A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “Did they make contact?”

  “No. Group appears to have failed to capture. In this situation, they may not be able to catch School’s tail.”

  “Hmm.” The professor sighed just once. “Either way, the others will probably act, too.”

  They were on a team directly under the jurisdiction of Aleister, the Academy City General Board chairperson.

  They acted as “that person’s” limbs, uncaring of good and evil. That was all that was expected from the small outfit.

  “From the outset, groups like ours have complicated reasons for acting, but various powers higher up the chain have pressured us and controlled us,” the professor said, his tone relaxed. “But after the violence that occurred during the 09/30 incident, most of the powered suits have been sent out to clean up in Avignon. That force makes for effective hands for the man on the telephone. They can’t use the suits freely now, which gives us a huge opportunity.”

  “Then perhaps the time is ripe.”

  Suddenly, a voice appeared from directly behind the girl in the red uniform.

  Nobody had been there a moment ago, but now someone was there. It was a boy covered in a big, baggy down jacket.

  It was like he’d appeared out of thin air.

  “Yes,” the professor said languidly, placing a hand on his nearby creature’s head and stroking it lightly. He didn’t seem surprised at the boy’s appearance. The girl sitting across from him watched their exchange with a lack of interest.

  Her expression suspicious, she asked, “How do we know exactly how they’re moving? The intel from higher up could be wrong.”

  “They have tech that makes it possible to know with accuracy.”

  The professor’s hand stopped petting the synthetic animal.

  He was staring at the sidewalk across the street from the café. A girl, in what might colloquially be called maid clothing, was passing by. But the professor wasn’t looking at her. That girl was sitting atop an oil drum–shaped cleaning robot. He watched its very smooth procession down the sidewalk.

  He nodded to himself.

  He was honestly impressed.

  “I never thought of an idea like that.”

  “Professor, please keep your mind off strange ideas.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Those Gradually Beginning to Act

  Altair_II.

  1

  Inside an RV that one of their drivers had brought around for them sat Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, and Awaki Musujime.

  It was noon.

  Fast-food meals lined a small table bolted to the floor.

  Each was eating the food they’d bought—Accelerator his spicy fried chicken and Tsuchimikado his giant hamburger. They weren’t kindred spirits even in what they ate for lunch.

  Meanwhile, Awaki Musujime, eating a fancy salad from a direct-delivery brand in the Mediterranean, watched them. “…That stuff will shave years off your life.”

  “Eating meowthing but green and yellow veggies seems too healthy to meow. You need both meat and vegetables to maintain a healthy body, y’know. You’ve gotta have a balance.”

  “Hah. Wouldn’t you be happier eating meat and dying? You’d be able to die after doing what you wanted to do until the end,” said Accelerator to Musujime, licking grease off his thumb. “Anyway, find out anything about those School guys?”

  “I accessed the data banks, but aside from the name, no. It looks like they’re as secret as we are. It just says Group and School in there.

  “But,” she added with a pause, “When I looked around, I found a few more organization names like that.”

  “There weren’t only two?” Tsuchimikado bit into his hamburger and hastily tried to keep the meat from coming out the other side.

  “Group, School, Item, Member, Block…,” she answered, counting on her fingers. “Five, just from what I can tell. Details are unknown, but they’re probably like us—unofficial teams made up of a small number of people. School were the ones plotting to snipe Monaka Oyafune. Would that make them the ones who blew up Management’s mansion and attacked his escort car? Maybe Mitsuki Unabara infiltrated them, too.”

  “Who knows? But if he’s doing spy work in School, I wish he’d at least give us a sign. We might think he’s a baddie and accidentally kill him,” said Tsuchimikado, listening to Musujime as Accelerator put a coffee can to his lips.

  …But why would School be trying to assassinate Monaka Oyafune?

  2

  They’re doing whatever they want, thought Shiage Hamazura.

  Right now, he was in a family restaurant in School District 7. But the woman named Shizuri Mugino, who had installed herself at one of their table’s seats, was blatantly eating a convenience store meal she’d bought elsewhere. That poor, poor little waitress waiting at the edge of the table…

  “Huh? This salmon bento tastes different from yesterday’s salmon bento. Hmm?”

  The woman, by the window and wearing a short-sleeved coat in bright fall colors even though she was inside, re-crossed her stocking-covered legs and tilted her head in confusion as she mumbled.

  It’s the same as always, thought Hamazura.

  Weirdos, every single person at the table.

  “It just means canned mackerel is in vogue right now. Curry is the best—curry!” said a blond, green-eyed high school girl named Frenda sitting beside Mugino as she wrestled with the can. Maybe she was bad at using can openers, because she wrapped some kind of plastic tape around it, then attached a fuse to the tape and blew the thing open. Hamazura was pretty sure you were supposed to use that for breaking open doors.

  Meanwhile, sitting across from Frenda was a mature-looking girl of about twelve named Saiai Kinuhata, who wore a fluffy knit dress. She wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to what the weirdos were doing (not that she had common sense or tolerance but because she was that kind of weirdo). Instead, she was browsing through a movie pamphlet. “An ultra-problematic C-movie presented by the Hong Kong Red Dragon film company…Looks like a real palm sweater in a few different ways, but that’s what makes it interesting. Yes, worth a check. Takitsubo, what do you think?”

