A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19 Page 11

  And yet, before Hamazura could realize that fact, Accelerator controlled the vectors of his legs and rushed straight up to him.

  Whoom!! echoed the roar a moment later.

  As Accelerator flew at him in a super-low arc, Shiage Hamazura tried to back away, his gun still raised.

  … He might be a Level Five, but he’s still human!! I should be able to kill him with one bullet. Come to think of it, he uses a trick to make sure the bullet doesn’t hit him. If I start by lowering him to a situation where that one bullet has to hit…!

  The answer he came to was a direct result of having shot and killed the fourth-ranked Level Five, Shizuri Mugino, the Meltdown.

  Except—

  Hamazura knew of one other Level Zero who could think that way. Once, his leader Ritoku Komaba had observed Accelerator’s actions and, by studying their characteristics, had arrived at the answer by himself: that by causing electromagnetic interference, he could temporarily shut his ability down.

  In that case.

  … I’ll make that choker malfunction. But how?! Leader used a chaff to cause interference, but…?!

  Hamazura knew where he needed to go, but didn’t know how to get there.

  And in the meantime, Accelerator spun himself and whipped around his clenched fist.

  Using his arm, which was rumored to kill people just by touching them.

  “???!!!”

  Hamazura instantly swung to the side in an effort to evade.

  The arm didn’t end up making contact. However, there was a strange blast of hot wind, and the wake of its passing alone was enough to send Hamazura flying. He flew over two meters clear through the air, then slammed into the hallway’s wall. An unnatural strength activated in his trigger finger, and he shot a meaningless bullet into the ceiling.

  Accelerator’s head turned his way again.

  Hamazura knew he’d be killed at this rate.

  Then he saw a security robot trailing down the hallway toward them. The terrorists had probably locked them all in one room, and now that they were liberated, they’d begun tracking their normal routes.

  He put everything into that bullet he shot in the robot.

  Despite all its durability, the armor shattered, and the bullet made a complete mess of its internals. Hamazura shoved a hand inside. The awful numbing sensation from an electric shock went up from his fingers to his shoulder, then to his chest, but he ignored it and tore the thing out.

  It was the giant motor piece the robot used to move.

  Having torn the cord off, Hamazura took the permanent magnet used in the motor and hurled it at Accelerator.

  Security and cleaning robots were designed to be heavy on purpose to prevent theft. To let the machines climb smoothly up hills, their motor had to be equally large, with output to match.

  Certainly large enough to induce malfunctions when he pushed one’s permanent magnet against an electronic device.

  … Will this work?!

  He had two bullets left in his gun and no time to replace magazines. But if he could weaken Accelerator to the point where he’d die if bullets struck him, he could end it right now.

  However.

  There was never any panic on Accelerator’s face.

  A strange wave shoved the giant magnet in a different direction.

  “Crap…?!”

  He tried to avoid it, but his legs hadn’t completely recovered from slamming against the wall. He was late to react—and Accelerator grabbed his collar ruthlessly.

  With his arm that spread death and fresh blood.

  Victory had been determined.

  Accelerator pulled him in by his collar, then tossed him to the side almost lazily. It was an incredibly casual act, but Hamazura’s body shot away like a cannonball. He hit the hard floor several times before finally coming to a stop. The dull agony permeated the gaps between his bones and dove down to the core of his innards. He couldn’t get up anymore. He’d never thought it so unnatural that he wasn’t coughing up blood.

  “Gah … hah … !!”

  He clenched his teeth against the intense pain but still clutched at the floor with his fingertips.

  Accelerator watched, switching off his electrode. He didn’t drop his guard, and as he extended his crutch, he took aim with his gun.

  To kill Hamazura instantly, in one shot.

  “It’s over. Stay down, and I’ll let you go—try to get up, and you’re dead on the spot. But it’s your life. I’ll let you choose.”

