A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15 Page 12

  Gripping her Aztecan sword, the macuahuitl, Xóchitl charged straight into range. He could sense no mercy—not in her eyes, her face, her hands, or her movements.

  She was serious about killing him.

  Maybe he could avoid one or two attacks. But he couldn’t keep that up forever. And if she successfully landed even one clean hit, the grievous blood loss would end his life. He couldn’t retreat for now, either. He needed more leeway for that. He could only choose that option once he decided she wouldn’t kill him if he turned his back.

  Still, so long as her weapon-breaking spell was in effect, he also couldn’t use any tools to defend himself. If he tried, he’d end up attacking himself with it.

  He was against the wall.

  “Damn it!!” he swore, trying to back up.

  A swing from the macuahuitl tore through his jacket, sending several cuttings of hair flying.

  “It’s over.”

  Thump!! Xóchitl stomped on the ground. Then, this time in range for a sure kill, she brought her macuahuitl up—a strike with timing Unabara would never be able to dodge.

  She had no emotional connection from Unabara being a former ally, someone from the same organization, or anything.

  Roar!! She cleaved down the sword.

  …?! Unabara thrust his right arm, its wrist dislocated, over his head. She saw it and laughed. She must not have thought it would provide any defense. The macuahuitl, with its sawlike blades, descended with all her body weight behind it at a terrible speed.

  Shrripp!! It tore apart his jacket, and then the jagged blade dug into the flesh of his arm. The grating, sawing noise reached his bones. His face distorted in pain.

  But…

  …that was all.

  Mitsuki Unabara’s arm was still attached.

  In fact, with the macuahuitl buried in his arm, he rallied all his strength and tried to push it away.

  “What…?!” exclaimed Xóchitl in surprise before he slammed her in the side with a kick. Her petite frame gave way to momentum and crashed to the ground.

  “…The Aztecs had no way of processing metal into weapons, so their swords aren’t that sharp. Instead of having a single chunk of iron for a blade, it uses many small, jagged stones along the sides of a wooden club. Even an expert couldn’t cleave bone; it’s made so you have to sweep the whole thing across arteries. In short, I can stop your sword with my bones.”

  With the Aztecan sword still lodged in his right arm, he coughed, then continued, “Why did you think I gave up on dodging and got my arm ready? If I thought it would get through my arm and cut me in half, I wouldn’t have tried to defend like that. I decided that if I kept on evading, I’d lose due to blood loss.”

  His tactic was possible because of Xóchitl’s relatively small stature and lack of skill with the weapon. A true warrior would still have broken his arm even if she couldn’t cut the bone.

  “That’s why I said that weapon doesn’t suit you.”

  Unabara looked down at the immobilized, laboriously breathing Xóchitl.

  He still couldn’t use weapons. But she had let go of her macuahuitl, too. In this state, he could win by strangling her, or hitting her hard enough. Given the differences in their physiques, it would be easy to straddle her to stop her from moving before she got her hands on another weapon.

  Xóchitl…

  But he couldn’t do that.

  No matter how much he wanted to.

  “I will not take your life. Disappear, and don’t come back,” he said bitterly, popping his wrist joint back into place and swinging his right hand to send the sword to the ground.

  When Xóchitl heard that, a subtle smile came to her lips.

  And a moment later, the brown-skinned girl’s body began to crumble.

  11

  The underground passage was straight and narrow.

  And inside the facility, the myriad of anti-esper measures employed—IDF jammers first and foremost—made Musujime’s ability unreliable. If anything went wrong, things could get really bad, even to the point of killing everyone instantly.

  That was why Tsuchimikado didn’t rely on her, nor did he attempt to approach Teshio when he didn’t know what sort of attacks she would use. Instead, he just brought up his gun, intending to fire bullets in a spread pattern that would leave her no room for escape.

  In response, Teshio kicked something at her feet into the air.

