A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15 Page 20

  “It looks like you overdid it this time.”

  “…You again? None of you could do shit. You all just watched from on high. You don’t have the right to lecture me. The only one who can act high and mighty is the one who actually risked her life to stop me.”

  “You understand.”

  “Shit,” spat Accelerator bitterly at the voice on the telephone that wasn’t listening. “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Anyway, I was the one who gave you the information regarding Teitoku Kakine, so I can’t be too hard on you. I would like you to be more efficient in utilizing my information, that’s all.”

  “What’s the penalty?”

  “What should it be, indeed. I could increase your debt, but for you, that wouldn’t be much of a punishment. And you’re too important to get rid of. Yes, what shall I do?”

  Those words were filled with implication. It got on Accelerator’s nerves, but the telephone voice abruptly said, “By the way, do you really plan on going back?”

  “Eh?”

  “I ask out of simple interest. After falling so far, declaring that you’d stand at the top of the darkness— Will you still not give up on that warmth?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” he spat back.

  “I see.”

  “Not gonna stop me?”

  “I’ll at least give you the right to struggle. Not necessarily the right to succeed, though.”

  “Perfect,” said Accelerator, hanging up.

  He stared at the screen for a few moments, but eventually put it in his pocket, opened the window hidden behind the curtains, and looked out at the scenery.

  …Oh.

  He still felt that little girl’s warmth in his arms.

  He clenched his fist and tried to will the sensation away, quietly thinking, I’ll outwit them for sure. Academy City, those shitheads at the top—everyone.

  In his inside pocket was a USB drive with his choker electrode’s blueprints.

  He’d checked it between operations, but it was no simple device. Just to make one part needed two or three ingredients or devices, and to make them he’d need four or five pieces of equipment—and those were all made by the frog-faced doctor himself. He felt like he was looking at Princess Kaguya’s impossible tasks. It looked like it would take considerable time to break down the electrode, remove the useless parts, and make a copy of it.

  But Accelerator still swore he’d do it as he hid that little hint he’d finally gotten in his pocket.

  Mitsuki Unabara left through the hospital’s front entrance.

  Xóchitl had come here as an assassin from the organization. She’d probably hate this ending. Unable to accomplish her goal or to even meet her end through death, he had let her live, only to steal her strongest weapon, the original copy of her grimoire. All she could feel right then was suffering.

  But she was still alive.

  Even with less than a third of her original body left, and though what remained was not much more than a simulacrum wrapped in skin, she still had life. Unabara was happy for it. It may have been pure self-satisfaction, but for Mitsuki Unabara, it was a kind of salvation.

  “Urgh…”

  His consciousness swayed.

  Taking in the grimoire meant immense knowledge was now stored in his mind. But it wasn’t used to a human body. It felt like iron fragments scraping through the wrinkles on his brain, strong enough to shoot through him from head to toe if he let it.

  I must have lost too much blood…

  Mitsuki Unabara reached into his inside pocket.

  His hand came out with the original copy, which he’d separated from Xóchitl. An extremely long grimoire in the form of a scroll, made out of animal skin. He unrolled the meters’ worth of knowledge and cast his eye over the contents.

  Gradually, the pain decreased.

  Once it was completely gone, he would understand this “original copy.”

  Ha-ha. If the English Puritan Church found me, they’d get rid of me, no questions asked.

  But this grimoire had power.

  And at the moment, he desperately needed power.

  …I was so intent on staying hidden in Academy City’s underworld.

  He rolled the scroll back up neatly, then put it back into his inside pocket.

  What’s happening with the organization right now? Why did a nice girl like Xóchitl transform into an assassin? …I’m going to have to confront the organization again.

  With a new power in hand, he looked forward.

  Unable to look too deep into the dark—but the Aztecan sorcerer didn’t hesitate.

  From afar, Awaki Musujime stared at the juvenile reformatory as dark smoke rose from it.

  A bandage-like thing was wrapped around her bloody foot. It was an organic artificial skin that used corn fibers. It still felt strange to her, but eventually it would fuse with her—thanks to the regenerative capabilities of flesh—and create such natural “human skin” that it wouldn’t leave any marks.

  “…”

  Without looking at her painful wounds, she kept her gaze fixed on the reformatory.

  She thought becoming a playing piece for Academy City’s underworld had guaranteed her allies’ safety. But when push came to shove and the reformatory fell under attack, the city hadn’t even sent in Anti-Skill reinforcements—even though they had those brand-new HsAFH-11 attack helicopters out and ready by the time the mercenaries scaled Academy City’s wall.

  I figured there would be a limit to how much I could trust those people.

