-footed drug dealer and take his money, and that’s armed robbery—even if you pass every cent of that cash on to a struggling single mother.
Shove a cop arresting a black man, helping the suspect escape, and that’s obstruction of justice—even if it was a wrongful arrest.

The definition of Justice is never the same twice. Those who fight evil are often accused of evil themselves.

Eventually, Paula got arrested in the middle of helping someone else. She had pinned a boy who stole a bike, slamming him down with a body press—only for the police to swoop in and restrain her. The kid, sobbing and pleading for help, looked for all the world like he was the victim, and Paula the aggressor.
The officer on scene refused to hear her out. Criminals always have excuses, and cops get tired of hearing them. The officer stayed polite but wouldn’t listen, and shoved Paula’s large frame into the back of a police car.

Still, a misunderstanding is just that. She was a minor, after all. She’d be out soon enough—or so I thought, casually spying through clairvoyance. But in no time at all, Paula was thrown in a holding cell, and her aunt was called in.

*Tragic news: an Esper has been arrested! Paula, what the hell are you doing?!*
*Who would’ve thought that the first member (?) of the Secret Organization to be arrested was Paula, and it wasn’t even about her powers!*

When the freshly widowed Maisie heard her niece had been arrested, she rushed in pale-faced and confronted the detective handling the case.

“I don’t believe my niece would attack a child and steal their bicycle!”
“Yes, well, evidence shows that this incident might have been a misunderstanding. However, Paula Port is suspected of involvement in multiple other incidents—her additional charges, if you will.”

The detective flipped through a thick stack of documents, listing out every case Paula had “interfered” in.
I recognized all of them. They were incidents where Paula had accidentally broken the law in the course of helping someone. I’d been watching.
*Damn, this detective’s good. He didn’t have to be this thorough.*
*…Actually, isn’t he a bit too good for this?.*

*Something’s afoot.*
*If they’d gathered this much dirt on Paula, enough to compile into such a thick book, why wait until now to arrest her? They could’ve intervened long ago, when there were fewer charges.*

“———and, well, those are all the cases that we’re aware she’s involved with. We can’t release her until we get all the facts straight. Ms. Maisie, are you complicit in your niece’s radical activities?”

Maisie’s face went even paler.

“She’s been busy lately, keeping secrets even from me. …But I’m sure she has a reason. She must.”
“I believe she does. We’d like to know that reason too.”
“She’s still a minor. Can’t you just let her go home? Arresting her over this is not right. If rumors spread that she had to miss classes because she’s in jail, her school life will be in tatters!
“Ms. Maisie, Paula is old enough to be tried as an adult. We could overlook a couple of minor offenses, but this? This is at least ten times thicker than the files on juveniles her age.”

The detective ostentatiously compared Paula’s stack of papers with the papers compiled in the other clips.
Maisie was struck speechless.

*Something smells wrong.*
*The detective doesn’t look like a cop frustrated with a troublesome kid—he looks satisfied, like a hunter who’d finally snared his prey. Almost as if they’d been waiting for her crimes to pile up before swooping in. Am I overthinking?*

I tried to skim the documents, but I couldn’t make sense of U.S. legal paperwork. Hell, I barely understood Japanese law, let alone American law. I couldn’t tell if there were procedural flaws.

Since my own brain is lacking, I nudged my wife for help.
Shiori and I had been hopping between hotels in NYC, usually sitting side-by-side while she fiddled with a tablet.
She scanned through my feed, tapped at her screen, and declared:

“It’s St. Germain’s trap.”
“What, we’re blaming everything on St. Germain now?”
“That detective is a senior Lunar Wisdom operative. The newest document in that stack is dated the day after their last council meeting. My guess is they were ordered to wait until Paula had enough charges stacked up for long-term detention before arresting her.”
“So it is St. Germain!”

*Terrifying! Downright terrifying!*
*The man’s reach is everywhere. I knew he had allies in law enforcement, but this was too smooth. Using the law and political clout as weapons? That’s cheating! Only someone at my level, or Shiori’s, or Ruu-denka’s status, could counter that.*

The most troubling part is that it’s all legal.
Paula really had broken laws, and the arrest and detention were completely aboveboard.
*What now? The future head of Amaterasu’s New York branch is sitting in a cell.*

“We watch. This is part of the battle between Paula and St. Germain. We won’t intervene until the breaking point.”
“Being arrested is a breaking point, isn’t it…?”
“Whether this arrest becomes a badge of honor or a shameful scar depends on Paula.”

Shiori smiled wryly and went back to her tablet.
I kind of get it. Shige-jii’s (probably exaggerated) prison-escape stories were entertaining, after all.

At first, Paula was compliant with the procedure. She gave sincere testimony and was cooperative in clarifying the facts, but after a Raincoat Inc. lawyer came in waving a settlement offer, she went silent.

