A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20

by Kazuma Kamachi

  Hamazura glanced toward the clinic’s wall.

  Were those called AKs? He didn’t know the exact model number, but assault rifles with wood here and there were standing up against the wall. He’d been surprised to see them when he’d first brought Takitsubo into the place, but it seemed like they were more common than fire extinguishers in these parts.

  But they wouldn’t work; running around with things like that was unlikely to lead to taking down the attackers, because they’d know the settlement’s circumstances well in advance. Plus, they were probably preparing to one-sidedly massacre the people here.

  They had no way to fight back.

  Hamazura had used pistols sometimes in back alleys in Japan, but he’d never touched a gun that big before. It probably worked completely differently.

  “…What do we do? Where are we even supposed to run?!”

  “That’s what we’re searching for now.”

  10

  In the remains of the Russian military air base attacked by the Academy City shadow organization, Accelerator quietly thought.

  Almost ten men and women were standing ready, surrounding him.

  And they were a strange bunch.

  It didn’t seem like they were mere Russian soldiers. Garbed in darkly colored religious habits, they gripped unique ornamental objects resembling swords, spears, staves, and axes in their hands.

  Normal thinking named these items impractical weapons. They were anachronistic, by one or two eras, but strangely enough, in the ruins of the base, spurting flames and smoke…they appeared to fit perfectly on a Russian battlefield. He felt the same sense of oppression from them that he felt from Unabara.

  There was just something about it…but that wasn’t the most important thing.

  In his arms was a girl named Last Order.

  She was unconscious, her body limp.

  If he applied his reflection to his whole body in order to fight while holding her in one arm, he ran the risk of harming her as well. He would have to be careful with his ability usage.

  The ability to walk without assistance on two legs.

  Deliberate lowering of defensive strength so as not to hurt the girl.

  And…

  “…”

  Thinking for a moment, Accelerator scowled.

  And then he went into action anyway.

  He concentrated his offensive vector conversion ability into his right hand.

  The air thundered and roared.

  Accelerator manipulated his leg-force vectors and instantly burst ahead like a javelin. Out of the ten men and women, he closed in on the nearest one.

  He stuck out his right arm.

  With a strike like a light touch, the habit-wearing man’s body flew over ten meters away without much impact.

  And yet, even as he careened back, the man spoke clearly:

  “Vodyanoy!!”

  It was spoken like a name.

  The group, on the verge of faltering at the sudden whirling injury to their ally, regained freedom of movement at the call. The woman standing diagonally behind Accelerator, directly in his blind spot—probably the Vodyanoy—moved her fingers in an unnatural manner.

  A moment later:

  The snow around her melted, turned into a watery spear, and lunged toward Accelerator.

  Neither a bullet nor a bomb—an incomprehensible attack.

  A normal person would have stopped moving at the sight of that, then been impaled in the meantime. But Accelerator wasn’t shaken. He was a heap of incomprehensible things himself.

  He held out his right arm, the only part of him he had applied his reflection to.

  The spear burst apart, its water shifting into prismatic beams of light flowing from his hand and out behind him. It became a wall of heavy pressure, and it knocked down four or five of the habit-wearing people who were supposedly Vodyanoy’s allies.

  Accelerator, however, frowned. Even though he was the one who had blocked it.

  It didn’t make sense to him.

  If his reflection had succeeded, the water spear should have plunged toward the woman herself and penetrated her arm. Instead, it had veered off target…and only after degrading into rainbow light.

  It was a strange phenomenon. It wasn’t water or ice or water vapor. Even he, the one who had caused the reflection, was mystified as to the process that had dismantled it into light.

  …What was that…?

  He felt like something slimy, something caught in his fingers, was escaping.

  He’d learned from experience that when he reflected a teleportation ability, queer phenomena would occur in the three-dimensional world, but this was a different sensation from that, too.

  But he didn’t have time to mull it over.

  Vodyanoy must have had her own questions about it. As if to confirm it once again, she purposely created the exact same water spear. As if to observe carefully—as if this time, she’d find a way through to him.

  That was convenient for Accelerator, too.

  He held out his hand, and once again, the watery spear turned into a rainbow of light.

  But this time, something was different.

  Part of the seven-colored light nearly grazed Last Order’s cheek.

  “…Careful.”

  Boom!! A gut-rattling explosion went off.

  It was the sound of Accelerator tapping his foot on the ground and bringing up a huge amount of snow like a tsunami. As it went, it swallowed up Vodyanoy and all the others with overwhelming speed. The snow wall had fired more swiftly than a crossbow, and with a slamming shock wave, it knocked out all his assailants in one fell swoop.

  “Figures a right hand wouldn’t suit me.”

  After making sure he’d eliminated all the enemies, he switched off his electrode and thought for just a moment.

  What was that water spear?

  The way he had to think about the vectors was altogether different from the scientific abilities developed in Academy City.

