He had advance information, too.
Academy City’s number three Level Five. For Accelerator, Railgun was a fated opponent. And one of the rumors surrounding Railgun was that there was an unknown Level Zero who could deal with her ability with only his right hand.
He had his doubts.
For example, assume he did have a right hand that could cancel out any ability.
But how would he time it?
Railgun’s attacks traveled at three times the speed of sound. Her lightning lances boasted even greater speed. Even if it was an effective means of interception, getting the timing right would be a Herculean task. And if he’d gotten the timing wrong by even an instant, he might have died instantly. In that situation, how could he have easily repelled it, over and over?
Seeing this now, though, gave him a rough idea.
In other words, this was…
He can detect the signs.
For example, in Railgun’s case, whenever she used her ability, it would spread a weak magnetic field and electromagnetic waves into the surroundings. Paper clips and doorknobs lying around would rattle about. Because of the huge explosion that happened afterward, Railgun herself might not have realized it, but it was exactly like subtle rumbling portending an earthquake. Like an elementary school experiment, spreading out iron sand to see what direction invisible magnetic forces were going in…All those subtle, incidental motions would vividly telegraph the attack Railgun was about to use.
The stronger the ability, the more unintentional aftereffects it would fling around. It was like having a tell in rock-paper-scissors— maybe it gave away the next action they were about to take.
Of course, that wasn’t all.
It wasn’t limited to just that one variety.
She was nothing compared to Accelerator, but Railgun was still the third-ranked Level Five, not someone to be trifled with like that.
There were probably other kinds.
Take the lightning lances.
They were pure high-tension current, so if he held out his right hand first, then even if her aim was somewhat off, the lightning would naturally be absorbed into that outstretched right hand. It would act like a lightning rod.
Take a sword of iron sand—other than the sword gathered into her hand, iron sand in the surrounding area would faintly react to the magnetic force lines and begin to change shape. In which case, he could use the visible magnetic force lines to predict how the next attack flung out would flow. In certain cases, he could even dismantle the particle sword itself without even touching the actual thing, instead by only touching the iron sand lines scattered in the vicinity.
Each time, there was a different method for sure victory. Either it was the power at the very core of his ability—or a subtle side effect derived from it.
Even which thing was treated as more important would change each time.
The important thing wasn’t whether there was a method to win. Never relying on a single type of pattern, always reevaluating the problem from new angles, and on top of that, searching for the most suitable way to resolve things each time…Even against another esper, he understood that the same resolution wouldn’t necessarily work. He knew that even against one lightning lance, depending on what he chose at the starting point to combat it, he could have to take a completely different path.
That was why his fighting style changed.
He would rely on his defensive capacity to nullify any other abilities to avoid being killed instantly, and then he would take maximum advantage of the little bit of time it bought him, using the information he’d gotten by literally throwing himself at the problem to discover a means of survival.
His way of thinking wouldn’t be enough on its own.
His ability wouldn’t be enough on its own, either.
Only because both were present could he use these tactics that could just barely reach victory.
In a situation where he was face-to-face with death, the guts to keep his body and mind moving were probably important, too.
However.
The Level Zero himself wouldn’t be aware of that.
A basis of judgment, of how to use both the ability itself and the side effects derived from it. And the actual actions taken, the quick changing of tactics depending on the situation…He was probably only using them in conjunction with his reflexes. Even when it came to the subtle fluctuations in nearby metal items against Railgun, he wouldn’t be consciously perceiving them; his subconscious would be processing whatever he saw move slightly in the corners of his vision for him. Which meant there was no guarantee of a 100 percent success. In fact, it was highly possible that if he tried to do any of this on purpose, he would fail.
But.
Just the fact that Accelerator had hit him with an attack—and he’d survived—made him a potent force in battle. Even with that special power in their right hand, how many others could have achieved the same results?
The pure ability by itself certainly wasn’t that strong.
A comprehensive evaluation might have said it was weak.
And that was why.
This boy knew how significant hard work was in order to survive.
““Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!””
Two shouts overlapped.
The Level Zero boy leaped into his fist’s range without hesitation.
Accelerator similarly swung his black wings.
The boy’s tightly clenched right fist flew in to oppose him.
Of the two intersecting attacks, the Level Zero’s reached just a split-second faster. Accelerator’s face was punched aside, and his balance faltered for a moment. The black wings veered away, failing to hit the Level Zero boy and instead ripping right by him.
The aftermath: A blast wind whipped up, sending both combatants tumbling dozens of meters backward. The two got up on the snow, clenched their fists again, and then dashed in to minimum range, meaning to close their distance to zero.
Something dark and sinister erupted from within Accelerator’s chest.
