The armored vehicle turned out to be an armored car with a fixed turret on the top. It had fallen into the basement at such a sharp angle that the cannon’s tip was bent.
“Run!!” shouted Digurv.
The armored car’s metal front hatch was about to open.
Hamazura dragged his unconscious charge away. Digurv, who exited the ruined basement onto the surface before him, took her and pulled her up.
Then, with a bang, the car opened up.
Hamazura and the frostbitten Russian soldier finished their frantic crawling aboveground together at about the same time rifle bullets started spraying blindly. There wasn’t anything to be seen of the clinic; the roof was long destroyed—even the walls were gone now. All that was left was an uneven pile of debris.
They’d avoided being peppered with rifle fire for now, but they didn’t have time to feel relief.
Digurv, his face white, said, “If we stay on the surface, they’ll kill us. Others in the area might find us, and if the guys in that armored car manage to crawl out, it’s all over. We have to find new shelter before they catch up!!”
Just then, an explosion went off nearby. Hamazura and Digurv were sent to the ground in different directions.
His eardrums didn’t seem to be working right.
From the ground, Hamazura gave Digurv a look. The man seemed to have sustained less damage; still holding Takitsubo, he glanced for a moment at Hamazura, then ran off somewhere as though the situation itself were pushing him. He was probably trying to flee to another shelter, just as he’d said.
…Shit, I don’t know where that place is, you know! If you let Takitsubo die, you’re never hearing the end of it!!
Hamazura wobbled to his feet. His mind was in a near-complete state of panic. He didn’t know at this point where the frostbitten Russian soldier had gone, and he was caught in the terrible stench of smoke rolling by. The old smells—of cooking and cigarettes, of human activity—were all gone. All blown away and replaced with the odor of engine oil and burning buildings.
He lowered himself, and as he hid amid the debris, Hamazura surveyed the area.
Almost half the log buildings were already destroyed, with distinct caterpillar tracks tangling through the snow. They didn’t seem to be from the armored car, earlier.
A weapon. Isn’t there anything I can use as a weapon…?
He’d never be able to overcome this crisis with nothing but the gun in his pocket.
For better or for worse, only about ten meters away was a machine-gun emplacement. Sandbags were piled up in a semicircle, and a fairly large-sized machine gun had been set up over them. It obviously couldn’t have been for shooting down attack helicopters. Maybe, leaving aside its actual effectiveness, they were making an appeal to having countermeasures like it in order to easily stop anyone from passing by overhead.
Naturally, he had no way of knowing how to use a machine gun. The recoil would probably mean the gun would control him rather than the other way around.
But it was better than nothing.
As Hamazura’s tension rose to a point where his pulse was so fast he was worried his heart was going to burst, he broke from cover onto the field of deadly white. More stumbling than running, he reached the emplacement, surrounded by several layers of sandbags. It had only been ten meters, but for Hamazura, the distance had been hellish.
The machine gun was fixed in place on a tripod. It was made so the joints could rotate; the three legs’ tips were like stakes, which kept it solidly on top of the square concrete sheet. Without tools, he’d probably never get it out.
“Damn it!!” he swore, finally pulling out his own gun. He could still hear blasts going off around him—would anyone notice if he fired a shot?
It happened just as he was thinking about doing it: An armored vehicle with tracks appeared from behind another building.
The distance was about twenty meters. It had a single rotating turret on either side, and their barrels were currently lining up in parallel. It had an antenna that looked like a plate, too—so maybe they weren’t tank cannons, but anti-aircraft ones. It seemed like they weren’t for firing explosive shells that would bombard an area; they were more like incredibly enlarged machine guns that would fire at more specific targets.
Again, that wasn’t normal tank usage. This was not a vehicle made for dashing through the front lines pursuing ground targets.
Nevertheless, it would certainly make mincemeat out of any unarmed human.
Hamazura was so shocked he almost bit his tongue off, but it looked like they hadn’t noticed him yet.
It was chasing different prey.
A woman in her thirties, running for her life with a young baby in her arms. A girl who looked about ten fled after her as well. The baby-holding woman’s expression had changed completely into overwhelming terror, exhaustion, and humiliation. Hamazura didn’t know who she was, but he felt the information squeezing out of the back of his mind. They’d probably been part of the group who had been rescued from the convoy and come to the settlement. He could tell their clothing, among other things, was subtly different from Digurv’s and the others’.
The anti-aircraft cannon barrels continued to move slightly, tracking after their backs.
Barrels of certain death; if even one hit, there’d be nothing left to bury.
Hamazura’s arms sprang up.
The next thing he knew, he was grabbing the machine gun fixed to the emplacement. There was no time to take careful aim.
He pulled the trigger.
It was fixed to the ground, but he still felt an impact shoot through his right shoulder, like a power tool had pushed back against him. The intense shock rattled his vision, and yet still, he clenched his teeth and kept pulling the trigger.
Sparks flew from the anti-aircraft tank’s armor.
