A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 21

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “I’m only doing what you did before.”

  Bchhheeee!! came the explosions.

  Carissa and the Femme Fatale were repelled backward simultaneously.

  They didn’t have time to reestablish themselves.

  Misha Kreutzev looked directly upward before using its wings of ice to take immediate flight into the air with the force of a rocket—to intercept the cluster of SAMs aimed at the Star of Bethlehem.

  As the Femme Fatale lowered the Durandal, she looked up into the sky. “…I doubt that’s enough to bring the fortress down.”

  “Twisted, distorted, or whatever, angels are angels. They’re just slaves that determine requirements programmatically, controlled by a superior’s instructions. If the mastermind is trying to do some sort of ritual in that temple up there, it’s perfectly easy to predict he would have put together a list of commands so it won’t fail.”

  After Carissa spoke, her body swayed.

  …I must have taken more damage than I thought.

  She’d just fought an irregular enemy, after all: an archangel. And continuing to draw out power using only the Curtana fragment was a strain in the first place.

  Still, that didn’t mean she had to retreat now.

  The militaristic second princess knew well that war wasn’t so simple.

  “The SAMs are national resources, too. We can’t fire them endlessly, so. Now’s our chance to evacuate the wounded. That target won’t keep tying it down forever.”

  Even as Carissa commanded her subordinates to “just keep firing,” she thought, Damned monster.

  She spat out the blood in her mouth.

  The flashing sword in the second princess’s right hand still had immense power within, enough to properly command a nation.

  But it was a power for man, created by man.

  A true archangel would be one dimension higher than that.

  Fact of the matter is: We’re up the creek. Couldn’t even find a clue as to how humans can beat this thing.

  3

  The intermittent rumbling continued.

  The shaking was strong enough to cause aftershocks even on the Star of Bethlehem floating in the heavens. Kamijou was too afraid to even imagine what was going on down on the ground.

  “…We’re going higher up,” murmured Kamijou while running down a stone-built passage, glancing toward the evenly spaced windows.

  With nothing but sky outside, it was hard to tell how high they were. Still, the clouds’ height was fixed, and seeing them falling away hinted that the Star of Bethlehem was ascending.

  “Answer one. The Star of Bethlehem was originally a heavenly body that a prophet witnessed. By this star’s light, the prophet became confident of the Son of God’s birth.”

  “A star floating from artificial methods, huh? That’s got a really ominous sound to it. We’ll just have to pray we don’t go all the way to satellite orbit and that we don’t help cause another ice age like a giant meteorite.”

  Even as they spoke, the passage was creaking and cracking, changing form. But the temporary explosive expansion was gone. It was like a newborn star had cooled and stabilized.

  Its size was about forty kilometers in radius.

  The spot Kamijou had been in at first was, on the whole, close to the back. The ritual site Sasha told him about, though, was on the edge of the right part, which was longer than the others. As long as Fiamma wasn’t after a different destination, he’d be near to it. To stop the archangel Misha rampaging even now, it seemed they’d have to head for the ritual site where Fiamma probably was, but some random high school kid wouldn’t be able to run the entire distance on foot.

  …But Sasha had escaped from the ritual site at the rightmost part and gotten all the way to where I was.

  It would be one thing if she had incredible running abilities, but otherwise, that meant some other method had been prepared for traveling through the Star of Bethlehem at a high speed.

  “Answer two. Personally, the option of returning to where I came from after managing to distance myself from it doesn’t seem very beneficial.”

  “Then you can wait here if you want, Sasha.”

  “Answer three. If I could, I wouldn’t be in this trouble.”

  “I guess not…No way to escape this place without finding a parachute or something. I’ll have to really think about that once I beat that asshole’s face in.”

  As he spoke, Kamijou continued through the expansive fortress, guided by Sasha.

  “This fortress goes on for miles. It’s practically a full marathon. We’ll run out of steam just running around, won’t we?”

  “Answer four. I don’t have that much confidence in my stamina, either. I have a method of transportation here.”

  Eventually, they found it: a monorail. Only one—maybe it really was just for getting around. It looked more like a relative of a car than a train.

  And naturally, it wasn’t magical.

  As Kamijou gaped, Sasha tilted her head. “Question one. Aren’t you getting on?”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s just…The place is like a big rolled-up ball of historical ruins. Why would there be a monorail here?”

  “Answer five. Please don’t ask me.”

  Now that he thought about it, there were furnishings that looked historical and footholds and scaffolding used for construction strung along inside Fiamma’s base, too. Had he put it together specifically for this sort of design?

  …Lesser said there are over two hundred Russian sorcerers. Did they need to repair the existing infrastructure, too, in order to make the place more efficient?

  Kamijou and Sasha boarded the monorail.

  He didn’t know how to control it or anything, but apparently neither did Sasha. It seemed like they only needed to enter a destination, and then the machine would move on its own. Maybe it was more like an elevator than anything else.

  For a while, the monorail trailed through the fortress, but eventually it left the proverbial tunnel and came out in the middle of the sky. It looked like they were going on a rail running underneath the fortress.

  A view of the sky.

