Would they leave this assassination to one of the Sisters, control of whom could be taken over at any time, despite that?
Which meant…
A disguise!!
A moment after coming to that conclusion, Accelerator’s legs moved.
Ba-bam!!
Not only the white snow but the ground underneath it broke apart as he shot toward his assailant with unbelievable speed. It was like a shotgun discharged with dirt in its barrel.
Meanwhile, his assailant smoothly, casually, lowered her stance.
His attack, like an uppercut, was dodged easily. But clumps of black earth got caught on her mask and sent it flinging into the air.
Her face was exposed.
And.
This time, Accelerator fell onto the white snow.
He hadn’t suffered any particularly strange attack. He just felt such intense resistance to acknowledging the face that had been under the mask.
“Nope.”
The assailant.
The girl, her face closely resembling Last Order’s but older, something like high school age, spoke without even cracking a smile.
“After all, you’re using the Misaka network for proxy calculations. The Third Season Misaka monitors the Misaka network’s operation status, which lets her predict your next attack. You’d need a miracle to land a fatal attack on this Misaka. This is no time for you to be holding back, is it? If you’re going to do this, you’d better come at Misaka with the intent to kill. Get it? Then try killing Misaka. You can’t, of course. If you did, all your hard work until now would be for nothing. In that case, want to stay quiet and let Misaka beat you to a pulp? Gya-ha-ha-ha!!”
A disguise.
Special makeup.
She was using some kind of ability.
So Accelerator thought as he struggled to get up, but…
“‘I’m scared. Help me!’”
“…!!”
Hearing the girl’s imitation, Accelerator stopped. Even as blood dripped from his left arm, pierced by the metal nail, he couldn’t even raise his fist up against that voice.
“By the way.”
The assailant put a hand to her neck.
There was a very faint trace there, one which he would have missed unless he looked closely.
“Misaka’s body contains a sheet and a selector. Even if Last Order sends Misaka a command signal to stop, the device automatically rejects all signals as long as they don’t have the permission code from the General Board. Clumsily cling to that girl all you want—it won’t stop this Misaka.”
“…”
The answer offered to him was a very simple one.
Kill or be killed.
That wasn’t in reference to Accelerator.
If that was all, he might have given up right there and offered her his neck.
The problem was Last Order. She was now wrapped up in this assassination, too.
This was wholly different from pulverizing third-rate trash. It wasn’t a story where he could throw away his life to solve everything, either.
Was there no way to save them both?
No matter what happened, even if he had a gun to his forehead, Accelerator would never kill another one of the Sisters. He couldn’t let himself kill them. Even if he turned the whole world against him, no matter how many monsters in bloody darkness he had to fight to the death with, causing pain and suffering to girls with this face was something he absolutely, positively, could not do. He doubted he could put a smile on their faces with all the blood clinging to him, but he wanted, at least, for them to create their own smiles.
And yet.
Win or lose, it would place one of the Sisters in a crisis.
After the experiment, Accelerator knew that if Academy City said they’d kill the sisters, they weren’t joking—they would. He didn’t have any leftover time to pull his punches and half-ass this, either.
However.
This was.
If this development continued, in the end, Accelerator would probably lose the last part of his self-control.
Even if one of the Sisters died.
“…The Third Season…,” muttered Accelerator. “If they really did start a third production schedule and created you, then that means they can make other Sisters at any time and replace them. Cost-wise and ethics-wise, that’s the sort of decision they made.”
“Yep. And our command tower, Last Order, is no exception.”
Academy City was trying to conduct some sort of experiment. He got the feeling Aiwass was involved with the project and that the Sisters’ network was being used for it.
“Still, considering the General Board wants to keep constant control over the Misaka network, maybe they wouldn’t have had to make the bold decision to make a new one if she hadn’t disappeared to begin with. If only you hadn’t gone and done all that dumb stuff. It all backfired on you, huh?”
In the end, that was how it was.
This wasn’t a retrieval, but a homicide.
If they were going to create a new Misaka network and command tower, the old numbers would no longer be needed. In fact, having two command towers might be an active detriment; that was why Academy City had taken the initiative and decided to kill Last Order.
Even though she’d never done anything wrong.
She’d been made at the selfish whim of somebody else; and now, just for the reason that they didn’t need her anymore, they’d kill her.
“What’ll you do?”
The assailant smiled.
It was an evil, emotional smile, contrary to the impression the other Sisters gave.
“If you don’t want to kill the Sisters, Misaka guesses you’ll just have to stand there and get beaten into the ground. But after this Misaka kills you, she’ll attack Last Order, too. Well, even if you try to stop me by force, a Misaka will still die! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Either way, your spirit will die here. I’ll play with you until your mind is ground into dust, so let’s have fun with it!!”
With those despair-inducing words, the battle began.