It wasn’t only a response to the Level Zero. It was against something more vague, an urge to rail against this illogical and unfair world—his hatred and rage, bursting out of him all at once in the form of words:
“Why?! Why doesn’t anyone save that kid?! You’re supposed to be a hero! The hero who stopped that experiment with nothing but a fist!! Save her, damn it!! If you can do something nobody else can do, then give a little of that to that brat already!!”
With his roar, an even greater power escaped his wings, whipping around furiously.
As it did, he could feel something ripped apart, tearing off inside his heart.
He couldn’t stop anymore.
Not even remembering Last Order’s smile could restrain his violence.
“The fact that a shitty villain like me has been trying to stand up for her this whole time is insanity! I’m the wrong person for it, no matter how you think about it! There’s no way I’d ever be able to be a hero! No matter what, the only thing I can choose is a resolution covered in blood! Why did I have to do all this shit?! If a hero like you had come running to the rescue, I wouldn’t have ever made this mistake in the first place!! And that brat would have never had to suffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”
Swinging wings and fists, even as they each tried to kill the other, the Level Zero boy probably didn’t understand why things had come to this. Just as Accelerator was shouting without really understanding what it was he wanted to say, obviously, nobody else would be able to.
For just a moment, the two were silent.
Their gazes averted, glancing toward a little girl fallen some distance away.
And…
The black wings expanded even more.
The wings partitioned into over a hundred pieces, and they flew at the Level Zero from every direction imaginable.
An explosion and a shock wave went off, a
nd even the foundation rattled.
He has to be dead now…thought Accelerator. It simply wouldn’t make sense if he wasn’t.
And yet.
“How…?”
An unintentional groan escaped him.
Eventually, it turned into a huge scream.
“How did that not kill you, Mr. Hero?! If you don’t die now, everything is going to be ruined!!”
Words came back to him, from the mouth of the nearby boy who clenched his fist, which was dripping with both their blood.
“…You don’t need to be a hero.”
Several footsteps echoed on the snow.
Fist and wings crossed.
Several attacks hit their mark, pounding through air, and blood splattered.
“I’m just a Level Zero! Do I look like some kind of superhero to you?! Good guys? Bad guys? Don’t give me that bullshit. Do you have to pick a side to save anyone?! Someone you don’t want to cry is crying right in front of you! She can’t even ask you to save her—she just has to bite her lip and endure it!! Isn’t that enough for you?! Enough for you to stand up for her?! You don’t need some special position or reason!! That’s all you need for it to be okay to be her shield!!”
Each time he shouted a word, the boy’s power grew.
He wasn’t directing it only toward Accelerator, either.
It was like his words were dispelling the hesitation that existed within himself, as well.
“I really don’t know why you want to protect her or how you’ve hurt others until now. But if you wanted to protect that girl, then be proud of it and protect her!! Be proud of how you want to save her, right here and right now!! It’s your life—you decide!! If you want to personally keep her safe, then do it, and if you want to abandon her, then I’ll take everything off your hands. But what the hell is it that you want to do?! Are you okay with that? You’d rather praise someone you barely know and give them what’s most important to you? Can you really be satisfied with all that?!”
An explosion went off.
Chaotically, the black wings swung.
Earth and snow were blown high into the air. But the Level Zero boy didn’t go down. Against an enormous attack that would have buried him altogether, he had twisted himself into a weak spot where he would barely miss a fatal blow, then charged in, ever onward.
A shuddering chill ran through Accelerator’s spine.
Until now, he’d thought the scariest part of this Level Zero was his constantly adapting tactics against powerful espers. He outwitted them in ways they hadn’t realized were possible, ran in head-on, and beat their little blind spots with his strong fist. He’d thought that was the scariest thing about him.
But he was wrong.
The scariest thing about him wasn’t anything that complicated.
It was the desire to never give up. Staying in the fight, no matter what happened, always hurtling straight toward the enemy, no matter what—that, Academy City’s strongest Level Five finally realized, was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.
And as proof:
That attack…
Accelerator audibly gulped.
Relatively, it was really weak, but a human body shouldn’t ever be able to endure something with that much force!!
That didn’t matter.
It wasn’t mundane logic that lay at the core of his fear.
The most important thing—the most fearsome enemy—was close to him now.
Come to think of it, Accelerator recalled suddenly.
When they’d clashed like this at the switchyard, during the Sisters-consuming experiment, didn’t it strike him then, too? That the scariest thing about the boy was how he’d always get up on his own two legs when he shouldn’t have been able to stand, never giving up?
“You be the one to choose…”
The Level Zero boy, just like the switchyard covered with too much blood to do anything about, stepped right up to Academy City’s strongest Level Five.
“Will you keep protecting her yourself, give everything to someone else and run away, or ask for my help?!”
That fist.