  She was asking an all-around lethargic girl named Rikou Takitsubo, sitting next to her. She hadn’t touched her food; she was just sprawled out on the booth seat, eyes wandering here and there, never focusing. “…Signal coming from south-southwest…,” she muttered.

  …These girls were a team called Item.

  They were an unofficial Academy City organization whose main business was to hold the city’s upper echelons, including the General Board, in check. This small group of four had real influence in this city, and by extension, the science faction as a whole. They were treated with the same level of secrecy as Group and School.

  Shiage Hamazura wasn’t an official member of Item. He belonged to their ancillary organization, doing odd jobs and being their driver.

  Before, he’d been the temporary leader of Skill-Out, an armed organization comprising back-alley Level Zeroes. But after their plans fell through and they sustained catastrophic damage, his life of standing above others had come to an end. Now he was doing grunt work in Academy City’s underworld.

  …Still, though, thought Hamazura. Ever since they’d assigned him here, something had been constantly worrying him.

  Being the only man in a group of women is really uncomfortable.

  This booth seated six, and Hamazura was closest to the aisle. They’d assigned him the job of refilling their drinks.

  “So!” said Shizuri Mugino after finishing most of her salmon bento. “About that incident where one of the General Board members, Monaka Oyafune, was almost killed this morning. With that, I think we should start moving, too.”

  “Actually, I never got any information about that,” said Frenda simply.

  Mugino paused with a grunt. Then the short-sleeved-coat-wearing woman glanced at Hamazura. “Hamazura, would you forward this incident’s details to everyone’s phones?”<
br />
  “Yeah, yeah,” answered Hamazura. He wouldn’t complain when they gave him orders. This was his job now. He took out his own cell phone, then sent them the saved data.

  “Hmm…”

  Everyone looked at the information on their phones.

  And what came up was an adult video downloaded from the Internet.

  A moment later, all four members of Item slapped their cell phones closed. With stares of contempt, they shut the doors to their minds, then barred those mental doors shut, then took their mental underground elevators down to evacuate to their mental nuclear shelters.

  “I, wait!! Do-over! There must be some mistake!!”

  The delinquent leader who once led over one hundred people in Skill-Out bellowed a plea.

  As for the four members of Item…

  “Hamazura…”

  “Man, you really are a creep.”

  “Bunny girls are a big hit for you, Hamazura?”

  “It’s okay, Hamazura. I still support you even though you’re like that.”

  Hamazura, trembling at the warm words, this time sent the correct information about the attempted sniping of Monaka Oyafune.

  Kinuhata sighed. “Right, the one School totally planned. I thought we’d, like, totally dealt with their assassin sniper three days ago.”

  “They must’ve hired a new one,” said Hamazura. “It just means they ignored our warning.”

  “Man, didn’t we argue about why they were after Monaka Oyafune then, too?” said Frenda, stabbing the contents of her can of mackerel with a fork. “Oyafune is on the General Board, but man, she’s useless. She has almost no influence. She’s not even worth killing. But they still wanted her…”

  “School still hired a new sniper after the one they lost, then still tried to assassinate Oyafune even despite our warning,” said Takitsubo lazily, continuing for Frenda.

  Mugino nodded shortly. “There is no value in killing Monaka Oyafune. Despite the risk of getting found out, they decided to force their plans and shoot her. Why is that? …Hamazura!”

  Hamazura’s shoulders jerked in surprise. What?! Why does it seem like she’s trying to get me to say something funny now?! D-don’t look at me at times like this!!

  “U-um, well!! Wait a sec, it’s coming up my throat now, I’ll know in a moment!!”

  In the end, he had enthusiasm, but couldn’t actually say anything.

  “Uhh, Hamazura…”

  “Man, the way you get flustered is creepy.”

  “There’s totally different kinds of creepy, but Hamazura is the worst kind.”

  “It’s okay, Hamazura. I still support you even though everyone keeps calling you creepy.”

  The girls gave disappointed sighs. The Level-Zero Hamazura hunkered down on the floor and stopped moving.

  Mugino ignored him. “Well, like I said, there’s no value in assassinating Monaka Oyafune. She’s too straightforward. But School still chose her for their target. So, like, maybe they chose her because she doesn’t have any value.”

  “Because she doesn’t? I totally don’t get it.”

  “I mean, like, maybe School just needed someone. They only wanted to cause a big fuss, so they chose a VIP whose death wouldn’t affect much…In other words, they went after the VIP with the least security.” Mugino sounded amused. “As for other VIPs…Well, even in just the General Board, nobody else would have been giving a speech outdoors in the past couple days. That Shiokishi guy wears his powered suit around the clock, right? There’s no way they can snipe someone like that, so I think they chose whoever would be easiest. And honestly, Monaka Oyafune didn’t have much in the way of protection.”

  “…Man, poor Oyafune.”