The battle to thoroughly demolish all the pillars Accelerator had finally built up to support his fragile soul.
3
Avoiding the Sea of Japan battleground and making an extensive detour in the Pacific Ocean, a Russian Navy submarine had made it to the waters around Indonesia.
They weren’t preparing to pull off a surprise attack and fire a ballistic missile into Academy City.
Multiple missiles had already been fired from various angles, but all had been shot down with precision strikes. Most had been intercepted outside the earth’s atmosphere, but some had even been blown away by an unknown flash of light not five seconds after launch.
Considering missile development history, this was absolutely impossible.
All sorts of technology was concentrated within the interception systems humanity had developed, but even then, they didn’t reach 100 percent accuracy. Generally, the theory for countering ballistic missiles was supposed to be centered around political caution so they were never fired in the first place.
Countermeasures to that were for the higher-ups to think about. The current goal of this submarine, deployed in the waters near Indonesia, was to cut off enemy supply lines.
Academy City, or rather Japan, was fundamentally an island nation. Unlike Russia, its natural resources were scarce. Nobody expected the battle to get this drawn out, but now that it had, the tactic of cutting off overseas supply routes and quickly depriving the enemy of much-needed materiel became effective.
They wouldn’t be wielding their technology in perfect form for long.
Once their stamina ran out, that would be their death day.
That was what the Russian military had assumed.
They had prepared over twenty submarines to prevent even a single transport ship from getting away.
However…
“They’re not showing up,” muttered someone. No matter how much time passed, no ships app
eared.
This strait was like a highway, not only to reach Japan, but for ships from all over the world to pass through. In fact, they’d confirmed vessels from various other nations entering and exiting. However, any transport ships heading to Japan were conspicuously absent.
Were they using a different route? Were they disguising themselves as other nations’ ships? They’d thought about several possibilities but never found an answer. All they knew was that without a large quantity of transport ships passing in and out, Academy City wouldn’t be able to keep running.
A voice reached them from the communications officer on another one of the submarines in the fleet. Being bored when one had nothing to do applied just as much to soldiers as it did to laymen. The fact that they hadn’t seen a single sign of their target was one that, more than necessary, rubbed everyone inside this closed-off sub the wrong way.
“Are they really using ships? Didn’t we get reports they’re using some crazy aircraft for inland operations?”
“I doubt those monsters alone could carry every single thing they need, including daily commodities. Don’t let the shock of their technology confuse you. The fact of the matter is: Sea routes are the most popular method of transporting heavy goods.”
“But we haven’t seen a single transport ship heading for Academy City. We’ve even pretended to be pirates to inspect cargo several times but always came up empty. Where are they? They’re not on the water or in the air. Don’t tell me they’re down at the bottom of the sea or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Submarines have a required maximum size so their sound isn’t detected. They can’t replace larger-scale transport vessels.”
“What should we do, sir? They hit the ball pretty close to the hole.”
Saying that was a young communications officer on board an Academy City–made submarine.
They were slipping past the Russian-made submarines deployed in Indonesian waters by a distance of only a few meters each time. Most of their cargo consisted of goods bound for Academy City. The Russians’ conversation had been right on the mark.
They indeed had an abnormal size. In contrast to the Russian subs, which were a hundred meters at most, this Academy City unit was easily five times that.
Academy City wasn’t situated on the water, but several cooperating organizations had, based on technical intelligence, prepared this secret trick: Once they entered Japan’s waters, they would link up with smaller submarines, which would then ferry the goods to harbor.
Another shipmate next to the young communications officer—the navigation officer—replied, in a bored voice, “They haven’t actually detected us with radar or sonar. Meaning we officially don’t exist.”
For a submarine this enormous, the sound of the screw propeller alone would be considerably loud. The noise of them splitting through water would also certainly be detected.
But that didn’t happen—because this submarine didn’t have a propeller in the first place. The ship’s outer surface read the ocean’s currents, firing water jets in such a way that it would blend in with the currents’ sound to advance forward. It even used the water jets to interfere with the very sounds scattered as the ship progressed, which they couldn’t completely erase no matter how hard they tried. All these efforts combined made it impossible for enemy sonar to detect the anomaly.
“But, sir, if we used supersonic weaponry, we could write it off as propeller trouble, not the result of a skirmish.”
No expense had been spared in other areas, either—stealth treatments had been applied to the ship’s surface, and it also had a mechanism to prevent magnetic detection.
Still, if they rose beyond a certain height, they couldn’t deny the possibility that they’d be noticed.
On the other hand, if they stayed below a certain depth, that possibility got very close to zero.
“Our orders are not to sink hostiles.”
The navigation officer responded as though confirming this to himself as well.
“We carry out our original mission. For us, the greatest victory is ensuring the safety of all.”
4
The land mines were all in one place outside the settlement.
