A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20

by Kazuma Kamachi

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  Gkk-keeeeee!! came a roaring sound, intent on contending with him.

  It was the sound of Fiamma’s flash and Kamijou’s right hand clashing.

  At that time, Kamijou, who had jumped in front of Elizalina, should have accurately blocked Fiamma’s hit. The flash of light didn’t disappear right away, but it splashed out in all directions as though trying to escape from his right hand. Those splashes should have been mere aftereffects, entirely different from the main thing.

  Nevertheless.

  The sound was driven away from Kamijou’s eardrums.

  The flash’s aftermath, parried to the sides, this time completely devastated the room’s barely standing walls and proceeded straight toward the plaza beyond them. Its trajectory was diagonally upward. Thanks to that, the people standing in the plaza avoided a grisly fate, but the roofs of stone buildings facing the plaza were all ripped clean off and carried away.

  Touma Kamijou and Fiamma of the Right.

  Two wielders of two special right hands glared straight at each other.

  “You’re opponent is me. You know why I’m fighting, don’t you?”

  “What?” In contrast to Kamijou’s shouting, Fiamma slowly cocked his head to the side—while glancing at a spot near Kamijou’s right shoulder. “I thought I said you were the main dish. You’re planning on serving yourself up first?”

  “!!”

  Lesser, who had been blown away to the wall, moved. After picking up a broken piece of metal from the Steel Gloves, she hurled it at him like a bullet.

  Her target wasn’t Fiamma.

  He’d proven with the last attack that it wouldn’t work.

  Her projectile struck Kamijou directly in his side. Stiffening, his body doubled over and was knocked straight to the side. A moment later, Fiamma’s right hand dropped like a guillotine. The floor melted. A good imagination wasn’t necessary to know what would happen to human flesh that came in contact with it.

  “…Guh…Argh…?!”

  Kamijou rolled, bursting out of the “building,” now no more than a pile of broken walls with only the floor and part of the structure barely remaining, and into the plaza. As he writhed on the snow, Fiamma slowly walked over to him. He didn’t spare so much as a glance toward Elizalina, who was supposedly his original goal. She wasn’t a tactically important target—he must not have thought of her as anything more than an annoying fly to be batted out of the way.

  For Fiamma of the Right, there were only two important targets.

  The first was Touma Kamijou’s right arm.

  The second was Sasha Kreutzev.

  …Not good, Kamijou admitted to himself. He’s having his way with us. In this state, I can’t exactly fight him while protecting Sasha…

  Fiamma still hadn’t located Sasha, which was a small mercy. She was apparently right nearby, according to Elizalina, but if he hadn’t found her yet, Kamijou had more options.

  Or so he thought anyway.

  But suddenly, Fiamma came out and said, “Hey, did you know? Modern sorcerers, who came into being at the end of the nineteenth century, generally dislike group action. Even genius organizations, starting with the Golden Dawn, in most cases see internal rifts stemming from personality issues. That’s why the Roman Catholic Church made a point of structuring its group combat doctrine around its religious teachings, but…Well, you know how it really is, don’t you? Sorcerers see individualism as very important, and that’s why the subjective aim of ‘magic names’ is still seen as extremely important, and why the secret organization called God’s Right Seat was born.”

  “What…are you trying to say?”

  “Here’s my point.”

  Fiamma slowly lifted his right hand horizontally to the ground.

  As he stood in the middle of the plaza, he paid no mind to any of the townspeople around. Not making any effort to conceal the magic he was using in front of all these people who were smothered by fear to the point that they couldn’t even bring themselves to run, he said this to Kamijou.

  “Someone in front of you seems like they’re about to be killed. From this moment on, hundreds or thousands of blameless civilians will probably be killed in an imminent invasion. In a situation like that, would a sorcerer who possesses power remain quiet and hidden simply for the sake of tactical importance?”

  “?!”

  Kamijou’s body stiffened.

  And then he noticed the angel amid the crowds.

  A red shadow. A body bound in black belts, an unnatural figure that seemed to be covered in a red innerwear and a mantle. Nobody was paying attention to her, despite her being in the middle of the plaza, perhaps because she had used some sort of magical illusion.

  Sasha Kreutzev.

  When he spotted her, he unwittingly felt a little relieved, forgetting about the situation up until a few moments ago. The archangel who had parried the saint Kaori Kanzaki with one hand—and who had in the meantime built a spell to “purge” six billion people. Nothing would feel more dependable than if they were able to borrow that power.

  But he realized it a moment later.

  That was not the archangel Misha Kreutzev that Touma Kamijou knew.

  She was no more than the Russian Catholic human sorcerer, Sasha Kreutzev.

  She was trying to do something.

  She was a professional Russian Catholic sorcerer—and she probably had first-rate abilities.

  However.

  “Today must be my lucky day.”

  Fiamma flicked something with his fingers.

  With just that, Sasha, who had woven through the crowds with the force of a speeding arrow to attack him, was blasted straight backward, still at her original speed.

  “I thought it’d be a massive pain, but two of my objectives found their way into my hands so, so easily.”

