CHAPTER 9

Difference of Obstacles

Two_Kinds_of_Enemies.

1

In a School District 7 garage, several giant automobiles were parked.

Their white chassis were as large as tourist buses but had no windows. And they weren’t buses—but rather the world’s biggest ambulances. The so-called hospital cars, in addition to packing life-support-equipped beds for ten, featured onboard equipment for performing simple surgery.

Around ten of these hospital cars were parked in the garage. Fully occupied, they provided accommodations for one hundred patients.

Several short figures stood behind those hospital cars.

They were the Sisters.

Assault rifles and anti-tank rifles hung from their bodies, not even slightly matching the Tokiwadai Middle School uniform blazers the girls wore. About ten of them stood there, on guard for the enemy group called the Hound Dogs, released by a man named Amata Kihara.

Amid them, a girl’s voice rang out.

“Let me go! If you don’t have a ‘Misaka Network Connection Battery,’ I don’t think there’s any point in me staying here! The city is acting weird, too, so I have to go check on it!!”

A group of nurses was restraining a girl dressed in a white nun’s habit. Her calico’s hair was on end, too, but a doctor had him clutched in her arms, so despite flailing his legs, the cat couldn’t slip away.

Little Misaka was listening to the uproar as well, but she couldn’t turn and look.

Her body wasn’t moving the way it was supposed to.

“(Confirmed signal from host individual #20001.)”

“(Estimated danger level 5. Misaka #10032 suggests reject—)”

“(Rejection refused. Accepting signals via routes R, V, and Y.)”

“(Misa…large, heavy burd on thoughting process—)”

“(Rejection refused.)”

Zzzz!! A certain signal spread like a giant wave through the Misaka network. It covered the world within moments.

It was an emergency code from Last Order.

Whatever the code actually contained, the individual node Sisters couldn’t oppose it. With most of their working brain regions repurposed, the girls were reduced to breathing organisms. Each of them froze in place.

What now? they all thought.

Last Order had clearly fallen into someone’s hands. However malicious the commands she sent were, they couldn’t resist them. But twiddling their thumbs and watching was out of the question.

I must take…action…that doesn’t oppose…the command…

#10032, Little Misaka, sent information to the Misaka network.

…If that…is able to resolve…this critical situation…as a result…

All the Sisters responded.

They would stop their futile resistance against the virus (or so the Sisters had redefined the emergency code from Last Order as). By doing so, they could once again secure the calculation regions of their brains that were, in the past, dedicated to resistance. From that they gained only a tiny bit of thinking ability, though; Little Misaka still couldn’t move a finger.

But with ten thousand of them doing it, everything coalesced into a single power.

The Sisters didn’t hoard the power for themselves.

They all knew someone who could use it more effectively.

2

Smooth sailing.

Those two words described Thomas Platinaberg’s life.

Born into an affluent household, he was allowed to live without restrictions. He attended higher education, then emerged victorious in bold business ventures, resulting in the acquisition of vast fortune and influence. He’d been selected for the Academy City General Board in his midthirties, an exceptionally young age, excluding Aleister. It was a trophy to cap his travels and career.

He had never failed at anything, nor would he walk any path in the future but success—he never had a doubt about that. He’d never spoken of it to anybody, but he considered gaining the title of chairperson and gaining control over all of Academy City a simple task. These weren’t his ambitions saying so. He thought it was just the natural course of things. If he kept doing his best, the rest would fall into place on its own.

Indeed.

He probably hadn’t even dreamed of this. His front door had opened, and a moment later a shotgun muzzle was pressed to his chest and its trigger was pulled, sending him flying five meters backward.

“…”

Bang!! Accelerator watched with icy eyes as the young upstart flew into the air and slammed into the floor without bouncing. He’d at least seemed to be aware that he was under constant threat; Thomas was wearing a bulletproof jacket underneath his clothes. It had prevented his body from separating into an upper half and a lower half, but his rib cage, without a doubt, had been shattered. The man’s body trembled with convulsions as well. He was completely unconscious.

Accelerator felt somehow relieved.

It had probably begun when he launched the attack on the windowless building. It was no longer taboo who he made into an enemy. Now he understood what that shit doctor told him. Limit yourself to one goal. He was absolutely right. He should have rescued Last Order even if he made her into his enemy. If he was already willing to go so far, why should he have to hesitate against other people?

Why hadn’t he thought of doing this in the first place?

He had to grin, mocking himself for how psychological blind spots had formed without his realizing.

“Piece of shit.”

Without a thought to his soaking-wet clothes, he made his way into the house, rubbing deep black stains into the extravagant carpets. Despite how much consideration went into each item inside it, the estate itself was extremely small. It looked more like a cottage than a Western-style house. Each piece of furniture was the price of a small house.

He glanced around the rooms to see several men and women—housekeepers, by the looks of it—sleeping on the beds, sofas, and floors. Maybe that was the reason the upstart prick had answered the door in person.

Spotting an office, Accelerator walked in and went over to the big ebony desk within. It looked like an antique…but flipping a switch raised a part of the polished desk, revealing an LCD monitor and keyboard. The movement made no noise; its utility was similar to the black-suits’ luxury cars.

It had several key locks, but it didn’t take long for Accelerator to get through them. It didn’t use any biometric authentication such as fingerprint or retina scanning. The man had probably done it that way so that someone couldn’t get in by cutting off his wrist or head and using it. And that was, in fact, exactly what Accelerator had been planning to do.

On the thirty-inch display was a mountain of data no ordinary person would ever see.

It contained several documents summarizing political activity in Academy City. The bias in what data existed here probably meant politics was the man’s field of study. The data looked meaningless, but skimming over them revealed some possibly important information there. Still, who knew how many days it would take to comb through every file one by one?

As Accelerator examined them, growing ever more impatient, he finally arrived at the data he needed.