  Different vectors.

  Different rules…

  Unconsciously, he recalled the parchment he’d obtained on the freight train.

  Did he attack this base, or didn’t he? Was he from Academy City, or wasn’t he? That was how they’d questioned Accelerator. That meant they must not have been the Academy City shadow group, but Russian people…

  They might know something about the parchment.

  Maybe how to use it, too.

  The chances of this being a breakthrough to save Last Order from her critical situation weren’t zero.

  What a pain…

  Now it seemed like he’d have to ask the assailants he’d just knocked out.

  He needed to make sure he didn’t accidentally kill them.

  So he thought, but then he paused and looked up.

  An Academy City supersonic bomber shot through the skies. If that were all, it wouldn’t be unusual, since this nation was at war. However, the bomber dropped something into the sky over the ruined base.

  And it wasn’t a parachute. It was fitted with cruising wings, like a more complex version of a hang glider.

  He could see a human shape.

  He didn’t have to think any more than that.

  It was an enemy.

  He came to the conclusion with but a single irritated click of his tongue.

  A moment later, he switched on his electrode and kicked a pebble at his feet.

  With an explosive bang, the aerial wings were shot out of the sky.

  However, the human shape didn’t slam onto the ground.

  Purple lightning scattered, and the human shape’s speed of descent decreased in stages. Even with their wings lost, at the end, they floated lightly down onto the ground.

  …They caused the air to explode?

  That was Accelerator’s idle guess, but it was nothing to be surprised about.

  He himself had jumped out of a bomber in Avignon without a parachute once.

  What made him curious was the ability
that was used.

  Electric power.

  And an ability Accelerator was very familiar with.

  “Who is that?”

  The person was clad in combat gear colored white to match the snowfields and wore special masklike goggles that covered their face. It wasn’t clear where their eyes or nose were. The expressionless mask only featured eight small lenses, fixed in a circle like the face of a clock. The clothing had no gaps in it, so one could store anything inside. Because of that, the visible body build didn’t do much good, but as a first impression and nothing more, the person looked like a girl of about high school age.

  Crackle.

  A strange sense of tension ran through him.

  The whiteness of the skin on her ears, which slightly showed at the sides of the mask, and the fluttering of her shoulder-length brown hair gave him an incredibly bad premonition.

  Yes.

  He got the feeling that this girl was identical to the one in his arms.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The figure in white didn’t remove her mask.

  Her expression wasn’t visible.

  With only the small lenses—placed in her mask like the face of a clock—shifting place slightly, she answered:

  “If Misaka said Third Season, would you know who Misaka was?”

  Accelerator almost unwittingly caught his breath.

  But the girl who had called herself Misaka continued.

  “Heyo! Came to kill you, Number One. Misaka doesn’t care what happens with this war. Never got inputted with any orders like that. Misaka’s goal is only to exterminate Number One. For that purpose, for that goal alone, they went through the trouble of dispatching Misaka from her culture medium.”

  INTERLUDE TWO

  She had wanted to look into it, but this wasn’t something she could investigate.

  …Well, I guess that much was obvious, though.

  Mikoto Misaka looked away from her PDA with a soft exhale.

  Until now, she’d always extracted confidential information from the data banks and such, but this time, the situation was different. The security had been strengthened quite a bit. Unexpectedly, the term war had started to feel real for the first time.

  The data she’d been trying to obtain must have been valuable enough to warrant it.

  If the details of operations and such leaked, it would affect many people’s lives.

  But she’d still gotten more than one thing out of it all—she’d been able to grab several pieces of information unrelated to the war.

  Mikoto Misaka had once watched Touma Kamijou’s school compete in an event during the Daihasei Festival, a large-scale athletic meet in September. Which meant that she knew his school’s name. She used it to consult their attendance data, but as she thought, it seemed he hadn’t gone to school ever since the day of that phone call from London.

  When she checked his attendance count, she found he’d already gone below the minimum requirement, ensuring he’d get penal courses. Normally, this wouldn’t have been possible in their school system…or at the very least, there should have been data that showed traces of confusion or panic into a sudden disappearance of a student. But it just said that he hadn’t been to school a single day since then, full stop—and that was abnormal, no matter how she thought about it.

  Perhaps it was as she’d surmised: That boy really wasn’t in Academy City any longer.

  And if the phone conversation was true, he might not even be in Japan.

  The war was centered in Russia, and the United Kingdom was, if only somewhat, removed from it. However, that didn’t give her any guarantee he wouldn’t be caught up in it. And actually, this was a big, planetary war. Safe places were probably harder to come by. Academy City seemed peaceful at a glance, but they’d already intercepted several ballistic missiles. Maybe looking for a safe place wasn’t the right move.

  …What now? Do I risk the danger and try to get deeper information?

