A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20

by Kazuma Kamachi

  That one phrase.

  Just four words put a halt to Accelerator’s decision.

  “Misaka was born to kill you. She didn’t want to be born, but they made it happen. They cut open Misaka’s skin to cram piles of strange sheets and selectors inside, all to cut off the signal from Last Order. This wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for you. If you hadn’t made the choices you did, Misaka would never have been born. Even if she had, it wouldn’t have been through this futureless method. ‘It hurts— Help me.’ By the time Misaka knew those words, she couldn’t say them anymore. Misaka has the right to denounce you. She has a reason to kill you.”

  And, added Misaka Worst, like a murderous huntress showing off each and every one of her vaunted weapons:

  “Misakas are each individual specimens, but at the same time, they’re one big Misaka connected by a network. It’s not some unique way of thinking that only specimens called Misaka have. Because it’s one part of what the big Misaka encompasses.”

  Accelerator’s vision blurred.

  It had taken him a moment to realize Misaka Worst had combusted the air to move swiftly and kicked him in the face.

  “Why do you think none of the other Misakas, including Last Order, ever denounced you before now? Didn’t it seem unnatural to you? Ten thousand people, ten thousand times you kept on killing, and why didn’t they ever harbor any hatred? The answer’s simple. The Misakas are no saints. The Misakas aren’t like those mythical princesses, either, pure and just…It isn’t that they decided not to hate you. It’s just that the way they handled humanlike emotions was too incomplete for them to understand and express it, so it never come up.”

  This was her aim.

  She wanted to drive Accelerator into a corner.

  Which meant he didn’t have to care.

  It was all an act, and he didn’t have to take every little thing as the truth.

  However.

  What he couldn’t bring himself to do was ignore any malice that Misaka Worst—or the Sisters—had for him.

  Even if he knew it was part of her strategy, he would get caught in it.

  But what if…?

  What if Last Order’s smile wasn’t one of forgiveness—it was nothing more than a product of her personality, formed rapidly by the Testament, and not mature enough to properly recognize and understand negative emotions like hatred or fear? With everything he’d done, he couldn’t possibly be so easily forgiven, could he? These apprehensions made him reel.

  His blood was trailing through the white snow. It was like someone had drawn a line to trace his movements.

  Misaka Worst rubbed the red liquid on the end of her shoe onto the snow.

  “Gya-ha-ha!! The Misakas are slowly becoming more human! They’ll be able to do all sorts of new things like humans can!! But being more human isn’t always a good thing! Many Misakas will come to realize their hatred soon. They’ll start thinking they have the right to pursue a just revenge!! All this atonement that you’ve been so absorbed in until now was nothing but self-satisfaction you were consuming for yourself!! None of it will dampen the Misakas’ hatred!! In the future, every Misaka connected to the network will gain human hatred and go after your life!! Will we succeed and kill you, or will they fail, and you’ll kill us all? Either way, that convenient future you’re imagining will never be real!!”

  As she spoke, again and again, her shoe’s toe flew.

  Each time, blood spurted from several places on Accelerator.

  He would have been able to avoid it if he had tried.

  He would have been able to counterattack if he had tried.

  But he couldn’t do that.

  The stirrings of the mind needed to do so weren’t forming.

  Because in his heart, something was close to breaking.

  It wasn’t just the external damage. Just trying to get angry in order to resist her was about to utterly destroy him.

  Destroy him so badly he’d never return.

  Maybe even so badly that he’d transform into a greater monster than he’d even been during the experiment.

  “If you want to drown in your sentimental delusions and deny what Misaka says, that’s fine. But what Misaka has said is already proven. This Misaka, Misaka Worst, isn’t like the other Misakas. She had her intracerebral substance secretion patterns purposely readjusted so that negative emotions come to the surface more easily. So that it’s easy to read negative emotions out of the giant network. They figured out that it isn’t that the Misakas don’t possess the emotion of hatred, it’s that they do, but they don’t have a way to express it…And that goes for all Misakas, including Last Order over there!!”

  Misaka Worst’s foot abruptly stopped after stomping on his face.

  She was watching something.

  A short distance away, on the snow, lay Last Order. The effects of Aiwass’s emergence had put the young girl’s very consciousness in danger. Still buried in the snow, her hand was squirming, reaching out—in Accelerator’s direction. As if to somehow protect him from the bloodshed, from the trampling.

  Not caring about any realistic numerical values…

  …like whether that hand would reach him.

  Last Order seemed to be trying to stop his assailant’s movements by using some kind of ability, but there was no change in Misaka Worst. She appeared to be using some “countermeasure,” and above all, it wasn’t certain whether Last Order, in her current ragged state, even had enough spare energy to properly serve as a command tower.

  Thick sweat dripped from the little girl’s face.

  Clearly, something ominous was happening inside her body.

  “…”

  For just a moment, Misaka Worst stopped moving.

  And then her twisted smile broadened even further.

  “All right. Misaka will start by taking care of that defective product over there. Seems like it would be more effective.”

