A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “Mr. Shiokishi,” cut in Tsuchimikado. He knew that once this board member started rambling about his stupid obsessions, they’d never hear the end of it. “I assume you went through the trouble of contacting us for more than a basic combat report. It would have been faster to go through The Voice on the Phone if that was all you wanted.”

  “I’m sure you had a faint idea, but I have the agent that normally commands you elsewhere at the moment. More than one incident is occurring in the city, after all …I thought he’d stop before things got out of hand, but to think that youngster at our table would be taken out.”

  “…”

  “There’s no reason to be distrustful. No need to fret over undisclosed information—everything is connected. If you all do what you need to do, everything will become clear sooner or later.”

  The camera wobbled. “Sugitani? Minobe?” said Shiokishi shortly before someone outside the video frame grabbed the camera and restabilized it.

  “On that note, I’d like to request another job of you.”

  “…Are you saying that we’re looking at back-to-back crises?” asked Tsuchimikado again, remembering the past death matches between the five organizations of Group, School, Member, Item, and Block.

  Shiokishi, however, shook his powered suit helmet. “It’s nothing that serious. Essentially, I want you to mop up the leftovers. Associates of what used to be Spark Signal, the ones who attacked the Hula Hoop, still seem to be hiding in Academy City. If we leave them to their own devices, they may come up with strange contingency plans.”

  Their associates.

  Ones who sought information about Dragon, one of Academy City’s deepest, darkest secrets.

  “I’ll forward you the target details, but this should be easier than the Hula Hoop incident … At least, easy enough that you won’t need too much time to prepare. After surviving something like that, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble dealing with them. That’s about it.”

  Shiokishi moved to hang up, but suddenly, Accelerator asked:

  “…Ever heard the word dragon before?”

  “A famous word. I believe it’s in the title of one of our video games beloved the world over.”

  Accelerator clicked his tongue. If Shiokishi had said he didn’t know, Accelerator could have pressed the issue, but a reply like that left him no room to maneuver. If he pursued the subject any further, Shiokishi would just evade it.

  Whether he knew about Accelerator’s intent or not, Shiokishi clapped his thick steel palms together a couple times and wrapped things up by saying, “You’re all students, too. Get this trivial stuff out of the way, and you can go back to leading your own lives.”

  2

  Tonight was Rikou Takitsubo’s welcome-home party.

  Having suddenly ended up in a position to prepare for it, Shiage Hamazura and Saiai Kinuhata had bought a large amount of silly party favors in a District 7 shopping area.

  “…Hey, I don’t get this. Why am I in a movie theater, and why are we the only ones in here two minutes before the show starts?”

  “I’m a short-film expert, so it’s super-okay. And these are the ten-minute-long kind so you can watch a bunch of in a row with five minute breaks in between. If you do the math, we can watch two and still totally make it in time to meet up with Takitsubo.”

  “Wait a second—none of that explains why it’s empty except for us two.”

  “You’re being too loud and I’m like totally holding it in right now, so please don’t talk to me, Hamazura.”

  You want to watch that badly, huh? he thought, shoulders drooping.

  Kinuhata’s hobby was watching movies, but she didn’t seem very interested in blockbuster Hollywood films or the like. But when it came to B movies, or anything bad enough that it could be called a C movie, she couldn’t seem to pass it up.

  “Gwah, this is awful. It only just started, but I can already tell from the first two minutes that this movie is totally gonna suck…”

  “Well, that’s usually how it goes when you get me involved!!” shouted Hamazura at the top of his lungs in the dark, since there was nobody else in the seats anyway. “You were the one who dragged me into this theater!!”

  But Kinuhata, not caring one bit about what Hamazura had to say, shook her head, expression downcast. “No, no. That’s totally not it. I don’t want to watch C movies that are self-aware, where they’re like Yippee, let’s all make a really dumb C movie!!— I want to see the natural ones, the ones where they were super-serious about taking on Hollywood but had so many problems they ended up being C reels.”

  “Yeah? The fact that the setting of this one is supposed to be the near future but the heroine is wearing a dress straight from the Middle Ages with no explanation. I can put that down to the world building, but…Doesn’t this story take place in the middle of winter? Did they film it during the summer or something? Everyone’s sweating, and now I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Hamazura. Look at the left side of the screen. You can totally see a smokestack from a thermal power plant on the opposite shore…”

  “Are you serious? That completely ruins all the SF atmosphere they worked so hard for! I heard about bad shots where planes fly over while filming, but the least you can do is make sure ahead of time that none of the buildings are wrong!!”

  Even Hamazura, who didn’t particularly have a thing for movies, had his head in his hands at this one. For a short while, Kinuhata was fidgeting, thighs rubbing against each other, but finally she said, “I can’t hold it in any longer. I totally don’t have it in me to stick this one out. I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll put all my eggs in the next short-film basket.”

  “What? I have to go it alone?!” cried Hamazura in a fluster, but Kinuhata had already swiftly left the screening room.

  With nothing else to do, he looked back at the screen, intending to kill time rather than seriously enjoy the movie, then noticed that they were having some kind of strategy meeting that was leading right into the climax.