“…Here it is.”

Information regarding the Hound Dogs.

It said that Academy City was currently under attack by an unknown threat, and to eliminate it, they needed to recover Last Order quickly. It was almost like a joke—they were actually playing at being saviors of the city.

What a load of bullshit…, he said to himself.

If they were thinking in such an “upright” way, then the first thing they should have done was become shields themselves. Bringing a tiny little brat so much suffering, then asking to be praised? You’ve gotta be kidding me.

“This is…,” he said as he stopped breathing, looking further into the data.

Apparently, to oppose the threat to the city, the guys on the General Board were trying to overwrite Last Order with a virus. That meant they couldn’t have her die—at least not until that “threat” was gone.

Maybe it wasn’t over yet. Maybe he could get something back from all this.

Accelerator typed on the keyboard, very slightly trembling in expectation.

Unfortunately, it didn’t say exactly how they’d use Last Order and how they’d “eliminate the threat.” It didn’t touch upon details about either the threat or the virus, of course. It clearly lacked information. The file was just a strategic suggestion (though in practical terms, a written order), saying only what had been suggested. Any further data might exist only in Aleister’s head.

The code name for the strategic direction document, however…

“ANGEL”?

It was the English word angel. It called to mind the giant feathers that had somehow appeared in one part of Academy City—and the one who said he was going to stop it.

Was Accelerator not the only one fighting in the darkness?

“…”

Whatever the case, he didn’t have time to pay attention to that. Last Order was his top priority.

Accelerator had already gotten rid of the virus someone tried to write into Last Order’s head on August 31. But that was only because he had information about the virus already and because he had been at full strength. In this situation, that didn’t seem doable.

Above all, he didn’t have enough battery power. He could activate ability usage mode for only another two minutes at most. He couldn’t heal her like this.

No, I don’t need to use my power to heal shit. Kihara would be using a Testament program to mess with the brat’s brain. That’s fine with me. The original script for the virus should be in his hands anyway.

After writing the virus to her, Kihara might destroy the Testament device…but Accelerator decided that wasn’t very probable. If something happened to go wrong during the process, he wouldn’t be able to redo it. Kihara would have some kind of insurance for that.

Which means I still gotta do the same thing.

The keyboard’s keys clacked under his fingers.

Hah, bull’s-eye!!

He immediately found where the Hound Dogs were standing by.

Just gotta kill Kihara and wrest the brat away. Ha-ha, now that I know what I’m gonna do, I really wanna do it!!

The residence contained several hunting rifles.

He searched out one with bullets whose shape matched his shotgun, then loaded up and left.

3

Index burst out of the parking garage into the rain.

She’d been shaking around in a big hospital-like car before, but she didn’t have the time to be hiding out any longer. Voices yelling for her to stop came from behind her, but she didn’t turn back.

I swear, what on earth was that “Misaka Network Connection Battery” thing, anyway?! Did he trick me? Anyway, a lost child is a problem, but I never thought something like that would appear in Academy City!

Just its wings were gigantic; she couldn’t see its main body, hidden behind the buildings as it was. She could see dozens of layers of feathers moving slowly—about the speed a person walked.

An angel.

Index had no idea why something like an angel had appeared in Academy City. Plus, this angel wasn’t in her 103,000 grimoires. That hadn’t happened since Aureolus and his Ars Magna, which meant this rivaled that incident in importance.

I have to stop it…She glared at the hundred-meter-long wings far in the distance. If I don’t, it will do something terrible.

Just the one attack from earlier had incredible destructive power, but if it really was an angel in the sense that Index knew them, that wouldn’t have been its true value. It would have the strength to end all life on earth with a fingertip and even greatly affect the stars in space.

The archive of forbidden books.

Necessarius, the Church of Necessary Evils.

It was all created for situations like this, but they’d never felt so unreliable before. She was a professional sorcerer, and even she felt so much fear from it. She knew she couldn’t let the angel strike that fear into others who had nothing to do with this.

Index ran through the eerily quiet streets. She passed by nobody, perhaps due to the downpour.

Then, the being far, far in the distance began to roar as though tearing apart the night sky with its cry. It sounded like a beast being pulled by a collar made of barbed wire.

Its layers of giant feathers rattled, squirming ominously, as though it was stirring, trying to endure pain.

And as the angel moved, it cried out.

Index focused in that direction, wanting to get as much information as possible.

“…Huh?”

But suddenly, she grunted, confused.

The sound, a simple vibration of the air, which humans could never understand.

But for some reason, when she heard that voice, she felt a longing.

“…”

The angel held her giant wings in front of her.

Wings of light, not meant to be in this world, divine yet spine-chilling. At times the wings would blur as though blown by the wind, then return to normal. Like waves on a beach—like mist swaying in a breeze.

The motions looked random, but they actually followed a fixed pattern.

Index had perfect recall, and that information gave her a match.

She’d seen those movements before.

September 1.

After defeating the sorcerer Sherry Cromwell in the underground mall, when she and Touma Kamijou had gone to the hospital with the doctor with the frog face.

It was…

The reserved air, cowering in the face of everything…Its owner was…

“…Hyouka?”

4

“What on earth is that?” Mikoto wondered aloud.

She stood dumbly in the middle of a rain-pelted street under the umbrella she’d bought at the convenience store. A street on which—whether because the final school closing time was past, the weather was bad, or some other reason—nobody could be seen.

She’d been looking for Touma Kamijou, but it was late, the passing shower had turned into something a lot more serious, and she was on the verge of throwing her hands up, when suddenly, a group of buildings elsewhere in the city crumbled into dust and dozens of giant, sharp, wing-looking things had appeared.

Even for a supernatural ability, they were enormous. Could any ability even do that in the first place?

Plus, a moment later the wings had done something like an electrical discharge, which had obliterated part of the area just outside the city.