  Nevertheless, she couldn’t immediately start waving a flag of rebellion. “Those people” were the ones with all the real power in Academy City. Even if she liberated her allies from that juvenile reformatory’s special block, they’d have nowhere to run. Not too long ago, she’d put down another back-alley group, Skill-Out. If she let her allies escape haphazardly, a similar end would be waiting for them. “Those people” could have even assigned her that mission to let her know that.

  Still…

  I swear I’ll get them back for this.

  Musujime promised herself. She decided to hold tight to the truth of that day, and the emotion that had begun to sprout from it. The phase of her relying on other people or other things she’d never seen or met before to protect her allies was over. Going forward, she would only believe what she saw with her own eyes and felt with her own hands, and use that to build up a protective wall.

  She cast one last gaze in the reformatory’s direction, then turned her back to it.

  She left without a sound, thinking to herself.

  I’ll rescue them from that place, for sure.

  And so, at an unspecified time, in an unspecified place, Accelerator, Motoharu Tsuchimikado, Mitsuki Unabara, and Awaki Musujime gathered back together.

  Tsuchimikado had a machine glove on his hand. His index finger and middle finger each had a long, glass nail attached to it. The bloodstained tool was the exact one Kakine had been in possession of.

  It was called the Tweezers.

  Accelerator looked at it and sighed. “Slipped in during the chaos and snatched it, huh? Surprised you were hiding with the rubberneckers.”

  “Apparently, nanodevices called the Underline are inside this. It looks like the reason for School’s actions was to collect them from the air and analyze them.”

  Accelerator wondered how he knew all that, but decided he’d probably been scurrying around without him knowing.

  Then Unabara, who didn’t look very good, asked a question, his speech slower than usual. “What data do they contain?”

  “The Underline is the core of Aleister’s direct information network in Academy City. The stuff inside the nanomachines is on a different level than the city data banks.”

  Now that he mentioned it, when Accelerator had attacked a General Board member named Thomas Platinaburg in his mansion some time ago, he’d tried to steal data from him. He could only get so much at the time—maybe he was splitting up informatio
n based on its secrecy between the regular network and the special one that used the Underline.

  Musujime, with a bored look, said, “Sounds like work. What kind of info is in those nanomachines anyway?”

  “One second. We’re about to find out.”

  The small monitor on the back of the Tweezers’ gloves made a blip. A jumble of random-looking characters scrolled by quickly—results of the analysis—and after that, began to change into actual words and sentences.

  “Looks like a bunch of secret codes for the Academy City underworld.”

  “You think it’ll give us a hint on how to get out of this?”

  “The names here are…Group, School, Item, Member, Block…This one is Tweezers…Here’s the Altair II’s data and a rough map of the juvenile reformatory…”

  “What do you mean secret codes?” said Musujime. “Sounds better than it actually is. Doesn’t this just mean the higher-ups were keeping an eye on Group and gathering information? Why show us this data now?”

  “There’s one more,” said Tsuchimikado.

  All of Group looked at the Tweezers’ screen. Tsuchimikado had set it apart from the others, and they took that to mean it was some different information.

  Newly acquired intel.

  Motoharu Tsuchimikado read aloud the characters displayed there.

  “The last one here…is ‘Dragon.’ ”

  At the end of the battles, they’d gotten an all-too-tiny opening.

  But it was still a key, and now that they had it, the four members of Group got to work once again.

  AFTERWORD

  To those of you purchasing these books one at a time, it’s good to see you again.

  To those of you who bought all of them at once, pleased to meet you.

  I’m Kazuma Kamachi.

  I went all out on the science for Volume 15. The seven Level Fives, agricultural buildings, nanodevices, unmanned attack helicopters, satellites, computer viruses, Skill-Out…I brought out all the little science key words that have popped up in the past and delivered them in bulk.

  The themes of this volume were the Academy City underworld and forlorn stories. Accelerator’s viciousness as he sprints down the path of evil was another major point. Though it was evil, it wasn’t the kind that left a bad aftertaste—I was aiming for an ending where the reader would feel refreshed after getting through the whole thing. Did I succeed?

  I think this was the most new characters appearing in a single book in the series (leaving aside groups like the Sisters). But his circle will never grow—perhaps one of the differences between Touma Kamijou and Accelerator.

  Thank you to my illustrator, Mr. Haimura, and my editor, Mr. Miki. It ended up being a chaotic story, so I really appreciate you two sticking with me all the way through.

  And thank you to all my readers. It felt like we were dashing down a side road again, but seriously, thank you for making it through all these pages.

  Now then, as I close the pages on this book,

  and as I pray you’ll make it through even more pages in the future,

  today, at this hour, I lay down my pen.

  …That white one—people might start calling him Robin Hood soon.

  Kazuma Kamachi

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.

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