  … What? The map behind that noble girl…

  Hamazura, whose eyes had become like a dead fish’s, abruptly started paying attention again.

  … A map of Martian craters and mountain ranges? Why isn’t it a regular world map? Why would they go through the trouble of hanging a map like…Waaaaaaahhhhh?!

  Then, like he’d been hit by lightning, his eyes ballooned.

  They said it was a midwinter story, but it wasn’t an Earth winter at all!! They pretended like it was, but it was actually a “what if” set in modern times—and on a bizarrely developed Mars!! So when the cast was looking all hot, it could have been natural depending on how they did the terraforming. That smokestack before wasn’t a filming slipup … Gwaahhhh!! It got me!!

  The story had suddenly gotten a thousand times better in the last five minutes. The boring first half had been planned all along. The filmmakers wanted these five minutes to really shine, so they purposely left viewers in the dark earlier. Like giving someone a cup of water after a difficult marathon.

  If anyone used this method in a hundred-minute feature-length film, the viewers would simply hoist the white flag long before the end. But this was a short film. It was over so quickly that even if the beginning was incredibly boring, the audience would just idly keep watching along. It’d all been calculated.

  Uwaaahhh! Uwaaahhh!! Uwaaahhh!!!!! What is this? This isn’t a C movie. They’re seriously filming like they 100 percent wanted to compete with Hollywood!! You’ve gotta be shitting me. This thing is only ten minutes long. How’d they manage to do more world building than some trilogies that are just going through the motions?! How did they cram so much in it and still disguise it so you wouldn’t be able to realize earlier?!

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” At this point, Shiage Hamazura couldn’t help laughing. He seriously considered kissing Saiai Kinuhata’s feet at this point. Yes, he understood now—the point of wading through so many terrible low-budg
et short films was to hunt for new talent like this. The overwhelming feeling of discovery made Hamazura keep laughing, but…

  Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.

  He felt someone’s eyes on him.

  Nervously, he turned around…

  There was the girl, the peerless lover of movies, who had only just returned from the bathroom.

  With a face that screamed “Damn it!! How could I have walked out on such an interesting work?!” she was peeking into the screening room from the slightly ajar door and trembling all over.

  After the screenings ended…

  I see, so the director’s name is Beverley Seathrough. I’ve gotta look her up … thought Hamazura, mentally taking notes as Kinuhata walked next to him.

  At the moment, Kinuhata was walking like a limp fish, with no energy and a pitch-black, thunderhead-like aura around her, wearing a face like it was the end of the world.

  “Kinuhata? Hey, Kinuhata. Don’t worry. You’re a winner at life. I would never, ever have seen that work of art by myself. There are as many movies out there as stars in the sky—but you found that one. Your antenna is the real thing.”

  “…And now Hamazura is totally pitying with me. C movies are all about luck. Maybe this is totally a sign my senses aren’t what they used to be…,” Kinuhata muttered.

  Right as they were thinking they’d go back to the hospital to meet up with Takitsubo after wrapping up their side-adventure, Kinuhata’s cell phone suddenly went off.

  For a few moments, the flaccid, dark-eyed Kinuhata didn’t react, but eventually, she took out her phone with strangely delayed movements and put it to her ear.

  After a short exchange, she eventually hung up and looked at Hamazura.

  “Hamazura, please, like, go pick up Takitsubo without me. You totes know where to go, right? If you just go to the booth in District 3 and wait for me there, it would be cool.”

  “Eh?”

  “It’s a job. The higher-ups are finally starting up a new team, so they want us all to, like, get together and slaughter a bunch of terrorists threatening the city. I guess they’re some people who used to be called Spark Signal.”

  3

  “…Wasn’t Saiai Kinuhata supposed to be going to her secret meeting place?”

  “…Saiai Kinuhata went to her secret meeting place, totally got fed up within five minutes, and came right back.”

  As soon as they ran into each other again, they began to argue.

  They’d split up earlier, but before Hamazura reached the hospital, he’d been accosted by the returning Kinuhata…He wondered if there was some kind of transmitter on him, but it didn’t seem particularly like it.

  As they walked on foot toward the hospital (final closing time was past for schools, and so the last trains and buses had already left), Hamazura asked, appalled, “What the hell happened? Weren’t they making a new team so you could fight some terrorists?”

  “Yes, but listen to this.”

  Kinuhata began relating some of the events she’d just experienced.

  After coming to the dimly lit underground area, Saiai Kinuhata looked around at the faces waiting there. She frowned, and then with perfect timing, her cell phone went off, and she heard these words through it:

  “Heya, thanks for coming. Item, School, Block, and Member got destroyed in the last battle, right? And so, I have for you … … Ta-daa! A new team made up of their survivors! I know you were killing one another before, but I hope you get along great!”

  “Hey, wait, no, you’re yanking my chain!! Something weird made its way into your story right off the bat!”

  “At first, I thought it was a joke, too, but it was super-serious. I totes couldn’t put up with them, so, like, I ran away and came back. Oh, right—the Heart Measure girl in the dress totally told me to say hi to you, though.”

