Chapter 9: Moment of the Great Distortion’s Correction
CHAPTER 9
Moment of the Great Distortion’s Correction
Broken_Right_Hand.
1
Shizuri Mugino.
The fourth-ranked Level Five. A bona fide monster who could freely use her terrifying ability Meltdown. And a fated rival that Hamazura had thus far defeated not once, but twice. Appearing before him now—he, who had fled Academy City to faraway Russia—was a hunting dog. It was no exaggeration to say she was one of the most infamous of her kind.
As far as Hamazura knew, she’d lost one of her arms. Looking carefully, he saw that her yellow coat sleeve seemed strangely baggy. Maybe it was only her wrist that had a human form and the inside was something more robotic.
“Pfeh.”
There were no words.
All Hamazura noticed was Mugino hanging her head, shoulders moving up and down eerily, mechanically.
“Heh-heh-heh. Ku-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
“…!!”
When she looked up, she was sticking her tongue out.
On its tender red flesh rested a small case. A rectangular holder, the kind you might put mechanical pencil lead into. It contained some white powder. Something Hamazura knew all too well.
Crystals.
This stuff had tortured Rikou Takitsubo. It was almost like a drug, allowing users to intentionally cause their abilities to go berserk. Hamazura’s and Takitsubo’s wanderings in Russia were merely one part of their efforts to combat its side effects—and yet, Mugino had dug up the root of all their struggles just to throw it in their faces once again.
She must not have even thought about it…
…about the wall that divided a Level 0 from a Level 5.
Come to think of it, where had Takitsubo gone? Was she truly safe? Nobody was doing anything terrible to her, were they?
Hamazura spat out the words as they boiled up in his mind. “After all this time, you still want to use that shit on Takitsubo?! Just to make us suffer a little bit longer, just to hurt us a little bit more, without any logical reason?!?!”
In response to his fury, Mugino gave him a scornful grin.
Her mouth moved.
But she didn’t answer. After all, she hadn’t opened her mouth to speak.
Ker-crack.
Shizuri Mugino’s upper and lower teeth crushed the case of Crystals between them.
Hamazura’s eyes trembled; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Meanwhile, the soft crick-crack-crunch-crunch noise continued. There was no mistaking that it was coming from Mugino’s mouth—the sound of her breaking down and chewing the case’s sharp fragments. Human mouths, of course, were not the sturdiest things. The taste of blood was probably filling her mouth at that very moment.
And yet.
Only that plastered-on smile remained in the monster’s expression.
“…Takitsubo, eh? Why should I care about every little thing that small fry does…?”
Mrmph-mmph-hmrph…Mugino continued to mutter as the sounds of fibers tearing filtered through her mouth.
Something was filling her.
Something nondescript began to circulate through the body of the woman named Shizuri Mugino.
“Crystals…A substance that allows espers to intentionally cause their abilities to go out of control. Some researcher from that crew Rescue, or whatever they call it, said it was the path to Level Six. Even ignoring the hopeless answer from the Tree Diagram, they struggled in vain, using resonance or telepathy or something like that. Clearly the Crystals still have their secrets, but I don’t think about stuff that complicated.”
Shiage Hamazura had misunderstood.
Misunderstood how serious it was that he’d defeated the fourth-ranked Level Five twice. And now that he stood on the same stage as the powerful, he finally began to realize what lengths they would go to for the sake of eliminating the powerless Level Zero.
“Hey, Hamazura? If the fourth-ranked Level Five went so crazy she couldn’t control herself, how much worse do you think the damage would be?”
Whoosh!!!!!!
A bloodcurdling white light erupted.
Not one light, not two.
Thousands, tens of thousands of intense lights radiated out from the woman named Shizuri Mugino, in every direction.
2
Touma Kamijou and Fiamma of the Right.
These two men confronted each other atop the Star of Bethlehem.
An intense bloodlust filled the air, emanating from Fiamma and flooding the space around him. An abnormal power had gathered to his third arm, the symbol of his strength. It was so overwhelming even Kamijou, who knew little about the inner workings of sorcery, could easily grasp its presence.
Kamijou had no choice but to face this terrible opponent alone. The sorceress Lesser wasn’t on the Star of Bethlehem. Sasha Kreutzev, who had been present only moments ago, had fallen through the cracks in the floor Fiamma had destroyed, dropping down to the fortress’s lower levels. Kamijou had nobody to call on.
But he never faltered.
He clenched his fist into a tight ball as he faced his enemy.
A Soul Arm rested in Fiamma’s hand. It was controlling Index remotely, granting him access to the knowledge in her 103,000 grimoires.
It was so close, Kamijou might reach it if he simply stretched out his hand.
But the sheer wall of strength named Fiamma made that nigh impossible. This wasn’t a problem that could be easily solved by just charging in blindly, and he knew that.
Slowly, slowly…As Kamijou gauged the distance, little by little…
Fiamma smiled.
It was a sign of his cold, merciless heart.
And yet, it was also the expression of a person who believed he wasn’t doing anything malicious whatsoever.
“The Star of Bethlehem has risen. My control over celestial bodies using Gabriel has also been completed. Each of the four planetary aspects has returned to its rightful position.”
Shoom went the sound of something cutting through the air.
Fiamma had casually swung his third arm; it was glowing faintly.
“Everything is now prepared. It’s past time for me to have that right arm of yours. Once I use it as a medium to wield the power that has taken root within me, Project Bethlehem will be complete.”
“…You would go that far to see the Roman Orthodox Church win?” Kamijou tightened his right fist.
Fiamma shook his head. “I don’t care about the Roman Church. Well, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about Crossist society in a broader sense. But fundamentally, my actions are for my own benefit.” He spoke smoothly, without a single pause. “And to add to that, I am not the cause of this war.”
It wasn’t a prepared sermon. He hadn’t simply memorized some set phrases. These were the fundamental ideals that utterly permeated the man named Fiamma. That was why his speech lacked even a moment’s hesitation.
“Yes, I may have pulled the trigger, but the rage, resentment, and envy underpinning this war—that vortex of negative emotions—is simply something that has always inhabited the hearts of people all around the world. Otherwise, could any amount of violence incite a war that spread the flames of conflict so quickly?”