  It was a cloth bag with ammunition that Saku, now lying on the ground, had been holding. If he accidentally hit that, it would send a spray of bullets out into the narrow passage, ricocheting off the walls and quite possibly him. By the time he was startled into stopping his trigger finger, Teshio had begun running up the passage, her fist clenched tight.

  “!!”

  Tsuchimikado squeezed the trigger, just barely before her fist was in range.

  But Teshio assumed a boxer-like stance, low enough to kiss his knees, in order to let the bullet go past.

  Before Tsuchimikado could fix his aim, Teshio sprang out of her low stance and tackled him right in the stomach. The blow was strong enough to destroy doors, and even thin walls, and it sent his body flying several meters back.

  A terrible sound rang out, and he almost stopped breathing. “Those movements…Anti-Skill arrest techniques…?”

  “This is, my spin on it. If I used, something like this, on a child, it would kill them.”

  Tsuchimikado fired his gun even as they spoke, but Teshio easily avoided it by swinging her upper body out of the way. The moment he was out of bullets, she sent out a kick that tore the gun from his hand.

  Then she came in for another tackle.

  With a dull thud, Teshio trapped Tsuchimikado between her shoulder and the wall. When she quietly stepped away, he slumped to the floor, limp.

  “!!” That was when Awaki Musujime swung her flashlight down behind Teshio.

  By simply raising her hand, Teshio caught the blunt weapon. “A professional needs, no eccentric abilities, nor any one-shot skills.”

  Returning the favor, she used her other hand to backhand Musujime across the face.

  Thwop!! The blow sent her careening to the side, and she collided with one of the solitary confinement cell doors along the wall.

  “We only need, an array of basic tactics, to defeat our enemies, in a logical manner.”

  Teshio delivered a kick.

  With a terrible ga-bam, Musujime tumbled into the cell along with the door, which should have been sturdily made. The extreme impact made her think her internal organs had been wrecked. Despite feeling a strange urge to vomit, nothing came out—it was like her throat was plugged shut.

  One of her allies must have been in this cell as well, because she heard them immediately call out her name. That alone gave her completely worn body a little bit of energy.

  Ka-click. Teshio set her foot down in the broken cell entrance, blocking her path.

  Musujime put a hand on the wall and wobbled to her feet, bringing her flashlight up. After telling her nearby ally to back up, she said, “…You were talking about forcing me to spit out the route they use to send goods into the nuke-proof Windowless Building, then trying to destroy it from within with multi-synchronous bombs, right?”

  “Feel like, talking now?”

  “You can’t possibly believe you can take down Aleister like that. If that was all it took, anyone with a teleportation ability could kill him in his sleep. You really don’t think Aleister has a plan for that?”

  “You’re right—perhaps I cannot, kill Aleister. He is, in the truest sense, a monster.

  “However,” she said, “the life support machines, keeping him alive, are different.”

  “…”

  “Those are just, machines. The reason, a monster like Aleister, would be holed up, in a fortress sturdier than a nuclear shelter, is plain to see. I’ve heard, those machines, have no replacement. If they’re blown up, he would be in trouble.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” ret
orted Musujime, trying to catch what breath she could. “It’s not a windowless building in the first place. If you don’t even understand that, then you don’t have any useful information. Plan all you want, but nothing will work.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you realize it? A building without any doors or windows would never normally exist. But there are a bunch of hints connecting to the right answer. For example, being able to produce everything he needs to live, including oxygen, inside. The fact that it can withstand a nuclear attack also means it blocks radiation. All sorts of cosmic rays from the stars.”

  “Cosmic rays? …Could that mean—?”

  “No,” interrupted Musujime.

  “It’s not like that.”

  Feeling her own powerlessness, she smiled thinly. Her answer sure seemed to have caught Teshio off-guard. “With these many hints, there’s a few possibilities. I have a couple theories of my own. But answers about Aleister himself aren’t part of them. My theories at this point in time are nothing more than guesses based on the information I’ve been shown up to the here and now. And I’m pretty sure Aleister hasn’t shown me all the information.”