It was only “like” an electrical discharge—it wasn’t actually one. Mikoto was the most talented electromaster in Academy City. By her estimation, the power hadn’t used electricity.

But then, what was it?

The more it resembled electricity, the more trouble she found herself having identifying it. Gradually, she started to realize that the scientific rules she’d always believed in didn’t apply here.

She tried to call Kuroko Shirai but didn’t get an answer.

Calling the Judgment station and even Anti-Skill yielded the same result.

She felt like she’d been left behind in a terrible place. And she didn’t know why, but Academy City’s peacekeeping functions had completely shut down. Now there was this big monster. She found herself in a completely unexpected, unreal situation, and now she stood stock-still, her umbrella open.

Then.

Someone, footsteps splashing through the puddles, passed by Mikoto from behind. They were headed straight toward the distant monster. The girl was soaking wet, running without any rain gear. Mikoto remembered her. She was the sister always with Kamijou, the one with the pure-white habit.

“W-wait! What the heck are you doing here?! Can’t you tell it’s dangerous?!” Mikoto reactively went after her and grabbed her arm.

“Get off of me!!” shouted Index without turning back. “I have to go. Hyouka’s there. I don’t know why, but I have to stop it. That’s my friend over there!!”

Her explanation didn’t make sense—maybe the situation was too overwhelming. Mikoto began to wonder if she was hysterical because of it, but then another figure appeared to her.

“Touma!!”

Yes, it was Touma Kamijou.

He came around a bend about a hundred meters away and onto the main road they were on. He didn’t seem to notice them. His eyes, too, focused only on the cluster of giant wings.

Having found the one she was looking for, Mikoto opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Because despite finding someone she knew, Mikoto felt Index’s resistance to her turn explosive. She wrenched her arm away from Mikoto and shouted into the heavy rain.

“No, don’t, Touma! Please don’t kill Hyouka!!”

5

Touma Kamijou was on the run.

He was just about to return to the main city to stop the angel, which was his top priority, after losing sight of Vento at the iron bridge. And just like he had when going after Last Order, he’d managed to bump into the black-suits.

He fled into a narrow alley too small for a car to easily enter, then tried to throw off their pursuit by following a complex pattern of roads. But despite his home-field advantage, he couldn’t lead trained professionals around by the nose. It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot by now.

“No, don’t, Touma! Please don’t kill Hyouka!!”

So when he heard the yell, he thought his heart would stop. It wasn’t so much what she said as the fact that he simply conflated the “loud noise” with a gunshot and thought he’d been shot.

“!!” He froze in place and then took two seconds to turn around. Finally, when he saw Index and Mikoto running toward him, he relaxed a little. Right away he changed his mind—this wasn’t the time to relax—and grabbed their arms and dove onto another back road.

Several splashing footsteps rang out on the main street.

It was the black-suits.

They were looking here and there, but they’d eventually find where they were hiding. But Index—and Mikoto, of course—didn’t care a wink about the black-suits. Index looked up at him with frightened eyes for some reason.

She didn’t ask what had happened or why he was on the run. She only stated the more important things. “Please, Touma, don’t go over there. I don’t know how or why, but I’m pretty sure that angel is Hyouka. I have to stop what’s happening no matter what, but you can’t get involved! If you touch her, she’ll disappear, even if you don’t mean for that to happen!!”

Index urgently pleaded with him, grabbing his shirt, which had absorbed water. She must have been agitated, because her words didn’t link together. But he knew the name “Hyouka,” at least.

Hyouka Kazakiri. An aggregation of involuntary diffusion fields. One with a human mind but not a human body.

Seriously…?

The girl Kamijou knew had nothing to do with such destructive behavior. But if someone outside were to interfere with the composition of the fields, maybe it could cause that sort of change. If they were completely in control of them, then maybe they could even control everything, from her form to her actions.

It seemed like a natural phenomenon, somehow incomplete.

But then who made her like that?

Is it because Vento took down all the students in the city…? No, it’s not…

As Kamijou thought desperately to himself, Index continued in earnest. “Touma, I’ll do something about Hyouka, so please, don’t get involved!”

Hyouka Kazakiri was the first friend Index had ever made. She wouldn’t want to make Kazakiri her enemy, even if she did waver due to her position as the archive of forbidden books.

Kamijou mulled it over. Hyouka Kazakiri was a good person. But if she was out of control, all bets were off. Someone’s usual personality didn’t matter if they were dead drunk, either.

So he said this: “That won’t work.”

“Touma!!”

“I’ll be the one to stop her. And she’s not the only problem here. I can’t leave everything to you.”

“But if you use your right hand, Hyouka will die!!”

“I won’t let her die!!” Kamijou yelled back, forgetting that they were hiding from the black-suits. He grabbed the complaining Index by the nape of her neck and pulled her to him. When she froze in surprise, he continued. “I’m not doing this to kill her! I’m doing this to rescue her! Does that look like how Kazakiri’s supposed to be to you?! Of course it doesn’t. Something happened to make her like that! I need to go save her, damn it!! Don’t get involved? Screw that. I don’t need your permission to save her!!”

Index’s mouth opened and closed.

Kamijou continued anyway. “I don’t know exactly how she’s built magically or what an angel is supposed to be here. I need your knowledge for that. But the involuntary diffusion fields are involved in all this, so you won’t know everything, either. I’ll tell you about that part of it. Together, we can save Hyouka Kazakiri!”

The sounds of rain started to grow distant.

Eventually only the boy’s words dominated their surroundings.

“A ton has been happening in the city today. I honestly don’t even know the half of it, and I don’t have any clues how to solve it, either. But I know that I’ve gotta do this! We’re going to rescue Kazakiri! Am I wrong?!” he demanded.

He had to wake up the girl going on about misdirected things regarding her friend, like kill or don’t kill.

