A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15 Page 19

  “…However dark your world, however deep it runs, I promise you that I’ll pull you out of there, eh…”

  Teitoku Kakine, face covered in blood, was saying something.

  He hadn’t gone after Yomikawa because she was in the way; Kakine had only ever been watching Accelerator. It was that slight moment of hesitation when, before Yomikawa, he’d been about to stop the evil. The act that would have withdrawn his very reason for killing Teitoku Kakine. That was what was in the way.

  Now he barely knew why he’d even lost.

  And that was why Teitoku Kakine flew into a rage.

  “You could never do that. It would never be that easy! This is our world. This is where the darkness and the despair lead!! You were condescending to me before, and at the very end, you still cling to it…Is this the fucking aesthetic you were talking about?!”

  Incoherent words. His anger and malice came first, and what resulted were words that had lost logic and consistency. They were just shock waves slamming into Accelerator’s body.

  “In the end, you’re the same as I am. You can’t protect anyone. And a lot more people will die after this, too. Killed by people like me. Isn’t that right, Accelerator?! You only got this far after making a lot of fucking people die!!”

  Teitoku Kakine unsteadily dragged his blood-covered body to its feet.

  Not to bare his fangs at Accelerator. Accelerator could tell—he knew malice personally. Kakine’s was directed somewhere else.

  Namely, to Aiho Yomikawa, crumpled on the ground.

  “St…op.”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  He identified a grinding noise. He didn’t know what had happened. Kakine hadn’t touched Yomikawa, but something invisible trampled over her. Her body twitched. The dark red on her, under pressure, started to expand a lot more quickly.

  “Stop!!”

  “I said I can’t fucking hear you!!”

  Kakine’s roar drowned out Accelerator’s words.

  “Don’t let that bitch decide things, idiot! Why the fuck are you trying to resolve things through talking, villain?! That’s not what we are. That’s not how we do things and you know it!!”

  Kakine’s ability further increased in pressure.

  Now, not only her side but her mouth began to drip with viscous red fluid.

  “If you want someone to stop moving, just kill them. If you don’t like something, just break it. That’s what it means to be evil! Don’t start wanting to be saved!! Don’t start trying to laugh it off like an idiot!! There’s no way a dumbass like you would ever be given that!! Come on, show me. Show me that evil you were lecturing me about before like some kind of fucking god!!”

  Idiot, he spat.

  He said he wouldn’t get civilians and pedestrians involved in the battle, and look what had happened. He’d abandoned the path of light, he’d decided to rule from the pinnacle of darkness, and he almost took the hand extended to him, fooled by warm words. He almost looked away from the dark world he was in, just for a moment, and almost touched the world of light. As a result, he lost sight of his top priority—removing the threat of Teitoku Kakine as soon as he could—and it gave way to a tragedy he could have prevented.

  Therefore…

  This time, Accelerator would become altogether evil.

  He swore then and there to rend Teitoku Kakine to pieces, no matter what he lost.

  He felt like his right and left brain had split. And he definitely felt like something sharp, something with an edge, had come up out of it and stabbed the inside of his skull. It wedged itself into his brain, that something, and immediately swallowed up Accelerator. He heard a squish, like a fruit being crushed. Something like tears flowed from his eyes. But they weren’t tears. This fluid was darker, redder, dirtier, more uncomfortable, and smelled like iron. Anything spilling from his lachrymal glands was now only hatred.

  And with it brought…

  a loss of control.

  “Oo…”

  He heard a pillar supporting his identity break. A thick, syrupy emotion washed over everything, from his center to his extremities. He clenched his teeth, his eyes turned red, and Accelerator let loose a howl that could be heard to the ends of the earth.

  “Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  His back burst open. From it burst murky black wings. Black wings like jet sprays. The anger had removed his very consciousness, crushed his very sense of self, and the pair of wings had exploded out of it. In moments, they stretched dozens of meters, parted the asphalt, and scraped against building walls.

  “Ha…”

  When Teitoku Kakine saw that, he knew.

  His Dark Matter, his elementary particles that supposedly didn’t exist in this universe. What on earth was it? Where was he pulling it out of? What did it mean?

  “Crazy…That’s some crazy evil. See, you can do it after all, villain. I see why Dark Matter’s just a spare plan now. But that doesn’t necessarily mean victory is assured!!”

  As though answering his cry, Teitoku Kakine’s six wings exploded out. They reached dozens of meters in length, filled with both a mystical light and an inorganic, machinelike quality. Just like a giant weapon that God or angels would use.

  Bawoo!! cried the air touched by the six wings.

  What Accelerator and Dark Matter possessed, respectively, were organicity and inorganicity. And those terms applied to a different world than this one. One wielded a part of a power equal to God, and one wielded part of the heavenly plane in which God lived. With these conditions, the match was even. And Teitoku Kakine, unlike Accelerator, hadn’t lost himself.

  Power the likes of which he’d never felt before raged within him.

  And he felt like he had perfect control over every last bit of it.

  Kakine thought to himself that their number one and number two positions had just reversed. It wasn’t an empty act of courage, nor was it him being a sore loser. It had none of the dramatization the emotion did. It was a simple impression. Right now, even against all the armies in the world, even against all the espers in Academy City at once, he could beat them without a scratch. Those were his honest thoughts.