With the preface of “if it could hit,” the large-sized machine gun packed enough destructive power to deal damage to a small aircraft.
Had the turret’s angle of rotation skewed slightly, pushed by the force?
The giant round fired directly after stabbing not into the backs of the fleeing women, but straight past them.
“RUN!!”
They wouldn’t understand Japanese, but he shouted anyway, loud enough to be heard over the gunfire.
The anti-aircraft guns didn’t stay quiet, either.
Brrrr!! The turrets swung his way, relying on the output of its giant motor. He could feel their irritation at him for getting in the way of their fun. The muzzles, which looked big enough to fit an entire golf ball inside, pointed at the machine gun nest where Hamazura was.
“Shit?!”
Immediately letting go of the machine gun, Hamazura dove to the ground.
The volley came a moment later.
One after another, the sandbags forming a wall burst, sending the black earth packed inside them spraying out. The large machine gun went to pieces. At this rate, he’d lose the wall before ten seconds were up. But if he brought his face out during this tempest of shells, that alone might blow him up.
He was now unable to move—
But then the anti-aircraft cannons stopped firing.
…Did…their gun get jammed…?
His thoughts were optimistic but inaccurate.
These privateers, unlike regular troops, didn’t act according to military doctrine.
This was entertainment.
And for the sake of their entertainment, instead of resuming fire with the anti-aircraft cannon, the crew had instead fired one of the surface-to-air missiles attached to the side of their vehicle’s turret.
With a jet of white smoke, the explosives flew toward the half-destroyed emplacement.
“Damn it!!”
Goggling, Hamazura leaped to the side, away from the emplacement he’d been using as a shield.
The explosion came an instant later.
His hearing failed.
His body, struck by an intense blast of wind, flew
into the air. He landed on the snow, and when he looked around, he was in a place right behind a building. He thought it had been ten meters away from the emplacement. But it wasn’t because of any superhuman leg strength. That was just how powerful the blast had been.
His legs trembled in terror.
These privateers were insane.
Hamazura and others like him had lived lives nobody could ever praise in the back alleys of Academy City. But these people’s morals were so deviant that even he was scared. They’d crossed national borders to reach a battlefield out of a desire to kill people—that wasn’t normal.
Now that the reality was slowly creeping in, he found himself unable to move.
And then he heard a quiet clanking noise.
“?!”
It almost caused him to panic, and he nearly pulled his gun’s trigger without thinking of the consequences, but then he realized something: It was Digurv, carrying Takitsubo, who had come to him. He must have gotten behind this debris via another route. He’d kept the unconscious Takitsubo—he hadn’t abandoned her.
Her sleeping face was just enough to prevent Hamazura from losing it.
“Are you all right? I’d rather not have any more sick or injured.”
“Wait, weren’t you escaping to another shelter?”
“While we were running around trying to stay hidden from the privateers, we eventually ended up here.”
…Did that mean their encirclement was closing in? Hamazura felt the inside of his mouth dry out from nervousness. As he considered throwing some of the snow at his feet into his mouth, he asked, “What happened to the other shelter?”
“A few of them were hanging around near the entrance. It didn’t seem like they figured it out yet, but if I got close, they might have caught on to where the shelter was.”
“Damn it,” muttered Hamazura.
Checking again, there were surprisingly few engine sounds. It was probably just the anti-aircraft tank from before. The armored car had fallen through the floor and couldn’t move anymore. The small group of soldiers who had exited it were now coincidentally blocking off the shelter.
“What were they like?”
“They were checking everything, from under the roof to behind bunched-up curtains. They were looking under children’s beds, looking for anything, even little stashes of money. Also, they seemed angry they couldn’t find their targets. Every single one of them is on pins and needles, wanting to kill the enemy.”
“…So they’re not going to let us get away. Doesn’t seem like we can appeal to their humanity, either.”
The privateers had blocked the entrance to the shelter, so they couldn’t dash into a safe alcove anymore.
Perhaps there’d been no such place to begin with.
Hamazura looked at Takitsubo’s unconscious face. A few bangs were caught on the awful sweat on her forehead. He gently fixed them and, strangely, realized that his fingertips had stopped trembling.
He couldn’t afford to let her die here.
He didn’t want the people who had worried about her to die, either.
He’d had more than enough of being beaten, of never having any power to do anything about it, in Academy City’s back alleys.
Hadn’t he decided that he would escape from all that?
He felt angry toward this unfair violence. Why did there have to be people after Takitsubo’s life in a place like this? Why did nice people who would worry about someone they’d never met before have to be attacked for such a bullshit reason? It was high time they counterattacked, wasn’t it? If lives were on the line on each side, then Hamazura had the right to bite back, didn’t he?
“…Can I leave Takitsubo in your hands for a just little bit longer?”
“Wh-what are you going to do?”
Digurv might have realized it based on the difference in his complexion and attitude.
Hamazura looked at Takitsubo’s face as she rested in Digurv’s arms just one more time before answering.
