Ga-boom!!
An incredible explosion went off. The entire hundred-meter-square space was filled with hellish winds hundreds of degrees Celsius. Mugino had a way to move at high speeds like rocket engines, but with the entire space filled at once, she had no chance to escape. It really was like a giant fly being swatted aside. Her body was flung straight through the air into the back wall.
After that, he couldn’t see what happened.
Everything outside the clear reinforced glass was orange, leaving him no clear views. It was like he was looking out the window of a space shuttle reentering the atmosphere.
Hamazura covered his face with his hands.
This was not the joy of victory.
He had his eyes shut, praying only that this hell would disappear as soon as humanly possible. Was this really the only thing he could have done? He questioned himself over and over, and it was the only thing on his mind.
Eventually, the hellscape calmed.
For a short while, Hamazura didn’t move a muscle, but eventually, he sat up in the cockpit seat, albeit slowly. He pressed the button, opening the reinforced glass canopy, and fell out of it. A hot, humid air struck his skin. It was like being in an oven.
What had become of Shizuri Mugino?
He didn’t have time to check.
“Hamazura. Hamazura!!”
From somewhere else, he heard a familiar girl’s voice. He looked up and saw Takitsubo looking at him from a crack in the ceiling created by the two hundred-kilo bomb. Hamazura waved. “I’m okay,” he said.
He had chosen Rikou Takitsubo, and for that, he had discarded Shizuri Mugino.
He gave the thought one more moment in his mind, then decided to move forward on his own two feet again.
That, however, was when his cell phone rang.
He picked it up. On the other end was Saiai Kinuhata.
“Hamazura!! Listen to me— Get out of there, like, as fast as you possibly can!!”
“Kinuhata…?!”
“I totally know you’re in the District 23 fighter testing site! That totally doesn’t matter! Another Academy City unit is heading that way to arrest you. And not the good kind of arrest! I can’t, like, totes guarantee you’ll survive!! Take Takitsubo and get away from there now!!”
“What?” Hamazura frowned. He would understand them sending a team after Takitsubo or Kinuhata. But he was just a street thug. Why had things gotten so dramatic? Mugino’s appearance had surprised him, but now that he thought about it, what on earth was that team chasing them before that?
Either way, he didn’t have time to mull it over.
He ran to the durability testing room’s exit, ran up the stairs, and hurried back to Takitsubo’s side.
“Hey! How far away are we supposed to run?! Academy City may be big, but it’s still walled off. If they keep sending people after us forever, they’ll catch us eventually!!”
“Jeez, don’t you have some kind of Skill-Out safehouse or something?!”
“Yeah, but those are just to hide from rival gangs. There’s no way we’d ever be able to get a secret spot that would stay permanently hidden from special forces!!” he shouted into the cell phone, running through the hangar-like area and pulling Takitsubo by the hand. Their pursuers were surely closing in. They’d be killed at this rate.
And then Hamazura stopped running.
There was one—and only one—route that was sure to escape Academy City’s pursuit.
“Hey, Kinuhata. Academy City’s supersonic passenger planes have autopilot features, am I right?”
“Hamazura, you’re not—”
“I know I don’t know how to take off or land, but once we’re in the air, it’d be fine! Isn’t there some kind of manual or something?! For now, we just have to get up there, and we’ll be good. I won’t think about landing. We can jump out in parachutes if we need to, so that’s not an issue!!”
As he spoke, he looked in front of him again. Along with all the fighter jets, there was a huge plane almost eighty meters in length. It was a supersonic passenger jet that could soar at over seven thousand kilometers per hour. If they wanted to get away from Academy City’s special forces, they would just have to flee outside the city.
With its gigantic fuselage, they wouldn’t be able to climb aboard without a specific boarding ramp vehicle.
But possibly due to the two-hundred-kilo bomb’s effects, a walkway was jutting out diagonally. Hamazura and Takitsubo moved up it and into the air, clinging to the side of the passenger jet. Fortunately, it wasn’t locked. They opened the hatch, then climbed aboard.
“Hamazura, can you hear me? The underground hangar you’re in has this scramble liftoff feature thing. Speaking super-broadly, it can set up an electromagnetic catapult hill.”
“What should we do? How do we escape to the skies?!”
“The catapult’s firing function is, like, linked to the cockpit. If you boot up the control computer, you should totes be able to touch the screen with an index finger and lift off.”
He ran to the cockpit in the nose and opened the door to find over a hundred buttons and a flight yoke waiting for him. It almost made him feel dizzy, but he followed Kinuhata’s instructions—she must have been looking at a manual—and began pressing buttons.
Several screens flickered to life, and the four huge engines began a low groan. One of the monitors showed a diagram of the catapult. Following directions, his fingers flew across the monitor, and several of the items on it changed from red to green.
And then:
The underground hangar door flew open wide, and men in black uniforms who must have been the pursuit team flooded in. They looked at the supersonic passenger jet just as it was about to take off and took immediate action.
Without wasting any bullets, they brought around a construction tractor and parked it in such a way that it blocked the catapult.
