A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 19 Page 16

“Where to begin? My request of you is really quite simple. It isn’t money, it isn’t political sway, and it certainly isn’t your life.”

  Oyafune was the one to touch things off.

  “I’d simply like you to refrain from selfishly integrating and expending the lives of others on all projects and operations you devise and execute in the future. Simple indeed, is it not? All others, aside from yourself, uphold this rule as a matter of course, after all.”

  She was right in that her words, when taken in isolation, sounded simple.

  But he knew Monaka Oyafune would pursue it aggressively. This wouldn’t end with a verbal promise, with an “All right, I swear not to do it anymore.” She wouldn’t be sated unless she forced Shiokishi to dismantle his private, directly operated forces, then indirectly exerted influence on other units to steal every last drop of the power and authority he needed to hire and use mercenaries.

  That would be synonymous with stealing everything from him.

  She was essentially eliminating all that made him appear powerful and sentencing him to become a mere layman.

  “Oh, yes, and I should ask you about Dragon as well.”

  “Is that necessary for you?”

  “Not particularly for me, but my collaborators, Group, have asked me to inquire about it.”

  Shiokishi watched her through his powered suit helmet, focusing on her face as she sat across from him. Still, he was silent for a moment before opening his mouth to speak.

  “…My dear Oyafune, how much do you know about Dragon?”

  “Nothing at all. Though if my authority is what it is on paper, I’m sure I would have had several chances to find out. I expect you know best of all why that didn’t come to pass.”

  “It is something that must remain out of sight,” he said quietly, not realizing she was criticizing him. “I am doing no more than accomplishing tasks necessary to protect Academy City, one by one. That is how dangerously critical the very word is. You may refer to me as barbaric, but only because you know nothing about Dragon. And I have no intention of telling you.”

  “Oh, I am of the same mind,” answered Oyafune immediately, without losing her gentle smile. “And I would stoop to actions considered barbaric if I needed to. If it benefited me protecting those precious to me from your evil grasp, I would have no choice but to pursue this Dragon.”

  “Then we are at an impasse.”

  “We both say we want to protect Academy City, but I believe we’re referring to different things. That’s why our paths have split.”

  “I see.”

  Shiokishi gave a single short sigh from beneath his helmet.

  Roar!!

  A moment later, he used all his powered suit’s output to punch Oyafune with his special-alloy fist.

  The powered suit Shiokishi wore was a custom-order piece of equipment, upgraded even beyond the ones the city used for military purposes. The remodeling was geared more toward defensive power and durability than its mobility and compatibility with other firearms, but that only meant the giant fist he flung at Oyafune was all the sturdier.

  This was far beyond what a heavy construction vehicle could do.

  It would smash an old woman’s body to atoms.

  But…

  “…You never even gave it a little bit of thought?”

  Monaka Oyafune’s body hadn’t been crushed—she didn’t have a single scratch on her.

  In fact…

  She hadn’t blocked his fist, nor had she even evaded it. His powered suit’s fist had stopped mid-punch. It was like its power had shut off.

  And now, it was just a heavy metal cage.

  “That I might, just as you protect yourself in a powered suit, adopt measures to protect my life as well?”

  “Wh…what…?!”

  The woman gripped a knife made of obsidian in her hand.

  The Soul Arm reflected Venus’s light as it shone through the ceiling, cracked open by the damage from Accelerator’s attack, and used that reflected radiance to dismantle any and all objects into pieces.

  Naturally, however, the weapon did not belong to Monaka Oyafune.

  She brought a hand to her face.

  As though peeling off the cover of a carton, she stripped away the surface of her face. For just a moment, he saw darker skin underneath, but then the stranger placed a different face on their head.

  And that face was…

  “Mitsuki…Unabara…?!”

  “Oh, you use that name? I had thought for sure you’d call me Etzali,” he answered, waggling the obsidian knife.

  In the meantime, the powered suit protecting Shiokishi began to fall to pieces. Every one of its screws came loose, the gaps between steel plates widened, and the motors and gears started dropping to the floor.

  It didn’t take very long for all the armor to completely fall apart and expose a middle-aged man in full dress to the outside air. His defenses lost, Shiokishi broke out into a nervous sweat.

  Unabara gave a thin, scornful grin. “You seem quite lucky. If this spear’s effective range had reached your body, your flesh and bones would be reduced to a lot of varying pieces right now,” he said. Then he added, “Still, it would have been a problem if that had happened before I could ask you about Dragon.”

  Shiokishi, for his part, while pushing away what few mechanical holdouts still clung to him, said, “Oyafune was…I knew it—that coward is watching us from on high, from somewhere safe, isn’t she…?!”

  “Is she, I wonder?”

  Unabara’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  It was the expression of someone who had just encountered harsh disrespect aimed at someone they held in high esteem.

  “My talismans use human skin as ingredients, but Mrs. Oyafune didn’t hesitate for a moment. It may have been from her arm, but it still must have hurt a lot to slice off over ten centimeters of skin.”

  Unabara’s fingers crawled around the obsidian knife as he closed in, step by step.