“This is a load of bullshit. I’ll reduce them to a pile of metal scrap.”
“Just so you know, we don’t have any RPGs or anything. They might have lighter armor than tanks, but AKs won’t be enough to shoot through that anti-aircraft vehicle!!”
“The point card.”
Hamazura said something indecipherable.
Digurv gave him a dubious look, and Hamazura rephrased so it would be easier to understand.
“…You have the land mines you dug up to give to the NGO stored somewhere, don’t you?”
2
Accelerator burst out of the base, running through the snow.
Not to hunt prey. Nor to dash toward a destination.
But to run.
Academy City’s number one Level Five, holding Last Order in his arms, was running away from something.
Terrified.
His feeling on the matter was sincere.
More than Amata Kihara.
More than Teitoku Kakine.
More than Aiwass.
More than that boy.
In a certain way, the enemy chasing him down was so incredibly terrifying that, in one blow, she would rock the pillar that bore his sense of values.
He heard the crackling of purple lightning bouncing behind him.
It was probably somewhat smaller in scale than the number three Railgun.
But it was much larger compared to the standard Sisters.
He heard a sound like a balloon popping.
A short metal nail, a few centimeters long, had just been launched—at a speed slightly faster than that of sound.
It held approximately the same force as a pistol round.
The nail fired off from behind Accelerator, then pierced his left arm, right in the bicep.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t reflect it.
It was that he didn’t know if he should.
No.
It wasn’t that. He simply couldn’t decide if it was advisable to let his assailant die as a result of using his reflection.
If he altered its angle, he might have gotten away with not harming the target. But if, by some mistake, he let his habits take over and reflected incoming attacks with intent to kill—the possibility existed. When he thought about that, he couldn’t take action anymore.
The strength faded from his arm.
The little girl he’d been holding up floated into the air.
Last Order.
The girl who was supposed to be supporting his mind—her warmth was swept away by the cutting chill of the snowfield.
“Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!”
A scream rang out.
The deep snow caught Last Order.
Accelerator couldn’t even extend his hand to her. Losing his balance, stumbling, he scattered the pure-white snow underfoot.
A laugh threatened to climb up from the pit of his stomach.
Accelerator had given himself a rule.
In the past, for his very own “experiment,” he’d murdered many somatic cell clones.
So now, he would never harm any clones like the Sisters or Last Order again, no matter what happened.
For that purpose, until now, Accelerator had been killing and killing, covered in blood. Amata Kihara and Teitoku Kakine—and Shiokishi of the General Board. He’d been in death matches with all sorts of monsters, and each time, it had chipped away at his body and heart. He’d lost to Aiwass. Following the being’s instructions, he’d fled to this snowy land. He certainly wouldn’t have received full marks, but he thought he’d been able to protect Last Order’s and the Sisters’ lives and livelihoods to some extent. He’d been able to believe he was doing what was necessary for that.
And yet, of all the things.
Academy City had worked out a plan to pinpoint and shatter that very thing he held close. A tactic to destroy his motive for combat, his having something to protect even if it meant turning the entire world against him.
They’re mad�
��
He needed to protect Last Order.
He needed to defeat the Sisters’ assassin.
No matter which survived, no matter which he protected, Accelerator could not break the rule he had risked his life to uphold.
A “Third Season”? Just to set up this exact situation? To take aim at my trauma? Crush my spirit? For bullshit reasons like that they made even more?! Academy City is a hellhole. I know that now that I’ve witnessed them from the outside. Something fundamental is totally fucked-up with the people in that city!!
His normal thought patterns weren’t establishing themselves.
It must have been proof the assailant’s presence was shaking Accelerator’s mental state.
Yes, for a tactic against someone with enough power to reflect a nuclear attack, it was having reasonable results.
“Oh? Hmm? Wait, are you thinking you’ve been protecting Misaka? Nobody asked you to do that, you know. You killed over ten thousand of them, and you think that will make everything right? The thought alone is arrogant.”
Those words stung.
Her voice was the same. But the emotion it carried was a world apart.
“Just do us all a favor and self-destruct already. If you break your little rule and fight at full strength, you could’ve probably beaten Misaka, too.”
His assailant’s voice reached him from inside the mask with the lenses arranged like an analog clockface.
No fear was in it.
That shouldn’t have been possible. Was this attacker confident she could attack him without reprisal?
“Maybe Misaka didn’t need to take measures against your electrode after all.”
A crackle of purple lightning sparked from her bangs, hanging out of the mask edges. She probably planned to use her electric-based ability for jamming or something. Or would she directly interfere with the Misaka network?
When he thought about that, a little doubt arose in Accelerator’s chest.
Last Order.
She was a unique individual who controlled the chain of command for all the Sisters connected to the Misaka network. If this assailant was one of them, one instruction from Last Order should be enough to stop her from moving.
The higher echelons had probably figured out Accelerator was running away with Last Order in tow.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 20 Page 14
