A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 14 Page 6

  “So what?” asked Kamijou.

  “Oh, but don’t you think that’s strange?” she asked back. “The Vatican is currently making a serious effort to destroy Academy City. Why would they choose worldwide demonstrations and protests to do that? Why don’t they take the simple approach and crush us with their numbers? Focusing everything on Academy City would be more effective than causing violence elsewhere in the world. Don’t you think it’s circuitous?”

  “…You don’t mean…”

  “Yes.” Oyafune smiled. “The fact that they control two billion people is a lie. If they could destroy this city, they would have done so long ago. Perhaps those people do wear Orthodox crosses, carry Bibles, and go to church on Sundays. And maybe there really are two billion people like that in the world.

  “However,” she continued, “the issue is whether they could commit murder in the name of Crossism…and that makes things different. Though I’m sure there are people who would. Right now, the world is split in two: Academy City and a giant religious organization. But…what is the truth, really? Is there actually a clear-cut line in the sand?”

  “…”

  “Even people who go to worship on Sundays watch TV and use cell phones. Even athletes who train their body according to scientific sports medicine might pray to God during important games—that’s what it’s like outside Academy City in the so-called normal world. The lines are vague. People take the good parts from both sides, fortify it with their own beliefs, and then create their own worlds to live in.”

  “The science side and magic side…overlap…”

  Oyafune knitted her brows and said, “Magic side…?” but still continued after a moment. “Yes. The world’s great majority…the winners of its rule by majority—that’s what it is. Everything is spread thin and wide. People will take out loans and plan their lives at banks managed by Academy City–related groups, then have their wedding ceremony in a Roman Orthodox Church…They’re the ones populating the world: those who reap the benefits of both science and religion.”

  “Then…,” said Kamijou. He felt the back of his throat starting to dry out, little by little. “The Roman Orthodox Church’s goal…Wait, it’s to get those people who reap the benefits of both science and religion to…?”

  “Most likely. Having the best of both worlds concerns them. They want all two billion of those people secured. They want as many allies as they can get. So I believe they did something. And as a result, the cogs fell out of alignment and induced the demonstrations.”

  Something, she’d said. Was that the key to this incident?

  “Inciting protests isn’t what they’re after. They want the boost from chaos to attack the foundation of the world Academy City’s very existence has established.”

  Oyafune’s words clearly came from someone on the science side. That bothered Kamijou a little, but there was no point arguing with her right now.

  “Academy City is especially concerned by this part of what the Church is doing.”

  “Really…Because they’re scared of all the people rallying to the Church because of the demonstrations?”

  “That is one thing,” admitted Oyafune, “but even if that didn’t go their way, a different development is possible. We’re currently in the middle of working out countermeasures to what we’re calling economic bombing.”

  “…Economic…bombing…?”

  “The longer this chaos drags on, the worse the effect on our economy. It’s dangerous, and it could trigger a worldwide scare. If that happens, then the Church wouldn’t need to be big enough—Academy City could be torn apart.”

  Kamijou didn’t quite get all this talk of economies and scares. He turned to the woman sitting next to him on the bench and said, “…These ‘modern’ nations you’re talking about…Would they really fail that easily? They haven’t been shaken at all yet, right? All this economics stuff—I don’t know anything about money on the national level, but I can’t see big armies getting ruined by business.”

  “If there is one representative or symbol of the scientific world outside of Academy City that’s easy to understand…it would be so-called military powers. But even those nations have weaknesses to economic trends.” She spoke slowly. “To maintain a military, you need tremendous capital. The worldwide chaos is limiting the sources of money they’re using for that. In addition, no matter how small their income, the military always expends a certain amount of it. In other words, when an economic scare happens, military powers immediately take damage. The bigger the military, the more extreme their collapse is.”

  Is that real? thought Kamijou. A few countries like that came to mind, but they didn’t seem like they would get jolted very easily. “But those countries that have big militaries…Don’t they have a ton of oil and lots of ammunition in store for times like these? Couldn’t they go off that for a few years?”

  “Ha-ha. Wars don’t happen after reserves have actually depleted. Militaries wouldn’t be able to fight at that point. If you can make them look at the current situation and think, Eventually our reserves will run dry, you can make them pull the trigger, and everything goes up in flames. And when a major power goes on a rampage—I think that’s more than enough of a factor to tear apart the science world centered on Academy City.”

  Her strangely decisive tone struck Kamijou dumb. She probably had the numbers in her mind she needed to back that viewpoint up.

  “I don’t know if that process is related,” said Oyafune, “but right now, Academy City is desperately trying to acquire war funds. Are they trying to make up for the numbers difference with cutting-edge equipment and unmanned weapons…or is there some other reason? We’re holding weapons exhibitions, using the pretext of lowering our products’ grade for the sake of mass production to manufacture ‘mundane weapons’ without actually using significant technology. Then we call them Academy City’s newest weapons and sell them at high prices.”

