Then he heard a voice saying that.
A woman’s weakened voice.
“You have someone you want to save with your own hands as well, don’t you? I’m not exactly human, but I can understand human feelings like that.”
Cornered, turning around with excessive hostility in his eyes, Accelerator then spotted the angel of science. Her body had turned strangely translucent.
“Maybe I can entrust my goal to a person like that as well. I’ve used too much of myself. It won’t cause my existence to disappear, but I probably won’t be able to affect the outer world for a time.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean, I might be able to do something?!”
“September thirtieth.”
The two words the angel of science spoke made Accelerator’s eyes go wide.
The day Amata Kihara had kidnapped Last Order. That date held a special relevance, even when taking in his whole life.
“My friend, named Index…She removed the virus in that girl’s head by singing a particular song to her.”
And then, Index.
The one keyword both Aiwass and that Level Zero had mentioned.
That piece of information was something he could no longer ignore. Accelerator’s attention turned to the angel of science, as though he were being drawn in.
And yet.
Like the flame on a guttering candle, that angel of science’s features grew more and more indistinct.
“……The ‘song’s’ contents…entered rest within girl’s virus as well as my linked mind. Because the original…one corresponded…to ‘me,’ it may not…work…on that monster…derived…from me…but if you…overwrite…the song’s…parameters…”
A song? The theory where you can control someone’s mental state through sensory stimulation? Just like how I fought against Amai’s virus, I’d affect her brain directly…
Vanishing.
Not enough time.
No time to have her teach him this so-called song from start to finish.
“…You’ll…be okay…”
The angel of science put an index finger to her temple.
Even that fingertip had mostly disappeared.
“The treat…ment re…corded the song…in her…hea—”
Her weakhearted smile, too, blurred.
“The para…meters…too…you already…know—”
She vanished.
There was nothing left to see.
No voice lingered, either, or anything else audible.
“…”
Accelerator flicked his electrode switch and checked the vectors nearby. The AIM dispersion fields filling the space like they did in Academy City were completely gone. The angel of science had “disappeared”…or maybe she’d been forced to “go home” to Academy City.
He thought just for a moment, then called out to the broken-down parked car’s driver’s seat—to the limp Misaka Worst.
“…You alive?”
“Unfortunately. For a while, Misaka figured she’d pretend she was dead to make it easier.”
The girl poked her head up, and with surprisingly nimble motions, extracted herself from the crushed driver’s seat and came out onto the snow.
Without particularly caring, Accelerator noted to himself, “Then you heard all that.”
“Data on the song used to erase the virus is still in Last Order’s memory region,” answered Misaka Worst in a “whatever” tone. “Maybe she meant it would help cure her if you extracted it. Oh—Academy City’s number one can even steal other people’s memories by reading the vectors of electrical signals in their brains? Wow, amazing.”
“…My vector manipulation ability only extracts whether there is an electrical signal or there isn’t—a sequence of zeroes and ones. It can’t play back what kind of memories they’re actually connected to. It’s not like you’ve ever met someone who could look at the surface of a CD and imagine the music on it, right? Same thing.”
“Then what’ll you do?”
“I’ll use your power,” said Accelerator without skipping a beat. “You’re one of the Sisters series, too—you should be able to directly access a certain massive information source called the Misaka network.”
“Last Order is the highest of us. Misaka only has normal access privileges. She can’t look into the command tower’s mind. If she could, the angel would have controlled her to make her attack you.”
“You don’t need to get inside the kid. She’s got this habit where she shares her memories with the other Sisters to make backups. Meaning, if you can reach the other Sisters through the network, chances are good you’ll be able to get the song data.”
“Not very prudent. If Misaka matches her timing with the command center’s tower, she’ll have a chance to bury some evil data in her.”
“Yeah. But generally, I think people call that imprudence trust,” spat Accelerator. “Thanks to that, I think I might have barely found a way.”
“Keh-keh. But even if Misaka found the song, wasn’t the problem that you couldn’t use it as is? Where are you gonna get the extra parameters you need to change its contents?”
“I got it.”
Accelerator reached into his pocket.
The parchment.
Something he couldn’t explain with science.
However.
Couldn’t he say the same about the monster Aiwass in Academy City? No matter how much that thing was based on AIM dispersion fields, could he really call it scientific? He’d defeated Accelerator, supposedly number one, so easily—if he thought of Aiwass as an existence outside their rule set, it would actually make a lot more sense.
In which case…
“I might find the parameters if I search this thing. Academy City—and the other form of technology outside it. If I put them together, I might find a path leading to a solution.”
4
Shizuri Mugino “burst.”
She had fired a cannonade of white lights rocketing out from her in every direction.
The eerily dark sky and the unnatural four-toned paths glittering in it—this supernatural phenomenon was completely upstaged by the overwhelming flood of light. Just as nighttime cityscapes blotted out the stars, Shizuri Mugino’s power reigned across this Russian land, a symbol of negative science.
