A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19

by Kazuma Kamachi

  She needed to make her opponent suffer much, much, much more.

  Why was it over so quickly?

  “…Are you messing with me? Is this a joke?”

  Stephanie heard the sound of her own teeth gnashing. Grating against each other so hard she thought it might deform her skull.

  “There was a lot more than this that I wanted to hit you with. This was still just the opening act! Don’t lower the curtains without asking for my permission!! You destroyed Mr. Sunazara! A person like that wouldn’t die this easily!! Suffer more! Beg for your life!! Stand up and let me kill you!! You had damn well better come back to life so I can kill you a thousand more times!!”

  The intense force of the buckshots created a gust of wind, like the air had inflated.

  Smoke struck her in the face, and she snorted it up. While coughing, Stephanie finally released her finger from her shotgun’s trigger.

  The wall of smoke parted.

  There was something on the other side.

  Is that all you were? spat Stephanie.

  Just as—

  Bang!!

  A gunshot went off.

  A hole appeared in Stephanie’s gut.

  And then she saw:

  Beyond the smoke, Saiai Kinuhata was aiming a gun at her.

  “What…? What?!”

  Her face one of shock, Stephanie stared at Kinuhata.

  She wasn’t unharmed. There was a large bruise on her little face, as though she’d been punched, and bright-red blood dripped from her widely exposed thigh. But that was all. She had none of the injuries that the automatic shotgun should have caused—nothing to grind her flesh and bones and organs into gruel.

  Stephanie didn’t understand.

  For now, though, she tried to ready her automatic shotgun at Kinuhata again.

  But the single bullet had dulled her movements more than she’d thought.

  Before the shotgun’s muzzle could take aim, Kinuhata fired again. And then again, then a third time, the bullets piercing into Stephanie’s chest. Her giant gun slid to the ground.

  “You told me not to die, so I decided to humor you. Should I, like, not have?”

  “But how…,” began Stephanie before seeing something on the floor.

  It was a metal can, about the size of a hair spray canister. But the metal seemed quite a bit thicker compared to its size. And the thick can had ruptured from within, as though it couldn’t withstand the internal pressure.

  An English letter was written on the metal can’s surface.

  Stephanie recognized it as a chemical symbol.

  “Liquid…nitrogen…?!”

  “Does it really come as that much of a surprise? If you create, like, a vacuum between two walls and insulate it, it’s not that hard to carry around with you.”

  Essentially, when Stephanie created a localized vacuum state, Kinuhata had tossed the liquid nitrogen into the heated air and instantly replenished a large amount of nitrogen.

  As Kinuhata held the gun up at her, she smiled thinly. “I manipulate nitrogen. In other words, that’s seriously the only thing I can do. Did you think someone who totally understands that she can’t do a thing if the nitrogen is gone wouldn’t have ever thought about what to do in a case like that? Plus, I’m one of the people who dwells in Academy City’s darkness. I can get whatever I need, like, no problem.”

  Flames crawled over the shotgun where it lay and caused the powder inside to ignite.

  But Kinuhata didn’t even glance at it.

  “You were in Anti-Skill, so you certainly learned a lot about how to fight espers and unlocked the ability to find their weaknesses. But it looks like you totes don’t understand that I’ve always been the kind of person who’s constantly struggled to win and survive.”

  Kinuhata holstered her gun as she spoke.

  She wasn’t letting Stephanie off the hook. She just wanted to end things for sure, with an attack she was most confident in—her ability.

  “Oh, right,” said Kinuhata as though in parting. “An esper like me who has a strong shield and can totally grab cars and throw them is nearly invincible in close combat. My worst enemy is someone sniping me from afar with pinpoint attacks and not giving me a chance to do anything…Chimitsu Sunazara was way more on point than a gun freak like you!”

  Stephanie tried to pull her spare handgun from her waist.

  Kinuhata moved faster.

  The esper’s arm, which could easily lift entire cars, was aimed right at her.