“Let’s go, Index. Help me out so we can save her!!”

Index heard his voice and nodded.

Kamijou let go of her neck.

Then he scanned the exit of the alley again. First, they had to shake off the black-suits on the main road somehow. The bullets were really just normal bullets, without any sorcery or powers behind them. They were the worst kind of problem for Kamijou. His right hand worked only on unnatural powers.

Then…

“Haaah…” Mikoto, who’d just been pulled into here with them, heaved a sigh and tossed her umbrella aside. She examined Kamijou and Index with a tired expression for some reason. “I don’t get what’s going on, but I can tell you’re up to your necks in some ridiculous problem.”

“W-well, you’re not wrong.”

“And that an acquaintance of yours is at the center of all this.”

“Not an acquaintance, a friend,” corrected Index.

Mikoto’s face grew even more exasperated as she stared out of the alley. “Just to make sure, she’s not a bad person, right?”

“Definitely not,” said Kamijou immediately and without hesitation. “Index says so, too. That person’s our friend.”

“Your friend…”

Mikoto looked at the angel spraying around electrical discharge–like phenomena between its wings as it moved in the distance, then back at Kamijou and Index one more time. “You mean, um, that person, right?”

Index and Kamijou answered at almost the same time.

“Of course, who else?”

“Quit asking the obvious.”

“Ha-ha-ha. Anyway, those people in black before were bad guys, right?”

“Can’t figure out why they’re after me, though. They’re not good guys, at least.”

Then they heard several sets of footsteps enter the alley. The black-suits, who had been examining the entrance, had stormed in. Not simply entered but stormed in. There was no time.

Mikoto grinned anyway. “Oh, whatever. If that’s your friend, who cares? I won’t ask again, so go save her already. I’ll make do here.”

“You idiot, you’ll…!!” Kamijou tried to grab Mikoto’s shoulder.

“Sorry, sorry. No time to stop. Starting now!”

Mikoto had already launched an arcade coin toward the alley’s exit.

The Railgun.

Her Mach-three strike gouged out the walls on either side, thundering and spraying flashes as it darted toward the main street. She probably picked a trajectory that wouldn’t hit the black-suits, but the shock wave alone flipped over several of them.

A gray dust cloud danced into the air.

Before the raindrops could push it back down, Mikoto stomped on one of the grounded black-suit’s stomachs to knock him out, then leaped onto the main street, which had no cover.

“Misaka!!” shouted Kamijou.

Unfortunately, the black-suits who had been waiting on the main street were returning fire, so he couldn’t go any farther. Meanwhile, Mikoto, who had incredible strength in terms of “normal combat force,” shouted back to him from the battlefield of bullets.

“The punishment game!!”

“What?!”

“Where you have to do anything I say! It’s effective all day, so you have to save your friend and come back, got it?!”

Kamijou tried to shout something back, but the sounds of crackling electricity and gunshots cut him off. Shit, he swore to himself. “I’ll protect her! Don’t you die either!!”

He let Index pull him along, and he ran farther into the alley as though shaking free of something. They had one destination. If Index was right, it was where Hyouka Kazakiri was waiting.

After hearing the wet splashing of footsteps, Mikoto sighed on the battlefield.

She’d totally drawn the short lot.

The punishment game…Ended up using it for something like this, huh?

But she figured there was no helping it.

He said he’d risk his life to save a friend. She couldn’t put a damper on that. But if these black-suits (was that what they were?) hadn’t caused this issue in the first place, maybe she’d have gotten to continue the punishment game in a better way.

When she thought of that, she got a little mad.

“I am in a really bad mood right now.”

Several muzzles openly pointed at her.

But right before they could squeeze the triggers, a bunch of manhole covers, water pipes, and signboards in front of her gathered to her to form a shield. It was magnetism. The bullets all bounced off the shield of steel.

“If you’re not going to run, come at me like your life depends on it.”

Right on the heels of her shield, she fired lances of lightning out at random.

She didn’t plan to lose.

6

Kamijou and Index ran through the streets in the downpour.

Kamijou was worried about Mikoto behind them, but he would probably only hold her back. He forced his mind from her and looked ahead.

As he did, Index, running beside him, asked him, “Hey, Touma, why is the city so quiet? Besides Hyouka, I kind of feel a flow of mana!”

“Yeah, it’s quiet because everyone’s probably unconscious. Because of the sorcerer who got into the city! I’d like to know how her attack works, too. And if there’s a way to heal them!!”

He summed up the occurrences in Academy City. Index fell silent after hearing it and looked down in thought.

As her feet plodded over the rain-pelted road, she looked back up. “I think…it’s probably divine punishment.”

“What?”

“It’s using a certain emotion as the key. It takes down anyone who has that emotion, no matter how far away they are! That’s why it’s divine punishment, like from God. Basically, no matter who or where they are, they won’t be forgiven for spitting on the Lord!” Index continued. “Touma, did you see the sorcerer acting in a certain way? Like trying to guide you to a specific emotion more than she had to?!”

A specific emotion. Kamijou thought back to his confrontations with Vento of the Front.

Her words and actions, purposely provoking.

Her makeup and body piercings, purposely creating a sense of revulsion.

Her many attacks, purposely fired at civilians with nothing to do with this.

Vento could have had her own reasons—or more likely, there was a magical meaning to them—but it was possible her role aside from that was to make him feel a certain way. Which meant the emotion had to be…

“Disgust…No, hostility or malice? Could that be the trigger for the divine punishment spell?!”

If she had an attack like that, Vento would be nearly invincible. Nobody would be able to stand in her way. Just considering the thought would trigger the spell.

As Vento had tried to go through the gate to Academy City without permission, Anti-Skill, who protected the city’s peace, had tried to stop her. The other officers had been informed via radio they’d been taken out—and then the whole city saw it on the news after that.