  Fiamma must have been confident that he’d completely stopped Sasha with one attack. Without any particular follow-ups, he turned his eyes to Kamijou again.

  “…”

  Kamijou quietly assumed his standard stance.

  He wasn’t exactly knowledgeable when it came to magical combat. But his Imagine Breaker was the only thing that had been able to oppose Fiamma’s right arm so far. This wasn’t the time to be debating whether he could do it. If he didn’t go in now, a great deal of people would be killed for Fiamma’s convenience.

  One-on-one.

  There was nothing he could rely on, nor any weapons to cling to.

  And then.

  Fiamma of the Right made a strange move.

  Casually, he shook his head.

  A moment later, something passed by Fiamma, grazing past his cheek. A strange fissure ran through the building wall behind him.

  The people in the plaza didn’t appear to know what had just happened.

  The unreal sight seemed to be one factor paralyzing their judgment.

  “…”

  But Kamijou, who knew about magic, albeit only on an amateur level, sucked in his breath softly.

  Fiamma had just taken evasive action.

  Kamijou was surprised at the unknown attack itself, too, but he was more shocked that Fiamma had responded like that.

  “Now there’s a familiar face,” Fiamma muttered.

  Kamijou turned around.

  He saw yellow.

  A woman, eyes adorned with gaudy makeup, piercings all over her face. Her appearance made it seem like she purposely wanted others to despise her. Her clothing appeared to be based on women’s wear from the Middle Ages, but perhaps because it was shocking yellow, it didn’t come off as outdated in any way. In fact, it almost looked related to super-conspicuous punk fashion.

  On September 30, with a spell that used divine judgment, she had almost completely put all of Academy City to sleep. As a member of God’s Right Seat, she had shown Kamijou a fight that went above and beyond any he’d known before that.

  A clinking noise.

  Her tongue was pie
rced, and a slender linked chain ran through it. The chain reached down to her waist, and a transparent, icelike cross hung from the end. That cross, however, was the one thing different from what Kamijou remembered.

  Vento of the Front.

  The one who had forced Fiamma of the Right to dodge for the first time was a sorcerer supposedly in the same organization as him.

  “It’s not like I’m responsible or anything for that brat or the Russian Catholic sister. I just can’t stand watching you cause mayhem in the Roman Orthodox Church anymore.”

  “I thought I’d received reports saying you couldn’t use your special ‘divine judgment’ anymore.”

  “You really thought that would be the end of me?”

  Roar!!

  A tempest whirled about.

  Two of God’s Right Seat.

  Two sorcerers from a different dimension, who stood at the pinnacle of two billion followers, collided.

  7

  Leaning on his crutch, Accelerator glanced around the room.

  That stack of parchment he’d found during the fight on the freight train. If Academy City’s underworld was undertaking a retrieval operation with the same level of importance as chasing him down, that also meant it was possible these were no mere superstitious drawings.

  Accelerator didn’t believe a lick in the occult, but he wondered if ancient “magic” was simply today’s science and technology.

  …But that’s all just me forcing myself to use my own head to talk about it.

  Accelerator took just one deep breath.

  He sensed, in an incredibly subjective way, that something was wrong with this parchment.

  A sensation like the core of his chest was under pressure.

  It was similar to what he felt sometimes when he was near Mitsuki Unabara. Come to think of it, he used powers that were different from pure supernatural abilities…or so his words and actions implied (of course, there was a non-insignificant chance that it was a bluff, so he didn’t have to reveal his hand). Maybe it was related.

  Which meant he was curious where they had intended to transport the parchment.

  Obviously, Accelerator couldn’t understand what kind of information it was just from the parchment. That meant his fastest option would be to extract information from whoever was supposed to receive it. The destination would only be one relay point, of course, and he might not find out who was to ultimately receive it, but in that case, he would keep going from one relay point to the next until he arrived at someone who knew what the parchment would be used for.

  If it was a clue to saving Last Order’s life, said to be unsavable even with Academy City’s cutting-edge technology…

  He thought that if worse came to worst, he would simply have to directly attack a military facility, but…

  “Damn. They raided it one step ahead of me.”

  The air was suffused with the smell of burning.

  It probably used to be a Russian Air Force base. The white snowfield had been cut away for several kilometers to pour asphalt into, and it was surrounded by a fence-like barricade. Inside it were several runways and many large buildings made from special concrete used for pillboxes.

  There wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  The fence was torn up, the thick concrete walls leveled wholesale, and the fighters on the runways lying on their sides like toys with fire spurting from them. Even now, as though explosives were still detonating somewhere inside the ruined buildings that held no hint of human life, firework-like explosions that resounded in his stomach were going off sporadically.

  Someone was here who knew how to use this parchment, or maybe it was simply a relay point before continuing its trip by air. And now he wouldn’t even know that anymore.

  Academy City, eh…? guessed Accelerator.

  Although it probably hadn’t been the regular forces clashing head-on with the Russian military. Their modus operandi was different. This was the work of a shadowy organization from the “evil” world, which had secretly snuck deep into Russia.