Fiamma’s voice was the only thing flowing between them.
“I am their indulgence.”
“…”
“Say I didn’t really want to do this, that someone else had ordered me to. Make an excuse like that to yourself, and you can commit even the worst atrocities. Humanity is an ugly species.”
“And you think that’s supposed to justify everything you’ve done?”
“Not at all. And I don’t think that way, either,” Fiamma explained simply. “I had two objectives with World War III. The first was to collect every bit of the supplies and data I needed for my plan under the pretext that they were war necessities. And the second was to conduct the ritual to lure the enemy I need to defeat into the open.”
His third arm.
The “symbol” that made him special flickered with light, strong to weak, pulsing.
“After all, even if you acquire a sword that can slay the king of demons, you can’t defeat it if the incarnation of evil is nowhere to be found.”
A moment later.
A slash came.
An attack coming directly from the side.
Distance didn’t matter. And it couldn’t fit within this one room anyway. The giant thing that appeared pierced the walls in its path—and in that instant, the entire room was torn apart, the resulting cut shaving off a massive piece from the Star of Bethlehem itself.
Ba-boom!! The roar reverberated a moment later.
There was an almost electric flash.
Kamijou’s right hand couldn’t cancel it all. If he’d tried to take it head-on, the force would have carried his body away, blasting it thousands of meters back, possibly even sending him hurtling down to the surface.
However.
“Oh?”
A smile from Fiamma.
Touma Kamijou was still standing in the cloven room. Knowing he couldn’t nullify the impossibly massive attack, he’d struck out at the sidelong hit with an uppercut from directly below. As a result, Fiamma’s attack had veered slightly upward, scraping right over Kamijou’s head.
In other words:
“You not only erase—you’ve learned to parry as well, have you?” Fiamma asked, sounding impressed.
And then:
The next attack that came was one nobody present could have anticipated.
Neither Kamijou nor Fiamma.
It was someone else.
In the skies spread past the broken ceiling, something blinked.
A white light.
A moment after Kamijou realized this, a gigantic pillar of pure-white light rained straight down onto Fiamma, bathing his entire body.
Ssszzzzhhhhhhhhhhh!! A second later, Kamijou heard a sound like oil popping in a hot pot.
“What…?!”
Everything exploded.
The light was blinding, like a welding flame, and before he knew it, Kamijou was covering his face with his hands. The flash actually gave him a headache—and then his feet were in the air. A moment later, his body careened several meters backward.
This was only the aftermath. The intense heat caused the air to explode, and simply being exposed to the shock wave had sent a single human body flying.
But…
“An optical weapon of Academy City?”
A cool voice could be heard beyond the explosive flashing lights.
The very man supposedly under fire by the mystery attack hadn’t changed his tone in the slightest.
“Officially, they claim to have four satellites…But now, as I thought, the map of space territory seems to have major discrepancies. It’s very likely they have smaller satellites and spaceships deployed around a giant station.”
The ray of pure-white light that had fallen from overhead should have been digging into the top of Fiamma’s shoulders.
But it wasn’t.
Instead, the third arm coming out of his shoulder was raised straight upward, acting like a huge parasol. It blocked the downpour of light from encroaching upon Fiamma’s space. And then, he casually swung his right hand. That was all.
And yet.
Boom!!!!!! The air rumbled.
Blown and scattered by the third arm, the white light shot away like a tiny eraser flicked by a finger. With no more than that, the irradiation of immense light, which had brandished such enormous power, vanished. Kamijou’s vision was nothing unusual for the average human, so he obviously couldn’t observe what was happening outside the planet’s atmosphere. But he knew. Fiamma, the man before him, had just shot down a whole satellite with a flick of the wrist.
“It’s nothing to be surprised about.” Fiamma of the Right’s third arm slowly drifted. “In fact, I’m ashamed I had to expose my half-formed appendage like this.”
“You…”
“I thought I’d displayed this in the Elizalina Alliance of Independent Nations already. My right arm does whatever I need it to, always providing the optimal output to match whatever challenge or difficulty I encounter. It doesn’t matter if what I’m facing is an optical weapon or anything else. Naturally, nothing can compete with me.”
This is insane, Kamijou sputtered.
This was way beyond holding back in rock-paper-scissors until just after you saw what the opponent threw. Fiamma was basically claiming to be all-powerful. Kamijou could throw out rock, paper, or scissors—but as long as Fiamma put out his hand, he’d simply win no matter what. It didn’t matter what shape he had his five fingers in. The moment he challenged somebody, he’d win.
That was why Fiamma didn’t need to worry about things that were normally important.
Speed.
Hardness.
Intelligence.
Muscle strength.
Distance.
Manpower.
Weaponry.
For someone who could end the battle by putting out his hand, trivial things like slowly building up to a victory, searching for the primary factor for winning, or thoroughly preparing beforehand. He only needed to do one thing to win: swing his right arm. That was it. Before, he seemed to have had a limit on how much he could use it, but he’d apparently overcome that as well by bolstering it with Index’s knowledge. As he was now, Fiamma could obtain as many victories as he desired.
Maybe they’d only be personal victories and not political victories. That was probably why he’d needed the Roman and Russian Churches. But in this situation, he held far too great an advantage.
How was anyone supposed to fight an opponent like him?
Finding a way to climb onto the same stage that Fiamma stood on and finding a way to achieve certain victory against him were two entirely different problems.
“Nevertheless, you should be proud.”
Fiamma, with his aberrant right arm, spoke cheerfully.
Not that he was enjoying his battle with Kamijou.
He was merely enjoying the simple fact that what he desired was within his grasp.
“I should have expected as much of the right hand I have such high hopes for. My right arm seems to be unsure how much power to use against that fist of yours.”
Boom!!
It was a horizontal swipe.
Naturally, Kamijou’s right arm wouldn’t block it. Fiamma’s arm wasn’t built so shoddily. Kamijou stuck his right arm out in front of him. Just as he was about to touch the tip of Fiamma’s third arm, he veered his fist away, as if to slide along the man’s forearm. His own body slid to the side to follow that momentum.
The tension that gripped his entire body was so intense that it almost seemed like it would shorten his life span.