  “…”

  “The only thing I can say is that his plan is far beyond what we can imagine. For Aleister, this entire planet is probably just a disposable tool. And you think your banal methods could possibly defeat him?”

  Musujime had only been trying to buy a little time. She just wanted to let out some of the damage she’d accumulated.

  But Teshio said, “That’s a great story, but my intentions, will not change.”

  “…Why are you so intent on taking Aleister’s head?”

  “I, too, have seen, my fair share of tragedy, in this city. And I wanted to ask Aleister, whether he was involved, or if he knew nothing at all. That’s it.”

  Teshio’s tone was curt. It wasn’t a desire for revenge burning in her heart. Because of that, though, Musujime felt the truth behind her words. No unnecessary emotions were driving her actions.

  “That’s a corny request.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “I was possessed by this ‘need for truth’ thing once, too. But going after something like that won’t get your peace of mind back.” Musujime’s voice was quiet. “If Aleister admitted he caused those tragedies, would you accept that? If he said he wasn’t involved, would you accept that? Whichever answer you get, you’ll probably think he’s lying. That there was something more to it. The question wouldn’t mean anything, and so there’s no point in asking it.”

  “…I see.”

  Teshio said no more. She’d probably decided on her answer by now—so she didn’t waver one bit.

  “Then what are you, going to do?”

  Musujime couldn’t answer that.

  Even inside this reformatory that held criminal espers, they were in a top-secret area. The anti-esper measures, including the IDF jammers, were probably firmly optimized for those specific people. Still, she couldn’t attack with her special ability, Move Point.

  And without that, Awaki Musujime was just a girl. She didn’t have firing skills like Accelerator, and she wasn’t proficient in close-quarter combat like Tsuchimikado.

  After thinking it through, she smiled a little and said:

  “…If I keep thinking like that, I’ll never be able to protect anyone.”

  As her lips moved, her hand went around to her back. She grabbed the bundle of cords there and yanked.

  A low-frequency oscillation treatment device. They were electrodes, aids that measured the disorder in her brain waves and gave her mild shocks to induce stress-relieving effects, and she tore them all off at once. She tossed the flashlight to the side, too.

  Musujime, having lost everything, still didn’t stop smiling.

  When Block’s Teshio saw that, she looked at her with interest. “You’re going to use it.”

  “Yes,” answered Musujime clearly, without a moment’s pause.

  “Sorry, but I’m going all out.”

  Suddenly, a metal nail appeared in Musujime’s empty hand. It was probably from the sturdy bolt on the solitary confinement cell door. But her Move Point wasn’t precise enough. She felt it tearing up the skin of her clenched palm.

  The trauma haunting the depths of her heart came on all at once.

  She forced it down, then triggered Move Point again.

  This time, her very body disappeared.

  Using logical eleven-dimensional vectors, she overcame her three-dimensional limitations and snuck right up to the brawny woman. A crushing pressure assailed her stomach as she teleported, but she ignored it and tried to jam the nail into Teshio’s gut.

  In response, Teshio backed up.

  Musujime’s instincts told her that if she got away now, she wouldn’t be able to win. But when she tried to step forward, she realized her right leg wasn’t moving. It felt like it was stuck to the ground with superglue, but her memory had very clearly felt this sensation before.

  The root of this terrible feeling was that, as a result of mistaking her teleport positioning, everything from halfway down her calf and below was buried inside the floor.

  Suffering.

  Terror.

  Shock.

  All those emotions she’s experienced before came surging up from her stomach at once, but…

  I’ll overcome this…

  With a creak, she squeezed the iron nail tight and bit her lips to hold everything in. Behind her was an ally she needed to protect. There was a life she needed to protect right now, and for that, Awaki Musujime crushed the past creeping out of her.

  I’ll overcome this infuriating scar, damn it!!

