A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19 Page 10

  He heard a soft bump over the line.

  It sounded like her leaning against the wall.

  “Wait. Then why are you on the floor like that?!”

  “I just…started not feeling so good. It’s not…enough to worry about.”

  “Shit!!” he swore without thinking.

  Rikou Takitsubo had just gotten out of the hospital. She could lead a normal life, but she might harm her body if she attempted any heavy labor or came under extreme strain. Plus, the whole reason she was in the hospital was because of those Crystal things he didn’t understand. He couldn’t imagine how much damage had built up.

  “Hama … zura … ”

  “All right. It’s fine. Let me do the talking. You’ll be fine, all right? I’m on my way there. I’m going to save you. Just hold out a little longer. Can you do that?”

  “No, that’s not … ”

  Hamazura worked his lips frantically, but Takitsubo’s reaction was the direct opposite.

  “Hamazura, don’t come. Don’t come here. There are ten terrorists. I think they all have automatic weapons and grenades. Hamazura, you might know how to use handguns, but not rifles, right? If you jump in and they focus on you, you won’t be able to deal with them. So don’t come here.”

  “…Don’t give me that…,” said Hamazura in spite of himself, trembling.

  It was a different trembling than before. It wasn’t fear—it was anger.

  “I’m going. Why the hell shouldn’t I?! I can’t leave you there! I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to rescue you. Wait for me. And don’t give up!! Maybe this is all totally beyond me, but I’m going anyway!!”

  There was no answer from Takitsubo.

  The call had suddenly ended. Maybe they’d destroyed the private salon’s cell phone relay antenna. For a few moments, Hamazura gazed at his disconnected cell phone, and then his trembling reached a peak. A cry exploded from his throat.

  The pilot sitting in the cockpit watched him, one eyebrow moving slightly.

  “Please…” While holding her at gunpoint with a trembling hand, while she toyed with the box cutter in her hand that she could attack with at any time, he spoke, his face broken down into tears and snot. “You can charge me with whatever you want. Drop me into the bottom of hell if you need to, I won’t complain. So please, just this once, help me rescue her…”

  Only his wrung-out words resounded in the helicopter.

  A few seconds passed.

  All that continued was the silence, but eventually, the woman heaved a sigh. Then, in an almost inaudible voice, she said, “Say something next time.”

  “?” Hamazura, not hearing her, was about to tilt his head when a roaring noise pounded on his eardrums. The helicopter’s rotor had rapidly increased its rotation frequency. Looking overhead, toward where the noise came from, he felt the sensation at his feet suddenly disappear. They were in the air.

  The pilot tossed her box cutter aside and grabbed her can of coffee, which apparently still had some left in it. She keyed in some numbers on a number pad, and after what looked like a small door right next to the flight yoke popped open, she dumped the coffee into it.

  … The flight recorder…?

  The device recorded conversations inside the helicopter in order to find out what happened during crashes. By pouring coffee inside its heatproof, waterproof, shockproof casing, she’d erased everything they’d said—everything that could incriminate Hamazura or Takitsubo.

  The woman sped the helicopter up and spoke through her headset microphone without looking at him.

  “Hijack on flight H3389. I repeat, hijack on flight H3389!! The culprit has a gun and a small canister of liquid. Its volume appears to be ten liters! If his words are to be believed, it’s liquid explosive, and he’s threatening to pour it all out of the helicopter along with igniters. I will follow his instructions for now to prioritize the lives of local citizens!!”

  A frantic man’s voice, probably the airport controller, came back over the headset’s earpieces. Then, the pilot proceeded to speak to him in code:

  “Tee-ay, tee-ay. Code black. Direction two zero two, cruising speed eighty, your permission! Bee-eye-elle, time unit thirty-five to forty. Large. I’m going now, do you understand?!”

  At first, Hamazura thought it was special air radio lingo or something. But when he thought about it, he realized it didn’t mean anything. She was listing the criminal’s characteristics. She was probably saying he was somewhere from thirty-five to forty years old, 202 centimeters tall, about eighty kilograms, and his skin color was black…That’s probably what she wanted to tell them.

  Of course, none was anywhere near Hamazura’s physical traits.

  The woman hung up completely, then looked at her surprised passenger. “Can’t exactly launch because a kid’s being selfish. Sorry, but I’ll have to make it big.”

  “You…”

  Hamazura didn’t know what to say, and as he was thinking about it, the helicopter flew on. The private salon building was a mere three streets away from the high-rise hotel they’d taken off from. They reached it very quickly.

  This building was extravagantly constructed, its style rivaling the hotel they had taken off from.

  Several figures were standing in the lit-up heliport. They weren’t customers seeking aid. Submachine guns rested in their hands.

  Hamazura felt as though someone had clutched his heart, but they didn’t attack when they saw the helicopter flying overhead.

  He bent his head to the side. “What’s going on?”

  “…I don’t know who they’re in contact with, but maybe one of their demands was a way to escape. They might be mistaking our helicopter for us giving in to their demands,” she said, circling around the building. “…But that doesn’t mean they’re not still cautious of us. We still won’t be able to land on the heliport. We want to avoid the terrorists actually seizing this helicopter.”