Clenched more strongly than it ever had been.
“I don’t care if it’s arrogant or what—you choose something that you’re proud of!!”
A thunderous roar split the air.
It was the sound of the Level Zero’s fist striking Accelerator directly in the face.
The power of those black wings, acquired after pushing forward on the path of “evil” and after several coincidences, would not work against him.
They would not.
Because, in the first place, were there really ever any shackles forcing Accelerator to walk the path of evil?
Something he had to defend, no matter what happened…
Last Order’s smile—that wasn’t something that had anything to do with their relative positions, was it? If he wanted to truly protect her, then didn’t he have to jump over the fences of mundane good and evil?
Maybe this was what it meant for someone to try so desperately to live while following in someone’s footsteps. Not because they were good or evil. He’d never thought about any of that from the start—so maybe that was why Accelerator, a “simple evil,” couldn’t ever catch up to him, no matter what.
In that case.
As Accelerator fell backward, he had a certain thought.
And he felt an illusion lurking within him shatter.
And:
The sorcerer Lesser, who had been traveling with Touma Kamijou, had been watching the battle as well.
From a magic perspective, the mysterious assailant’s black wings held a terrible significance. But the scariest thing of all was still Touma Kamijou, who had brought even those wings into submission.
Just now…
Lesser internally reviewed once again what she’d just witnessed.
…That boy. The black wings had split over a hundred times, and he just…grabbed one and twisted it…?
The boy’s right hand seemed to have the power to cancel out any supernatural or paranormal abilities. But it had conditions and limits. When it came to incredibly immense amounts of power, he wouldn’t be able to cancel it all out; there also seemed to be cases where it wouldn’t do much more than simply block it. In fact, it had taken him some time to fully cancel out the special large sword Fiamma had used.
Logically, a situation where he couldn’t cancel something out should have been a disadvantage for him.
However, just now, that boy had used that disadvantage as an advantage, purposely grabbing one of the black wings that he couldn’t nullify. And then, by twisting it, he had ruined his attacker’s balance, creating a safe zone within the net of a hundred wings unleashed equally, which left him just barely enough space.
Elimination and interference.
A unique power he could use differently by aligning it with his opponent’s strengths.
Did that mean this cruel war had only amplified the boy’s power?
However.
…Could he have really overcome the situation with only that…?
Even if he had “grabbed” that immense force with his right hand, she still didn’t think that would be enough for him to pull through. Even if Lesser had possessed the same power, it would have been unthinkable for her to escape that situation in one piece.
In that case.
What on earth had happened?
Was there really no logic to it?
Or…
6
Accelerator’s vision flickered.
In his now-sideways field of vision was Last Order. She was still buried in the cold snow. Belatedly wanting to scowl at that fact now, Accelerator discovered someone squatting down right next to her.
That might have been enough for the Accelerator back when he’d entered Russia to be the trigger for murder.
But right now, he could no longer move.
The one bending beside Last Order was a spiky-haired boy. He’d been peering i
nto the unconscious little girl’s face, but eventually, he directed his right hand toward her forehead. The gesture was like checking the temperature of someone with a fever.
With only that, something happened.
A high-pitched noise, like a hard object breaking, rang out across the white Russian lands.
Accelerator couldn’t comprehend what it meant.
His consciousness once again began to slip away.
When he next woke, he was in a vehicle.
It wasn’t a common passenger car. It had no windows, much less furnishings for people to ride in it, so it may well have been the bed of a truck or something. The rough metal walls and floor aroused a sense of caution; he wondered if the Academy City shadow group had retrieved him.
A moment later, though, he figured it out: That spiky-haired boy had been in a motorcade made of several vehicles. Maybe the vehicle he, Accelerator, had been put into was one of them.
There were no vibrations, so the vehicle must have been stationary. Perhaps it had reached its destination?
But curiously, Last Order was lying next to him.
The earlier sweat dripping down her entire body was, for some reason, nowhere to be found. Right before he’d lost consciousness, the spiky-haired boy had touched her. Had his right hand applied some sort of effect?
However, no matter what kind of effect it was, Accelerator figured it was temporary.
His vector-transformation ability could accurately gauge even the agitation in a person’s brain waves. When he used that sort of power to check Last Order’s physical condition, he learned that the fundamental issue was unsolved.
She was stable for now, but she’d eventually relapse. Still, the fact of the matter was that the time he had to resolve the situation was now extended.
Accelerator, unsure of how he should interpret the situation, suddenly felt the rough texture of the parchment he’d put in his pocket. At about the same time, he noticed that someone had placed a small note right next to Last Order.
Given the timing, it was highly probable it was from that spiky-haired boy.
He picked the paper scrap up and unfolded it, and on it was written:
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20 Page 21