Perhaps Kamijou’s hand should have also been considered abberant for being able to compete against a right arm like Fiamma’s.
“…!!”
Still, despite all his efforts, Kamijou couldn’t counterattack properly. Fiamma’s body had already disappeared.
His opponent couldn’t move up or down, but he could move across as much horizontal distance as he wanted. After instantly retreating three kilometers back, Fiamma landed on the roof of another building on the floating Bethlehem.
At the same time, he launched his next attack.
A light burst out—from the remote-control Soul Arm in his hand.
“Warning. Chapter 22, Verse 1. Commencing spell Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani— Full activation in seven seconds.”
Rrrrrm!!!!!! A bloodred flash surged forth in a roar.
A magic circle had appeared in front of Fiamma, and a pillar of light had leaped out of it, shooting straight at the distant Kamijou.
Something ran up Kamijou’s spine.
He couldn’t have remembered this as a memory, but something like an instinct was intensely rejecting this.
“…?!”
He immediately thrust out his right hand, but what came was pressure heavy enough to break his fingers.
He couldn’t drive it all away.
This…guy…!! Kamijou clenched his teeth. He doesn’t rely only on his right arm?! It’s got so much packed into it, and you’re telling me it’s still nothing but a crude, incomplete item to him?!
And then…
“As I thought, simple spells have their limits.”
That line came from directly behind him.
He didn’t have time to turn around to meet the voice. Fiamma was already there, his third arm gripping a giant sword made of light. He swung it horizontally, aiming for Kamijou’s neck.
Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak to attacks coming from multiple directions at once.
It would be too difficult to cancel both at once, and at this level of power, even if he stuck with one and faced it head-on, he’d be crushed.
But Kamijou didn’t have the time to hesitate.
Even now, the bloodred light ray was threatening to squash his body while the great sword was approaching from behind to chop off his head.
“Ooohhhhhhhhhhhhh!!” he shouted, keeping his right hand thrust forward while pivoting his body around.
He positioned himself so that his leg was underneath his right hand and at a right angle to the light ray of the spell Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani.
And then he pulled his right hand back from the ray.
Rather than taking it head-on, he changed his positioning to only subtly graze the ray’s edge.
A moment later.
Crack!! The red beam’s trajectory was forcibly twisted.
It was like in bowling, when throwing the ball purposely away from the center of the pins to come in from the side. Its path bent, the light ray flowed behind Kamijou, parried diagonally.
Yes.
Toward Fiamma, who was trying to take his head off.
Got y—
Kamijou turned around at the sound of the explosion, but his eyes went wide before he could confirm the result.
Fiamma of the Right had ignored the light approaching him and continued with his third arm’s horizontal swipe. The sword of light blasted the red ray into oblivion with a single hit, then tore through the air, still heading for Kamijou’s body.
He didn’t have time to get his right hand in position.
He also didn’t have room to dodge with footwork.
“!!”
Without hesitation, Kamijou dropped to the floor as though his legs had been swept out from under him. An instant later, the sword passed right over his head. He knew it was already slicing brutally through the fortress’s walls; the rumbling noise hit his body like another shock wave.
Fiamma smiled thinly.
With his sword drawn all the way to the end of its swing, he toyed with the remote-control Soul Arm.
“…Continuous attacks from a distance are less precise. I suppose I knew that based on what happened in Elizalina’s country.”
The remote-control Soul Arm gave off an unnatural light, pale and red.
“Warning. Chapter 29, Verse 33. Crimson Stone of Pexjarva— Full activation in seven seconds.”
Wha…?!
Blindsided, Kamijou immediately got ready to make his next move, pushing the soles of his shoes into the floor as he tried to get up.
A moment later.
Crack-crack-crack!! A strange, intense pain shot up Kamijou’s toes and through his ankles, shins, and knees. It was almost as bad as if his bones’ joints had been wrenched out of place. It felt like something he couldn’t see had made its way up from the floor, through his feet, and into his body.
“Kuh…gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Kamijou slammed his balled fists into his thighs.
The moment his hand made contact, the intense pain stemming from his legs suddenly vanished.
He got onto his knees, but Fiamma didn’t stop there.
“Warning. Chapter 35, Verse 18. A Rain of Sulfur Shall Scorch the Earth— Full activation in five seconds.”
Arrow-like objects, blazing orange, rained down.
And more than just a couple.
Almost fifty arrows appeared close to the roof before falling upon Kamijou like a suspended ceiling.
…He has his own skills as God’s Right Seat and he’s pulling one thing after another out of Index’s knowledge…?!
Still on the floor, Kamijou clenched his teeth, then swung his right arm.
Several of the arrows turned into orange sparks and blew apart in a spray of color. Their fine particles continued, crashing into the swarm of the rest of the arrows still trailing their target, causing a fruitless explosion in midair.
But he couldn’t knock them all down.
Orange arrows plunged straight past the young man’s body, brutally crushing the stone floor. Even as he was pelted by sharp fragments, Kamijou rolled backward, then stood up on two feet.
Touma Kamijou and Fiamma of the Right.
They glared at each other through the white smoke between them.
“Ah, this is no good. Even though I couldn’t have rehearsed a situation like that, it’s still important to pay attention to the theory’s margin of error. Anything less is simply rude when the enemy I need to defeat is standing right before me.”
Now that both the room and the fortress had been cut in two, a cliffside into the skies appeared right under Kamijou’s feet.
Beyond the sheer fissure, he could see white clouds and the Russian earth that had been upturned.
In a situation where one wrong step would lead to a deadly jump from almost ten thousand meters up, neither Fiamma nor Kamijou took their eyes away from the other’s face.
The movement of Fiamma’s limbs didn’t quite possess the speeds of Kanzaki or Acqua. They were a normal person’s normal movements, same as Kamijou. Nevertheless, mountains had been shattered, and the ground had been ripped apart. The inconsistency was rather bizarre.
Though fully aware of that terror, Touma Kamijou found his lips moving. “Enemy you need to defeat?”
“Well, of course. I’m not being overly dramatic, mind you. And I don’t want to take over the world, or wipe out humanity, or anything of the sort. If anything, that sort of change is the furthest thing from what I’m working toward. My goal is to keep the right things moving in the right direction.”
The remark was clearly at odds with his words and actions thus far.