  “Assuming that’s correct, what was School after? I propose this: a system of guaranteed VIP security.” Mugino stuck out her chest proudly—a chest visible even outside her short-sleeved coat. “Academy City designates several people and organizations as VIPs, starting with the twelve General Board members. Their protection comes from a different security group. If anyone ends up in a life-threatening situation, they’d call in people from all over. They’d do things like close off roads for ambulances to pass through and get all the biggest names in medicine to do surgery.

  “What I’m saying is this,” concluded Mugino after a pause. “What do you think would happen if a VIP was almost assassinated?”

  “They’d call in other people to defend the medical facility, then get all those special scientists and machines and stuff together,” replied Kinuhata. “Heh, you’re saying School would use the chaos to do something else? How boring.”

  It would certainly create an opening, but the method wasn’t very decisive. It wouldn’t affect District 23’s strict security or the Windowless Building much at all. At most, it would raise the possibility of attacks on facilities that were already targets to begin with.

  “It could be insurance,” said Mugino. “If School got serious, they could break into most facilities by force. However,” she added, “they were so intent on obtaining insurance that they hastily replaced the sniper we took care of and plotted to assassinate Monaka Oyafune. It seems like they’re pretty high-strung about it.”

  “Man, that means Oyafune was just a means of insurance, and School plans on attacking somewhere or someone else now.”

  “Yep,” said Mugino, nodding.

  Hamazura broke in anxiously. “…Wait, doesn’t that mean they wanted to fail?”

  “I don’t think it matters, really. Even if she did die, they’d devote a lot of people to her for heart and lung resuscitation and crime scene inspection and autopsy and stuff. She might not be all that, but she’s still one of only twelve members of the General Board—one of the highest VIPs in the city. They would mobilize all sorts of unknown technology for it.”

  “Urk,” said Hamazura, scrunching up his face.

  Mugino continued anyway, not so much as batting an eye. “I’ll check the facilities with less security because of the attempted assassination of Monaka Oyafune…Actually, maybe that’s not enough. I’ll check the points that would have changed if it had worked out, too. School must have controlled the situation so they could get to their goal whether or not their sniper succeeded. There must be a facility with less security that matches both conditions. That’s probably where School will show up next.”

  Shizuri Mugino vigorously rose from her seat.

  Without sparing a glance at Hamazura, she told him, “Hamazura, go look for a car, please. We’ll probably be leaving right away.”

  Her snobbish tone pricked at Hamazura’s nerves, but he couldn’t argue with her. He was just a grunt right now. “Damn. I’ll have you know, I’m the leader of over a hundred people in Skill-Out…,” he muttered anyway, despite himself.

  “Yes, and?”

  …Damn it, he cursed to himself before leaving the family restaurant ahead of them to find a car.

  3

  Mitsuki Unabara was in a mixed-residence building in School District 10.

  The building was missing a lot of tenants, and now he found himself in another vacant apartment. The sole juvenile reformatory in Academy City being right out the window might have had something to do with it.

  There were a dozen or so armed men in the small room—and about four people who clearly looked like bosses—all standing around. On a business desk left haphazardly in the room were the firearms and laptop they’d brought there, as well as a tossing of smaller tools for disguise and hand cream and such.

  …My, my. This is a quandary.

  Right now, he was not Mitsuki Unabara.

  He’d taken out one of the attackers, and now he was “borrowing” the man’s face.

  Who would have thought someone so weak was central to this organization…

  His plan was to disguise himself as one of the grunts at random, wait for an opportunity to go out on an errand or something, sneak away from the group, and flee…But apparently, Unabara had taken out one of the group’s
bosses.

  It would be hard to sneak away from them like this. It wasn’t like they were watching his every action, but whenever he moved, the ring of people seemed to move with him and around him.

  He lost his chance and ended up coming to District 10 from District 7…

  “What is it, Yamate?”

  Suddenly, a voice spoke to him from the side.

  A tall woman was standing there. Though she was slender, her whole body was covered in hard muscle. She looked built—almost like a statue, actually. He could tell at a glance she did behind-the-scenes jobs, but according to what he heard, she was also an Anti-Skill officer on the surface and had infiltrated their headquarters.

  As he thought about all that, he recalled what the muscular woman had said.

  Yamate. That seemed to be his name.

  “It’s nothin’,” he said.

  “Keep it together. Your strength, is vital, to our plan’s success.”

  She spoke politely, stating each word clearly. It sounded like she was being kind while also looking down on him.

  “School’s started to move,” said a bearlike man. “We’re the ones who sent them Management’s information, but…Damn. If only they’d taken action a little later.”

  “In the end, attacking the mansion and destroying the information was all pointless,” said the muscular woman standing next to Unabara. “Thanks to School’s actions, the security level, of the entire Academy City, should have gone up. I just hope, it doesn’t impact, what we need to do.”

  “Looks like this won’t be easy. We can’t get out of Academy City now, either. Though, it’s not like we can stop now anyway.”

  “…” As Unabara listened to the woman’s voice, he pieced together the information in his head.

  …This organization was apparently called Block.

  …Block was presumably afforded equal secrecy and authority as Group.

  …Block seemed to be planning something, but because another organization called School took action on the same day, they were apparently caught up in it.