  He couldn’t spot a single cartridge.

  Cracks ran through the walls, but the bullets that would have gotten stuck inside had been removed.

  Academy City had always tended to avoid letting their technology leak into the outside world. This, though, was altogether more conspicuous than expected.

  If taking this position was all they’d wanted to do, they wouldn’t have needed to use a group from the underworld. All Academy City had to do was direct the regular forces to mount an offensive on the base.

  Did that mean their goal, then, was the parchment Accelerator possessed?

  They’d dispatched one retrieval team for the parchment itself, then also committed a separate detachment to its shipping destination, the airport. Survivors might be inside if he searched every nook and cranny inside the base. But they would’ve at least massacred everyone who knew anything about the parchment or used the shadow group to personally bring them in.

  There weren’t any hints left here.

  It was like his already unreliable lifeline had been cut off, but in his mind right now was not panic, but a question.

  …You telling me this parchment is really worth that much?

  If it was, how did one actually use it?

  Was that usage something Academy City wanted to acquire at any cost?

  And.

  Would it help him, even slightly, to heal Last Order’s battered body?

  …That shithead Aiwass told me to go to Russia. Is this connected to that? And there was that whole thing about the key being of a completely different “rule set” than Academy City…

  He mulled it over, but he had no way of getting any answers.

  Setting it aside for the time being, he considered his next course of action.

  …I’ve got no more leads on finding someone in Russia who can explain to me what this parchment actually does now. Which means the next route I can try is Academy City’s shadow group. The people running interference should understand how valuable this parchment is.

  Accelerator didn’t have concrete details on who would have the necessary information, so any combat ran the risk of landing him in a protracted battle. As long as his electrode battery power was finite, that wouldn’t be a favorable development for him, but he couldn’t care less. If he needed to, he’d crawl through the snow to finish off his target.

  It was an extremely combative idea.

  Recalling the limp, unconscious Last Order’s weight, he let out a grin.

  “Not good…”

  He thought he’d been hiding it up until now.

  He thought he’d decided that no matter how bloody the world he lived in was, this girl was the one person he didn’t want to have to pretend with.

  …I’m losing my grip on the brakes.

  He didn’t say those last words—because he didn’t want Last Order to hear? Or because a slight unease had crossed through the back of his own mind?

  Either way, he couldn’t afford to call it quits here.

  Academy City owned several large supersonic jets. Monstrous aircraft that could soar through the skies at over seven thousand kilometers per hour and arrive on the other side of the planet in just two hours. If the City used something like that to move the shadow group that had attacked this base to another location, he wouldn’t be able to pursue them at length. If he wanted to stage an ambush, he’d have to follow their footsteps immediately.

  There was no time to hesitate.

  And yet, as Accelerator tried to turn on his heel, he stopped.

  There were several figures.

  The air base was set up on a flat, expansive surface, centered around its runway. Hiding spots were few and far between. Nevertheless, almost ten silhouettes had surrounded Accelerator without him realizing it. Actually, it might have been more than that.

  The men and women were largely in their twenties, all wearing the same outfit.

  Accelerator frowned. Their gear wasn’t
cutting-edge, technologically enhanced military uniforms—they were more like a certain kind of old-fashioned religious clothing. He felt the same sort of pressure from them as he did from Unabara and the parchment.

  One of their number addressed him in Russian.

  “You with Academy City?”

  “I should ask you— You’re not the ones who attacked this base?”

  “You haven’t denied it.”

  The habit-wearing man dropped his center of gravity slightly.

  Accelerator took it as a signal that he was prepared for a death match.

  “Don’t really have the time for this.”

  Reaching a hand to the switch on the electrode around his neck and retracting his extendable crutch, he continued:

  “You don’t mind if I finish this quickly, do you?”

  8

  Fiamma of the Right.

  Vento of the Front.

  The two monsters of the Church didn’t suddenly leap onto nearby roofs or start fighting so quickly that eyes couldn’t follow.

  Swoosh.

  With wordless glares, they smoothly dodged from side to side in an almost relaxed manner. Maintaining equal distance and moving in tandem, they continued toward the center of the snowy plaza.

  There were no explosions or flashes of light—nothing so utterly clear-cut to trace the exchanges of their fight. In spite of that, the people below, who were nearly in a panic because of Fiamma’s attack, were unable to react save for one thing: The crowds naturally moved away from Vento and Fiamma like so much water overflowing from a bathtub after a giant lowered himself into it.

  Kamijou, meanwhile, couldn’t move.

  He should have been providing backup.

  Elizalina, Lesser, and Sasha Kreutzev. He knew he had to help someone back to their feet.

  But he couldn’t move.

  He had no idea when this bomb would go off, and if he tried to mount a rescue right next to it, his mind would naturally be drawn to it. That was the kind of mental state he was in.

  Clunk.

  He thought a gust of wind had blown through—and then Vento’s right hand was gripping something, some kind of hammer with barbed metal wire wrapped around it. It was about a meter long, and its tip was touching the ground.