But the words that followed brought his ominousness to the fore.
“This world is distorted.”
One short sentence.
Casual words—but they conveyed Fiamma’s thoughts keenly enough to send a shiver down his spine.
“Whether it be the four aspects that I mentioned before or the immense, sordid negative energy fueling World War III—everything is hopelessly distorted. The causes are numerous. All kinds of problems are cropping up everywhere. Almost as if the world itself is growing decrepit, and its joints are weakening. The one we call God has created a perfect system and arranged the cogs so that everything would spin correctly. Why, then, did things distort so easily? …The answer is simple. Several of those cogs have reached their limit.”
That was why he would put it back to normal.
Put it in words, and it was a simple goal.
But considering how many he’d sacrificed against their will before now, it was easy to see how wrong his process was.
“Cogs need to be exchanged, and in certain places, it’s very likely new mechanisms will have to be set up. Think of it as having to do internal rewiring when renovating an old house. In a way, the malice manifested by World War III was merely getting some clogged dust out.”
Fiamma spoke about these things in a tone that made it seem like they weren’t important to him.
“After washing off all the dirt on the cogs, I’ll reapply the lubricant—Crossist codes—and restore their original smooth motions. I think that should work as a decent analogy. I think it would be more prudent to compare it to Noah’s ark…Although, even after washing the world away with the great flood, it seems that clinging malice remained even in the post-flood world.”
“…Lubricant,” murmured Kamijou, glaring at Fiamma’s face. “Are you talking about using a spell or something that will rewrite people’s minds in a way that’s convenient for you, like the Croce di Pietro during the Daihasei Festival?”
“It’s not that complicated. I only need to teach the masses a lesson; that’s the easiest way for people to learn. Think about it—if I were to swing my completed arm just once, every last person would have no choice but to realize the difference in power whether they wanted to know or not…Now, I wonder how afraid humanity will have to be before they come to terms with reality. The reality that what I’m doing is the same as the punishments of legend, like raining thunderbolts atop the heads of those who go against the codes. The reality that I can offer salvation to people throughout the world as long as they obey those codes. The reality that when the Star of Bethlehem first began to glitter in the night sky, a new age had already begun.”
In the end, was Fiamma of the Right a Crossist?
Or was his belief that the cogs God had created were distorted and that he could “fix” them the greatest blasphemy?
That wasn’t what Kamijou was interested in, though.
“Offer salvation to people throughout the world…”
Fiamma would cover the world with happiness, but only in the scope he could imagine.
He would never acknowledge any other values.
A world like that…
It would be a utopia, in a certain sense.
A planet where all but happiness had been obliterated.
“Have you ever really gone out into the world and seen every last bit of it for yourself? Seen how many people are smiling?”
“Hmm. Your opinion is quite fascinating.” Fiamma grinned. “But I’ll consider it after I’ve saved the world.”
A moment later:
A giant sword suddenly rose, from straight beneath him to straight above him.
It dug right up under Kamijou’s right armpit, heading immediately for his right shoulder.
He had no time to evade, nor room to parry.
Thmp.
With an unbelievably soft noise, Touma Kamijou’s right arm came off at the shoulder.
3
Accelerator had successfully brought down the angel of water.
Despite having manipulated vectors, his breath was ragged, and his two feet on the snow trembled madly with exhaustion.
He’d kept the water angel’s detonation as small as he could. For now, he’d protected hundreds of kilometers of Russia that the explosion would have obliterated—as well as the people living there. He’d made a difference.
And yet.
Accelerator thought his heart would stop.
Because, in front of him—
Crashed into a wall of snow was a single car. It was the one Misaka Worst had been driving, the one Last Order had been riding in. It was clearly not fine. The hood was massively dented, and the front windshield had shattered.
The surrounding trees had all been mowed down in the same direction.
This was the aftermath of his battle.
Last Order and Misaka Worst had taken the brunt of its shock wave.
“…”
Accelerator’s weary body seemed ready to crack and sink into the snow.
As things stood, he wondered what had he even been fighting for.
Both Misaka Worst and Last Order lay limp inside the car, no doubt having sustained severe injuries—Last Order especially. Aiwass’s influence had already bound her from within, and now she’d been injured from without. Just imagining the peril her body faced was terrifying.
Is there anything I can do?
He still didn’t know how to use the parchment. Meanwhile, the war was intensifying with no end in sight. On top of that, a string of battles had taken its toll on both Last Order and Misaka Worst. Would Last Order physically hold on until he could find his so-called clue, and it guided him to a concrete solution?
“…You might…be able to do something…”
Then he heard a voice saying that.
A woman’s weakened voice.
“You have someone you want to save with your own hands as well, don’t you? I’m not exactly human, but I can understand human feelings like that.”
Cornered, turning around with excessive hostility in his eyes, Accelerator then spotted the angel of science. Her body had turned strangely translucent.
“Maybe I can entrust my goal to a person like that as well. I’ve used too much of myself. It won’t cause my existence to disappear, but I probably won’t be able to affect the outer world for a time.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean, I might be able to do something?!”
“September thirtieth.”
The two words the angel of science spoke made Accelerator’s eyes go wide.
The day Amata Kihara had kidnapped Last Order. That date held a special relevance, even when taking in his whole life.
“My friend, named Index…She removed the virus in that girl’s head by singing a particular song to her.”
And then, Index.
The one keyword both Aiwass and that Level Zero had mentioned.
That piece of information was something he could no longer ignore. Accelerator’s attention turned to the angel of science, as though he were being drawn in.
And yet.
Like the flame on a guttering candle, that angel of science’s features grew more and more indistinct.
“……The ‘song’s’ contents…entered rest within girl’s virus as well as my linked mind. Because the original…one corresponded…to ‘me,’ it may not…work…on that monster…derived…from me…but if you…overwrite…the song’s…parameters…”
A song? The theory where you can control someone’s mental state through sensory stimulation? Just like how I fought against Amai’s virus, I’d affect her brain directly…
Vanishing.
Not enough time.
No time to have her teach him this so-called song from start to finish.
“…You’ll…be okay…”
The angel of science put an index finger to her temple.
Even that fingertip had mostly disappeared.