  And that sky was dark, without any stars, painted completely over in black.

  “The Star of Bethlehem…,” murmured Sasha, staring at the purposely constructed darkness. “Opinion one…The star announced Jesus’s birth. Is the one known as Fiamma trying to re-create that using only man-made objects?”

  The clouds below were dense, but gaps existed in places. Through them, he noticed flashes of red light. That was no nighttime scenery; it was probably flames. He recalled the time when he’d been watching a TV program and they were showing a satellite view of the Amazon. The regions that were doing slash-and-burn farming had glowed red then.

  Krrk…Kamijou softly clenched his teeth.

  And then it happened. From near the red glow on the earth’s surface spurted some kind of water vapor–like stuff. The clouds passed over it a moment later, taking it out of sight, but then suddenly that thick cloud was torn apart. From inside, a dully shining cylindrical object flew out.

  “A surface-to-air missile…?!”

  And not just one or two, either. Fifty, even a hundred flames blew a wind hole in the night’s darkness.

  Whoever fired the missiles might have meant them as a last-ditch effort, but some of them were headed straight for the part of the fortress’s underside that the monorail car carrying Kamijou and Sasha was traveling along. If they kept going, they’d land a direct hit. And even if the missiles didn’t hit the vehicle, as long as they destroyed the rail, there was a good chance Kamijou and Sasha might fall along with it.

  But at this point, they had no way to avoid it.

  There was nowhere to run in the cramped, boxy monorail car.

  An explosion went off.

  The monorail car’s glass all shattered at once. Fierce winds blew inside. Kamijou tried to cover his ears and curl up, but then he noticed something.

  The missiles hadn’t
hit them directly.

  If they had, the monorail car would have been a crushed empty can right now. He and Sasha would have died instantly, too.

  The missiles had been shot down—by something.

  Kamijou looked.

  And then, on the inside of the below-freezing car, he caught his breath.

  It had been the archangel Misha Kreutzev.

  The huge-winged monster was flying alongside the monorail car, matching its speed.

  Kamijou stopped caring about the missiles, exploding one after another, and even the sound of them exploding.

  That was the level of tension that ran through him then.

  And in the meantime, the archangel flapped its wings again and again, intercepting every one of the countless missiles created with the latest technologies.

  “…”

  When he got another close-up look, he was surprised by how imposing it appeared.

  From afar, it only looked like a human-shaped silhouette with huge wings growing on it, but when he saw it like this, he noticed the similarities to Sasha. Its height, to begin with, was almost six feet. According to Kanzaki, Gabriel was a female angel, but its face was actually smooth, expressionless. It was almost like a doll face still in the manufacturing process. The insufficient hills and valleys actually engendered a strange sort of allure.

  It was feminine, surely, but it was more feminine than female, assumedly to grant it a sense of uncanniness.

  Its skin and clothing weren’t demarcated, with the silky white cloth showing its body lines. Golden pins fastened the cloth in various places. Its general color scheme was white and gold, but the pale-blue light emanating from its body changed its impression to something viewed on a screen.

  The white cloth extended back where the hair would be, spread out in the shape of a trumpet. It looked like a lily, but it probably had some sort of religious meaning.

  In a place that wouldn’t get in the way of that hair, a small ring made of water was floating. Its speed of rotation would increase or reduce according to the angel’s movements as though some sort of rules were at play.

  What did Sasha, a genuine Crossist follower, see when she looked at that angel?

  Kamijou didn’t have the time to ask.

  His eyes locked with the archangel’s.

  Even though its face comprised only indentations, with nothing anyone could call eyeballs, Kamijou definitely felt a terrible sensation in his spine.

  Misha Kreutzev made a gesture like someone tilting their head slightly in confusion.

  A moment later.

  The giant wings on its back filled with power, like someone pulling back on a bow. The movement was clearly trying to attack their monorail car.

  …Shit…?!

  Fiamma of the Right had said that his right arm and Sasha’s body were essential to his plans.

  However.

  Maybe those circumstances didn’t matter to Misha Kreutzev.

  Its face, expressed only with unevenness, seemed to be watching Kamijou’s right hand closely.

  The right hand that could cancel out any strange power.

  Then, as though drawn to what one could call “her” natural enemy, Misha Kreutzev flapped its wings.

  Grrkk-eeeee!! A tremendous sound like two crags ramming together rang out.

  For an instant.

  Kamijou thought the shock would make his heart would stop—but that didn’t actually happen.

  That was not the sound of Misha Kreutzev firing an attack at Kamijou and Sasha.

  In fact, it was just the opposite.

  Someone had intervened, driving an extremely fast flying kick into Misha Kreutzev, knocking it away.

  “Question…two. What on earth…?!” said Sasha, groaning.

  Nothing normal could have dealt an effective blow against an archangel. And they were high in the air—up above fifteen thousand feet. Coming up here by itself had to be impossible for a normal sorcerer.

  But Kamijou knew.

  He knew exactly one being, one who could overwhelm even saints, one who could probably compete with the magical angel Misha Kreutzev.

  A being created by science.

  An aggregate of AIM dispersion fields.