  “…”

  “Meanwhile, the Roman Orthodox Church is also amassing a war chest, in the form of contributions from the faithful. On the surface, they’re peace funds to quell the chaos, and the people donating probably have no ulterior motives…but it’s plain as day what the higher-ups mean when they say they’ll use the money for peace.”

  The bigger the chaos got, the more funds they could raise.

  The Roman Orthodox Church was enormous. With its two billion followers, even if everyone only donated one yen, they would have two billion yen. Of course, it wasn’t compulsory, so plenty of people wouldn’t donate, but wealthier strata apparently had a tradition of gaining status through how much money they donated. And going by what Oyafune said, they’d already gotten a lot more than two billion.

  “Their system of indulgences is still around, though in a different form,” said Oyafune.

  Kamijou didn’t really understand that. Was indulgence a historical term of some sort?

  “You’d have to be quite the zealot to weigh science against religion and choose the latter. If someone told you heaven existed, you wouldn’t decide dying was all right. Science is realistic, which means it’s almost ridiculously easy to understand. People will flock to whatever’s easy to understand. But there are people who still worry about it. And those are the people they did something to. Whatever it was, as I can see it, it affected the gears in their normally functioning minds and resulted in bringing about all this chaos.”

  “…”

  Was this all true? For example, wasn’t it possible Academy City caused this, not the Roman Orthodox Church? Academy City would have to fight the Church and its two billion followers with 2.3 million people. So they caused the chaos in the Church to whittle down the enemies’ numbers a little. Wasn’t that possible?

  …This is hard.

  The Roman Orthodox faithful were the ones central to the demonstrations and protests. But if they were spread thin like Monaka Oyafune claimed, they wouldn’t be a direct combat force. And they wouldn’t properly under
stand the sorcery aspect of the Church, either. It was hard to think about big shots like Agnes Sanctis or Biagio Busoni participating in the protests and rampaging around doing whatever they wanted.

  If this was a plan of Academy City’s, then it was hard to imagine it doing damage to their actual combat forces.

  In fact, if the demonstrators were halfway between science and sorcery, then that would make them important people supporting capitalism. If they were too preoccupied with protests to do their actual jobs, that by itself would lead to economic damage. And if it was two billion people doing it, those losses would be no laughing matter. If they just wanted money for wartime, they wouldn’t purposely constrict their own sources of funds.

  If there was some kind of conspiracy going on behind the scenes, Kamijou decided that it would be appropriate to think the Church had caused this chaos—to win over the people on the fence.

  And when things came to the dark side of the Church, Imagine Breaker likewise became more valuable.

  “But still,” he began after thinking it through, “let’s say the Roman Orthodox Church was doing something, and they were related to some kind of trick or whatever. What on earth would the trick be? My power doesn’t amount to much. I don’t know where they are or what they’re using. It’s not a convenient tool I can use to meddle in things like this. If I’m going to cause trouble, I’d at least want someone to take me to the stage.”

  “Yes. About that—” began Monaka Oyafune before stopping.

  A new figure had appeared in the small children’s park.

  “Tsuchimikado?” muttered Kamijou, seeing his sunglasses-covered face.

  It was Motoharu Tsuchimikado, his classmate. He should have been at school after it ended, but he’d vanished when it came time to do the weeding. Kamijou considered griping about that, but this was clearly neither the time nor the place. He couldn’t—not with the way he seemed.

  The air about Tsuchimikado was completely different from how it usually was.

  “…Finished talking?”

  He didn’t speak to Kamijou. His eyes, behind his blue-lensed sunglasses, were only looking at Monaka Oyafune.

  Oyafune, for her part, wasn’t surprised. Maybe she was acquainted with the agent known as Motoharu Tsuchimikado. “We are not, but this is fine,” she said. “If you’re to be the one, I can accept that.”

  “I see,” said Tsuchimikado shortly before exhaling quietly as if he was bored with an annoying job. “You’ve taken care of business?”

  “I did yesterday.”

  “Then I’ll start, if you don’t mind.”

  “There is nothing you need to hesitate about,” answered Oyafune with a smile.

  Tsuchimikado looked slightly away from her. He reached behind him and took out something from the belt of his pants.

  “Tsu…chimikado?”

  There, as they left the confused Kamijou out of the conversation, he saw something unbelievable. A black, shining metal item in Tsuchimikado’s right hand. An object just fifteen centimeters long. It was…

  …a pistol?

  Though his mind caught up, Kamijou couldn’t stop him.

  Not because he couldn’t predict what was going to happen.

  But because even if he had predicted it, he didn’t believe his classmate could follow through with such a heinous thing.

  Bang!! The dry gunshot echoed through the tiny park.

  Monaka Oyafune, nevertheless, was smiling.

  Her body wavered, then fell off the bench and onto the dirt.

  6

  Mikoto startled at the loud noise.

  It sounded like the crack of gunfire.

  The shrill noise drilled into her ears, then echoed into the air.

  Wha…? What was that???

  Fireworks? But October wasn’t the season for them. In terms of other possibilities, maybe a fire-creating esper had done something…?

  She heard several windows opening in the student dorms nearby. With such a loud sound, they must have been worried. None of the students went so far as to leave the building, though; it seemed spectating didn’t hold enough interest if it meant interrupting dinner.