The raging emissions eventually converged toward a single point. It was an arm. An erect construct almost twenty meters tall. Just as Hamazura looked upon it in dread, the arm of flashing light dove at him from above like a collapsing building.
“…???!!!”
In haste, he rolled to the side.
The Meltdown arm explosively incinerated both the thick layer of snow and the ground beneath it.
The blast had been powerful enough to throw a fully grown man over ten meters away. Hamazura’s mouth was frozen from fear in a shouting gesture.
He suddenly realized he’d lost a ton of moisture.
Forcing his stuck-together throat to move and taking in a breath, Hamazura set his mind to work.
The attack hadn’t hit him directly. If it had, he’d already be in pieces.
A water vapor explosion…!!
His entire upper body was giving off a stinging pain. His whole spine creaked. But he didn’t have time to complain about it.
The next attack was coming.
The only good thing, perhaps, was that Mugino, who had gone berserk of her own accord, couldn’t take careful aim in her current state.
The difference between the good and bad, however, was too great.
Shizuri Mugino was no longer visible.
Her flashing arm unraveled, and again, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of beams shot out from her whole body in every direction. It was not an instantaneous event, like a saber in a robot anime, but rather a perpetual, continuous emission. The brightness blotted out even the contours of the body of the woman named Mugino. The incredible mad dance of light burned afterimages into Hamazura’s vision, which ceased to function properly.<
br />
In that flashing vortex that would induce sharp headaches after a single glimpse, he decided to hit the deck for the moment. The fact that Mugino’s attack, which could instantly liquefy even steel, hadn’t managed to cleave his body in two yet was nothing short of a miracle.
He couldn’t get close like this. Any attempt would unequivocally mean death.
Mugino’s Meltdown had been overwhelming in their previous battles, too. After all, she could fire attacks at will that could pierce someone’s body even after passing through a myriad of obstacles. Simply breathing loud enough to be heard was the same as dying. That was what Hamazura was facing.
But something was different.
More so than everything else.
At this point, Mugino was the same as a blast furnace or the sun. Holding his breath and approaching from a blind spot or taking advantage of a psychological opening to attack—chances like that were no longer possible. This was an all-too-massive light. An iota of carelessness in the approach would mean fatal wounds for a human body. And it wasn’t up for debate what would happen if he touched it.
Plus:
“…Haaamazuraaa…”
In the explosive din, Hamazura still heard the husky voice. He could tell that voice was coming closer. Yes—closer. Shizuri Mugino, who had “burst” with such force, was slowly coming his way. A blast furnace, hot enough to roast flesh just by being nearby, was walking toward him. She was truly an angel of death now.
This was the significance of the Crystals.
This was Meltdown.
Her ability had been demonically strong to begin with. What would happen if she added a “drug” that would bring out even more destructive power? Shizuri Mugino showed him exactly what that would look like after becoming this world’s hell.
“…Look at all I’ve sacrificed.”
She sounded nightmarish.
With only her voice, she seized the insignificant man’s heart.
“I knew what would happen if I used the Crystals. It wasn’t hard to imagine. But I did the right thing. I made the sacrifice, Hamazura. I paid the price to stand here. It wouldn’t be right if you were left unharmed…You don’t think you can settle things without giving something up, do you…?”
Was she even human like him?
That was Hamazura’s honest impression. At this point, he didn’t retain even a fragment of the vague resentment he felt toward powerful espers during his time in Skillout. Now he was certain that people like this were insane. The world they lived in was in another dimension. It was supposed to be a game of chicken, competing for distance to the cliff—but Shizuri Mugino had simply flapped the wings on her back and easily flown off it. Against a monster like that, no matter how far he drove, the only thing waiting for him would be a straight drop off the cliffside.
He couldn’t win.
He couldn’t do anything.
Still on his hands and knees in the snow, Hamazura couldn’t make a move.
Even if he pulled his assault rifle’s trigger now and shot every bullet he had, what good would it do against a monster like that? She showed no opening. No blind spot. What the hell was he supposed to do to leave a scratch on a Level Five continuously firing killer beams in 360 degree arcs?
“…Hamazura…”
Death was calling his name.
Death was coming for him.
“Hamazura.”
No point in showing his back. If he tried to flee on foot in this snow, Mugino only had to focus a little and fire to end it all. Similarly, if he tried to hide in the trees, she’d blast him and the trunk together in one blow.
Even if he ran far away, he’d be killed.
But even so, standing to face her would only shorten his life.
But then…
What the hell am I supposed to do…???!!!
“Haamazuraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!”
A roar.
All that white painting over his field of vision immediately vanished. Or—no; that wasn’t right. Fired in every direction, the attacks were now concentrating on a single point—to pierce Shiage Hamazura head-on. To precisely open a giant hole in their target’s torso—that and nothing else.