  “I got it. I don’t want to make you do all that anyway.” Hamazura glared at the heliport spread out below them, then pointed at something. “What’s that?”

  “…An artificial tree, I assume. A little early for that. They pull a bunch of white cloths taut like a yacht sail, then overlap them into a tree shape and decorate it with multicolored lights. If they used a real tree, the wind could break branches off and cause problems for helicopters trying to land.”

  “Oh.”

  Hamazura thought for a moment.

  Then, without hesitation, he opened the helicopter door.

  “Thanks for the good info.”

  “?!”

  Even the female pilot had to gasp.

  Shiage Hamazura had just leaped out into the night sky.

  It was around twenty meters down to the heliport. His body fell freely before smashing into the tree formed by overlapping cloths. The sail-like decorations cracked and broke, but they softened the impact enough so it wasn’t fatal, and then Hamazura was on his feet on the heliport floor.

  At first, the three terrorists, armed like the others, were shocked. They’d thought the helicopter had arrived in accordance with their demands, but then a strange man had fallen on them.

  And Hamazura didn’t wait for them to catch up.

  Without mercy, he pointed his gun and pulled the trigger in succession.

  Bang-bang-bam!! Dry gunshots ripped through the sky, mowing down the terrorists before they had a chance to show their real power.

  He gave a wave to the helicopter circling overhead, then gestured for it to leave the area before turning back to face the door leading inside the building.

  His lips moved slightly.

  “…I’ve arrived, partner. All the way to the pit of hell.”

  Even Shiage Hamazura himself probably didn’t realize it.

  He may have been a worthless, third-rate minion. There wouldn’t be any surprise twists, like he actually had a crazy hidden power all along or anything. He really was, as his appearance implied, not
hing more than a frail Level Zero.

  However.

  At this time alone, as he risked his life to protect a certain girl, he’d become a true protagonist.

  9

  Those among the terrorists formerly known as Spark Signal occupying the private salon looked up unconsciously.

  Gunshots.

  But the crack and report didn’t sound like the bullets they’d prepared. The caliber was probably the same, but the type of gunpowder was different.

  “Wasn’t there a team who went to the roof to see if they gave us that helicopter we demanded?”

  “When do we meet up with Stephanie? Depending on how she made her move—”

  “Or maybe we should consider a teleport-type esper?”

  But they weren’t simpleminded enough to all go up to where they heard the sound right away. They’d brought almost everyone in the building under their control, but they continued to require a certain amount of people to still be able to act as needed.

  Plus, if the gunshots themselves were a trap, if there were bombs or something set up for anyone who rushed to respond, they ran the risk of everyone getting taken out in one fell swoop.

  The seven former Spark Signal members considered all this in an instant, then decided to split into three teams.

  They probably thought theirs had been a swift decision.

  However.

  Calamity always ignores such rules. It simply comes out of the blue.

  And this calamity came to them from the window.

  Wham!!

  A deep bursting sound, like the main guns of a battleship firing, rang out. The windows covering one wall, a panorama of the nighttime cityscape beyond them, shattered all at once. But what flew in was not a fireball or anything of the sort.

  It was a person.

  Someone with white hair, red eyes, and a smile that split his face.

  It was Academy City’s strongest Level Five: Accelerator.

  … This…This is the twenty-eighth floor!!

  Despite how out of the ordinary this was, the thoughts of Spark Signal still turned into something cliché. And when facing Accelerator, that little loss of time would be fatal.

  The Level Five’s action was simple.

  He grabbed the nearest Spark Signal member with one hand, then threw him toward another. He moved like a child throwing a tantrum, but when it involved his ability to focus control of every possible vector, it created destructive force comparable to a cannonball.

  Whomp!! came the blast.

  Three former Spark Signal members were caught in it, blown away without much of a say in the matter.

  Without stopping to listen to the sounds of tearing flesh and bone, Accelerator turned his red eyes to the next target.

  The terrorists had finally found cover and were starting to position their weapons.

  However.

  Gunshots suddenly rang out, one after another, from an unexpected place.

  “…!”

  Rat-tat-tat-tat!! Gunshots echoed from the floor’s exit. The terrorists, preoccupied with Accelerator, weren’t able to respond to the flurry of shots. Blood splattered over the floor, and they fell in turn. Each received a single bullet right to the middle of the gut. There was no doubt they’d died instantly. Not one of them even cried out.

  Accelerator turned around to where the gunshots came from.

  A man he’d never seen before was standing there in a suit. He looked around thirty or so. Judging by the column of smoke coming from the gun in his hand, he must have been the shooter.

  “Who’re you?!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the man in the suit, aiming the pistol elsewhere. He fired at the terrorists who Accelerator had already mowed down using his vector ability, right in the gut, just in case. The shots were loud, as if in proportion to the barrel’s size. It probably wasn’t a standard 9mm. He was using bullets of a larger caliber.

  As he exchanged magazines, the man in the suit said to Accelerator, “If you really want to protect this city, you should do things more cleanly.”