“The treat…ment re…corded the song…in her…hea—”
Her weakhearted smile, too, blurred.
“The para…meters…too…you already…know—”
She vanished.
There was nothing left to see.
No voice lingered, either, or anything else audible.
“…”
Accelerator flicked his electrode switch and checked the vectors nearby. The AIM dispersion fields filling the space like they did in Academy City were completely gone. The angel of science had “disappeared”…or maybe she’d been forced to “go home” to Academy City.
He thought just for a moment, then called out to the broken-down parked car’s driver’s seat—to the limp Misaka Worst.
“…You alive?”
“Unfortunately. For a while, Misaka figured she’d pretend she was dead to make it easier.”
The girl poked her head up, and with surprisingly nimble motions, extracted herself from the crushed driver’s seat and came out onto the snow.
Without particularly caring, Accelerator noted to himself, “Then you heard all that.”
“Data on the song used to erase the virus is still in Last Order’s memory region,” answered Misaka Worst in a “whatever” tone. “Maybe she meant it would help cure her if you extracted it. Oh—Academy City’s number one can even steal other people’s memories by reading the vectors of electrical signals in their brains? Wow, amazing.”
“…My vector manipulation ability only extracts whether there is an electrical signal or there isn’t—a sequence of zeroes and ones. It can’t play back what kind of memories they’re actually connected to. It’s not like you’ve ever met someone who could look at the surface of a CD and imagine the music on it, right? Same thing.”
“Then what’ll you do?”
“I’ll use your power,” said Accelerator without skipping a beat. “You’re one of the Sisters series, too—you should be able to directly access a certain massive information source called the Misaka network.”
“Last Order is the highest of us. Misaka only has normal access privileges. She can’t look into the command tower’s mind. If she could, the angel would have controlled her to make her attack you.”
“You don’t need to get inside the kid. She’s got this habit where she shares her memories with the other Sisters to make backups. Meaning, if you can reach the other Sisters through the network, chances are good you’ll be able to get the song data.”
“Not very prudent. If Misaka matches her timing with the command center’s tower, she’ll have a chance to bury some evil data in her.”
“Yeah. But generally, I think people call that imprudence trust,” spat Accelerator. “Thanks to that, I think I might have barely found a way.”
“Keh-keh. But even if Misaka found the song, wasn’t the problem that you couldn’t use it as is? Where are you gonna get the extra parameters you need to change its contents?”
“I got it.”
Accelerator reached into his pocket.
The parchment.
Something he couldn’t explain with science.
However.
Couldn’t he say the same about the monster Aiwass in Academy City? No matter how much that thing was based on AIM dispersion fields, could he really call it scientific? He’d defeated Accelerator, supposedly number one, so easily—if he thought of Aiwass as an existence outside their rule set, it would actually make a lot more sense.
In which case…
“I might find the parameters if I search this thing. Academy City—and the other form of technology outside it. If I put them together, I might find a path leading to a solution.”
4
Shizuri Mugino “burst.”
She had fired a cannonade of white lights rocketing out from her in every direction.
The eerily dark sky and the unnatural four-toned paths glittering in it—this supernatural phenomenon was completely upstaged by the overwhelming flood of light. Just as nighttime cityscapes blotted out the stars, Shizuri Mugino’s power reigned across this Russian land, a symbol of negative science.
The raging emissions eventually converged toward a single point. It was an arm. An erect construct almost twenty meters tall. Just as Hamazura looked upon it in dread, the arm of flashing light dove at him from above like a collapsing building.
“…???!!!”
In haste, he rolled to the side.
The Meltdown arm explosively incinerated both the thick layer of snow and the ground beneath it.
The blast had been powerful enough to throw a fully grown man over ten meters away. Hamazura’s mouth was frozen from fear in a shouting gesture.
He suddenly realized he’d lost a ton of moisture.
Forcing his stuck-together throat to move and taking in a breath, Hamazura set his mind to work.
The attack hadn’t hit him directly. If it had, he’d already be in pieces.
A water vapor explosion…!!
His entire upper body was giving off a stinging pain. His whole spine creaked. But he didn’t have time to complain about it.
The next attack was coming.
The only good thing, perhaps, was that Mugino, who had gone berserk of her own accord, couldn’t take careful aim in her current state.
The difference between the good and bad, however, was too great.
Shizuri Mugino was no longer visible.
Her flashing arm unraveled, and again, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of beams shot out from her whole body in every direction. It was not an instantaneous event, like a saber in a robot anime, but rather a perpetual, continuous emission. The brightness blotted out even the contours of the body of the woman named Mugino. The incredible mad dance of light burned afterimages into Hamazura’s vision, which ceased to function properly.
In that flashing vortex that would induce sharp headaches after a single glimpse, he decided to hit the deck for the moment. The fact that Mugino’s attack, which could instantly liquefy even steel, hadn’t managed to cleave his body in two yet was nothing short of a miracle.
He couldn’t get close like this. Any attempt would unequivocally mean death.
Mugino’s Meltdown had been overwhelming in their previous battles, too. After all, she could fire attacks at will that could pierce someone’s body even after passing through a myriad of obstacles. Simply breathing loud enough to be heard was the same as dying. That was what Hamazura was facing.
But something was different.
More so than everything else.
At this point, Mugino was the same as a blast furnace or the sun. Holding his breath and approaching from a blind spot or taking advantage of a psychological opening to attack—chances like that were no longer possible. This was an all-too-massive light. An iota of carelessness in the approach would mean fatal wounds for a human body. And it wasn’t up for debate what would happen if he touched it.
Plus:
“…Haaamazuraaa…”
In the explosive din, Hamazura still heard the husky voice. He could tell that voice was coming closer. Yes—closer. Shizuri Mugino, who had “burst” with such force, was slowly coming his way. A blast furnace, hot enough to roast flesh just by being nearby, was walking toward him. She was truly an angel of death now.
This was the significance of the Crystals.
This was Meltdown.
Her ability had been demonically strong to begin with. What would happen if she added a “drug” that would bring out even more destructive power? Shizuri Mugino showed him exactly what that would look like after becoming this world’s hell.
“…Look at all I’ve sacrificed.”
She sounded nightmarish.
With only her voice, she seized the insignificant man’s heart.