  10

  Tecpatl—the man who virtually controlled the Aztecan “organization.”

  He now stood before Unabara with Xóchitl’s comrade Tochtli in tow. For the sole purpose of killing him, the pariah.

  Unabara’s gut told him it was an odd pairing.

  He didn’t remember Tochtli and Tecpatl being on very good terms with one another. Neither had the kind of trust required to watch the other’s back in certain death situations. Was organizational hierarchy alone enough to overcome that? Whatever the case, right now, that wasn’t what Unabara needed to be worrying about.

  “…” Without thinking, he glanced at the obsidian knife in his hands.

  The Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli.

  By reflecting Venus’s light onto an object, the Soul Arm could dismantle even the strongest armor back into its constituent parts. It was just as effective on human bodies. If he hit Tecpatl or Tochtli with it, their bodies would part into flesh and bone more precisely than a skilled artisan butchered cows or pigs.

  Could he do it?

  They had parted ways, but they were still former comrades. Would it be right?

  “Hey, come on.” In contrast to Unabara’s waffling, Tecpatl didn’t even worry about it. “That little thing is all you have? …And here I’d thought for sure that something like this would come up.”

  As he spoke, he took something from Tochtli’s hand.

  It was a rectangular object that looked like a flat schoolbag.

  Long, thin slits were cut out of its bottom, out of which incredibly thin stone plates a few millimeters thick protruded like bread from a toaster.

  Tightly carved into one surface were things one could take as characters, symbols, or even images—the Aztec people’s unique information storage method.

  It can’t be … !

  An awful chill came over Unabara, and at the same time, something in the back of his mind sparked like it’d been stabbed. It was the pain of his brain being corrupted with knowledge none should ever know.

  This wasn’t the first time it had happened to him.

  Tecpatl smiled, as if to substantiate his suspicions, and said:

  “Yes. It’s an original copy.”

  As Unabara desperately shook his head, in a state akin to getting dizzy upon standing up, Tecpatl continued, still grinning. “You know we did some…modifications to Xóchitl, right? Our position is good enough that we can even distribute original texts to our advance parties. I’m the one who planned and carried this out, so it’s not surprising I have one, too, is it?”

  “You…”

  “Bring yours out. I know Xóchitl is alive, which means you must have extracted it.” He paused. “And just so we’re clear, you’ll need more than some obsidian knife to dismantle mine.”

  … Is he seriously bringing an original text into real combat…? Damn! What are those characters engraved on that stone plate?

  Unabara had no intention of ever reading it again. Instead, as though tasting the poison still clinging to his brain once more, he carefully considered the text Tecpatl held.

  It was probably a calendar stone, a type of complicated timekeeping from the Aztec world. They were large, disc-shaped stones with descriptions of how both the world’s destruction and its rebirth functioned. The grimoire they’d embedded inside Xóchitl was derived from it, but Unabara figured Tecpatl had acquired an original of a different derivative, one which emphasized different sections.

  Unabara looked up, tak
ing care not to direct his attention at Tecpatl’s original text, and said, “An account of the moon rabbit…?”

  “You actually went and read this thing? You’re a bigger daredevil than you seem.”

  Tecpatl must have been taking unknown measures to make sure the stone plate’s knowledge didn’t enter his mind; he rapped casually on the stone with his knuckles as he spoke.

  “It’s a story about the time when the fifth sun was created. The moon, born in the same era, shone more brightly than any of the gods had initially expected. The moon would soon grow indistinguishable from the sun. To prevent this, the gods threw a rabbit to the moon to weaken its light…And when I use the power of this legend, do you know what kinds of things I can do?”

  As soon as he finished, it happened.

  Ga-boom!!

  Something shot out of Tecpatl’s hand and smashed all the shelter walls from the inside out.

  It was a single straight-line attack. Despite everything, the shelter had been created to withstand strategic weapons—and yet, it fell apart in one fell swoop, collapsing on top of Shiokishi’s private soldiers, who were still fighting outside.