  With a shudder even larger than before, an awful premonition swelled deep within the heart of Academy City’s number one.

  “The Misakas have been refurbished for the Third Season, plus the network’s expansion and redeployment have strengthened and rapidly increased their capabilities.”

  Jingle-jangle.

  The two-centimeter iron nails in Misaka Worst’s hand gave off a grating cadence.

  “They no longer need a last-generation command tower like Last Order. In fact, now that all the Misakas are going to be deployed, all she’s doing is shackling them.”

  The situation was almost cannibalistic, but if he assumed the Sisters to all be controlled by one giant Misaka network, he could also apply her words and actions to human thought processes and deal with them that way.

  Normal humans thought in ways that were convenient for them, too.

  The you right now isn’t the real you. You have wonderful talents hidden inside you. Draw them out and become the real you. Abandon the old you.

  In normal humans, convenient but empty ideas like that came from the mental parts inside the body. The Sisters, however, were a giant network composed of many bodies. The notion of “abandoning the old you” would then come to be used in a physical, rather than metaphorical, sense.

  …Right.

  Wanting to prevent their spontaneous “advancement” and keep them the way they were now was nothing but pure egotism. Nothing but an idea to take someone’s freedom away, much like how a parent wanted their child to remain a child forever.

  …So that’s what it meant.

  It wasn’t possible to settle this without letting anyone die.

  The following two choices were available:

  Kill Misaka Worst to protect Last Order.

  Or keep one of the Sisters alive and watch Last Order die.

  Metal nails had pierced his body. He’d been kicked in every spot imaginable. He’d been trampled on. And now the spear was pointed at Last Order.

  Finally, Accelerator realized there was only one question left:
/>   Was giving up the only thing left he could do?

  Ba-bam!! A blast rang out.

  It was the sound of Misaka Worst—this girl who had stomped on Accelerator’s face and aimed her metal nails at Last Order—being hurled into the air. Her body flew in a wide arc, going a good ten meters during her flight before plummeting to the snow.

  Yes.

  If the number one in Academy City got serious, such a thing was easy.

  Whether it was a two-billion-volt high-tension current, or metal nails flying faster than sound could travel, or one of the Sisters.

  One or two insignificant chumps couldn’t do anything to him.

  “Gah?!”

  As Misaka Worst groaned, she saw a figure standing up unsteadily.

  Accelerator—like a mirage, bereft of his central core.

  Originally, she should have successfully weakened him, then arrived at the chance of a lifetime.

  And yet…

  “…!!”

  Misaka Worst puffed out a burst of air, then focused some magnetic force to launch a shot.

  The metal nail, flying faster than the speed of sound, was arced precisely to Accelerator’s forehead. He didn’t dodge it. He didn’t swing his head away or even shut his eyes. Despite that, not a fraction of his skin tore, and not a drop of his blood spilled.

  It was due to his reflection.

  The metal nail bounced back and penetrated Misaka Worst’s arm. Accelerator had had no hesitation, no indecision. As she tumbled, she took out another nail. This time, her aim was Last Order. She reached out her arm, attempting to destroy the core of Accelerator’s proxy calculations.

  And then the mirage-like Accelerator moved distinctly.

  Only when he had manipulated his leg-force vectors and approached her, all in the span of an instant, did he bring his fist down onto her outstretched arm.

  It broke.

  The nail still buried within her arm, he used blunt force to break her bones.

  She screamed, searing the air with a high-tension current, attempting to immediately withdraw. However, Accelerator grabbed her leg and slammed her onto the snow.

  Wh-whump…!! A tremor dispersed into their surroundings like the venue of a fireworks show.

  As Misaka Worst coughed, he swung his fist down again.

  Only the sound of pounding meat, creaking bones, and spattering blood continued.

  Misaka Worst had evidently brought a way to interfere with Accelerator’s electrode, but he never gave her an opening to use it, whatever it was. The intense, continuous agony prevented her from gaining even the scant focus to use her ability.

  As he did so, he felt the sensation of something that was inside him now slowly beginning to collapse. He wasn’t walking a path that anyone in their right mind would praise him for, but it was still his way of life that he’d crafted with his own unskillful hands—and he could tell that now, he was losing every last bit of it. Even if he made the whole world his enemy, even if he had to fight to the death against other monsters while crawling through a bloodstained world—his wish, his desire, to protect the people who shared this girl’s face at all costs, was crumbling.

  Except…

  It wasn’t exactly crumbling.

  It wasn’t approaching zero.

  It was going below that.

  He himself realized that he was transforming into a far more terrifying monster than what he was when he met Last Order, or even what he was during the experiment.

  “Hah, ha-ha.”

  The next thing he knew, Misaka Worst wasn’t moving anymore.

  “…It hurts…Misa…ka…” She was managing to inhale and exhale, but several places on her body were torn apart. Her arm was bent in an unnatural direction. Her regular features had swollen. The girls he had to risk his life to protect, one of their number, was at death’s door.

  “Help me. Someone…”

  Accelerator realized that.