“I knew what would happen if I used the Crystals. It wasn’t hard to imagine. But I did the right thing. I made the sacrifice, Hamazura. I paid the price to stand here. It wouldn’t be right if you were left unharmed…You don’t think you can settle things without giving something up, do you…?”
Was she even human like him?
That was Hamazura’s honest impression. At this point, he didn’t retain even a fragment of the vague resentment he felt toward powerful espers during his time in Skillout. Now he was certain that people like this were insane. The world they lived in was in another dimension. It was supposed to be a game of chicken, competing for distance to the cliff—but Shizuri Mugino had simply flapped the wings on her back and easily flown off it. Against a monster like that, no matter how far he drove, the only thing waiting for him would be a straight drop off the cliffside.
He couldn’t win.
He couldn’t do anything.
Still on his hands and knees in the snow, Hamazura couldn’t make a move.
Even if he pulled his assault rifle’s trigger now and shot every bullet he had, what good would it do against a monster like that? She showed no opening. No blind spot. What the hell was he supposed to do to leave a scratch on a Level Five continuously firing killer beams in 360 degree arcs?
“…Hamazura…”
Death was calling his name.
Death was coming for him.
“Hamazura.”
No point in showing his back. If he tried to flee on foot in this snow, Mugino only had to focus a little and fire to end it all. Similarly, if he tried to hide in the trees, she’d blast him and the trunk together in one blow.
Even if he ran far away, he’d be killed.
But even so, standing to face her would only shorten his life.
But then…
What the hell am I supposed to do…???!!!
“Haamazuraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!”
A roar.
All that white painting over his field of vision immediately vanished. Or—no; that wasn’t right. Fired in every direction, the attacks were now concentrating on a single point—to pierce Shiage Hamazura head-on. To precisely open a giant hole in their target’s torso—that and nothing else.
At this point, it didn’t matter where he fled.
An attack of certain death that would cut through any obstacles.
I’m…de—?!
His breath caught, but his hands still sprang up. Without checking if the safety was even off, he pointed the assault rifle’s muzzle at Mugino. To create a possibility where Rikou Takitsubo would survive, even if it was a 1 percent chance, or a 0.1 percent chance, Hamazura tried to pull the trigger.
And then.
Shizuri Mugino’s roar began to spread out explosively.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Suddenly, all light vanished.
And then, Shizuri Mugino’s body stumbled and collapsed into the snow.
“Huh…?”
The scene before his eyes was incomprehensible.
Hamazura hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. Nor had a third party abruptly appeared and attacked Mugino. Nobody had done anything. And yet, Mugino had lost her power on her own before dropping like a marionette with severed strings.
He didn’t have the presence of mind to think about why.
…Am I…saved…?
That was all he could think.
Until he noticed something.
Specifically, how Shizuri Mugino’s body, sunken in the snow, was trembling. Her face, with the special makeup peeled off, had burst into a huge amount of sweat, a strange sight in ultra-cold Russia. She looked like she had come down with a high fever. Hamazura knew what was happening. He knew, because a girl he had watched over so closely had been in a very similar state.
It was the Crystals.
They had originally been developed to purposely cause espers to go out of control. Because some could bring out more power when berserk, a few espers like Takitsubo had been provided with Crystals, but they’d never been suitable for espers who didn’t have the affinity for it.
Shizuri Mugino never had that kind of special compatibility.
The Crystals had steadily eaten away at Takitsubo’s body, and she was someone who had the innate compatibility required to use them with any semblance of control. It didn’t need to be said how terrible the effects would be if Mugino used it without heeding the danger.
Those were the lengths that Shizuri Mugino had gone to.
Her power as number four wasn’t enough anymore. If it was guaranteed that she could kill Shiage Hamazura, whom she’d lost to twice, she didn’t care what happened to her body afterward. That was probably what she’d been thinking when she’d used the Crystals.
…Even just standing must have been absolute hell for Mugino.
Of course, didn’t Hamazura, a Level Zero, understand this well?
If there was something that would raise a person’s strength so easily, without any risk, nobody would have any difficulty.
“…Why…?”
Something squirmed and writhed in the snow, calling out in desperation.
It was what remained of the queen who had once led an organization called Item.
“Why, damn it? Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!!!! The Crystals…What happened to the Crystals? Just a little more…Just ten more seconds, and I could have cleaned everything up…!!”
“…”
Now fully aware of the situation, Hamazura’s hand trembled. The assault rifle’s muzzle wavered indecisively. He had a clear line of sight to Mugino, who was still writhing in the snow.
He could kill her now.
If he killed her, she’d never come after him or Takitsubo again.
The index finger on the trigger twitched.
However.
Was it truly okay to kill her?
Who was it, exactly, who regretted having a death match with Shizuri Mugino after meeting her again, just before coming to Russia?
Hamazura looked at the fallen Mugino again.
He remembered her being the most attractive member of the mostly all-girl Item team. Her fashion sense wasn’t bad, either, from what he could recall. Her limbs were long and slender, and all of her mannerisms overflowed with elegance. Hamazura, who had been treated as nothing more than a two-bit lackey, had never heard anything about her, least of all her personal history. Even so, he’d still been able to guess that Mugino was a high-class young lady from somewhere.
And yet.
“Hamazuraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Don’t look down on me, you bastard! I’ll kill you…I’ll kill you with my own two hands, I swear to you!! I screwed everything up back then. Ever since you shot me in that ethanol plant!! If I don’t crush you, I’ll never get it out of my mind!!”
Even now, Mugino was in tatters. She’d lost an arm as well as an eye. Her face had a severe burn on it. And he couldn’t begin to tell what her insides must have looked like. Were her organs still where they should be? Did she even have the right number of them? Nothing strange had been added in there, had it? He didn’t even know that. How much had happened while Hamazura wasn’t watching? Considering how grievous her wounds were, the very fact that she could keep getting up, again and again, was abnormal. He couldn’t even imagine how much grotesque technology had been put into her to make that possible.
And on top of all that, the Crystals.
Mugino was a shadow of her former self. Her body no longer contained the spirit it once did. She looked as if a light poke with a fingertip on her skin was all it would take to for it to sink into a thick, rotten jelly. It was stranger that she had been able to stand right up until a few moments ago. Academy City’s “darkness” had made her into a perfectly disposable tool.