“I think there are stages of the divine punishment spell depending on their hostility! Like making them unconscious, binding their flesh, or blocking outside interference. But whatever stage you get, it’s over by then. Until the sorcerer decides they don’t need it anymore, I don’t think those people will ever get better!!”

That’s why everyone collapsed.

Not even just in Academy City anymore. It could be happening outside the city—and with news broadcast to Japan or the rest of the world, the damage could be spreading. Aside from them, in groups and agencies cooperating with Academy City, they could have automatically gotten notice of it and seen victims.

But…

“Is that even possible? Is sorcery really just that convenient to use?!”

“Not normally! There’s nothing about it in my 103,000 grimoires. But this is the only way to explain what’s happening! …I know it sounds crazy. Divine punishment is just that—punishment meted out by the heavens. There’s no way regular people could do it!!”

But Vento had. Was that simply the power of God’s Right Seat?

“That bastard—so that’s how she…!!”

“Wait, Touma! If this is all true, don’t tell me about the sorcerer at all! My Walking Church doesn’t have its papal-class defenses right now. Unlike you, the spell could affect me, too!!”

“Oh,” said Kamijou, quickly shutting his mouth.

Not even Index could defend against Vento’s divine judgment spell. As long as there wasn’t an exception like Imagine Breaker, Vento could crush anyone if that condition was met. And Index was someone who specifically fought sorcerers who hurt people.

Either way, if there was no way to heal them, there was no point sticking to the topic. Kazakiri came first right now.

Maybe Index knew about that, too—she’d even exposed Vento’s divine judgment spell. “What about Kazakiri…the angel? She’ll be all right, won’t she?! We can still save her, right?!”

“Well…”

“Shit, why did that thing show up now?! Is it related to the divine judgment in the city?! Why is it clearly an angel and not just a simple phenomenon going out of control?!”

“I don’t know!!” shouted Index in denial, which was unusual given that she had memorized 103,000 grimoires by rote. And yet that had to be an angel, something from the magic side, out there in the distance.

“…It looks and works a lot like the ones from the grimoires in my head, at least. But the parts it’s using are all over the place, and I’ve never seen any of it before! It’s like looking at a mural with letters you don’t know on it. The picture shows basically what’s happening, but you can’t figure out the culture or mental state of the person with it!!”

“…”

The most frustrated was probably Index. She was the “index” of forbidden books meant to solve these problems, after all.

“At the very least, I can tell that the core commanding the angel is somewhere else, but…”

“So even you can’t figure it out…”

Hyouka Kazakiri was made out of involuntary diffusion fields.

That very foundation contained supernatural ability research and cutting-edge scientific technology. And if Index couldn’t deal with those, then she couldn’t take any countermeasures against this angel.

As Kamijou and Index ran, they continued their conversation, driven by impatience enough that they didn’t worry about the downpour.

“What about you, Touma? Do you know anything about how Hyouka’s angel works?”

“Not really…”

It was easy to say it uses involuntary diffusion fields. But he couldn’t explain how that worked. Everyone knew cars ran on gasoline, but very few could actually draw up a blueprint for one.

…Isn’t there anyone who knows more about this than me? Someone on a college-professor level who could draw a “blueprint” like that while humming to themselves…?

But Kamijou didn’t have any adult or scientist contacts like that. He was about to curse when a single person came up in his mind.

“Miss Komoe!!”

Back at the beginning of September when Sherry attacked the underground mall, she’d figured out Kazakiri’s identity just by his story. She would know a lot about involuntary diffusion fields.

Her phone number was still in his cell phone from when he called her back then. As he ran through the rainy streets, he immediately contacted his homeroom teacher on his phone.

But…

“What’s the matter, Touma?”

“Shit!!”

She wasn’t picking up. Maybe she’d fallen victim to Vento’s attack, or maybe there was some other reason she couldn’t use her cell phone right now. No matter how long he waited, she didn’t pick up.

Out of options…!! Kamijou clenched his teeth and started scrolling through his contacts list. But all the entries were students. Nobody here would know more than Miss Komoe about—

“!!”

Kamijou immediately called the bottom number in his list. It was the newest number he’d added.

And the name was…

“Misaka!!”

“Gah!! Wh-what? I’m really freaking busy! Don’t give me more work to do!!”

Bang-bang-bang!! With all the gunshots in the background, Mikoto’s voice was mixed with static. Maybe the connection was particularly poor because she was using electric attacks.

Kamijou didn’t have any time, either. He got right to the point without asking about her trouble. “Tokiwadai has totally different lesson plans than regular middle schools, right?! They teach you all so you guys can be at the forefront when you graduate, so you take college-level courses, too, right?!”

“What?! What are you—? Yikes! What the heck are you talking about?!”

“I need information to stop that angel! I need an adviser who knows a lot about involuntary diffusion fields!! You’re my only hope! Can you do it?!”

He heard a weird sputter come across the cell phone. After taking it away from his ear for a moment, he shouted, “H-hey, Misaka! Did you get shot?! Hey!!”

“I did not!!”

Buzz-spark-crack!! came a series of lightning attack noises.

Misaka’s voice followed in their wake. “N-not like I have a choice!! No mercy, huh? Asking me to fight while thinking about something else!!”

“Okay, then Index, you take my phone. Anything you don’t understand, ask her!”

“Huh?” Index looked at him blankly as Kamijou tried to give her the cell phone.

Meanwhile, for Mikoto’s part…“What?!”

“??? What’s the problem, Misaka?”

“Well, no, er, it’s fine, but, whaaat?!”

“I’ll leave it to you!!”

He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he didn’t have time to worry about it right now.

“I’ve got my right hand, and I don’t think I can help you with anything sorcery-related,” said Kamijou, pushing his phone at the sister in white. “Sorry, Index, but can you do this by yourself?”

“What will you do, Touma?”