  “Hold still,” said Tecpatl with a smirk. “Twenty or thirty soldiers just died, I think. Of course, this attack was originally for destroying other celestial bodies in one hit…but it seems like its materials, the rabbit bones, aren’t that good.”

  Unabara was surprised.

  But not at the sheer force of the attack Tecpatl had unleashed.

  He was looking next to Tecpatl, at Tochtli.

  Her index finger wobbled…and swayed, like a squid’s tentacle.

  “…What did you do?” asked Unabara, his lips quivering. “What did you to do Tochtli?!”

  “The rabbit bones— Oh, do I need to explain every little thing to you?”

  Tecpatl had launched some kind of projectile attack. And he’d used the term rabbit bones. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

  Why is Tochtli obeying him … ?

  With a natural question in mind as his gaze remained fixed to the brown-haired girl, Tochtli opened her mouth for the first time. And from it came this.

  “ … Uh … Agh … gh …”

  In that moment, all the heat drained from Mitsuki Unabara’s spine.

  It wasn’t human language. She didn’t have a brain or a mind left to think with. Tecpatl, seeing Unabara dumbfounded, burst out into laughter as though he’d been holding it in this whole time.

  Why was she helping him this much?

  Tochtli and Tecpatl weren’t on very good terms, were they?

  The answer was so, so simple.

  Besides…

  A normal person would never give their bones away without anesthesia.

  “Ha-ha-ha!! It’s fun to watch her, isn’t it? I’d guess less than half the bones in her body are left now. The original copy does appear to have a mechanism for swapping human bones with obsidian, but it seems using it comes with significant pain. When I first used it, it blew me away. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter for me as long as I can replenish the stock.”

  “Tec…patl…”

  Unabara’s lips trembled.

  In the meantime, Tochtli’s tentacle-like finger inflated from within, then squeezed back down to its normal shape. Obsidian had rushed into where the bones used to be.

  How much pain must that have caused?

  And how much humiliation?

  “Tecpaaaaaaaaaaatllllllllllllllllllll!!” Unabara roared, putting his hand to his face. He tore off the skin covering it, revealing his true brown-skinned visage to the world.

  Then, as though in response to his rage, something moved.

  The scroll-shaped original text in his suit’s inside pocket unfurled on its own accord and reached out. It writhed in the air like a snake, and Unabara grabbed it again, under his own volition.

  The original copy that Unabara…or rather, the original copy that Xóchitl took ownership of described its interception as a counterattack against those who took up arms. In Xóchitl’s case, it created a spell that caused those who took up arms to harm themselves with those weapons, but Unabara couldn’t yet draw out that much of its power.

  In response, Tecpatl’s original copy, the one that consumed the bones of the girl named Tochtli, described its interception as a long-distance bombardment. Its spell was built on the folktale of the thrown rabbit giving a celestial body its current form, becoming a projectile weapon that could shoot down any enemy.

  A clash of grimoires.

  Unabara no longer felt aversion to using his. Tecpatl had set foot into territory he shouldn’t have. His mind was seething. It could only think about killing the monster.

  “I like it,” responded Tecpatl, holding his stone plate aloft as the owner of an equal grimoire.

  “This is our battle. Let us exhaust all our intellect and vie for control over the Aztecs!”

  Ga-boom!!

  Multiple flashes of light burst from Tecpatl’s hand, and Unabara’s vellum scroll unfolded itself wide to stop them. Countering, the scroll became a tempest of sandpaper-like dust particles; Tecpatl’s tablet swung around and blew it away.

  The shock wave alone caused the shelter dome to crack and swell.

  This wasn’t a normal fight. He was way beyond Unabara’s specs.

  But Unabara’s original copy hadn’t become his ally for nothing.

  … Urgh…The headache…!!