  “…You…know the answer…,” said Hamazura through coughs, still glaring at Accelerator. “…You don’t…even have any…reason to leave…”

  “Guess not. I wouldn’t mind quietly adding a bullet to your body. Not like killing you’d give me a bad aftertaste. Don’t have an obligation to let you go knowing you could take revenge later, either. It would be easier just to kill you and get it over with.

  “But,” added Accelerator, sounding fed up with the situation.

  “Having the sick one stand up and protect you is breaking the rules, isn’t it?”

  At those words, Hamazura looked away from Accelerator for the first time.

  In surprise and still on the floor, he turned his head just as Rikou Takitsubo, consciousness hazy and sweating all over, one hand desperately clinging to the wall, approached him.

  To protect him.

  To save him.

  Using every ounce of energy she could, with a body that was probably wrecked worse than his.

  “What’re you gonna do? If you want to use this brat as a shield and come at me two on one, I’ll answer your request and turn you into a blood puddle. But if that brat is still gonna get in the way of the fight, then we’ll start over. I’ll leave for now, loath though I may be to say it. Think of it as a villain’s sense of aesthetics.”

  The question caused Hamazura to finally relax the arm trying to reach for his gun that had fallen on the floor.

  And finally, he asked himself why.

  Why was Accelerator, who was trying to harm Takitsubo, apprehensive about getting her involved in their fight? If he wanted to, it would have been much easier to kill them both at once.

  … Wait, he thought in his daze…Wait, have I … misunderstood something … ?

  But before he could turn back toward Accelerator, he heard a soft tapping noise.

  And then, Academy City’s number one, who Hamazura knew had him cornered, was suddenly nowhere to be found. He must have manipulated his leg-force vectors somehow. Now Hamazura only heard a soft, regular tapping from the other side of the floor.

  “Hamazura…”

  After looking on in a daze for a few moments, he heard a girl’s voice call his name.

  Rikou Takitsubo.

  The girl he most wanted to protect was dragging herself over to him. She lifted his unmoving body, every bit of it wounded, and embraced it.

  “Hamazura!!”

  “I’m so pathetic…,” he muttered thoughtlessly, still with no energy in his limbs. “I said all that about saving you, and in the end…this was all I could do. Hah, pathetic. And the worst part is I attacked the guy who might have been saving your life. Could I possibly be any more pathetic…?”

  “That’s not true.”

  Takitsubo shook her head vehemently, despite it likely causing her considerable pain.

  Her lips trembling, she denied Hamazura’s statement.

  “Hamazura, you came all this way by yourself. Even Anti-Skill didn’t know what to do, but you jumped right into the building. You’re not pathetic at all.”

  “Really…?”

  Hamazura smiled a little but, in the meantime, took a moment to think to himself, while trying not to let the girl near him notice he was clenching his teeth.

  … In that case…

  … In that case, why are you crying?

  It wasn’t like Hamazura had been beaten up because Academy City’s strongest Level Five had shown up. Even if that monster hadn’t,
even if he’d had to fight the terrorists like he’d planned—would he really have been able to rescue Rikou Takitsubo? No, on an even more basic level. Even if the enemy had been just a gang of delinquents, could he say for sure he’d have succeeded?

  He couldn’t.

  In fact, the chances were low. Hamazura was no professional, with all sorts of special training. He didn’t have a natural talent for fighting, and he didn’t wield rare, powerful abilities. If it came down to a large-scale brawl, a war between one gang and another, he was just the third-rate street thug who would suddenly collapse in a corner of the alley.

  Even if he risked his life, if he sacrificed everything and challenged everything head-on, he couldn’t guarantee even something that simple. If he’d been a main character since birth, blessed with amazing abilities, then maybe he could have saved his friend more skillfully. He wouldn’t have needed to make her worry about him like this. Hamazura felt an acute sense of loss, then realized what it was and clenched his teeth, his body ruined.

  It wasn’t that something he’d accumulated had fallen apart.