  Guess an esper’s going crazy. Well, this just turned into a chore, she thought, heading in that direction.

  She was a Level Five electromaster, the Railgun. She could handle most espers on her own, one way or another, and was confident that if dragged into an incident, she could turn the tables. Even if someone threw her into the middle of a fight between a berserk esper and Anti-Skill, she’d probably return unharmed.

  Still, even she had once faced a problem she couldn’t do anything about alone, but…

  …!! Th-that’s only because the two key people were way too irregular! And that doesn’t have anything to do with this! A-anyway, I’ll go see what I can find over there. Um, which way was it again?

  Mikoto shook her head, focused, and started walking toward the noise.

  All she could see in this seemingly normal neighborhood was student housing to every side.

  7

  Monaka Oyafune had been shot in the gut.

  It took several seconds for Kamijou to realize that fact.

  Motoharu Tsuchimikado had shot her.

  It took another few seconds for him to process that.

  Oyafune hadn’t resisted. She’d been poking Kamijou with something in her coat before, but he never saw her point it at Tsuchimikado. She knew exactly what was coming and took the bullet anyway. Such was the scene before him.

  Tsu…chi…mika…do?

  Kamijou’s gaze slowly moved away from the fallen Oyafune.

  Tsuchimikado’s expression remained the same.

  White smoke still billowed from the pistol in his right hand. He brought it behind him, then hid it between his shirt hem and his pants belt, picked up the empty shell casing from the ground, and put it into his pocket.

  All of those were completely calm, simple actions to him.

  That made Kamijou explode.

  “Tsuchimikadooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”

  He shot off the bench and grabbed his classmate’s shirt. When he saw that the eyes behind the sunglasses still didn’t change in the slightest, Kamijou clenched his fist and threw a punch. He felt the uniquely dull sensation in his fingers and wrist joints as he connected. Hit in the face, Tsuchimikado reeled back, and he fell to the ground. But even after falling over, his expression remained the same. He clearly didn’t feel any of the damage whatsoever.

  This bastard!! Kamijou clenched his teeth and took another step forward.

  But then he received interference—

  A small hand weakly grabbing his ankle.

  It was Monaka Oyafune’s, even though she’d just been shot.

  “…Don’t…,” she said, lips touching the dirt as they moved. “Please…don’t blame him…”

  Those words were enough to throw Kamijou into confusion.

  Monaka Oyafune continued.

  Smiling.

  As though thankful Kamijou had stood up for her.

  “My actions…don’t match…the ideas…of the rest of the General Board…representing Academy City…”

  “What?”

  “They want the war to get worse…They want to destroy…the other science side called religion…represented by the Vatican…They want to take advantage…of this chaos. They don’t…want this to be…resolved so easily…”

  Kamijou looked at Tsuchimikado again. As always, his face was still, like he’d known everything since the beginning.

  “Making the war worse…It’s absurd…You must stop it,” she said slowly, her voice tinged with pain. “But a board member…can only…use so much authority. I can’t…do it. Someone who went against the head’s will…and lost her power because of it…can’t do very much. So I…had to contact someone. Someone…who could actually…fix the situation…”

  She was looking at Kamijou. Gazing into his eyes as she spoke.

  “…One day…this cont
act will be revealed. The plan was…that I would be punished…for my rebellion. Alone…I could have avoided this…but then others would be punished.”

  Others, thought Kamijou, a chill running up his spine. “If you ran, they would go after your family…?”

  “…”

  Oyafune didn’t answer. Her silence stated that she didn’t want anyone to worry about her.

  “…I’m the one…who asked him,” she said instead. “Just to clarify…he said no. So please, don’t…blame him…I’m the one who…made the difficult request…that he enact my ‘punishment’…but miss my vitals…”

  “Don’t talk,” interrupted Motoharu Tsuchimikado finally.

  He slowly got off the ground and peered into the old woman’s face.

  Kamijou couldn’t see his expression from here. Tsuchimikado probably didn’t want to show it, either.

  “We’ll do the rest. You’ve done your duty well. I know you have a lot more to say, but I only have one answer for you. Don’t worry. That’s all you need to remember.”

  After Tsuchimikado spoke, Oyafune’s smile slowly deepened. Around her neck was a homemade scarf, not very well-made. That was her reason to fight.

  Stopping the conflict between Academy City and the Roman Orthodox Church, making sure not to have anyone else perform her “punishment”—it all came down to that. Tsuchimikado crouched and searched through her belongings, then took out a cell phone and called an ambulance. After wiping off the fingerprints, he put it on the ground.

  Then Tsuchimikado took something out of Monaka Oyafune’s coat.

  It looked like a small pistol for self-protection. He stuck it behind his belt and then looked at Kamijou. “Can you move right now, Kammy?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he said through clenched teeth, staring at the fool of a woman lying on the ground. “…She set up all this, this outrageous nonsense, so I would do something. Just so I would do something. You have to be kidding. How indirect can you possibly be?”