“You said the angel and the core commanding it are in different places, right? You go to where the core is and solve the problem. Meanwhile I’ll do the angel job myself.”

He continued, saying, “Like I said before, there’s a sorcerer using the divine judgment spell. A sorcerer named Vento from a group called God’s Right Seat is after this angel version of Kazakiri. I’ll have to stop Vento first if we want to free Kazakiri. I want you to handle the core causing the problem. While you’re at it, I’ll protect Kazakiri from Vento’s attacks!!”

When she heard that, Index frowned a little bit in worry. She was probably thinking about the sorcery involved. But she didn’t verbalize it. Instead, she replied, “Okay. I’ll leave Hyouka to you, Touma!!”

“Yeah, I’ll be relying on you, too, Index!!”

The two separated and ran down different paths…

…both with the same objective: rescue Hyouka Kazakiri.

7

“Ha-ha, that’s fuckin’ crazy! What the hell is it?!” cheered Amata Kihara in the obsolescent office room.

Tons of these “feathers” had suddenly appeared hundreds of meters in front of him, leveling buildings all around. He could see only the “feathers” from his window, but for some reason, the term angel came to mind at a mere glance.

After inserting the virus into the mind of Last Order, sleeping on the desk right now, no sooner had he rebooted her than that being appeared. The name of the virus the higher-ups had given him was, in a stroke of unoriginality, the English word ANGEL. It couldn’t possibly be unrelated. Something unconnected to science had manifested through science.

But Kihara didn’t reject this unscientific state of affairs. No, he was astonished science had actually set foot into this territory at last.

Aleister, Academy City General Board chairperson…Kihara thought of himself as a mad scientist, but this guy was something else.

“Damn, now I’m jealous! You’re fucking insane, Aleister!! Don’t you even know the meaning of the word theory?! A scientist rejecting science? What kind of scientist does that make you?!”

Unlike Kihara, his five subordinates nearby were bewildered. They didn’t know how to deal with what they were seeing as something real, and they looked like they were perplexed as to whether it was even real.

“Your goal was to use that thing to crush Academy City’s enemies?! Yeah, I guess if you had somethin’ like that, most assholes would be helpless. Dunno who was sticking to the outside walls, but too bad for them! Check it out, you bastards! He brought out a fucking angel! Forget the three antinuclear principles!! Since when was the Bible a freaking pop-up picture book, anyway?!”

His Hound Dog subordinates, their minds unable to process the information, sluggishly followed Kihara’s command and looked out the dust-covered glass window.

But none of them was looking at the distant angel.

Because Accelerator was flying through the air and about to smash through the window.

Craaaassssshhhh!! The glass exploded.

He’d already unlocked his ability usage mode.

One of the black-suits near the window took the brunt of Accelerator’s flying kick and careened back to the opposite wall. The man struck the thin inner wall without bouncing, his combat armor pulverized as he crumpled to the floor.

Accelerator didn’t bother to check if he was alive. His blood-red eyes rolled to and fro, then locked onto his target.

“Kiiihaaaaaaaraaaaa!!” he screamed, leveling his shotgun and pulling the trigger without hesitation.

He aimed for everything from the chest to the waist. He wanted to kill him with perfect certainty.

Kihara thrust one of his nearby lackeys in front of him. The man gave a stupid-sounding grunt and danced right out to where he’d block it.

Countless shots ripped into him, spraying his Hound Dog blood everywhere and sending him to the floor. Kihara didn’t care. He started laughing so hard, it looked like pieces of his face would break.

“You gotta actually aim that thing! You’ll be a bother to everyone if you don’t!!”

Accelerator ignored the clear provocation. Instead, his gaze shifted to glance over the flustered black-suits hastily readying their weapons. Annoying fucking shields…He ground his teeth. Fine! Hope the bunch of you don’t start pleading with “please forgive me, I was only doing what he ordered me to”!!

He changed the vector of his leg strength, set his sights on the Hound Dogs instead of Kihara, and lunged up to one of them. Rather than use his shotgun, he extended four fingers and his thumb. A knife and a pistol were fixed on the man’s combat armor, and four whole grenades were equipped near his shoulders.

Those were what he was after. He used his four fingers to remove all their pins.

Not a moment later, he kicked the man in the gut, sending him flying into the other Hound Dogs before they all went down like bowling pins. The man on top quickly reached for the grenades still attached to him…

…and then the human bomb exploded.

The shrapnel grenades sent blood and flesh spraying everywhere.

Now there was only one Hound Dog left besides Kihara.

“Ahh?!” squealed the last man as Accelerator’s eyes rolled around to look at him. He immediately grabbed something lying on the desk. It was Last Order, limp and unconscious as though they’d done excessive processing on her with the Testament.

Right now, Accelerator was holding a shotgun that couldn’t aim very precisely. The man must have thought Accelerator wouldn’t be able to attack with his shield.

Unfortunately for him…

“”

Accelerator’s eyes changed. There was a grr-crash!! After altering the vector of his leg strength, he closed the distance to the Hound Dog in an instant, arriving right beside the man.

The man had been right—Accelerator didn’t fire his shotgun.

Instead, he brought the meter-long metal gun barrel around in a full swing and smashed it into the Hound Dog’s face. The impact shattered the shotgun, spraying tiny springs and cylindrical bullets from the magazines into the air. With a muffled sound, the man spun around four times in midair like a flying top before slamming into the floor, and then he stopped moving.

Last Order ended up released and in the air; Accelerator caught her with one hand and gently put her on the desk.

Then he looked at Amata Kihara, the culprit of all this.

But Kihara cackled, as if to say Accelerator had just made it easier for him. “That was so cool!! Now that you’re showing your true colors, I think I’m in love, Accelerator!!”

“Time to turn you to scrap, you shithead!!”

The two villains’ shouts shook the air.