…I wonder why I had to turn into such a horrid monster.
Hadn’t Shizuri Mugino said that in District 23? And what had he thought when he heard those words? When he broke out of Academy City, didn’t he decide he was done with these back-alley death matches?
“Mugino…”
If he killed her now, would anything have changed?
Hadn’t he come to Russia because he didn’t want to shed any more of the blood for the machinations of Academy City’s darkness?
“Muginoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”
The next thing he knew, he had run over to her. He tossed his assault rifle to the side. He didn’t need something like that. Not for this.
No attacks came from Mugino, who had stood in his way as such a formidable obstacle until now. She simply continued to shake.
Hamazura approached her, squatted, put his arm around her back, and propped her up out of the snow.
Now naturally in a hugging position, he felt in his palm something strange, hard and hollow, in addition to the feminine, soft sensation of her body.
At first, he thought she was hiding something in the back of her coat, but he quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
Something was inside her.
Mugino’s expression hadn’t changed. For her, maybe it was natural at this point, nothing worth discussing. Seeing Hamazura’s shocked face, she moved her trembling lips and voiced her confusion.
“…What…are you doing…?”
“I’m sick of all this…,” spat Hamazura, wringing out his true feelings. “Why do we have to kill each other like this?! Those fights with Item and School were what caused us to be enemies, but wasn’t that really a problem the adults in Academy City were supposed to solve?! Their ambition created the darkness in that city, didn’t it? Why do we have to go this far just to wipe their asses?!”
“…”
“You, Takitsubo, Kinuhata, even Frenda—you were such good friends before, weren’t you?! I don’t know much about when you four were still together, but you all trusted one another, even before I was made Item’s subordinate, didn’t you?! Why? Why did it have to turn out this way?! It wasn’t just a short temper that made you kill Frenda. If Academy City’s leaders really had control over even that battle, then whatever the specifics were, they set it up so that Item would lose to School, didn’t they?! We were cornered, and then they designed it so we’d all kill each other!!”
Academy City’s leaders controlled people’s fates like gods—had they even predicted this conversation? And were they listening to Hamazura’s exhausted words from the comfort of a dark room somewhere, laughing at them?
“Listen. If you want to see me being pathetic, I’ll do anything. I’ll grovel until I die. I’ll lick the bottom of your boots as long as you want, and I’ll even light my bankbook on fire. I’d do anything if it would stop this fighting.”
Expelling his true feelings from the bottom of his heart, Hamazura keenly felt as though his true enemy was coming more and more into view. And it wasn’t a monster like Mugino. It was the guys who had turned this lone girl into a monster.
He wasn’t going to spout nonsense about it being society’s fault, or that their living environment was somehow responsible. A Mugino-level calamity would never happen in a natural environment. She was too massive a nightmare for that.
However.
If there was someone intentionally building everything around the delinquents and espers in those back alleys to create these tragedies and reducing them to means for profit…
Wouldn’t that be a far more terrifyingly malicious existence than a mere monster?
“So let’s…just stop.”
They didn’t need to fight.
If they took each other’s lives, the ones who stood to gain were the bigwigs sharpening their claws in a place they could never reach. Why did others have to wash blood with blood in endless battles just to increase the number of their jewels and paintings? What reason could he possibly have to call this girl a monster—a lonely girl who had been remade into a monster—and hold her at gunpoint?
At last, having ultimately severed the mental chains strung through the giant darkness known as Academy City, Hamazura spoke.
He said what would be the most natural thing for a normal person to say:
“Let’s just…stop killing each other.”
For a while, Shizuri Mugino was silent.
Embraced by her mortal enemy, so close to her target she’d normally be able to instantly kill him without lifting a finger—the Level Five monster let her body sink into the Level Zero boy’s arms.
Eventually, her lips moved.
Her head swung side to side.
“…What are you saying, Hamazura…?”
She seemed to squeeze the words out.
Her voice—it seemed to shatter her own heart to pieces, exposing everything inside it.
“But you chose Takitsubo, didn’t you? You killed me twice to save her. And after all that, you’re saying you’ll save me when I’m like this…?”
“Yeah…,” said Hamazura with a groan and a nod. “That’s right!! I chose Takitsubo! I swore I’d protect her with my life!! That hasn’t changed!! So I can’t do it over and choose you or anyone else!! The facts haven’t changed at all. I abandoned you so I could protect Takitsubo!!”
He had said he’d willingly endure any humiliation. If that was what it took to stop the fighting. He knew the weight of their violence. When Mugino realized that, the corners of her lips loosened ever so slightly, so subtly that no one who wasn’t watching very closely would have noticed.
When she looked back on it, her body had been wrecked.
She hadn’t only lost an eye and an arm. Her insides had been messed up badly enough that her missing appendages were the least of her worries due to the effects of Academy City’s incomprehensible medical technology and the Crystals ruining her body. As she thought on her miserable state, she said, “…You’re so selfish.”
“I know. I’m probably the worst person in all of Academy City.”
“I killed Frenda, you know. I tore apart Item. And I tried to kill Takitsubo more than once. How exactly are you going to save me?”
“I doubt it’ll be easy. And that goes for both of us.”
“…?”
“Apologize to Kinuhata like crazy, bow your head to Takitsubo, then cry and beg forgiveness at Frenda’s grave. If you do that…”
Then Hamazura stopped talking for a moment.
The Level Zero delinquent used every ounce of his lacking mind to form the words he’d need to get his point across.
“If you do that, we can all be Item again. I’m sure we can!!”
There was no argument.
Far from it—Shizuri Mugino’s thoughts had completely frozen over.
In the silence, only Hamazura continued:
“Until then, I’ll keep you alive! If you, and Takitsubo, and Kinuhata—all of us—can go back to being Item, I’ll stake my life on it!! So stand up, Mugino. Please—just one more time. Stand up on your own two legs, for real!! Break through that twisted pride, the chains that Academy City wrapped around you!!”
“…You, a Level Zero, are going to protect me, a Level Five…?” muttered Mugino before a grin split across her distorted face.
