A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 22

by Kazuma Kamachi

She ZVDF wasn’t ZDFB perfect.

  BuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

  Yes.

  To turn around a situation using an overwhelming power, one needed to take all precautions.

  A huge amount of ice with special signage and symbolism.

  The special ice, for example, from a planet’s pole.

  “…What is happening…?”

  In St. George’s Cathedral in London, a Sister around twenty years old let out a moan. She’d been monitoring the flow of magical power in Russia.

  “Misha Kreutzev has begun moving northward at a high speed!! The polar ice has also begun to melt extremely quickly!! Additionally—confirmed a massive line of telesma between them!! There is clearly mutual interference occurring!!”

  “It wants new power—no, to replenish its body?” Stiyl asked, frowning.

  Thinking simply, if that angel had instantly melted all the ice in the Arctic Ocean, phenomena similar to a large-scale tsunami would occur in regions bordering the Arctic Ocean. If the situation progressed too far, an insane water vapor explosion could engulf everything in a radius of thousands of kilometers.

  And it wouldn’t continue in such a simple manner. If Misha Kreutzev, already brutal, was to take in so much water and ice that it would cause the Arctic Ocean to collapse, how far would her power swell? Now that Fiamma had lost, what was that archangel’s objective? Did she not have one at all? They didn’t know a single thing, but the endgame she’d create as a result was clear.

  They wouldn’t be able to withstand it.

  In the first place, nothing could contain a God-created angel’s full capacity with only matter from the physical world. Even during Angel Fall, Misha Kreutzev hadn’t been any more than an incomplete manifestation. If she attempted to forcibly draw out even higher output than envisioned, the body itself composing Misha would explode, equating to a massive discharge of telesma.

  A planetary ignition, centered on the North Pole.

  At the very least, it would annihilate all living things in the northern hemisphere. In the worst case, it could seriously throw off the actual planet’s orbit, possibly pushing it away from the solar system.

  But how do we stop it? thought Stiyl, glancing at a magnet that was moving of its own accord on a whiteboard. I don’t know if we could have held back the old Misha even if we fought her as one group. Clashing with an archangel in that wounded state would only magnify the damage.

  Still, if they did nothing, a destructive ending surely awaited them.

  And then—

  “…Hey, what are you doing?” Stiyl muttered at the screen.

  There had been a change in the Star of Bethlehem’s flight path, even though it had just been going smoothly. It had begun to travel down a clearly different route than Stiyl and the others’ plan. He thought it was a glitch in the fortress, but as far as he could tell from their monitoring, no such trouble had been detected.

  Clearly, Touma Kamijou, who was inside it, had done something to a large levitation Soul Arm in an effort to purposely veer it away from the safest route.

  In order to block Misha Kreutzev, who was heading for the Arctic Ocean…?

  The fortress was falling faster now.

  And inside it, Touma Kamijou was running at full speed.

  The Arctic Ocean coastline, between sea and land. He’d destroyed a different one of the large levitation Soul Arms to twist the fortress’s trajectory that way. In order to stand against the archangel, Kamijou just kept on running.

  On the surface, there was a change. Some sort of small shadow was approaching at a high speed.

  He could see the snow along the path of whatever it was, shooting along at a low altitude with incredible velocity, being gouged out in enormous chunks. It wasn’t simply getting blown away. Hundreds of meters—no, whole kilometers of snow centered around “her” were all getting absorbed at once.

  Drawing a long, thick line over the white lands, the archangel headed his way. There was nobody to stop her advance. There seemed to be several along the way who flung magical-looking lights at it, but the archangel didn’t even glance their way. She just passed through, mowing down all the professional sorcerers.

  The archangel reached the Arctic Ocean from the coastline.

  And at the same time…

  …The Star of Bethlehem fell directly on top of it.

