A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “Bastards, bastards, bastards!!”

  Accelerator’s eyes were bloodshot.

  A new objective was born.

  It was a paltry resistance.

  Yes—

  “This was what those Academy City bastards were planning, wasn’t it…? No matter how I struggled, this kid would die, my mind would be ripped to shreds, and someone in a nice warm room somewhere would sip their wine and smile. Pretty clever of them to tie it all together like that…”

  His emotions frothed and bubbled up.

  As did the necessary impetus for affecting another human as a human.

  “In that case!! I’ll wreck everything!! If their plan won’t succeed unless this kid dies, then I’ll save her and ruin it for them!! You shitheads, you better be watching!! I’m about to wipe those shit-eating grins off your faces!!”

  An overwhelming anger.

  A clear intent lay in Accelerator’s eyes.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!! You scum, always looking down on me, thinking I only have the power to kill people!! I’m about to show you something you’ll never forget!! Just like how I saved that brat from Amai’s virus before—even I have the power to protect people, damn iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!!”

  8

  Her blurred vision never shut off, no matter how much time passed.

  Eventually, Misaka Worst was able to interpret that to mean she was still alive.

  The selector embedded in her body was for refusing signals from Last Order, and she had intentionally set it off. The explosion was an extremely small-scale one, but several broken pieces had gone deep inside her. Normally, there would have been absolutely no saving her; even an operating room in a hospital outfitted with the latest equipment probably couldn’t have pulled it off. And with nothing but empty snowfield around, there was nothing anyone could do.

  She was a disposable specimen.

  It didn’t matter if she won; nobody had considered any other use for her. Even in the Third Season project, she was a specimen designed to die before the official network was constructed.

  And yet…

  …?

  No matter how much time passed, a definite death never came.

  Only an obscure life continued on and on. Eventually, she also dimly came to the realization that it was because her vitals were stabilizing.

  Had she survived?

  Had Academy City’s plans failed?

  Could this have meant Academy City’s number one Level Five had been able to overcome a malice that operated on a global scale?

  That notion was hard for her to accept as someone fine-tuned to pick up more negative emotions from the Misaka network than normal. But the reality was that she’d lived through a situation that she was pretty sure she had to die from. And with the help of a third party, no less.

  Misaka Worst stayed quiet for a while.

  For someone built to accept only negative emotions, the silence was bewildering, but at the same time, somehow comforting.

  However.

  “Gya-ha.”

  She heard something—an unpleasant noise.

  The noise of whatever she’d been about to accept shattering into pieces.

  “Gya-ha-ha. No good, no good. Ku-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

  The waves of the voice were unstable, going high, then low; loud, then soft. The sound evoked a far greater sense of danger than even the sound of something leaking from a gas main.

  Misaka Worst slowly turned her head.

  And before her was…

  “Ihya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! I can’t hold it in anymore!! That brat’s smile isn’t enough anymore!! Gya-ha! Gya-ha-ha-ha-ha!! I wanna destroy all of it! I wanna tear them all to shreds, every single one of them!! All those bastards who get their kicks making stuff like this and the bastards happy to benefit from it! I won’t leave a single one standing!! Not a single damn one!! 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!!”

  Boom!! A blast went off.

  Misaka Worst thought it was Academy City’s number one having lost himself and flinging his ability in every direction.

  But it wasn’t.

  She saw black wings.

  Wings like a solidification of all despair.

  Each of the wings in the pair tangled with the other, crushing each other, plucking the other off. The stirrings of his heart, likely manifesting on the surface in some form. Each time, Accelerator’s mouth unleashed a scream. The air tingled and trembled, and she could tell the white lands of Russia were creaking, hurting, from the energetic aftermath. Fissures sprawled through the foundation like a spiderweb, centered around Accelerator’s feet in the snow.

  Misaka Worst didn’t know how far it would expand.

  She could have been witnessing the day the world ended.

  Maybe what she’d felt just a moment ago hadn’t been a mistake.

  Maybe something warm like that flowed within Academy City’s number one Level Five as well.

  But.

  This shattered all of that.

  What had she started? As she began to realize what she’d done, her entire body began to shake in a strange, awful trembling.

  9

  The anti-air tank attacking the settlement had stopped moving.

  The other soldiers, spread out here and there, were the ones who had originally been driving the armored car. They weren’t geared up like they would have needed to be for actual melee combat.

  Their proficiency as soldiers aside, a simple comparison of how many people had assault rifles actually showed that the villagers had greater numbers. After all, the things were more widespread than fire extinguishers in these parts.

  Each side was stopped in place, their guns aimed at the other battle line.

  However, the privateers’ armored car and anti-air tank were both destroyed. The fact lifted the spirits of the villagers more than necessary.

  After seeing the people of the settlement standing firm, it didn’t take long for uneasiness to spread through the privateers. If the strings of tension snapped for either side, and this turned into a shoot-out, there would definitely be casualties on both sides. The privateers probably didn’t want to consider that sort of development; they’d come to this battlefield to go on a homicidal safari.