  It was the opposite. He felt keenly now, once again, that even though he’d won against Shizuri Mugino in a fierce battle in the past, he hadn’t actually gained anything from it.

  … So much for the man who beat a Level Five. The man who brought down Number Four by himself. What’s the point of getting so full of myself over a stroke of luck? In the end, I’m nothing but the same old Shiage Hamazura. My story didn’t dramatically change after that. Nothing’s that convenient.

  He wanted to swear.

  He didn’t want to worry Takitsubo anymore, but he still harbored intense feelings about this.

  He didn’t have to turn into an evil, charismatic figure like Number One.

  He could accept staying a third-rate street thug.

  But at the very least…

  As nothing but Shiage Hamazura, he wanted to become a man who could protect this girl’s smile.

  11

  Looks like they’re really going at it …

  Saiai Kinuhata was observing, from a slight distance, the building at the center of the incident. It seemed like the former Spark Signal members had been mopped up already; the Anti-Skill officers blockading the building had decided to head inside, despite their apprehension at the sudden change in the situation.

  The Heart Measure girl had reported that Shiage Hamazura had charged into the private salon building with a gun in order to save Rikou Takitsubo.

  Hamazura didn’t seem good enough to face almost ten Spark Signal members on his own, but apparently the two of them were safe. The problems, though, didn’t end there.

  Hamazura and Takitsubo weren’t currently active in any shady side businesses. Academy City had several mechanisms to cover up incidents, but that service wouldn’t cover the two of them—which meant that if Anti-Skill discovered he possessed a weapon, things would be bad.

  If it was going to come to this, I suppose I should have gotten moving, like, right away.

  There was a simple reason Kinuhata hadn’t made it to the private salon building. She’d been looking into the Hexawing helicopter that had attacked their car. The voice on the phone, at least, had insisted she had nothing to do with it, but it was also difficult to imagine Spark Signal somehow being in control of it.

  Her efforts had eventually proven fruitless.

  … I’m totally gonna have to apologize for being late. And debts like this are best paid off superfast. Looks like I’ll give them a hand busting out of there.

  That was what she thought anyway, but in reality, she would never execute that plan.

  Ga-boom!!

  All of a sudden, there was a shotgun blast from the side, and it knocked her small body flying.

  The girl’s petite body, clad in a white woolen dress, bounced on the road twice, then a third time. The curious onlookers nearby began to panic after hearing the gunshot out of nowhere, but Kinuhata was calm even as she rolled along. The pellets had struck her from her right cheek to her chest, but thanks to her Nitrogen Armor, she wasn’t bleeding.

  … A twenty-pellet buckshot from a single sound. Single shot size of over five millimeters. I totally don’t need to use my ability—I should be able to just hide behind that over there!!

  Reverse calculating the attack’s power, Kinuhata bounded behind a car parked nearby on the road.

  But her assailant kept precise aim with the muzzle.

  The next shot was not the single discharge sound normally associated with shotguns.

  Ba-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha-gha!! It was the sound of automatic fire.

  “What—? That’s no ordinary shotgun?!”

  The car’s frame didn’t even last two seconds.

  This was beyond opening a few air holes. Its metal body inflated from within like a popping balloon, and the torrent of pellets that pierced it slammed straight into Kinuhata’s body. Despite having made a thin wall of nitrogen, an overwhelming number of lethal weapons shot at her, meaning to tear through both her and her wall.

  It knocked her over ten meters away.

  When she quickly rose to her feet, she noticed a rivulet of blood trickling down her cheek.

  It hadn’t been fatal, but her armor had certainly been penetrated.

  As the thought made her shudder, a voice called out, its cheerfulness standing in stark contrast to the situation.

  “Heya! You’re Saiai Kinuhata, right? Boy, I thought I’d have a hard time since your defenses looked relatively tough. Those unrelated Spark Signal guys happened to be moving at the same time as me, though. I seem to have made the right choice using them as decoys. While you were focused on them, I seized the chance to take a nice big chomp out of your soft flank.