At this point, it didn’t matter where he fled.
An attack of certain death that would cut through any obstacles.
I’m…de—?!
His breath caught, but his hands still sprang up. Without checking if the safety was even off, he pointed the assault rifle’s muzzle at Mugino. To create a possibility where Rikou Takitsubo would survive, even if it was a 1 percent chance, or a 0.1 percent chance, Hamazura tried to pull the trigger.
And then.
Shizuri Mugino’s roar began to spread out explosively.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Suddenly, all light vanished.
And then, Shizuri Mugino’s body stumbled and collapsed into the snow.
“Huh…?”
The scene before his eyes was incomprehensible.
Hamazura hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. Nor had a third party abruptly appeared and attacked Mugino. Nobody had done anything. And yet, Mugino had lost her power on her own before dropping like a marionette with severed strings.
He didn’t have the presence of mind to think about why.
…Am I…saved…?
That was all he could think.
Until he noticed something.
Specifically, how Shizuri Mugino’s body, sunken in the snow, was trembling. Her face, with the special makeup peeled off, had burst into a huge amount of sweat, a strange sight in ultra-cold Russia. She looked like she had come down with a high fever. Hamazura knew what was happening. He knew, because a girl he had watched over so closely had been in a very similar state.
It was the Crystals.
They had originally been developed to purposely cause espers to go out of control. Because some could bring out more power when berserk, a few espers like Takitsubo had been provided with Crystals, but they’d never been suitable for espers who didn’t have the affinity for it.
Shizuri Mugino never had that kind of special compatibility.
The Crystals had steadily eaten away at Takitsubo’s body, and she was someone who had the innate compatibility required to use them with any semblance of control. It didn’t need to be said how terrible the effects would be if Mugino used it without heeding the danger.
Those were the lengths that Shizuri Mugino had gone to.
Her power as number four wasn’t enough anymore. If it was guaranteed that she could kill Shiage Hamazura, whom she’d lost to twice, she didn’t care what happened to her body afterward. That was probably what she’d been thinking when she’d used the Crystals.
…Even just standing must have been absolute hell for Mugino.
Of course, didn’t Hamazura, a Level Zero, understand this well?
If there was something that would raise a person’s strength so easily, without any risk, nobody would have any difficulty.
“…Why…?”
Something squirmed and writhed in the snow, calling out in desperation.
It was what remained of the queen who had once led an organization called Item.
“Why, damn it? Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!!!! The Crystals…What happened to the Crystals? Just a little more…Just ten more seconds, and I could have cleaned everything up…!!”
“…”
Now fully aware of the situation, Hamazura’s hand trembled. The assault rifle’s muzzle wavered indecisively. He had a clear line of sight to Mugino, who was still writhing in the snow.
He could kill her now.
If he killed her, she’d never come after him or Takitsubo again.
The index finger on the trigger twitched.
However.
Wa
s it truly okay to kill her?
Who was it, exactly, who regretted having a death match with Shizuri Mugino after meeting her again, just before coming to Russia?
Hamazura looked at the fallen Mugino again.
He remembered her being the most attractive member of the mostly all-girl Item team. Her fashion sense wasn’t bad, either, from what he could recall. Her limbs were long and slender, and all of her mannerisms overflowed with elegance. Hamazura, who had been treated as nothing more than a two-bit lackey, had never heard anything about her, least of all her personal history. Even so, he’d still been able to guess that Mugino was a high-class young lady from somewhere.
And yet.
“Hamazuraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Don’t look down on me, you bastard! I’ll kill you…I’ll kill you with my own two hands, I swear to you!! I screwed everything up back then. Ever since you shot me in that ethanol plant!! If I don’t crush you, I’ll never get it out of my mind!!”
Even now, Mugino was in tatters. She’d lost an arm as well as an eye. Her face had a severe burn on it. And he couldn’t begin to tell what her insides must have looked like. Were her organs still where they should be? Did she even have the right number of them? Nothing strange had been added in there, had it? He didn’t even know that. How much had happened while Hamazura wasn’t watching? Considering how grievous her wounds were, the very fact that she could keep getting up, again and again, was abnormal. He couldn’t even imagine how much grotesque technology had been put into her to make that possible.
And on top of all that, the Crystals.
Mugino was a shadow of her former self. Her body no longer contained the spirit it once did. She looked as if a light poke with a fingertip on her skin was all it would take to for it to sink into a thick, rotten jelly. It was stranger that she had been able to stand right up until a few moments ago. Academy City’s “darkness” had made her into a perfectly disposable tool.
…I wonder why I had to turn into such a horrid monster.
Hadn’t Shizuri Mugino said that in District 23? And what had he thought when he heard those words? When he broke out of Academy City, didn’t he decide he was done with these back-alley death matches?
“Mugino…”
If he killed her now, would anything have changed?
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 22 Page 3