  Every time he fought, the knowledge would come flowing in. The pain started with his head and ended at his fingertips and toes. Unabara endured, wielding the original copy again.

  Original copies of grimoires assisted those who wanted to spread the text’s knowledge. Thus, they couldn’t be weapons for those who simply owned them. If any were to appear who were more suitable than its current owner, it would mercilessly annihilate the “used” owner and jump ship.

  It was as though it was testing him.

  Kill or let live—the text was deciding for itself which would be a greater boon.

  … I don’t care…

  Unabara gritted his teeth. Red blood leaked from between them.

  … There is an enemy I need to defeat even if it destroys me!!

  But willpower alone wouldn’t determine victory.

  Another barrage of flashing lights flew out from Tecpatl’s hand. They were stronger than Unabara’s defenses could take. Several of the shots wove around and through his scroll shield to stab into his upper body. Even so, possibly due to the original copy’s assistance, his body was not ripped apart. Instead, it simply tumbled down to the ground.

  But he didn’t have the stamina left to get back up.

  As Unabara held the scroll open to the air, Tecpatl walked right up to him.

  “It’s a matter of experience. And you possess no security against the grimoire. To use it as a weapon, you have to take measures to prevent the counterflow of knowledge.”

  “…”

  Unabara glared at him, but Tecpatl’s expression didn’t change.

  Yet another light appeared in his hand.

  A light created from the bones of the girl named Tochtli.

  “What…What happened anyway?”

  “What?” Tecpatl grinned. “One major fight ended. A fight against the philistines who call themselves the world’s police. We believed that once it ended, we would be able to go back to our peaceful lives. So we continued to fight.”

  His grinning was incessant.

  “But nothing ended. Nothing about our status, nor our position, nor our ways of life changed at all. Why, then, have we fought? Such a bitter battle, and all we could protect in the end were the interests of some old men standing atop us?”

  Finally, his grin faded.

  “We’ve already purged the old men who instigated us with utter gibberish. But execute them though we did, nothing changed. That’s all. We lost our direction and our objective. We no longer know where to go from here. That is all.”
>
  Ga-boom!!

  This time, the strike from Tecpatl’s hand was a decisive one.

  However, it didn’t end Mitsuki Unabara’s life.

  The attack Tecpatl had launched from his hand had curved back around and stabbed himself instead.

  “…What…?” groaned Tecpatl as he stared at the gaping hole in his stomach.

  As Unabara lay crumpled on the floor, he quietly asked, “Did you know this? An original text is not a mere tool or weapon. It allies itself with those who want to spread its knowledge the most—and if needed, it will even turn against its owner.”

  That was when Tecpatl saw it:

  Unabara had drawn something on the floor in his own blood. It was a sentence from the stone tablet Tecpatl had.

  He had just copied the original text’s writing, creating a transcription of the grimoire and thus attempting to spread its knowledge when Tecpatl had made his attack. Because of that, he’d been attacked by his own original text.

  “…If you had confronted your original text’s knowledge, maybe this wouldn’t have ended in such an extreme manner. After all, you said you took measures to prevent it from corrupting you. Not only did you not spread the knowledge to others—you didn’t even want to read it yourself. You were hoarding it. Did you really think an original text would allow that…?”

  There was no answer.

  Tecpatl had fallen onto his knees. Then, as if prostrating himself before Unabara, he collapsed. Unnaturally long, slender shadows stretched from the schoolbag-like lump, which was packed with several stone tablets. They looked like thin, beckoning hands.

  Accept me. If not, I will kill you.

  That was what it felt like they were saying to Unabara.

  It seems original copies quite like me.

  “…Fine, then…,” answered Mitsuki Unabara to the grimoire’s request.

  A second original copy. The speed of their corruption would reach new levels now, but Unabara didn’t hesitate.

  “However,” he suddenly said, looking away from Tecpatl. He turned his gaze so that it reflected the girl who could no longer understand human speech, Tochtli.

  He had no obligation to go this far.