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

  Laughing and laughing some more, Kakine took his six truly awakened wings and slammed them into Accelerator.

  He didn’t even care about Accelerator anymore. He just wanted to test this on something nearby. That was all Kakine was thinking.

  But then, a crack.

  A moment later, his body, hit with a massive force, was buried in the asphalt.

  “Guh…?!”

  He didn’t know what had happened.

  Accelerator’s black wings hadn’t moved. He’d simply looked his way and waved a hand. With just that, Kakine, who thought he was in an absolutely dominant position, lost, crushed deep down into the ground.

  He heard cricking and cracking.

  It was his right hand, with the Tweezers equipped, being instantly cut off at the elbow.

  Gah…ah…!! Wh-what the…hell…?!

  Accelerator had picked up some kind of vector, changed its direction, concentrated it at one point, and attacked him with it. He knew that, but even with all the world’s vectors, he couldn’t have caused something like this. Right now, Teitoku Kakine was sure he couldn’t lose in this world.

  It didn’t make sense.

  He couldn’t comprehend it.

  The supremely overwhelming Accelerator simply walked toward him, slowly, one step at a time, toward where he was smashed. Kakine realized that every footfall was his life ticking away. When the distance came to zero, his life would end. And Accelerator had already taken the final step.

  “Ha-ha…”

  “…yjrpevilqw”

  “Damn it…So that’s it!! That’s what you were for?!”

  No response—just a lethal fist coming down on him.

  The overwhelming butchery had begun.

  5


  Only the sounds of pounding meat echoed through Academy City. With each hit, the asphalt cracked, the earth rumbled like an aftershock, and the buildings shook ominously. None of the onlookers could say a word. Even looking away took courage. Most people did nothing but gaze at the overpowering scene.

  “Ugh…”

  Amidst all that, Aiho Yomikawa woke up.

  In the haze in her mind, she heard a roar. A roar more fearsome than a beast’s and more horrible than a demon’s. But to Yomikawa, it sounded like a child crying.

  I have to stop him, she thought in spite of herself.

  “Yomikawa!!”

  But before the collapsed Yomikawa could move, someone grabbed her arm. They picked her up, got under her shoulder, and swiftly moved away from the site of the incident. The deftness belonged to another Anti-Skill officer. But unlike Yomikawa’s jersey, this one was fully armed with a gun and body armor.

  “…Urgh…Saigou? Let me go…I still have to…!!”

  “You can’t, Yomikawa!!”

  She tried to fling him away, but she didn’t have her normal strength. Meanwhile, she heard a series of bangs and booms, the air being struck. She looked up and saw a black combat helicopter soaring through the blue sky. It was one of the brand-new Hexawings.

  “The satellites just came online again temporarily, and they detected an abnormality. A distortion the law of relativity can’t explain has expanded over one hundred meters around us. The analysis team says it’s probably bizarre interference from involuntary diffusion fields.”

  “And you’re attacking the source, even though it might kill you? Give me a break!!”

  She coughed up blood when she shouted, but this time, she wrested herself free from Saigou’s arm. She took another look around. Many other fully armed officers were here, and they even had units of powered suits and armored cars. It was like a scene out of a nightmare. For Yomikawa, who had investigated Accelerator’s earlier years to some degree, it gave her a sense of déjà vu. He’d been surrounded like this once when he was younger, and he’d surrendered, having lost any hope at life—and then they threw him into a dark research facility.

  She couldn’t let that happen again.

  Not paying any mind to the wound in her side, the blood-soaked Yomikawa stood in the officers’ way.

  “Lower your guns!! We don’t need them to persuade Accelerator!!”

  “But Yomikawa!!”

  “Don’t you know who that is? That’s a child we’re supposed to protect! I won’t accept it. I’ll never allow anyone to point a weapon at him!!”

  That was when Accelerator looked up to the skies.

  His black wings began spurting out with even more force.

  “Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  Ba-boom!! An impact shot through everyone present.

  It wasn’t a physical one; it was a simple threat to their lives. Their animalistic instincts had gripped and squeezed their hearts. The pressure she felt was so strong it felt like she’d crumple to the ground if she relaxed. Accelerator’s anger wasn’t directed at the onlookers or the officers; they were below his attention. Nevertheless, with just the scrap of that emotion, he dominated the world, forced it to yield to him, and nearly destroyed it.

  Accelerator was supposed to be after Teitoku Kakine.

  But who would believe, looking at him now, that he’d stop there? Once his target was gone, and his anger had nowhere left to go, would he point it somewhere else? Nobody there let that possibility—no, that danger—go unconsidered. Yomikawa knew Accelerator well—and she knew his actions were too hard to predict.

  Damn. Can’t I…do anything…?

  When Yomikawa tried to get closer to him, she coughed up blood. Saigou frantically pinioned her, stopping her from moving. Even restrained, however, she watched Accelerator through blurred eyes, thinking, Isn’t there some way to stop him? Is…is this stupid nonsense really going to end his future?!