  With an earsplitting bbb-bbooom!! the giant fortress fell into the sea along with the archangel. As it sank, Kamijou headed ever downward as fast as he could. Unable to withstand the immense pressure, the walls and pillars inside the fortress collapsed one after another. Severely cold seawater poured inside, but Kamijou didn’t pay attention to it. He kept going down. To the bottom. He went below sea level.

  There was no more illumination around him.

  But there was one speck of light in the expanse of darkness.

  A quiet light, deep and blue, reminiscent of moonlight.

  Touma Kamijou squeezed his right fist as tightly as he could. She’d noticed him, too. In the dark, only the lights of their eyes clashed a step before they did. As an incredible sense of hostility overflowed, the boy, a simple human, plunged forward, never stopping.

  So much had happened before coming here.

  And it had all started when he lost his memory. He’d decided to go forward, lying in order to prevent one certain girl’s sadness. He’d fought an alchemist to save a girl possessing special “blood.” He’d fought the strongest monster, too, to rescue the third-ranked Level Five and her Sisters. At the beach house, he’d fought a death match against a traitor from his class.

  A bunch of things had happened on August 31: He’d stood up against a real golem to save a friend, an aggregation of AIM dispersion fields. He’d picked a fight with the largest Crossist denomination to help a Sister professing to be able to decipher the Book of the Law. There’d even been an incident related to the Tokiwadai girl’s underclassman.

  During the Daihasei Festival, even as an executive committee member and a classmate got wrapped up in everything, he’d protected Academy City from the threat of the Croce di Pietro. In Chioggia, Italy, he’d clashed with a fleet of ships made of ice to save a girl who used to be his enemy. On September 30, to save his utterly changed friend, he went head-to-head against a woman from God’s Right Seat. The sukiyaki he’d eaten with everyone in his class had been delicious, and he’d run into Skill-Out, too, to help the Tokiwadai girl’s mother.

  In Avignon, France, he’d fought God’s Right Seat over the Document of Constantine. In Academy City’s underground city, he’d fought alongside the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church against a powerful saint. In London, England, he’d stopped a coup d’état led by the second princess.

  And now.

  It’s been a long time, he thought.

  The things that had transpired up until this point hadn’t all been enjoyable.

  He’d hurt others, many, many times, and been hurt by others in return, a cycle that had kept on repeating.

  However.

  Touma Kamijou could still run.

  He knew that his actions had saved no small number of people.

  He could take on his greatest enemy, this archangel, proudly.

  …Maybe this world will be destroyed one day. Even planets have a life span, and I know it’ll be swallowed into the sun once it expands. Maybe it’s more likely all the creatures will die off the face of the earth before that happens.

  But, thought Kamijou, gripping his fist and charging forward.

  It’s okay for the ending to be less tragic.

  It’s okay to fight to stop this thing.

  With a boom!!!!!! the two figures charged at point-blank range.

  At the same time, the giant body of the Star of Bethlehem, which had transferred its landing impact in its entirety, was crushed to a pulp.

  And.

  October 30.

  Academy City and the English Puritan Church.

  The Roman Orthodox
Church and the Russian Catholic Church.

  World War III, started by a fight between two factions, ended.

  Just before it did, the Star of Bethlehem was confirmed to have fallen into the Arctic Ocean.

  Some flood damage was confirmed in cities on nearby coastlines, but not enough to kill anyone.

  The very same fortress was completely destroyed by the impact of its landing.

  Misha Kreutzev, who had been heading for the Arctic Ocean, had disappeared from all sensors. It was assumed that it had lost the power supporting its existence, disappated into mere energy, and returned to another phase. A stopping of the ice-melting progressing in the same ocean had also been confirmed.

  And in that ocean, they detected no survivors.

  A search team was dispatched from an alliance of Crossism’s three biggest factions, but they never found a survivor in the two-degree-Celsius water.

  Touma Kamijou was thus assumed dead.

  It was his second death.

  EPILOGUE

  The Boy and the Stillness

  Silent_to_Small_Fire.

  “That bastard…,” groaned Stiyl Magnus in St. George’s Cathedral in London.