  “Who do you think you are? You wanna die right now?”

  “I’m Sugitani,” said the man casually without batting an eyebrow. He kicked at each of the corpses, making sure they didn’t respond. “I pray we never meet again. Do your best to make sure of it.”

  With only that, the man in the suit put his gun away and headed for the floor exit. Accelerator, after glaring at his receding back, eventually switched his electrode back to normal mode as well. However it happened, the threat to the private salon was gone for now.

  Accelerator took out his cell phone.

  He detested having to seek help from people who had messed up so badly, but doing the more trivial parts himself would be painful.

  “…Hey, Tsuchimikado. I cleaned up the guys you let escape in the private salon building. Get up here and check for injured people and traps. And if you say you can’t do that, I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes for real this time.”

  He put away his phone and walked through the rooms on this floor.

  There was an open door, and inside was a large space, like the kind used for parties. People were gathered there, probably hostages, around three hundred at a glance. A few eerie cries came from within the group, but not the kind that would imply anyone was dying.

  Then he heard a thump from another direction.

  Accelerator stopped right before entering the large hall. On his modern-design crutch, he walked down the hallway, then found something lying there behind a pillar.

  It was a girl who looked high school age, wearing a pink tracksuit.

  She seemed to have no energy, and she was sweating all over. It made Accelerator inadvertently think of Last Order, whose mind had once been violated by a virus.

  The girl in the tracksuit seemed to be barely conscious, and despite her eyelids opening and closing faintly, she didn’t try to get up even when she saw Accelerator approaching.

  He stooped down to check on her, then arched an eyebrow.

  No noticeable loss of blood. She must not have been shot. A sudden illness or something? he wondered. Don’t tell me she’s pregnant, too … ?

  For now, though, he decided he’d better get her to the hospital right away and took out his cell phone.

  That was when it happened:

  “…What the hell are you doing?”

  He heard a young man growl.

  Accelerator immediately looked and found one man walking toward him from farther down the hallway.

  And it was—

  Shiage Hamazura.

  He was glaring at Accelerator and the limp, unmoving girl in the tracksuit, squeezing the words from his throat as he spoke.

  “I asked you what the hell you’re doing to Takitsubo!”

  10

  Hamazura had lost his cool.

  He’d come from the roof to slip into the building but, obviously, he couldn’t use something as simple as the elevator; that would be idiotic. Instead, he’d climbed down and down the fire escape, but even those stairs were basically a straight line. If he encountered any hostile terrorists, he wouldn’t be able to avoid a disadvantageous shoot-out.

  His tension was maxed out the entire time. Once he’d descended to a certain floor, he’d heard gunshots. He’d shot down the rest of the way to the twenty-eighth floor, and there, he had witnessed it:

  Academy City’s strongest Level Five, Accelerator, crouched right next to an unconscious Rikou Takitsubo, trying to do something to her.

  If he’d been able to examine the situation from an objective, impartial perspective, maybe he could’ve concluded that Accelerator was trying to do some sort of first aid.

  But he couldn’t.

  The reason was simple.

  Shiage Hamazura had once belonged to a gang of delinquents called Skill-Out. At the time, someone named Ritoku Komaba had been its leader. But then the city’s leaders decided they were inexpedient for the city.

&
nbsp; As a result, they’d dispatched Accelerator.

  He’d shot their leader, Ritoku Komaba, temporarily driving Skill-Out to the brink of destruction.

  “…You were behind this, too?”

  That person, that General Board’s lapdog, had appeared before him once again—and not only that, he had made contact with Rikou Takitsubo and was attempting to do something to her.

  “Are you the head of these terrorists—and survived on your own? Or did you have a falling-out and kill all the rest? You know what— it doesn’t matter. You’re still plotting evil in the darkness.”

  If you considered how this was right after he’d been attacked by an Academy City Hexawing, you’d probably understand right away what conclusion Hamazura had reached.

  “When Skill-Out went down, part of that was our fault. Even our leader Komaba knew his fight against you would be his last, so I won’t say anything more about that. I really, really want to, but for his sake, I’ll stay quiet.”

  An impartial observer likely wouldn’t have understood him.

  But Hamazura wasn’t speaking in the hope that someone would understand.

  His mouth was simply moving on its own.

  “…But if you’re gonna try to take something important away from me again, if you’re going to take Takitsubo’s life even though she’s not prepared like Komaba, when all she wanted to do was live a normal life from now on…”

  Tremble.

  Without caring a single iota about tiny differences like Level Zeroes and Level Fives, in order to protect the incapacitated girl, Shiage Hamazura pointed his handgun at Accelerator.

  “It’s time to accept your fate, Number One!!”

  In contrast:

  Accelerator had already realized what was happening, essentially.

  But even knowing he was being misunderstood, he didn’t try to deny it.

  “…I like you.” He grinned, a face-splitting smirk, as he stood up slowly and reached for his choker.

  And then, Accelerator gave the most evil smile as he made a declaration.

  “You’re a good villain.”

  The line wouldn’t have made any sense at first, but he almost never rated anyone this highly.