  He let out another roar, painting over the world with black. The black wings on his back granted despair beyond the realm of man. She saw some Anti-Skill officers get their guns ready out of reflex, without being ordered. But if they pulled the trigger, it would all be over. The act would be tantamount to rejection from society, and it would break him again. And she wasn’t sure anyone would be able to bring him back a second time.

  Faced with such overwhelming power, everyone had lost hope.

  All they could do was cringe out of the way of that power’s rampage and tremble.

  And then, before their eyes…

  …their last hope came down to them.

  It looked like a ten-year-old girl. Shoulder-length brown hair and energetic features. Clothed in a sky-blue camisole with a baggy men’s button-down over it, their “hope” pushed terror-stricken onlookers out of the way as best she could and came to the busy intersection.

  She said she was looking for someone lost.

  Now that she’d found him, she didn’t hesitate. Even with the overpowering scene spread out before her, she went straight up to Accelerator. Everyone who saw her thought it was over—but none could reach out to stop her, either. She’d already gotten too close to the destruction’s center point.

  “‘I found you,’ says Misaka says Misaka, relaxed.”

  She approached Accelerator’s back as he continued to howl.

  Accelerator slowly turned around.

  Vwooh!! A burst of roaring wind.

  Academy City’s strongest Level Five had just done something very simple: His jetlike black wings had sliced through the air. His backward-facing wings were packed with incredible power, and he’d inadvertantly let loose a massive yet casual attack.

  Everyone there visualized the tragedy.

  They imagined her young body torn apart, crushed, and scattered across the road.

  But…

  With a tremendous gkkkeeee, the black wings stopped right in front of Last Order.

  An invisible wall had blocked Accelerator’s attack. It was just a few centimeters from her face, and though his wings trembled and shook, they didn’t get any closer. The girl shouldn’t have had any abilities that could ward off his black wings. Even if someone searched the whole world, they might not find anyone like that.

  If she couldn’t do it, and if nobody in the world could do it, then who had stopped them, and how?

  As Yomikawa stared in stupefaction, she eventually came to an answer.

  “Accelerator…”

  Academy City’s strongest Level Five. The One-Way Road. If anyone could stop this overwhelming power that nobody could reach, it would have to be the man creating that power himself. At the very end of the end of the critical moment, Accelerator had stopped his wings.

  The black wings trembled, squealing and cracking.

  They trembled like the sobbing of a beast.

  And then the bang of gunpowder rang out.

  Yomikawa, startled, looked over to see that one of the Anti-Skill officers had just discharged his gun.

  Shit, she thought.

  He’d fired at Accelerator with Last Order nearby. His black wings had torn apart and transformed into several sharp feathers. They were aimed at the Anti-Skill officers nearby. He had taken it as an attack against the girl.

  Accelerator unleashed a booming attack right away, with himself at the center, but…

  “‘Stop,’ advises Misaka advises Misaka.”

  One word from Last Order.

  As soon as it came out, the feather tips at the Anti-Skill officers’ throats stopped dead in their tracks.

  “‘It’ll be all right,’ says Misaka says Misaka, extending her hand.”

  It wasn’t that the little girl didn’t understand the situation. She knew how dangerous Accelerator was, but she still reached out to him with a delicate hand.

  “‘You don’t have to do this anymore,’ says Misaka says Misaka, telling you what the right thing is.”

  As if to swat away her words, Accele
rator crashed his black wings into her again.

  But once again, they stopped centimeters before her face. A sharp ggkkkeeee was the only sound that came out. It was Accelerator’s internal conflict. His heart was telling him to get rid of her. If it meant feeling like this, if it meant tragedies repeating, he should abandon everything. But he just couldn’t do it. He could kill her at the twitch of a finger. It would be so easy to send that tiny body flying. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t let go of that hope.

  “Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  He burst into a roar.

  For a few moments, the only sound was the angry flapping of his black wings.

  But the overwhelming sense of pressure they’d been exerting was gone. Now he seemed like a young child throwing a tantrum. The girl watched. When those next attacks came, she didn’t even shut her eyes. She trusted him—so she wasn’t surprised.

  He swung his wings much wider, then brought them down at her in one final, determined attack.

  When they stopped dead in front of her face, Accelerator stopped as well.

  His head was down—nobody could see his face.

  Without a sound, the pair of wings on his back melted into the air and vanished. At the same time, all the strength left his body. She spread her arms to accept him. He wavered, then slowly fell toward her.

  Accelerator’s weight seemed like it would crush her, but she held onto him anyway.

  She brought her mouth to his ear and whispered into it.

  “‘That’s good,’ says Misaka says Misaka.”

  EPILOGUE

  To the Survivors Go the Spoils

  Nano_Size_Data.

  When he came to, Accelerator was riding in an ambulance.

  But the machines inside it weren’t the same as an actual ambulance. This one probably wasn’t heading for a hospital. He was being brought somewhere else.

  Someone must have been driving it, but he couldn’t see them. Nobody else was riding with him, either. His cell phone was on the floor beside him. When Accelerator noticed it, his ringtone went off, as though somebody was keeping a close eye on him.

  Accelerator picked it up and heard a voice that was familiar, in a way.