  “It’s time to ask about Dragon. Or would you rather taste how much pain Mrs. Oyafune went through—the one who you called a coward?”

  “Guh…!! Minobe!!”

  Shiokishi, backing away, pushed a button embedded in his suit’s inside pocket.

  Immediately, a partition opened in the wall, and two tall men appeared. One must have been Minobe.

  They moved in front of Unabara, shielding Shiokishi behind them.

  “Did you think Sugitani was my sole pillar of security?”

  Shiokishi, his expression still trapped and drawn, gave an unnatural smile.

  “I’ve always had my security split into two teams in case I was betrayed from within: the Sugitani team and the Minobe team. All so that they could kill each other if things came to that.” He paused. “You may be talented in combat, but you can’t deal with this team by yourself.”

  The two tall men remained still as Shiokishi attempted to escape on his own.

  Unabara’s face hardened.

  But when Shiokishi got near the exit, he suddenly stopped. He was looking at something past the exit, astonished.

  “Why?”

  He turned back to them again, forgetting his flight.

  Then he shouted the question again at his subordinates.

  “Why has the rest of the security team been massacred?!”

  One of the two men opened his mouth.

  But what came out was not an answer to Shiokishi’s question. Instead, he looked at Unabara and said:

  “You’re pretty early, Etzali.”

  He heard a dull thud.

  Something had sprouted out of the side of the General Board member Shiokishi. It was a knife. One thrown haphazardly. But it didn’t have a normal blade made of steel. It was of a stone called obsidian, thoroughly polished, used by members of a certain people.

  It wasn’t Unabara’s.

  The man called Minobe had thrown it, despite the fact that he was supposed to be acting in Shiokishi’s defense.

  For a fe
w moments, Shiokishi remained stiff, looking at the casually launched knife without turning around. But then his body swayed to the side, and he fell over.

  The name Etzali.

  The selection of an obsidian weapon, a material that was at a glance less practical than metal.

  “No…”

  “You never gave it a second thought?”

  Each of the tall men brought a hand to his face.

  “About the possibility that there were others who had infiltrated Academy City’s dark side in the same manner as you?”

  Their face skin peeled off noisily. From behind those masks appeared different features—and soon their bodies and even genders began to quickly shift. It was exactly how it had worked for Unabara: a phenomenon created by Aztecan sorcery.

  It was a man in his late twenties and a girl in her mid-teens.

  “Tecpatl…and Tochtli!!”

  Tecpatl was from the organization Unabara—Etzali—used to belong to. He was in charge of things like planning operations. Tochtli was Xóchitl’s fellow comrade.

  “We had planned to place ourselves as central factors of Shiokishi’s security lineup, then eventually replace the very man himself, though. But he never takes off his powered suit. And if we physically destroyed the armor, the sensors would alert Sugitani’s group. We were just wondering what to do about it when the lot of you charged in,” said the brown-skinned man, Tecpatl, without sounding particularly regretful about it. “If Shiokishi’s post was to be ruined, then it wouldn’t mean anything to replace him. We’d decided to draw the curtains there, but…at the very last second, we came up with a nice souvenir.”

  “…I don’t think the organization would gain very much from you bringing my head back to them.”

  “No, that’s not it. You have it all wrong,” answered Tecpatl with a shrug. “Finding you in the shadows and killing you was the whole reason we infiltrated Academy City’s core and tried to replace Shiokishi. After all, belonging to a division like Group makes it impossible to locate you with conventional information networks…On the other hand, there are no problems as long as we have your head.”

  8

  Awaki Musujime was down.

  The only remaining fighters were Accelerator and Sugitani. Glaring directly at the assassin who had named himself a descendant of the Koga, Accelerator touched the switch for the electrode on his neck.

  “I’m about to murder you. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I do not. I’m not petty enough to be enraged by a word or two of nonsense.”

  Boom!!

  Both moved forward at once.

  Accelerator controlled his legs’ force vectors and shot ahead like a cannonball, but Sugitani took several lighters from his pocket in response. Casually, he threw the lighters, which were modified to constantly emit gas, then tossed his lit cigarette into them.

  Ba-boom!!

  The raging flames became a solid wall in the ruined passage.

  But that wouldn’t work against Accelerator’s reflection. Without a moment’s hesitation, he burst through the wall, and—

  He’s gone?

  Accelerator jammed his soles into the floor to brake, having lost his target. But he was too late. Sugitani had distracted him and moved sharply around behind him in the meantime.

  “If I recall, Amata Kihara broke your reflection by pulling his fist back right before impact.”

  “?!”

  A voice and a fist came rushing in from his blind spot.

  Accelerator hastily jumped back from his position.

  “And Teitoku Kakine used objects that don’t exist in this world to create vectors that are likewise unreal.”

  The voice and fist tracked him perfectly.

  Sugitani’s footwork was so smooth it was inhuman. He traced around in a curve sharper and quicker than fish in the sea, maintaining his point-blank distance.

  There was a loud grrkk!!

  Pain jolted through Accelerator’s face, and then Sugitani backed off for the first time.

  “I see,” muttered Sugitani, shaking his wrist around. The joint had swelled as though he’d sprained it. “These are unique exceptions they found as a result of investigating their own specialties. I suppose emulation is never perfect.”