  “Still, these supernatural abilities of Academy City’s are quite the trouble, aren’t they?” she continued, moving her giant, beach parasol–sized gun.

  Kinuhata heard a clanking of machinery.

  The woman came closer, parting the gunpowder-smoke-laden air. She was tall and blond.

  In her hands she held—a light machine gun with an incredibly high firing rate?

  It was over a meter long. Assault rifles were designed to let infantry carry them on foot for long periods of time without causing issues, but this was different, an even larger gun. It had a box magazine attached that looked big enough to hold anywhere from fifty to two hundred rounds. Its intended usage appeared to be for suppressing entire areas, not individual targets.

  The bullets she was using, though, were clearly custom shotgun shells. Real armies would rule out firearms of such bad taste right away. The combination was awful—shotguns were meant to be used up close, but its weight made it unsuited for melee combat. On the other hand, that probably meant this woman had the speed and technique to make it work anyway.

  The woman wielding the automatic shotgun smiled sweetly at her. “If I said Chimitsu Sunazara, would you understand? You tried to kill him with explosives.” She made a cute pose to garner agreement, one which probably would have made someone like Hamazura break out in a nosebleed. “I’m Stephanie Gorgeouspalace. I came here to avenge Mr. Sunazara. I think you should prepare yourself, don’t you?”

  She pointed her monstrously sized gun at Kinuhata and proclaimed her death with a smile.

  INTERLUDE TWO

  Stephanie lived in a hopelessly peaceful nation, and she wanted for nothing in her life. The tepid, safe environment was exactly what made her start questioning things (or what gave her the time to do so), and that made her decide to fly out into the world. She was a civilian, and her motive for going to the battlefield as a mercenary was an extremely puerile one: She was concerned, as many are, about the distortions in society. She was at an age where she couldn’t allow people to go on suffering the way they did. An age where she wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t do things herself.

  And then.

  The civil war in Costa Rica became the first hell she’d ever experienced.
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  A baptism—not for an official soldier, but the kind reserved for mercenaries. The new recruit was assaulted by incomplete intelligence. They’d been told there would be attack helicopters, but not that the helicopters were equipped with extra electronic devices and machines linked up with swift antipersonnel ambush radar setups on the ground. It had found Stephanie and the rest of her mercenary unit’s hiding place in the underbrush, and a rain of rocket fire had descended upon them from above.

  Their patchwork unit was annihilated that very day.

  All of her comrades ended up in worse shape than mere corpses. None of their dog tags even remained, supplied on loan from their client. In Stephanie’s case, it was nothing short of a miracle that her head and limbs were all still attached. But being the sole survivor hadn’t been something she’d achieved on her own merits.

  A large-bore antitank rifle had penetrated an attack helicopter’s fuel tank from very far away.

  That was when she’d first come across Chimitsu Sunazara.

  Unlike Stephanie, he went to battles alone, without particularly forming any teams—a rare type of mercenary. He’d picked her up after she had been wounded and saved her life. No, it wasn’t just that. Stephanie had come to this battlefield with half-assed, biased knowledge. Without Sunazara reteaching her all the skills she’d need, she would have ended up on some other battlefield in the same exact situation and died a dog’s death.

  Stephanie decided to stick with Sunazara even after the civil war ended. It was partly because she looked up to him, but she couldn’t deny that she’d done it for a shrewder reason—staying by someone strong was a surefire way to survive as a mercenary.

  And as they traveled to more and more battlefields, Stephanie suddenly realized something.

  She knew what she got out of this relationship, but what was Sunazara getting out of it?

  He was a sniper, a mercenary who acted alone. He’d never formed teams before. Apparently, it was because allies had held him back and dragged him into a desperate situation before, but then why would he want to take a newbie like Stephanie along? She was pretty sure his motive wasn’t that he just wanted to have a young woman wait on him hand and foot.