“Shit!” cursed Hamazura in spite of himself, but he couldn’t stop the commands he’d given at this point.
With a massive gshhhhh noise, the supersonic passenger jet made its way quickly down the catapult rail. He saw one of the black-suited men, the one moving the tractor, hastily climb out of the vehicle, and knew that the supersonic passenger jet was headed straight for it.
They’d crash.
So Hamazura thought, until—
Zzzap!! A tremendous flash of light burst out and knocked the tractor to the side. Before Hamazura could consider where it came from, the electromagnetic catapult launched the supersonic passenger jet from the climbing tunnel up above the surface.
Hamazura didn’t touch the flight yoke; it would have been foolish to do so. Instead, the autopilot program steadily brought the plane horizontal. As long as they didn’t hit any turbulence, he’d be better off leaving it alone.
Mugino …
The flash he’d seen at the end had probably been hers. He didn’t know what reason she had for firing it, but he got the keen feeling they’d meet again somewhere.
“Hamazura…,” came Takitsubo’s voice suddenly from next to him.
Hamazura found he was naturally able to wrap her in a hug. That seemed to finally release the tension, and the two plopped down onto the cockpit floor.
One battle had ended.
And in his arms was but a single girl.
5
Accelerator was slumped on the bloody floor. The amount of blood loss was insane, but strangely, he didn’t feel pain. His limbs wouldn’t move properly, but he felt no fear. Or maybe he’d lost the ability to feel it.
… Is it…over…? he thought, dazed.
One last attack with his life on the line. The bullet he’d fired at the end had pierced right into the triangular prism thing he saw in the Aiwass’s semi-transparent head region. Then there had been the sound of a crystal shattering. He didn’t quite understand what that had been, but he figured it was Aiwass’s weak spot.
However…
“I suppose I should rate that at so-so
.”
This time.
This time, true despair washed over Accelerator. Before he realized it, Aiwass was standing in front of him. He didn’t know when, exactly, it had happened. Or how the being before him had recovered, or if the damage really affected it at all, or what that triangular prism was. They’d been engaged in a death match until now, and yet he still hadn’t gotten a single scrap of real information.
“In actuality, I might have gone down there just like Fuse Kazakiri. Even if it hadn’t been as bad as as a clean kill, I wouldn’t have been able to come out for, say, several years. Aleister’s plans would have needed drastic revisions, and you might have been able to rescue Last Order in the meantime.
“However,” continued Aiwass casually—as though saying it didn’t matter if it survived or died—“the security Aleister built seems to be more careful than I’d anticipated. Perhaps he’s a worrywart. In any case, it seems my defenses were made to be less penetrable than I expected.”
“…You piece of shit…”
Accelerator desperately tried to get up.
But he’d lost too much blood. He couldn’t even move his limbs properly. While he struggled, Aiwass continued.
“I feel bad, since you fought with everything you had.”
Aiwass smiled thinly.
Above its head appeared a shining angel halo.
One with a pale platinum glow, a hint of white at its core.
The blond monster that held interest based on objective value and had appeared before someone out of that interest said one final thing.
“…It seems I have a transformation feature.”
Ga-baaaaaaaaam!!!!!!
Accelerator’s consciousness was cut off without mercy.
And thus, his last hope to save that one single girl disintegrated.
EPILOGUE
I Won’t Let This End in Tragedy
Brave_in_Hand.
The blond monster, Aiwass, walked on two legs, a run-of-the-mill cell phone at its ear.
It was near the edge of an exposed steel beam in a building still under construction. It walked while looking at the moon, not paying the slightest attention to its oh-so-narrow footing. The precarious metal perch held no value, so it had no interest in the thing. That was the only reason.
“Is it truly so mystifying, Aleister?” said Aiwass slowly into the cell phone it had acquired from parts unknown.
The other person was silent for just a moment, then answered, “If you wanted to, you wouldn’t need to move on foot. And the same applies when it comes to conveying your intent. Your actions are indeed perplexing and seem quite inefficient.”
“To stand on two legs and converse through a convenience of civilization…Is that not an act from which one can draw significant value? Perhaps, though, it is perplexing to a man who floats upside down in a glass container in the pursuit of efficiency first and foremost.”
Efficiency and value.
That seemed to be what distinguished the two monsters.
“Oh, yes. About the ‘number one’ you finally succeeded in creating by building this whimsical city for over fifty years.”
“Are you about to tell me things haven’t proceeded as expected?”
“Well, you can allow it, can’t you? You have margins of error. Still, I must say, his mind was more puerile than I thought. He bemocks himself as evil, but I wonder if he realizes it is only because of a fervent thirst for goodness…Even though the one who he pursues, the Imagine Breaker, doesn’t act according to good or evil in the first place. That boy simply acts in line with the mental activity that bubbles up to the surface, only to be arbitrarily deemed ‘good’ by others.”
As Aiwass looked at the moon, it smiled very, very thinly. Its expression seemed to say that a short moment’s idle conversation held more value and interest than even destroying the world.
“And perhaps,” it said, “you admire them, hmm?”