The lawyer explained:
Some Raincoat Inc. employees had been unfortunately harmed by Paula’s overzealous heroics, including the loss of a USB drive containing sensitive data. The financial damage was too high to ignore. They were prepared to sue her for millions of dollars in damages.
But, the lawyer added, one compassionate executive had intervened. Supposedly, they knew Paula Port as the niece of a renowned philanthropist who had made many years of contributions to New York City, and by extension, America. Surely it wasn’t right to saddle a minor with crushing debt for a mistake made with good intentions?
So, Raincoat Inc. would take the extenuating circumstances into consideration
Should Paula agree to participate in their medical research trials, they’d gladly drop all charges.

Paula read the consent form and refused to sign.
I couldn’t understand every word—the contract was riddled with obscure legal and medical jargon—but I didn’t need to.
St. Germain wanted her to voluntarily consent to human experimentation.

Absolutely terrifying. He was basically saying “Superpower! Hah, taste the full might of the police and the law!” And it was effective.

We’d already secretly contacted St. Germain and ordered him to “Defeat Paula. But no killing, and no permanent physical or psychological harm.”
If Paula signed the consent form willingly, then technically he didn’t defeat Paula, and any harm she suffered, physically or psychologically, was something she had consented for and accepted firsthand.
Of course, that was all a pretense and nothing more. He was just trying to trap her, kill her, and wring every drop of value from her, consent or no.

But all of this was perfectly legal.
If Paula signed that devilish contract, it’s game over. The battle between Paula and St. Germain would be settled with our esper’s complete and total defeat without even a single direct confrontation.
Well, if she did sign, I’d instantly vaporize the paperwork with telekinesis and intimidate St. Germain into undoing it all—but even if I cleaned up after her mess, a hero who bends the knee to evil isn’t fit to lead Amaterasu’s NYC branch.
I’d find someone else to be the branch manager, and demote Paula Port to be a regular member.

Two or three days after Paula invoked the fifth, Raincoat’s lawyer returned with new leverage.
Hank Snart had been arrested for hacking Raincoat Corp servers and violating wiretap laws.
When Paula heard this, she went pale. Hank was being held under guard in Raincoat’s HQ, negotiating a settlement that would decide his future. The police were involved.

The lawyer said;
Raincoat Inc. was taking a hard stance for his intentional act of industrial espionage. Hank denied all charges, making them less willing to compromise. They couldn’t share details, but it was all but certain that Hank’s future would be in the ruins.
However, should Paula sign the contract and agree to the clinical trials, then they are willing to drop Hank’s lawsuit…

Paula was sweating like a pig over a slow fire, but she still refused to sign and remained silent.
She managed to slip her doppelgänger out of the police station, but even after she trained it to reach a 100-meter activity range, it was nowhere enough to break Hank out of Raincoat’s HQ and rescue him.
This was no doubt by design. She’d been deliberately placed in a remote holding facility, far from her home, school, and Raincoat HQ. Even if she wanted to help, she couldn’t.
St. Germain had used all the information he gathered on her and crafted a perfect trap.

Now I feel bad for her.
How was a high school girl with fledgling psychic powers and a strong sense of justice supposed to fight a cunning genius with influence, resources, and experience?
This wasn’t some flashy shounen battle to enrich an adolescent life. This was an adult beating down a kid from a safe position.

The lawyer didn’t force anything on Paula, but several days later he came back with a wholly different story.

The Port family home had burned to the ground.
With just those words, Paula collapsed from her chair, wheezing like a pig in a panic attack.

He went on:
“Fortunately, your aunt Maisie had been out at the time and was unharmed from the fire. Benjamin was a close friend of my client’s executive, so they had arranged for her to be moved to a secure residence reserved for senior-executives. The arsonist might be targeting your aunt, so they had assumed that giving her extra security details is wise.
“I understand that you are worried about your aunt, and we’d love to arrange a meeting between you two, but it is against the company’s wishes and the letter of the law for you to step out of these premises. If you’d only sign the clinical trial, Paula, then you’d give us the power to mobilize the full resources of our law firm to help resolve this situation…”

With a voice barely above a whisper, Paula managed to squeeze out the words: “Give me time to think.”

She was driven into the corner.
Legally detained, her best friend and family essentially taken hostage, blackmailed, trapped, and no escape route given.
It would be difficult for Paula to break through the sturdy cell. She might be able to do it, given time, but the officers would definitely notice. As this was a legal arrest, escaping would brand her a criminal through and through.

Obviously she’d have realized that Raincoat Inc. was behind it all—maybe even guessed St. Germain himself was orchestrating it. But even if she did, there was nothing she could do.

That night, Paula sat on her cell bed, knees hugged to her chest, gazing out through the barred window at the New York skyline.
She was far past worrying. Her every thought was torment.

Would she finally succumb to the clever trap of evil? Just as I thought so, a savior arrived.
With a faint mechanical hum barely audible over the city’s night noise, a drone floated into view outside her window.
Startled, Paula rose to her feet. A voice came from its tiny speaker:

“Paula! It’s Hank! Hurry, grab the keys!”

Hanging from the drone’s chassis was the key to her cell.