  “…”

  And yet, he had still jarred Accelerator’s brain without using an ability. That was only possible due to Sugitani’s top-class skill. If he were some street punk, it wouldn’t just be his wrist bones—they would have lost control of their blood flow and experienced their internal organs exploding.

  “How third-rate,” spat Accelerator, despite having coldly analyzed the situation. “You’ve got some skill, but all you can really do is follow orders from that black-hearted old man? And you’re a descendant of people who called themselves defenders of justice?”

  “…”

  “Does Shiokishi look like a good guy to you? And are you right for obeying him? Don’t make me laugh. The answer is so obvious a baby could see it.”

  “…You are right. The word good is always misused by those in positions of power. Even if that wasn’t the case, one can’t build a perfect system.

  “However,” added Sugitani.

  Without an ounce of hesitation—

  “Does that mean leaving everything to evil would solve every single one of the planet’s problems?”

  —Accelerator and Sugitani glared each other down.

  Good had met Evil’s gaze and denounced him.

  “Be serious. Evil like you and Group—all you’re doing is scavenging for the leftover scraps of good. We constantly stand against hundreds, if not thousands, of tragedies, and you think you’ve beaten us by stopping two or three? Garbage pickers like you think you can fill the world’s belly with scraps?”

  “You shithead.”

  In response, Accelerator spoke ill of Good.

  “The fact that you think those scraps are garbage means your goodness is fake.”

  “Fake?” Sugitani raised an eyebrow. “You mean to say a villain like you knows what it means to be an ally to justice?”

  “…”

  There was a slight pause after the question this time.

  Nevertheless, in the face of it, Accelerator said, “Yeah, I do—so well that it pisses me off just thinking about it.”

  “I see,” replied Sugitani, reaching into his pants pocket. “But you won’t be seeing that good guy again—because you’re about to die.”

  A moment later.

  Accelerator’s electrode abruptly lost all effectiveness.

  Academy City’s strongest Level Five crumpled to the floor alone. He seemed to be squirming, trying to move his extremities, but he wasn’t getting any real result out of it.

  “You probably can’t understand human speech anymore, but there’s a modification in your electrode that allows us to control it remotely. Cut off from the Misaka network, you have zero combat ability.”

  After finishing what he had to say, Sugitani glanced at Accelerator’s crutch.

  It looked different than the designs from when they’d supplied it. It had undergone several modifications, probably to allow him to stand even after his electrode’s power was gone. But it didn’t seem to have worked out.

  “This is what I mean when I say good,” said Sugitani, taking out his large handgun.

  It was the gun he’d used to slaughter all the terrorists in the District 3 private salon building. Now that Accelerator had lost his power of reflection, Sugitani could kill him with one shot.

  “This is how a man does things, when he lives in a world of cowards but keeps fighting to stay good.”

  The only sound then was the loud bang of a gun.

  9

  Stephanie Gorgeouspalace was still pulling her shotgun’s trigger.

  The oafish metal heap shone eerily, reflecting light from the flames that were inundating the underground mall. Its bullet storm contained the power to mow down a run-of-the-mill armored car within seconds from i
nside one meter. It was no joke, no exaggeration—it could take a car and make it into a fold-up diagram.

  Saiai Kinuhata was using an ability called Nitrogen Armor to protect herself, but even that had its limits.

  By repeatedly blowing up propane gas tanks, Stephanie would momentarily blow all the air away, creating infinitesimal vacuums near Kinuhata. Now that the nitrogen walls were no longer able to form up, Stephanie’s pellets could pass straight through.

  The woman didn’t hesitate.

  Her index finger moved, meaning to take advantage of this single instant and pour as many pellets as she could into her target.

  Ba-boom!!

  The air burst.

  The tempestuous pellet spray hiding immense power within roiled the air in the vicinity, swallowed up the dark smoke, and even caused the wall of flames to flicker. Gunshots loud enough to blot out all other sounds went off in succession, the lead pellets piercing into the space Kinuhata occupied. It didn’t matter what angle the situation was examined from—it would be fatal. However, Stephanie didn’t stop there. She continued pulling the trigger, again and again, pumping more bullets in.

  The stronger the esper, the more irregular their tactics, because they depended on their own abilities all the more—but she was the opposite. Still, that certainly didn’t mean her power was ordinary or average.

  The most basic form of combat was to be incredibly efficient and optimized over many long years of a person’s life. By pursuing such a goal, it was self-evident how strong some people could become.

  In other words—

  Her bullets shot accurately toward her target without any waste.

  From the same underground mall, but from past the wall of flames, she heard what sounded like a boy’s voice.

  “Ki…Kinu…Kinuhataaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

  The boy seemed to be crying out in death instead of the girl.

  Stephanie’s face remained clouded.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t felt the bullets hit. She couldn’t see it, since it was past the fire and smoke, but Saiai Kinuhata’s body would at this very moment be transforming into a meaty pulp.

  What Stephanie wasn’t happy with was how easy it had been.

  She was taking revenge for Chimitsu Sunazara, yet, it had ended so simply.