“ … ”
“Heroes come in many shapes and sizes: those who try to stay on the straight and narrow, obeying the emotions that well up within them, even if nobody teaches them; those who have committed a grave mistake in the past and try to walk a proper path even as their sin causes them agony; those who can become a hero for one person alone, even if they don’t have the talent and weren’t chosen by anyone. Each sort of hero is someone who will rise again and again, no matter how many times they are beaten.”
“ … Aiwass.”
“These three types of heroes seem to be equipped with what you lack. I cannot blame you for admiring them…After all, there was a time when you could do nothing except fall to pieces and wail.”
“Aiwass.”
Aleister said its name one more time.
He who appeared both male and female, both adult and child, both saint and sinner, let a sharp twist creep into his voice for a mere moment. Normally, his voice was clothed in all emotions: joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. But now something was different.
Aiwass’s expression never changed.
Perhaps Aiwass didn’t even find that reaction worthy of its interest.
“I will be using whatever I can. Even if that means you. You may laugh and speak of errors in my plan, but allow me to say something as well—that absolute superiority of yours is by no means an eternal guarantee.”
“I didn’t particularly gain this power out of desire, nor do I maintain it through effort,” said Aiwass into the cell phone. “Well, that’s fine. I’ll emerge here again if I find value and interest.”
Moments before daybreak, Aiho Yomikawa awoke for some reason. Even she didn’t know why. She was a talented Anti-Skill officer, and as a result of her training, she could accurately sense the presence of others. Without turning on the lights, she left her bedroom and found her apartment’s living room window had been opened.
On alert, she searched the room and discovered two things. The first was that a roommate, a girl named Last Order, was nowhere to be found. And the second was the sticky trail of blood leading from her room to the living room window.
Yomikawa’s expression changed, but then she found a third clue.
It was a small note.
A short sentence had been written on it using bright-red blood, the characters shaky. There was nothing indicating who had written it, but Yomikawa recognized the words right away. She couldn’t glean deeper meaning from the words, but this one, abrupt sentence was written there:
I’ll save this brat’s life. I promise.
Only the periodic sounds of shaking disturbed Accelerator. He was in a dark space—a freight train container. And this freight train, which ran before the first commuter trains started, was set to keep chugging along and head outside Academy City. There would have been freight checks near the outer wall on their way, but Accelerator, active in the dark underbelly of the city, knew that certain processes could get a stowaway through them.
There were no voices.
It was so silent it seemed strange that this served as the hiding spot for two people. In Accelerator’s hands, as he lay curled up and unmoving, was another person, a girl, who was also still. It was Last Order, fully unconscious, the brunt of her weight on Accelerator. Aiwass’s appearance must have placed considerable stress on the girl; she was exhausted beyond what he’d ever seen.
“The girl presents a problem.”
Accelerator recalled the words, delivered from on high after he’d been completely trounced.
“It depends on Aleister’s plan, but whether it’s right now or far in the future, there is no doubt she will eventually be destroyed. She will die during the process of him integrating me into his plan. I wouldn’t rely on that doctor. Bluntly speaking, he’s just another human. His skills aren’t perfect, and if the technology in this city could do something for her in the first place—well, Aleister would never leave any causes for concern sit and not do anything about it. Still, though, losing this body if and when his plan crumbles is just one of myriad possibi
lities. If you want to save yourself tears later, walk a path besides the one that already exists.”
What was the intent behind those words?
As though he’d seen value and interest in something, Aiwass’s words alone continued to flow.
“Go to Russia.”
Accelerator had stayed silent and listened.
Aiwass wasn’t someone he could deal with in anger, a problem that he could tear limb from limb, and that fact alone disturbed Accelerator enough to fry his nerve cells.
“More specifically, head for the Elizina Alliance of Independent Nations, which broke off from the motherland. That place is beginning to transform into the center of a planet-scale war. Every civilization’s knowledge and technology will be honed into militaries and weapons and converge there … and something you’ve never seen before will appear as well—a completely different ‘law.’”
Aiwass, mindless of others’ thoughts and feelings, continued uttering words alone.
“The index of prohibited books—remember that term. The index itself is not there, but there is something crucial related to it.”
“…”
Accelerator’s puny evil didn’t stand a chance against power that overwhelming.
What should he do now? It felt like he’d been using a GPS map to cross some flatlands, but suddenly his screen had gone dead. He couldn’t figure out what it was he needed to aim for.
Academy City’s strongest monster. Nobody could see him hiding in that freight train, but if they had been able to, everyone might have felt the same.
They would have seen an abandoned child, one who had been wandering around the vast city’s streets and had finally curled up in abject exhaustion.
There was a crunch.
It was the sound of him crushing his cell phone in his hand—his only connection to Group, Aiho Yomikawa, and Kikyou Yoshikawa.
Accelerator brought the young girl in his arms close again, and his lips moved very slightly. In words that were almost unspoken, he said:
To Russia.
The supersonic passenger jet Shiage Hamazura and Rikou Takitsubo rode pierced through the heavens, maintaining its balance and a fixed course on autopilot. But that wouldn’t last forever. Hamazura had no way of safely landing the jumbo jet.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19 Page 22