  He’d gotten the report that the Star of Bethlehem had fallen and had crushed Misha Kreutzev from above. But no matter how big a mass it was, he doubted mere physical pressure would defeat a true angel. As it collided, he’d probably brandished his right hand and fought the monster.

  And when Stiyl thought about it, wasn’t that the way that man had always done it?

  To save the one girl named Index, hadn’t he broken free of all chains, stepping forward without hesitation, even taking a hit hard enough to make him lose his memories?

  The air in the cathedral was heavy, a far cry from the clamor of a victory celebration. Only businesslike reports continued—that Misha Kreutzev had vanished, that the four aspects had been reset into their former positions.

  Stiyl heard a clatter.

  He turned around just as a weary Index was coming over to him. She put a small hand on a stone pillar, her steps wobbling, her eyes on the whiteboard.

  “Where’s Touma?”

  It was a question nobody could answer.

  Right after Index had awoken in the cathedral, before she could even get up out of bed, she told Stiyl the frequency to connect to the Star of Bethlehem. He doubted anyone had told her what had happened. Maybe the other priests or Sisters couldn’t tell her the truth while she was on her way. Finally, Index had come here. To this room, which knew all the results, inside which only a heavy air remained.

  She looked around once more, studying the faces of everyone there, and asked again.

  “Where’s Touma?”

  They needed to find something to escape in.

  Shiage Hamazura used a thick branch to dig in the snow.

  Right before Shizuri Mugino had attacked, the Russian saboteur team had been bombed by an Academy City super-large fighter jet. The vital equipment for the Steam Dispenser and the bacterial wall had been blown away without leaving anything behind, and the saboteur team that was a slight distance away had been neutralized, too, but the vehicles that unit had tried to use to escape must have been caught in the avalanche and buried under the snow.

  In the end, he hadn’t found anything.

  The bacteriological weapon’s spray, the battle with number four, the defeat of the Academy City team using weapons “not of this world” and built up using Dark Matter…

  At a glance, the results may have seemed so excellent they’d overturn his position as a Level Zero. However, Hamazura and Takitsubo’s original objective was to find something that would allow them to negotiate with Academy City’s leaders. All they’d done was go onto a side road; they hadn’t been getting anywhere down the main street.

  They hadn’t found a negotiation tool.

  If they stayed here like this, they’d be killed.

  They needed to leave this place as soon as they could.

  Near Hamazura, as he single-mindedly continued digging through the snow, were Takitsubo and Mugino, holding similarly thick branches and doing the same work. Mugino was Academy City’s number four Level Five, but after the Crystals and the previous battle, she, too, seemed not to be in a state to use Meltdown right away.

  Rewrapping her disheveled scarf, Takitsubo said to him, “Hamazura. What should we do now? Should we pick up the masks the assault team was using and use them as a foothold for a negotiation tool?”

  “We’ll gather up what we can, but I don’t think they’ll be enough by themselves. Would they really throw such an Achilles’ heel into the middle of enemy lines? That city’s darkness runs deep. For them, even letting those masks get out would probably be acceptable.”

  “Let’s use my blood as insurance,” piped in Mugino as she continued working with her thick branch. “Number four’s DNA map. If we each take a chip with a bloodstain on it, we might have a better chance to throw them off if they split us up.”

  “…Damn it all.”

  But Hamazura was looking away from them. He’d stopped digging in the snow, too. He was looking at somewhere far away, it seemed to Takitsubo and Mugino. They moved their heads to follow his gaze.

  And then.

  There suddenly came the sound of multiple footsteps scattering the snow. Before they knew it, soldiers had surrounded them in a circle about ten meters away. An Academy City kill team, all wearing white from head to toe. Completely indiscernible through their masks and goggles, they gripped carbines in their hands with suppressors attached.

  They’d probably been watching Hamazura and the others in a two- or three-layered formation until now.