Kihara opened his fists, then clenched them again, licking his lips. He ran for Accelerator.

His “reflection” wouldn’t work on Kihara, but Accelerator wasn’t shy about it anymore.

He opened his own fingers and began to run.

Remaining time for ability usage mode: sixty seconds.

8

Touma Kamijou had reached ground zero.

It was a corner of School District 7 he was familiar with. The tall buildings were rather high-grade, famous department stores and corporation sites, for the place to be called student-oriented. You could always find restaurants and such inside the department stores in magazine columns. He didn’t visit the place every day, since it was out of the way of his school commute, but Kamijou had come here several times to eat with Index (with absolutely no “mood” of any kind involved).

School District 7 had both a high-quality feel like the Garden of Learning and the more civilian smell like his own student dorm, and this corner was in one of the more high-quality areas. Normally, during the day, many girls in Tokiwadai Middle School and Kirigaoka Girls’ Academy school uniforms would have been walking around here.

It was a uniquely adult atmosphere that needed more than children to exist.

And now…

…like a collapsed sand castle, it was a pile of wreckage and debris.

“…”

Every single building about a hundred meters out from here had been destroyed, mowed down. Not that it was a complete crater without even any broken pieces remaining—no, it was a more disorderly disaster, like a giant had used its arm to wrench each individual building free. On the other hand, though, the buildings tilted diagonally and department stores with only their first floors remaining were strangely vivid scars, and they shook Kamijou’s heart.

Vento of the Front.

There must have been a ton of people her special attack immobilized. And in that situation, all these buildings had collapsed around them. He couldn’t even imagine how many people were buried in this mountain of wreckage. Rescue teams were running late, but even if they got here, how many would they be able to save?

His nerves felt numb.

With floaty movements, he stared at the center of ground zero.

There was an angel.

Her main body was the same size as a normal person. Her wings, however, were enormous—so gargantuan they looked like they’d swallow up the person inside them.

They gave off a dazzling light, seemingly enough to ward away all the gray dust clouds and heavy rain. They ranged from ten to a hundred meters long. They had no uniformity; they looked like sharply edged weeds sprouting every which way. Each of the dozens of giant wings connected to the back of the small-statured girl.

The angel was about a hundred meters off, slowly moving to the size relative to him. She was simply walking with her two slender legs, but every time her foot hit the ground, there was a dull thump.

The girl.

Hyouka Kazakiri.

Her hair was long and pretty, with a little bit of brown mixed into its black. It mostly reached down to her waist, but one tuft of it was tied to the side and hung down. Her skirt, part of her blue school-designated uniform, looked timid, its length unchanged. Atop her blue blazer was an accenting red necktie.

It should have been a girl Touma Kamijou knew. It should have been a fainthearted, blubbering girl, the kind who would hesitate to punch even a villain.

But…

Right now, what Kamijou was seeing was clearly different from that image of Hyouka Kazakiri. Her head hung low, lips half-open and tongue hanging out. Her eyes were wide open, and they shook irregularly, like a mechanical lens reading tiny letters. The rainwater on her face mixed with her drool, dampening the top of her uniform. But even the slimy light and feel didn’t move her an inch.

Dozens of giant wings. An inhuman atmosphere. A wall-like presence. It was a lot like Misha Kreutzev. But the huge angel before him now was even more unnatural, more twisted.

Her face held no emotion. Her uncannily wandering eyeballs shed no tears.

Something wasn’t letting them shed any.

A kind of restriction.

Above her head was a ring, about fifteen centimeters across. The ring’s rotational speed changed in time with her footsteps, and its diameter kept growing and shrinking. On the outer edge of the ring were several pencil-shaped sticks pointing outward, which were quickly retracting and extending, making click-click-clack-clack noises.

Touma Kamijou remembered something. Inside Hyouka Kazakiri’s head, there was an object that looked like a triangular prism. Her hands and feet moved to match that prism.

That’s what he felt like he was watching now. It was even more chilling than seeing a person controlled by a bunch of electrodes in his head.

Kaza…kiri…

Kamijou averted his eyes from her terrible face right away. It would have been easier to look at a corpse. He knew deep in his heart that he had to stop this. He didn’t need a reason.

“Kazakiriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!”

He shouted despite himself.

Kazakiri’s feet, on their way somewhere, stopped suddenly. Her neck slowly turned toward Kamijou.

However…

With the loud scritch of metal against metal, the angel halo above her head spun around quickly. All the pencil-sized rods surrounding its outer edge went shh-ghh at the same time and stabbed inward, into the halo.

He heard something like a scream.

It forced Kazakiri’s neck to stop moving and shake madly. Then, like something got inside the gears, her neck shifted back to its original position. She resumed her slow pace forward, her neck unnaturally twisted.

Spark!! An electric sound rang out.

Far overhead, as each of the giant feathers got close to another, they sparkled with a pale-blue light. They almost looked like they were checking themselves before firing.

Crack-crack. Strange lights sparked around Kazakiri, timed as if aligned with her angel halo. Then, as though guided by those lights, her body moved.

It looked like she was afraid—she didn’t want to do anything, but something that way was worrying her too much, and she wouldn’t be satisfied until she went over there.

Just like someone worried about whether they’d left the gas on. Just like thinking the dirt on your hands wasn’t coming off despite washing them numerous times.

…Like a severe case of obsessional neurosis?

He had a vague idea—it wasn’t based on any rules, but it was that feeling of just having to make sure. The lights he saw were the same. They were mentally guiding Kazakiri’s movements by appearing in one “important spot” after another.

However…

If she went on too long in that state, it would have to wear down her nerves. It was the same as pressing a burning iron plate to the back of someone blindfolded, as leading a lost person to the exit of a labyrinth.

And the act completely ignored Kazakiri’s human mind.

Damn it…This is bullshit!!