  “…Great. I’ve got a sinking feeling I know exactly who that is.” This made Hamazura literally droop, but then he looked up again. “Wait, then will you be all right? Those phone people seem to have a lot of authority. They gonna let you off batting away their orders?”

  “Well, probably not. That’s why I want you to help me with something. If I can do the whole thing by myself, they won’t be able to complain.”

  “Huh?” The boy’s eyes went wide.

  Kinuhata put it plain and simple. “Steal a car from around here and, you know, get us transportation like you always do. We’ll use it to chase the so-called friends of Spark Signal, the guys who attacked the Hula Hoop, and mop them up real nice. We can’t afford to let Takitsubo wait much longer. Let’s get this over and done with, lickety-split.”

  “Just you wait. Weren’t you just going on about how I didn’t need to answer to Item anymore? Did you think I wasn’t serious when I said I want to wash my hands of this shady business and support my beloved Takitsubo—”

  “Then you can just go by yourself with Takitsubo and totes leave me behind even though she’ll probably be super-worried when I never come no matter how much time passes but just as long as you have fun and everything, it’s fine I guess.”

  “Damn it!! We worked so hard on this welcome-home party, and you’re just gonna leave an unpleasant aftertaste?!”

  “If you don’t like it then get moving and get us a car please so we can bust some Spark Signal terrorist skulls and then celebrate our girl getting discharged from the hospital come on Hamazura come on!”

  With her even using a soft, coaxing voice near the end, Hamazura, teary-eyed, swore and shoved his hand into his pocket. Out came what looked like lock-picking tools.

  Keeping one eye on Kinuhata as she used her cell phone to get in touch with Takitsubo and tell her to go ahead of them to the nearby District 3 private salon on her own, Hamazura easily unlocked the door of a family car parked on the road.

  “Man, you’re really the type to rely on acquaintances, huh?”

  “Did you, like, say something, Underling Hamazura?”

  4

  The camper with Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Awaki Musujime, and Mitsuki Unabara in it had arrived at District 3, a gathering place of celebrities and rich socialites.

  As Tsuchimikado displayed the orders sent by Shiokishi on their big screen, he said, “There are twenty holdouts. With as many submachine guns and grenades, evidently…So yeah, it does seem like an easy job, like the boss man said. Apparently, their main job was to support the guys who messed things up at the Hula Hoop.”

  “Sure, killing them would be simple,” said Accelerator from the simple bed he sat on, rolling his eyes over to Tsuchimikado in a glare, “but are we just gonna keep doing everything those General Board shitheads tell us to? Depending on how we play this, we could be close to a chance at getting a glimpse of Dragon.”

  “Are you suggesting we fight alongside those former Spark Signal terrorists? With the ones who would take over the Hula Hoop and kidnap children to use as negotiation tools?”

  “…”

  “From our perspective, it only makes sense to investigate Dragon. But we can’t do it the wrong way. These former Spark people are all garbage human beings. If we leave them be, they could take over some random building…But if you’re willing to get innocent people involved while investigating the mystery, then the four of us would be finished.”

  Accelerator sucked his teeth in annoyance.

  He was the epitome of evil, a Level Five treated as a living strategic weapon. He was even dropped out of a bomber once. However, he had a strong aversion to harming civilians—more specifically, harming the world where a certain young girl lived peacefully.

  After Accelerator fell silent, Musujime was the next one to speak. “These holdouts—where on earth are they hiding?”

  “They’re moving through the underground mall that’s beneath the station. It’s closed up already, so no civilians are there, but if they went all the way up there, they must be thinking it won’t be very hard to break through security.”

  Mo
st open-air markets stayed active until late at night, but the ones attached to stations were an exception. Because the last train was scheduled to match up with the school’s closing time, stores in the underground mall closed up early, too.

  Using the remote, Tsuchimikado pulled up a map of the mall. “They probably know by now that their main force at the Hula Hoop is gone. They seem to be going through the mall to reach vehicles parked elsewhere, and from there, they’ll make their next move. Still, we’re not sure whether they’re simply running or trying to shift to a Plan B that involves high-powered weapons.”

  “Where exactly do they have their getaway cars?” asked Unabara.

  Tsuchimikado idly pointed beyond a wall of the camper. “There.”

  “…I’m sorry?”

  “I gave the driver instructions to cut them off. If we wreck their cars first and have one of us wait here, Spark Signal won’t get their way, at least for a while.

  “Of course, we won’t be stopping there,” added Tsuchimikado. “We’ll leave our anchor here, and the other three will do mop-up at the mall. It’s fine—Musujime can do pinpoint sniping with her ability, while Unabara and I can pretty quickly crush them in the confusion.”

  Accelerator, of all of them, was the one who suddenly frowned.

  As Number One glared at him, Tsuchimikado grinned thinly and tapped his own neck. “You just came from fighting back at the Hula Hoop as well as dealing with Department Store, right? Save your electrode battery.”

  “Tsk.”

  Accelerator didn’t have any particular responsibility to obey, but he also didn’t need to be the one to offer them assistance. If those idiots would take care of the small tacks, he decided, he could just leave them be.

  At that point, the camper stopped moving.