  She gritted her teeth, then moved her leg in one motion as if to yank it out of mud.

  In that moment, she heard a ripping noise.

  Awaki Musujime didn’t look away from any of it.

  And she went forward.

  Right up to the Block killer threatening her ally’s life she went, ignoring her mutilated foot, simply gripping that iron nail, shooting forward like a bullet.

  Thud!

  An explosively dull noise rattled the cell.

  The power drained from Teshio’s body. As she tottered forward as if to lean on Musujime, she brought her lips to Musujime’s ear and muttered into it.

  “…Awfully confident, of you.”

  The iron nail was in Musujime’s hand. But right before impact, she’d spun it around in her hand and struck Teshio not with the sharp end, but with the middle of its flat back end.

  “Unfortunately,” she answered indifferently, “this is the leadership they need from me.”

  12

  Mitsuki Unabara couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  He’d beaten Xóchitl in the reformatory gym. Now, her right arm had suddenly crumbled. It wasn’t biological decomposition.

  It was like an invisible person taking off bandages.

  The texture of the outside of her skin was incredibly human, but after the bandages came off, there was only a void. The change, which started from her fingertips, ate its way up to her elbows in the blink of an eye.

  “Xóchitl…? What on Earth…?!”

  “My body’s hit its limit, that’s all,” said the brown-haired girl with a thin smile as she slowly came undone from the tips of her hands and feet. “Hope you learned something. When you try to compensate for a lack of ability with a grimoire, this is the result you get.”

  “Wait…You read a grimoire?”

  “Even more than that, actually. As an Aztecan sorcerer yourself, you’d know. In our rituals, we reach heaven by eating the flesh of man. Basically, a magical conduit connects me to any flesh cut from my body.”

  Hearing those few words, Unabara was shocked. Now he knew the real meaning behind the spell, which used someone else’s weapon to make them kill themselves. She dried her own skin, made it into a powder, and scattered it around. Magically speaking, that powder was a part of Xóchitl’s body, so she could con
trol them like limbs just by thinking at them. The same applied to things they stuck to tightly.

  She made other people’s weapons part of her own body. That was the true identity of Xóchitl’s spell.

  But…

  “Any spell that gets rid of your own body like that is quick to fail! This is already past the point where Soul Arms could assist you! You must have at least known that much, Xóchitl!!”

  “It doesn’t matter. The organization demanded disposal of the traitor, and I answered. If I can kill you before my expiration date, the organization’s goal will be achieved.”

  “Damn!! The organization I knew was already terrible, but it wasn’t this bad! What the hell happened there while I was away?!” exclaimed Unabara.

  Xóchitl only smiled mysteriously.

  The brown-skinned girl was swiftly crumbling. By Unabara’s estimation, there was only a third of her physical body left. Naturally, that wasn’t enough to preserve her life. It was leaving her flesh and organs out in the open air.

  …I don’t think any ordinary spell or Soul Arm could have caused this bad of a situation.

  Unabara watched the destruction, far past her limbs now and at her gut, and thought desperately:

  If there’s anything more esoteric than those…all I can think of is an original copy!!

  Via a fusion with an original grimoire, which was indestructible by anyone and could act entirely on its own—or rather, by becoming one of its parts—Xóchitl had attained power. Things made sense when he thought of it that way. Causing people who were holding weapons to kill themselves with those weapons was very much in the vein of the defenses original copies had. And the Aztecs had books called codices, which wrote characters in animal skin.

  Animal skin…Wait!!

  Unabara stared dumbly at the girl’s brown skin, which was literally coming apart at the seams.

  And inside was written

  “Guh, urgh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  When he carelessly peered inside, he screamed.

  Just a few characters. He hadn’t even seen them—they’d only gotten into his peripheral vision, and it almost broke his mind. It wasn’t a written, less-pure copy, a reinterpretation for the average person. It was a bona fide original.