  It didn’t take long for their morale to break and their hands to rise.

  Maybe the very fact that they believed it would save them meant they still hadn’t realized the true gravity of what they’d been doing until now.

  “…We patted them down and threw them into a usable shelter for now.”

  Digurv was delivering a report of that nature to Hamazura.

  Hamazura had just been putting disinfectant onto his scrapes here and there.

  “Oh.”

  “To be honest, I wanted to break their legs and leave them for the wild dogs. In fact, some are saying they’re going to try exactly that. But you’re the one who blew up that anti-air gun. They wouldn’t have listened if it wasn’t you who had asked.”

  “…”

  Hamazura thought for a moment about how heavy the gun in his pocket was.

  In the end, he hadn’t been able to shoot the soldiers who had come out of the immobilized anti-air tank. No matter how detestable they were, he couldn’t pull that trigger. If they’d been about to take his life, if it had been that very moment, he probably would have. Or rather, he wouldn’t have had the time to think about it. But back there, he had the time—time to think about how they were people just like he was.

  Either way, though it may have been temporary, they’d averted a crisis.

  He wanted to stop people’s thoughts from becoming bloodthirsty. Most of the buildings were now rubble, but in his view, everyone could still be smiling. Not shooting the privateers who had surrendered earlier would, one day, surely be a g
reat help to the people in the settlement. He was sure it was okay to think that way.

  Despite all that…

  “Somebody, come here!! It’s bad! Way worse than the guys before!!”

  Someone shouted in Russian. Hamazura didn’t understand it, but it sounded important. He ran there along with Digurv to where many people had gathered in a yet-unbroken building. They weren’t just holding out against the cold. There was something that looked like an out-of-date television. It was showing green dots of light on it.

  “It’s an old-gen radar,” explained Digurv. “It picks up metal response reflections and shows them. The closer they are to the middle, the closer they are to the settlement. Things along the ground won’t show up.”

  “What are those three dots for?”

  “They’re big ones. Maybe over thirty meters long. Doesn’t seem like they’re fighter jets. Which means…”

  “Then what are they?”

  “Helicopters.”

  Digurv’s expression visibly shifted, tense.

  “Attack helicopters for strafing the surface. We can’t tell the exact models, but they’re fairly large. If all three are the same kind of attack helicopter, we can’t fight them with what we have in this settlement. Grabbing some mines isn’t going to do anything about them, this time.”

  This settlement had assault rifles like AKs, but they probably wouldn’t hit helicopters. Attack helicopters had thinner armor compared to tanks and anti-air cannons, but they could move around faster as well. So fast they might even dodge portable surface-to-air missiles unless you fired right behind one.

  On top of that, if they could move quickly, that meant they’d be hard to run away from. If you were just fleeing in a car, they’d catch up in no time. He doubted they could endure swarms of missiles and machine-gun-strafing runs from the air.

  “…Privateers again?”

  “Most likely. If this was an official cleanup operation, they would have attacked with more than just one kind of weapon. Theoretically, you’d have multiple weapons and service branches and deploy in a combined-arms unit to let them cover one another’s weaknesses. Tactics like that don’t even enter the privateers’ minds.”

  Which meant…that in light of the armored car and anti-air tank never returning, a second wave showed up. If it was true, their tenacity of purpose was really something else. Doubtless they would commit to a fierce offensive, less to retaliate for their comrades and more to recover their own besmirched honor.

  “We can’t use basements anymore. They’re all pretty damaged from the battle earlier. If they fire missiles at us from above, we’ll be buried alive,” Digurv explained to Hamazura, unfurling a map.

  He’d probably already conveyed their general plan of action to everyone else in Russian.

  “There’s a big forest to the south of the settlement. The leaves and branches will block them from seeing us from the air. We’ll just have to run through it, spreading out as much as possible, not clumping together. As long as the helicopters haven’t caught on, they’ll focus on the settlement.”

  The bit about “not clumping together” got to him. The helicopters probably had sensors that could detect heat sources and magnetic fields. If they moved as a group, the pilots would realize it was a bunch of people. But by moving scattered, and if the pilots mistook them for beasts roaming the forest, the possibility for survival went up.

  But that was all probably superficial reasoning. In truth, all they were trying to do was decrease the number of people who died in a single strafing run.

  …We can’t get away with zero victims.

  Everyone understood that, but they were all too scared to say it.

  Hamazura didn’t think that was enough. Looking at the map as Digurv explained, he interrupted and said, “…We might be able to win if we use an anti-air tank.”

  “You want to lay down curtain fire to shoot down aircraft? No, this isn’t some Russian military installation. We don’t have any weapons like—!!”

  As he was about to finish, Digurv caught himself.

  He’d figured it out.

  Didn’t Hamazura just put a caterpillar-tread anti-air vehicle out of action?