Shizuri Mugino, Saiai Kinuhata, Frenda, and Rikou Takitsubo.
It was the same grin from the days they held strategy meetings together in family restaurants.
“You’ve gotta be kidding. Don’t underestimate me that much.”
Brushing Hamazura’s hand away, her movements slow, Mugino stood up on the snow. Her body tilted to one side, wavering. He quickly put out a hand to hold her up, after which she used her jaw to gesture to the night sky, with its eerie four-colored trails of light running through it.
An Academy City supersonic bomber was about to pass over.
They could see three lumps falling straight down along the bomber’s flight path.
Skreeeee!! An awful scraping noise abruptly ripped through the air. It was coming from the Russian military operative’s radio, which had fallen on the snow. The signal was being jammed.
It was probably so that the inhumane acts sure to happen momentarily would never leak to the outside world.
Hamazura felt an intense loathing, like he’d touched incredibly filthy slime.
Hamazura could smell it again—the same smell he noticed while confronting the privateers. This time he was facing weapons from his home, Academy City, but the impression he got from them was the exact opposite of that monster plane that had shot down the Russian saboteur team. These were not the benevolent sort who would blow up Steam Dispensers for them without being asked.
The soldiers on their way now were surely coming to kill them.
That was their only objective.
That was Hamazura’s gut feeling.
While looking up at the creepy night sky, Mugino said softly, “…I was apparently disposable to begin with. They probably decided to crush the garbage before she could produce results. Their plan B or whatever is coming down now. What will you do, Hamazura?”
“I already told you.”
Hamazura picked up the assault rifle again, which he’d discarded a short distance away.
“I’d risk my life if everyone could go back to being Item again.”
“…Hmph. You’ve got guts,” said Mugino to herself so he wouldn’t hear.
Meanwhile, Hamazura was observing their surroundings. There would be some time before the Academy City assassins fully alighted. In the meantime, the first thing he’d do was find Takitsubo, who he’d been separated from in the avalanche’s aftermath. Once he did that, he had to think of a plan to intercept those Academy City assassins drifting down from the night sky to attack them.
He’d been given precious little time.
A darkness enough to substitute for Shizuri Mugino was about to close in on them to try to swallow them whole.
5
The basement of St. George’s Cathedral.
Index’s fierce attack was merciless.
She had immediately figured out that Stiyl Magnus was purposely using three flame titans as one to create a combined structure, resulting in less of a burden than normal.
To destroy that structure, she had focused her attacks on just one Innocentius. Under her assault, Innocentius was reduced to two bodies and the unstable stress hit Stiyl all at once.
But the battle continued.
There was no time to rest.
Index’s intense attack, which fully utilized 103,000 grimoires, didn’t give him that chance.
Foreign things clung to her. In her emotionless eyes shone magic circles; from her limp, unbalanced back grew red wings; and around her floated swords, formed by light particles converging. All of them existed to annihilate any hostile entities, and at the moment, their target was Stiyl Magnus.
“Guh…!!”
Even now, the bloodred wings flapped again and again, and the slender swordlike objects made of light pressed him in an attack that came from multiple directions. The swords were not in Index’s hands; they were floating around her. It made Stiyl remember the sword that could fight on its own and kill enemies without anyone to wield it, the one possessed by Freyr, god of fertility.
Angel wings and swords of Freyr…!! Quite the combination, for someone who combines Crossism and Scandinavian myth myself!!
In Scandinavian mythology, there existed no stories of anyone defeating that sword. Even in Ragnarok, the final battle, Freyr only lost because he’d left that sword with someone else before the war began. Nowhere was a method described for what to do to beat the sword.
Yes.
Even Odin and Thor were defeated along with their weapons—but that sword alone was not.
Innocentius wouldn’t be enough on its own.
It would be worn down in an instant, then extinguished without time to recover.
Who would stop Index if that happened?
How do I save her? Stiyl wondered.
Roar!!
Without hesitation, he created a flame sword, then stepped between Index and Innocentius.
He had only two flame titans left, so they couldn’t buy any recovery time.
Their regeneration couldn’t keep up with Index’s onslaught, and they’d already lost their momentum as though it had been ripped out of them. If he could make up for that in some other way, he could still fight.
If he could only buy time for them to recover, he’d be able to rotate out.
Zng-bam-zng-bam-bang-bam-boom!! Multiple slashing attacks flew out, blood wings and titan arms swinging. More pressure was building inside Stiyl’s body, and an awful sweat dripped off his skin. His flame swords weren’t perfect either; he’d been hit by one of Index’s earlier attacks, too, which had cut him and violently flung him away. Twisting his body to its limit, Stiyl barely managed to keep fighting.
However.
John’s Pen, the Automatic Clerk, was a system designed to annihilate anyone, whether an individual or an organization, attempting to steal the 103,000 grimoires. The fact that Stiyl Magnus was able to deal with her alone at all was certainly unexpected.
Stiyl had grown, but that alone was hardly enough to explain it.
Index was clearly not operating at 100 percent.
The remote-control Soul Arm is hurting her.
Though he was achieving the incredible feat of breaking the 103,000 grimoires’ attack on his own, Stiyl didn’t overestimate his own ability.
Something extra has intruded on her mind, and it’s lowering her precision and speed. If she were in the same state as back then, when I fought alongside that right-hand boy, this sort of parlor trick would never have worked.
Still, he didn’t intend to give thanks to anyone.
She wouldn’t have had to suffer at all were it not for that thing in the first place.
Stiyl pushed forward.
A momentary opening.
If he detonated his flame sword now, he could knock her out. No matter how great this system was magically, the core was still a delicate girl. If she took the brunt of the shock wave, it should be enough to disable her. And in the meantime, he could put up extra rune cards to bind her mentally.
And then it would be over.
But at the last moment, Stiyl’s mind slightly caught on something.
Even if it was to protect her…
Even if the remote-control Soul Arm was forcing her to fight a battle she didn’t want…
He’d hurt this child so much already.
Could Stiyl Magnus’s magic name tolerate dealing even one more wound to her?
He shouldn’t have thought about it. It was time he couldn’t afford to spend.
And then—
“Chapter 32, Verse 44. Preparation for counterattacks complete.”
—the cold voice of the girl he needed to protect found him.