  He saw the blood covering his hand, and he dropped to his knees in the snow.

  “Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Giiyaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

  Only dry laughter seeped out of him.

  It was over. He couldn’t move anymore. Everyone from Academy City was insane. He couldn’t keep up with something like that. And he couldn’t make sense of a world that prospered on that sort of power. He was acutely aware of the pitch-black underbelly lurking just behind all the peace and happiness in this world. Exactly the way amiable smiles in television commercials were artificial things created to gain immense wealth, he could no longer believe in any of the light or good that he’d so idealized.

  In any case, this wouldn’t be the end.

  If they realized that Number One’s spirit hadn’t broken yet, they would no doubt execute a second plan, a third. Would other Sisters appear next? Or would it be a specimen adjusted to have a body like that brat’s? Would they use Yomikawa or Yoshikawa? Or would they use a completely unrelated village or town wholesale, like a disposable tool?

  Whatever it might be, this was all he had. After this, his opponent would definitely deliver greater pain than he felt now, and he wouldn’t be able to endure it. He didn’t even want to fight it. Letting himself be broken now would probably be easier for him. The darkness Academy City gave form to simply wasn’t normal.

  But then, he heard a stirring.

  It was the sound of Misaka Worst, so viciously flattened, squirming on the filthy red snow.

  As he recalled it, she’d said she had a plan to use her ability to block Accelerator’s proxy calculations.

  The beating earlier probably hadn’t given her the time to use it.

  This time, she might use it to counterattack.

  For some reason, Accelerator shook his head, still grinning. He didn’t know the meaning behind the act. But he didn’t want to move any longer.

  Nothing mattered anymore. The pain in his heart had wiped out everything he’d had inside him just a moment ago. With his spirit in tatters, he decided if he was to be killed now, he didn’t mind.

  However.

  Academy City was more insane than even Accelerator thought.

  He heard a soft brrrrkkk.

  It was the sound of a selector, buried in Misaka Worst’s body, rupturing.

  “…Eh?”

  Whatever happened next, the damage to his heart was now at its height.

  There was no greater pain than this.

  The tormenting mental attacks Misaka Worst had used on him had ended.

  That was what he had thought—and that was why his mind, if only for a moment, had blanked.

  All his emotional waves had flatlined.

  And a moment later—

  Every emotion a human could possibly have exploded in his head.

  “Kuh, ha-ha?! Gi-ha-ha-haaaahhh!! Gyaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

  The impact caused his vision to spin.

  In a world where he could no longer tell the difference between colors, only a small reddish hue remained—and spread.

  Something had torn Misaka Worst’s skin, from the base of her skull to the bottom of her neck.

  She was losing an enormous amount of blood.

  Meanwhile, the girl, lying on her side, was grinning. A smile that seemed to be her negative emotions having hardened on her face. It was like invisible fingers of malice were tugging at her skin from the inside.

  Her mouth opened and shut, opened and shut.

  In a hoarse, grating voice, she hissed:

  “…This…is…your…fault.”

  He thought she would spray vomit and excreta everywhere.

  “Gfh!! Gah-ha-fhgh!! Gibh, gya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  Those Academy City bastards had des
igned her body so that no matter what her results were, she would be able to put an end to Accelerator’s life. So that if Accelerator had wielded overwhelming power but tried to settle the matter without killing her in half-done measures, she could tear whatever remained of Accelerator’s mental state into shreds.

  Until now, this was how he’d figured they were thinking:

  If they could use Number One’s trauma against him to weaken and kill him, that was fine.

  Even if she lost, the fact that he’d murdered one of the Sisters would crush his mental state.

  But he’d been wrong.

  It hadn’t been that simple.

  It wasn’t about whether he won or lost.

  Whether he won, lost, fought to a draw, escaped, reconciled—this device would always lead to her finishing off Accelerator, no matter what the situation was. That was what this girl, Misaka Worst, really was.

  The term breakdown seemed apt.

  It was a mental term, and what he experienced was strong enough that Academy City’s number one believed that he really had died.

  And Accelerator’s spirit, in fact, had been almost obliterated.

  He’d lost the power to interact with other humans as a human.

  He didn’t want to keep living in this rotten world. He didn’t even want to change this rotten world. It was too far gone. Too far gone for human strength to do anything about. If he could leave this world, then maybe letting himself sink into the snow was a better deal.

  Misaka Worst’s body twitched and squirmed, unconnected to her will.

  She’d probably lost so much blood in such a short time that the shock was manifesting its effects.

  A result the rotten people from Academy City had produced.

  Now, having seen the absolute worst ending, Accelerator…

  “You motherfuckeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!!!!!!”

  …finally screamed and rushed to the near-dead Misaka Worst’s side.

  His ability was vector manipulation.

  The power was one he mainly used for offensive purposes, but that didn’t mean that was the only way he could use it. By reading the direction of blood and electrical signals flowing throughout a person’s body, he could examine the state of a person’s health, and if he really applied himself, he could even perform some medical treatment and first aid.