  This time, Hamazura shoved away the map they’d prepared in order to run away and said, “Any heavy construction equipment? Even a power shovel or something is fine! If we can just move all the debris covering the anti-air tank, everything changes!!”

  “But we—”

  “You want to let yourselves get killed without doing anything?! Anyway, aside from using the anti-air tank, nothing about the plan changes. We’ll still move the battlefield away, and we’ll still get everyone else to hide in the southern forest! We’re better off with as many plans as we can get, aren’t we?! Even if I mess up and the anti-air tank blows up with me in it, they might be satisfied they took down a target with some fight in it and go home!! That’s a hell of a lot better than doing nothing!!”

  Digurv ran toward the building’s exit. Hamazura followed behind him.

  Apparently, they had an excavator in the settlement to deal with blocked roads whenever tons of snow accumulated.

  Hamazura had controlled a heavy construction vehicle like it once when he was robbing an ATM in Academy City.

  When they removed the rubble, out came the caterpillar-type anti-air tank.

  The treads themselves were undamaged.

  However, one of the two turrets set up in parallel was bent way out of alignment. If they fired it like that, they’d be hurting themselves instead. But nobody here had the expert knowledge of how to take one of the cannons off. As a hasty stopgap, they pulled out all the ammunition from the busted cannon. Now even if they fired the cannons, ammunition would only come out of the working one.

  “Their accuracy will plummet,” said Digurv. “Why do you think they put two turrets facing in the same direction? It’s because they almost never hit. Even with rapid-firing cannons made specifically for anti-air, they normally never use just one. They put dozens on a single vehicle, put out a huge bullet curtain in a section of air, and then you can only shoot those down if a few of those hit. That’s the kind of weapon they are—”

  “I don’t need your whining,” interrupted Hamazura. “We’re not exactly in a situation where we can get top-of-the-line weapons. If there’s even a slight chance, that’s enough. I’ll pass on staring at the sky waiting to be killed, thanks. If there’s any chance left for me to affect something with my own strength, then I’m plenty happy.”

  “Do you even know how to operate one of these things?”

  “Using the treads is the same idea. It’s probably the same idea as the excavator, right?”

  Digurv watched Hamazura shimmy up the dented vehicle and gave a bitter grin. “These things generally need more than one person to move.”

  “What?”

  “Someone to move the vehicle, someone to move and fire the cannons, and someone to keep an eye on the surroundings and command…You need three people at least. Its specs say it normally needs five.”

  Hamazura stopped moving.

  If he tried to do all those things himself, he’d have to stop in the middle of one thing to do another. Evasive maneuvers might not mean much against attack helicopters freely flitting about in the skies, but fighting while moving and stopping just to fire completely changed the tactics they could use and their chances of survival.

  “Which means I’m coming, too,” said Hamazura. “I’ll ask the others in the settlement. If we get two or three, we should be able to operate it. Can’t say everyone who hears about this will want to fight—that would be more worrying.”

  “W-wait a minute.”

  Hamazura was at a loss.

  A different sort of tension ran through him than that which the thought of going to a battlefield on his own gave him.

  “Are you sure? You just said it’s not a sure thing that we’ll be able to win. It’s more than likely a busted-up anti-air tank like this won’t stand a
chance against three attack helicopters, isn’t it?”

  “Hey!”

  Then it happened.

  From a different direction, a Japanese voice spoke to them. When Hamazura and Digurv turned around, they both wore dubious looks.

  The one who had spoken to them was the Russian soldier who had been suffering from frostbite.

  “In that case, count me in. I was assigned to an air base, but before my transfer, I had training in anti-air weaponry like this. You’ll have a better chance of winning if an actual soldier helps you out.”

  “…Wh-what are you thinking?” asked Hamazura somewhat cautiously. “Those privateers are with the Russian army, just like you.”

  In response, the Russian soldier answered as though spitting out bad food. “Russian army just like you, my ass.”

  “…”

  “You two saved me when anyone else would have left me to die. And those guys are trying to exterminate you like you’re some kind of bugs…I’m sick of it. Fuck the military. I don’t care if they come after me. In fact, I might as well defect to Elizalina. It’s more important that I repay my debts. I want to use what I have to help the people who saved my life.”

  “…All right.” Digurv, too, relaxed his shoulders slightly and grinned. “You seemed to be more concerned than anyone else that we’d get mixed up in the fighting. I don’t want to leave someone like that out to die. If that’s your reason, we can look forward and fight…And you’re not the only possibility I’m betting on. We’re getting pretty sick and tired of the way the privateers do things ourselves.”

  When Hamazura heard those words, he silently lowered his head to the two.

  He quietly savored how reassuring it was to have people fighting with him.

  Then he turned back to the anti-air tank.

  The weapon Hamazura had won from the enemy.

  The last possibility that might let him save a girl more important to him than his own life—and the people who were worried about her.

  Once more, he felt firmly.