  And she had dozens of wings coming out of her back, flinging purple lightning every which way.

  “Hyouka…Kazakiri…!!”

  Kamijou shouted her name as the raging winds gusted past them.

  What the heck is she doing here…?!

  He doubted she could have heard him.

  But she did, just once, glance his way.

  For just a moment, a trace of her usual timid nature crept into her face.

  A second later, after turning back to face Misha, Kazakiri possessed a fighting spirit he’d never seen in her before.

  September 30. Kazakiri, in her angelic winged state, had been under the control of a third party. But he didn’t sense that sort of dangerous light from her gaze. Their births may have been different, their body structures may have been different, but a human light filled her eyes. Her hair had changed to a golden hue, and there was a ring over her head and wings on her back, but she was, without a doubt, the Hyouka Kazakiri that Kamijou knew.

  They intersected for the blink of an eye.

  Since the glasses-wearing girl had stopped in place in order to hold off Misha’s follow-up attack, the monorail car zoomed away.

  The mouth of a tunnel—another entrance into the fortress—was closing in.

  But right before they shot inside, he saw the knocked-away Misha Kreutzev arcing toward Kazakiri. And he saw a strange sword extend from Kazakiri’s right hand in response, one that looked like a transformed sinister wing.

  He didn’t know what became of them.

  Because a moment later, the monorail car entered the dark tunnel.

  And then.

  Vr-vvrrrrmmmmm!! A massive shaking hit them after another instant. If they hadn’t been in the tunnel, its aftermath alone might have sent the car flying from the rail.

  “Damn it!!”

  Kamijou ran to the back of the car, but he still couldn’t tell from here what was happening in the skies.

  …What was that? What the hell happened?!

  Judging by the second shock wave that came rushing through, and then the third, their battle hadn’t finished.

  Kazakiri was supported by Academy City’s AIM dispersion fields— How was she here? And why was the fainthearted girl fighting? Kamijou didn’t understand anything.

  In any case, there was only one thing to do.

  This wasn’t just for Index anymore. To protect her friend as well, he had to stop Misha Kreutzev’s movements as soon as possible.

  4

  Hyouka Kazakiri.

  The girl had abnormally large wings coming from her back, but this was the first time she’d actually flown in the sky. In fact, she hadn’t even known whether these wings had such a commonplace function. But they weren’t giving her any problems. It wasn’t that she’d “remembered” how to use them or that she’d learned it anew. It was as though the countless lightning-scattering wings were being remade to bring out the effects she desired—giving her buoyancy just as she wanted.

  She’d protect her friends.

  That was the feeling with which she’d come all this way, but then she’d found something. A being much like her. And one trying to kill the one on the monorail car, the one she owed her life to.

  In the skies, over fifteen thousand feet in the air, she glared at the enemy before her.

  They resembled each other.

  They weren’t humanlike, but they still looked feminine. Giant wings sprouted from their backs. A small halo hovered above their heads. They possessed immense strength, which carried the risk of collateral damage. In other words, their existences were supported by a kind of power.

  As they faced off, and as she thought about how they were alike, she realized something.

  I see.

  Almost like an angel.


  Was that her impression of the enemy before her or an impression of herself? Hyouka Kazakiri didn’t strictly make a distinction. She didn’t need to. Any impressions she had of her applied to herself as well—as all impressions she had of herself applied to her. She had the vague notion that’s just how they were.

  What was the other one thinking and feeling?

  Did she have the ability to think and feel at all?

  Did that apply to herself, too?

  Was she herself truly succeeding at thinking and feeling from her heart?

  In this situation, where starting to consider it too deeply seemed like it would lock her into an endless loop, the two monsters, paused in midair, eventually began to slowly move.

  Hyouka Kazakiri tightened her grip on the “sword” made of the same essence as her wings.

  In contrast, the angel of water gently waved its empty right hand and produced an icy blade from midair.

  They didn’t need a signal.

  By the time one had moved, the other had already begun as well.

  That was their connection as they clashed head-to-head.

  Boom!!

  A spherical shock wave fired out and spread—endlessly.

  The air tingled and shook.

  The shock wave had the density of a physical wall, and it even rattled the floating stone fortress. Several rooms caved in, but their fragments, instead of raining down on the surface, hung suspended as though liquid in a zero-gravity space, before being reabsorbed into the fortress.

  There was no time to idly watch.

  Even as that happened, the battle continued.

  As the monsters’ swords locked together, the giant wings on their backs wriggled like living creatures.

  They howled.

  And then they crashed into each other.

  Ba-bang!! Ba-ga-zk-zk-gak-gak-gak-greeee!! With momentum exceeding the speed of sound, dozens of blades attacked their targets, each at its own angle. But victory was not decided. The reason was that as both of them continued their fierce offensive, they kept enough power in store to deal with the other’s.

  Icy wings swung, icy wings tore apart; lightning wings attacked, lightning wings broke. The fragments, severed from their masters, turned into fine particles in midair and scattered, becoming an all-encompassing snowstorm of lights that took on color. They looked like small feathers, left behind in the wake of a white bird soaring away.