  Considering the people from Academy City’s underworld, the extra-large combat forces they’d sent in before now—Shizuri Mugino and the masked men—these attackers were a simple team. Meaning they knew perfectly how exhausted this trio was and had sent in optimal troop strength.

  Their time was up.

  The moment he realized it, his spirit, inside the body he’d been pushing to its very limits, immediately shattered. In fact, he was envious of Takitsubo and Mugino for still glaring at their enemies with a will to fight blazing in their eyes.

  But they would have understood, too.

  Rikou Takitsubo and Shizuri Mugino, who had been fulfilling important jobs in Academy City’s darkness, had value. It might not be business as usual for them, but there was still room for them to be “retrieved.” Hamazura alone, however, was different. Standing on the stage for this long had been absurd to begin with. Even if the higher-ups had chosen the option to take them alive, that would only apply to Takitsubo and Mugino. Hamazura alone would be shot and killed here like a piece of trash.

  That was why their eyes displayed such excessive fighting spirit.

  He was happy for it.

  But at the same time, he realized he was somehow relieved. If he played his cards right, he’d keep sacrifices to a minimum. Not finding a tool to negotiate with the higher-ups was his own fumble, so he swore to stop any more damage. A clear goal had been born within him.

  “…Well. You sure have been causing quite a lot of trouble.”

  A new figure appeared, drawing close to Hamazura and the others as they stood surrounded by ten men. It was a woman with hair the hue of chocolate, wearing an expensive suit. However, ruining the whole image was the full-face helmet she had on. It made her behavior, which spoke to a proper upbringing, appear unnatural instead.

  “Although, on the other hand, being able to contain things this much may have proven the strength of our security.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone like you,” answered the helmeted woman in the suit immediately. “We may even share the same chain of command.”

  “I recognize the way you talk.”

  “Oh, please.”

  At the response, Mugino and Takitsubo exchanged glances. But a shared acquaintance’s presence didn’t mean they’d let them off the hook, of c
ourse. The world wasn’t that accommodating.

  The woman in the suit continued. “You have a general idea of how you’ll be split up, I’m sure.”

  “…”

  “We’ll immediately recover Shizuri Mugino and Rikou Takitsubo. As for Shiage Hamazura, that’s the hard part…Well, the conditions probably don’t match. You seem to have built up enough of an interpersonal relationship to use you as a hostage for Takitsubo, but her fundamental movement capabilities are low to begin with. Even without mental shackles, the research can proceed only by isolating her in a concrete room, and if some sort of action was demanded, it would suffice to bury a super-small balloon in her brain, then remotely expand and shrink her cerebral cortex as needed.”

  “Wait,” interrupted Hamazura. “Research? On Takitsubo? Not Mugino?”

  “I would guess that those two, at least, have figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?”

  “Shizuri Mugino used Meltdown when you defeated the masked group outfitted with Teitoku Kakine’s Dark Matter. But it wasn’t that Takitsubo had merely given her verbal instructions. Her Ability Stalker, which interferes with AIM dispersion fields, affected Shizuri Mugino’s personal reality, almost forcing her to take aim…Actually, you could go so far as to say she temporarily overwrote the correctional information.”

  He can’t mean…Hamazura thought in awe.

  He’d heard that Takitsubo had tried something like that in order to fight Teitoku Kakine.

  And Shizuri Mugino had possessed Crystals.

  “No, that’s wrong.”

  But after studying Hamazura’s face, Mugino quickly denied it.

  “Takitsubo isn’t using the Crystals. In fact, we weren’t acting on any sort of operation, either. If we’d had a way to interfere with Level Fives to begin with, her role in Item would have been different…After all, if she could do that, she could strengthen anyone or make anyone go berserk.”

  The helmeted woman in the suit shrugged and added, “Originally, the plan to make Takitsubo the eighth was independent of the Crystals. The Tree Diagram’s simulation results came out, but the real-life conditions were too severe and out of our grasp. That was why we set our sights on Crystals instead, which had a just barely similar effect…Of course, those simulations came out the same: almost completely hopeless.”