  Mikoto began to think about this seriously but then heaved a sigh. She knew the blood had gone to her head. Even if she tried to hack in, if she started in her current mental state, she was sure to mess it up. She’d be better off taking a break, resting her mind, and thinking about what to do next.

  The decision made, she switched her PDA to a 1seg TV service.

  Like always, a lot of the news was about the ongoing conflict. Many normal programs had been canceled, and though a variety show was on, it felt somehow stilted—they were refraining from using any words related to the war or that might make people think about it.

  Nothing she saw gave her any peace of mind.

  She considered switching to a browser and watching shows online, but then her index finger, which was controlling the screen directly, stopped dead.

  On the news program, the anchor was explaining the situation in snowy Russia. It wasn’t a live stream, so it must have been filmed a short time ago.

  The edge of the screen showed a small person. A spiky-haired boy with a Croaker cell phone strap hanging out of his pants pocket.

  One she was sure she’d seen before, somewhere…

  CHAPTER 3

  Confront Walls of Doubt

  Great_Complex.

  1

  The invasion of the foreign mercenary privateer unit had begun.

  And Shiage Hamazura and the others could do nothing about it.

  They didn’t seem worried about the wounded Russian soldier, either. It was an all-out offensive.

  “This way.”

  Digurv led them to the clinic’s basement. From what it looked like, it was originally a space for storing cheese and smoked meats. Naturally, they couldn’t expect a dedicated shelter’s durability from it. This wasn’t a structure designed for weathering attacks—its only worth was to stay out of sight of the enemy.

  After warming up in front of the electric stove, the frostbitten Russian soldier now seemed able to move somewhat. He was focusing on recovering his stamina, having gotten a share of the preserved cheese. However, his face was the definition of gloom. Being abandoned by the army must have been a bigger deal for him than his physical condition.

  Hamazura drew Takitsubo’s limp form close. He’d never imagined something like this would happen; he’d thought Academy City’s back alleys were bad, but it turned out they weren’t the only hell. Every place had its own gaping maws of darkness. Hamazura and Takitsubo believed they’d been desperately fleeing here, away from the shadows of their city, but that didn’t mean anywhere else was pure paradise, either.

  The ceiling began to give off a low rattling noise.

  It didn’t seem like it was a bomb. It was sort of like a car’s engine, but the vibrations were significantly too severe for that.

  “What’s that? Treads?”

  “They might have sent in tanks or something,” answered Digurv. “Not many of them. Probably only two. They don’t care one bit about standard military practice, after all. They probably didn’t bring any foot soldiers along either…Of course, even armored vehicles acting arbitrarily will be enough of a threat in their own right.”

  As the rumbling continued, Hamazura felt an acute sense of fear but also a streak of doubt. “Reality aside for a moment, what if there were troops with antitank rockets behind and inside buildings, waiting to ambush them? Normally, you’d take out valuable cover from a distance, then charge in after that.”

  “They’re not regular soldiers. These units are filled with people who simply want to cut loose and go wild with top-of-the-line equipment. That’s why military doctrine doesn’t apply to them. Their wanton expression of their humanity might present a vulnerability, but that means they’re also far more brutal than robotic units. We’re better off not letting them find us.”

  An awful creaking noise began to come from the ceiling.

  The talking ceased. Only the roaring continued, like an active demolition site. They must have been charging in with the thickly armored vehicles themselves, rather tha
n laying down a bombardment. It didn’t seem like the proper way to use them.

  …They’re screwing around.

  Still holding Takitsubo close, Hamazura gritted his teeth…They’re waiting until we can’t stand the fear anymore and jump out. Once we’re out of patience and cause a panic, we’ll be like fish in a barrel.

  The privateers were enjoying this, prioritizing the act of killing itself over any strategic objectives. Crying and surrendering would probably be useless. Clinging to them and begging for them to save at least the girl would probably do no good. They’d both end up with bullets in their foreheads for sure.

  Vehement rage bubbled up from deep inside him, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. If he jumped out in front of the privateers now, he’d be playing right into their plan.

  Digurv probably felt angrier than he did. They were the ones who had invested everything in this land, not Hamazura. The fact that the privateers were mercilessly demolishing it all for sport must have been amplifying his rage.

  And yet, Digurv was still enduring it.

  Enduring so that he himself would survive this, and so Hamazura and Takitsubo, hiding in the same place as him, wouldn’t be caught up in it.

  It reaffirmed to Hamazura the fact that he couldn’t take any risks.

  However.

  That alone wouldn’t be enough for the crisis to leave them.

  Bk-grr!!

  Because suddenly, the ceiling caved in, and the armored vehicle slid inside like an avalanche.

  The privateers probably hadn’t purposely created this situation. They’d been trying to pass through the clinic without realizing it had a basement, and then the floor had given out.

  But that was of no concern to those trapped inside it. A deluge of wooden planks burst forth, sending Hamazura and Digurv falling into desperate rolls. The now-jagged plank edges began to stab into the mortar walls.