Afraid of the anti-air tank engine noise, Hamazura jumped out from behind the rubble. As he hid behind obstacles—objects barely retaining the buildings’ original forms—he advanced across the snow.
There was a small, hut-like structure.
A little wooden building that didn’t look big enough to even fit a minivan inside.
After opening the simple door, which resembled a restroom stall’s, he saw things piled up haphazardly like stacks of magazines. They were metal plates, pentagonal, like home plate from a baseball field. Other than the ones tied together with rope, cylinders about the size of soda cans were crammed inside, too.
Hamazura groaned. “Here we are…”
According to Digurv, the antitank land mines were the home-plate ones. After grabbing a tied-up bundle in both hands, he placed it on the snow. If he’d known what the land mines were capable of, he’d never have been able to do such a thing.
He unbound the rope and grabbed the end of one of the plates.
A little triangular piece was sticking up from each of the pentagon’s points. They were probably the fuses that would detect weight. When he turned it over, he found that the central section was dented slightly, with a tree branch a few centimeters long inserted into it horizontally. It seemed to be holding down a pin-like object. It wasn’t an original part; the people from the settlement who dug it out of the ground had probably put it in there as a makeshift solution. Digurv had said these were used the same way as hand grenades. Basically, you pull the pin out, put the mine in the ground, and you’re all set. Then, if anything, even a stag beetle, so much as stepped on it, the whole thing would blow. He had to wonder if there was a tool to control the pin after setting it in the ground.
Hamazura wanted to bring along as many land mines as he was able, but they were quite heavy. He could manage holding two to three at most, probably. If he carried four or five of these things, he wouldn’t be able to run straight. He was already at a disadvantage in this situation. His handicap had better be as small as possible.
…Two’s my limit.
Just then, a wall from one of the civilian homes relatively close to the hut blew up.
A giant shell from one of the anti-air cannons.
Digurv had said they probably only brought two armored vehicles to the settlement. And the armored car had slipped through the floor and fallen into the basement shelter. If they could just get rid of that anti-air tank, they would be mostly safe for the moment.
Wincing at the blast from the anti-air tank’s shot, Hamazura left the hut with the mines in his arms.
Next, he’d have to get close to that vehicle.
He could place the mines in spots he predicted the tank would go to, but that didn’t absolutely guarantee it would pass over those locations. He only had so many mines, and what’s more, he didn’t have the leeway to leave his hiding spot and set the mines right out in the open, so that wouldn’t be a very realistic plan.
If he wanted to take it down for sure, the fastest way would be to get close and throw the mines at it. Digurv had only used hand grenades as an analogy, but with this method, Hamazura would actually be using them like that.
Still…
…Running up close is gonna be a really high hurdle.
After all, his opponent had a large-bore autocannon with enough power to mow down buildings, to say nothing of human bodies. If they spotted him, it was over. He would basically be jumping right into the middle of them, taking a risk that would make it easier for them to notice.
He had to say, this plan of his wasn’t exactly sane.
But if he didn’t succeed, everyone in the settlement would be helpless.
Takitsubo would be killed, too.
Why would he have bothered fleeing from Academy City, then?
He wouldn’t be able to go back to his old life after finding a bargaining tool and making a deal.
I have to do this!!
Hamazura broke out into a run along the backs of the fallen rubble. The anti-air tank was having fun breaking down all the buildings in its search for prey—they might find where the people of the settlement were hiding quite soon. He ran underneath a precarious, nearly fallen ceiling balanced against a practically destroyed wall.
The sound and vibrations from the caterpillar tracks closed a fist over his heart.
The iron hulk went straight past the broken glass of the window.
Hamazura rested his back against the half-collapsed wall and peered out the window.
It was close.
Only about five meters away.
He reached for the small branch underneath the antitank mine.
If he pulled it out, the land mine would spring back to life. Even the slightest impact would cause it to explode. Naturally, it should ignite if he threw it against the tank.
He took just one deep breath and then set his stance.
Pulling the branch out from under the land mine, he picked himself up off the wall. He leaned out of where the glass used to be in the window.
The anti-air tank seemed to have noticed, too.
But between its giant turrets rotating and a human hand swinging, Hamazura was always going to be faster.
He hurled the explosive, then hid on the wall.
The land mine struck the side of the turret, then went off.
A roaring blast rattled Hamazura’s brain.
However, land mines were not the same as hand grenades. They were explosives meant to be used on the ground. Obviously, you could achieve a more efficient explosion if the blast could only go upward, rather than having it spread in all directions.
The antitank land mine Hamazura had thrown was put together in the same fashion.
And that land mine, as it spun through the air, had struck the anti-air tank’s turret right on its bottom surface. It had exploded, detecting an impact, but most of the blast escaped in other directions.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20 Page 15