Kamijou almost ran up to her, but his feet stopped. What was he planning to do? He couldn’t touch her. The Imagine Breaker would destroy the illusion called Hyouka Kazakiri, no questions asked.

“Damn it…!!”

Kamijou clenched his teeth and pounded his useless right hand into a wall of wreckage. He couldn’t save the people buried here. He couldn’t save Kazakiri, attacked by this strange phenomenon. He felt so incredibly small and hopelessly wretched.

Then, as though the misfortune in front of him had called forth more misfortune, he heard a new set of footsteps.

“Oh my. Were the mortal sinners busy licking each other’s wounds?”

Kamijou turned around.

It was the woman adorned in the archetypical dress from an age long past with piercings all over her face. A member of the group called God’s Right Seat, who had robbed the city of almost all its functions and now strolled leisurely through it, come to kill Kamijou.

Vento of the Front.

Her hands gripped a giant hammer covered in barbed wire.

Whether due to sickness or some other reason, red blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and it had dyed her rain-pelted clothing here and there, too. And yet her expression was the same.

All the piercings ruining the balance of her face, Vento, weapon in one hand, grinned at him. A grin filled with scorn and disdain, the kind you wouldn’t think anyone would direct at another person.

“I went through all that trouble to save you for later, and now you come to me to be slaughtered. Were you so sick of seeing tragedy that you wanted me to crush you first?”

“I won’t let you kill Kazakiri.”

“Really, now. You feel things for something like that? What an awful philanthropist. That thing is a symbol of blasphemy, even more hideously corrupt than the great pregnancy in Revelation. Even perverts would never accept something like that.”

“Bastard!! Take that back!!”

“Take what back? Oh, are you trying to tell me she’s not normally like that? How absurd. This may be the first time I’ve seen it, but do you really think the head of Academy City would use the entire city to make something harmless, useless? It has such vast power and worth. Maybe what you saw before now was just an incomplete, imperfect irregularity.”

The head of Academy City.

The one with half the world, the science side, under his absolute control.

If using all the involuntary diffusion fields in the city had made Hyouka Kazakiri, the leader of the one who was (or might have been) controlling her had to be him. If she hadn’t spontaneously appeared, if there was some kind of goal behind her creation, then the terms incomplete and imperfect did indeed sound credible.

“As one of God’s Right Seat, I can’t overlook that monster. I mean, we’re not exactly organized, but none of us can approve of something like this. A lump of blasphemy, scorning everything we offer to Crossism—she must be purged.”

Craaack!! A loud roar hit Kamijou’s ears.

…?! Again?!

He turned around to see lightning-like flares flickering out of the giant wings connected to Kazakiri’s back. The sparks formed bridges between feathers, and the sound’s pitch was steadily growing higher. It could all rush out of it at any moment.

Kamijou fell silent for a moment and thought about everything.

And then he said this.

“Can I just say this again?”

“What is it?”

“Take it back, you shithead.”

“Oh?” Vento said with an amused smile. “So you do have a cute side to you. All right, fine. I’ll sympathize with your feelings. Either way, you’re both set to be killed in turn, so I’ll be nice and kill you together.”

For her, that was probably the biggest concession she could make. Though from Kamijou’s standpoint, it was such a meaningless condition he wanted to spit.

“Oh, did you want to save that monster? That won’t work. Not even the two of you together can defeat me,” said Vento in an entertained tone of voice.

“Did you know that angels don’t actually have their own wills? They’re nothing but God’s tools,” she said with a scornful laugh. “If it malfunctions or gets confused with other chains of command or something, it turns into what we call a fallen angel. The most famous would be the rebellion of Lucifer, or Bearer of Light. A single ‘bug’ in the program dragged a third of all the angels assigned in Heaven into confusion, and then into war.

“But anyway,” she said, scraping her hammer along the asphalt.

She looked at Kamijou.

“Is that monster there sacred? Or is it corrupt?”

“!”

“It isn’t even worth asking! That thing is just a goddamned fallen angel!! And it’s not even the kind God made before it went out of control. It’s a man-made doll with misshapen wings, then further corrupted with sin after sin! A miserable pile of unholy guilt!!”

Vento lifted her hammer off the ground with one hand and pointed it at Kamijou.

“I don’t know what Academy City has in mind! Did he fail to make a perfect angel, or was he trying to make a fallen one to begin with?! It doesn’t matter—I will never agree to anything you bastards do!!”

Just the emotion in her voice was enough to overwhelm most people. Her words were a perfect rejection of the being known as Hyouka Kazakiri.

“I don’t think my ‘real spell’ will work against that thing now. I don’t even know whether it has the same mental structure as a person in the first place. But I’ll kill it! Even if I lack the power, that fallen angel is incomplete! I’ll make a spell to interfere with its complete mess of an internal control system and have it destroy itself!! I’m telling you I’ll blow the damn monster away with its own strength!!”

Kamijou listened to her speak. He clenched his teeth, glared straight at her, and moved his lips.

“…Not happening.”

He was struck by how unreasonable the combat conditions were. He didn’t even know if he could beat Vento in the first place, and now he had to protect Kazakiri while he fought. To add to that, Kazakiri might not be harmless, either. The insane sparks jolting from those wings would kill him in one shot if they hit him in the back.

But Touma Kamijou clenched his right fist hard anyway.

And he spoke.

“…She’s already been put in this situation by the higher-ups in Academy City, controlling her limbs, staining them with blood, and even sealing away her ability to ask for help or shed tears…And you think I’ll let someone who just waltzed on in here treat her like a monster and kill her?”

It didn’t matter whether his words reached “her” or not. Kamijou had decided to protect her. To make good on that decision, he now stood before Vento. With the downpour soaking him and the giant angel behind him, continuing to accept as many of the disadvantageous conditions as he could.

“Don’t screw with me. The hell do you think a person’s friends are?!”