A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 16

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “(…You absolute idiot!! You didn’t have any plan in mind when you incited her, did you?! Now we might have first-row seats to see how terrifying a girl in love can be!!)”

  “(…What?! How is it my fault?! What do you think I should have done back there?!)”

  “Tatemiya, Ushibuka?” murmured Itsuwa. Both the men shot upright at attention, unmoving. Itsuwa, still looking down, continued, her expression unreadable. “I’ll be fine, all right? Could you please let me focus?”

  Her face was blank, and her voice was incredibly level.

  That was all she said, though, before going back to sanding down the side of her spear again. It was slowly evolving to be easier to carry, easier to use, and easier to kill.

  Tatemiya and Ushibuka turned into shivering, stammering messes. Their comrades nearby sighed deeply at them.

  Itsuwa seemed somehow awfully violent today, so Tatemiya secretly kept himself busy by using leather belts to tuck up his own sleeves, reinforcing his clothing with magic, and comparing notes with everyone else to make sure they had a firm grasp on the surrounding geography.

  In the meantime, Tatemiya and Ushibuka, almost seriously, put their hands together in prayer for Acqua of the Back, who wasn’t here right now.

  You might have your own stuff going on, Acqua, but now that our Itsuwa is in a murderous rampage mode, you’re on your own, buddy.

  “(…I…I really, really, really don’t want to be responsible for holding Itsuwa back when she snaps,)” said Tatemiya quietly.

  “(…I—I—I concur,)” whispered Ushibuka.

  Just then, Tatemiya’s ringtone went off.

  “Oh my. Would I happen to be speaking to Mr. Tatemiya?”

  “Ack, Miss Orsola!! Your voice is a salve for the soul!!”

  With something important in his mind about to give way, Tatemiya stood there, about to collapse into tears.

  Orsola, though, didn’t understand the situation. “Um, if this is the wrong person, then I do apologize. I will hang up—”

  “Don’t hang up!! If you do, I’ll fall back into that sea of nervous tension!!”

  Grasping at straws, Tatemiya fully engrossed himself into his conversation with Orsola. He switched his phone to speaker mode, so that everyone could hear, and waited for her to speak.

  “I…I have new information regarding Acqua of the Back,” she reported, unusually hesitant for someone who always went at her own pace. “I’ve discovered his real name—William Orwell. He’s a magic mercenary born in England, belonging to nobody. Of course, he wasn’t a Roman Orthodox follower since birth; the record states that as a young boy, he was baptized in an English Puritan church. As a mercenary, he was always a lone wolf and appears to have specialized in bringing down enemy positions.”

  Specialized in.

  That implied bringing down positions wasn’t all. In his many battles, the thing he’d been best at was point control. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do any other kinds of battle. If that was true, William Orwell would have lost long ago, and he wouldn’t be here now.

  “Also, William apparently has a sorcerer’s name as well. He has engraved the name Flere210 into his mind.”

  “…Flere, huh…?”

  Magic names used Latin words. Flere’s literal meaning was “tear,” the droplet. They didn’t know what meaning was behind that, though. Still, William Orwell had enough of a reason to name himself that—and the overwhelming ability to be able to.

  A saint—that word, expressing an entirely different sort of existence than the rest of them, passed through the back of Tatemiya’s mind. “What kind of record did William Orwell have during his mercenary days?”

  “In western Russia, supporting the Astrologers’ Brigade. In central France, the battle to annihilate the Knights of Orleans. Near the Dover Strait, the battle to rescue the third princess of England…There are too many to count.”

  Participating in many battles, gaining victory, and returning alive—that, by itself, spoke to Acqua of the Back’s massive abilities. As Orsola listed off the names of the battles Acqua took part in, Tatemiya recognized several of them. All were known as heated conflicts. Battlefields they could praise only as nightmares, the sort even Amakusa all together couldn’t overcome.

  “He’s a tough opponent…Actually, he sounds almost invincible.”

  “However, William Orwell does not seem to have been the sort to resolve all problems before him with violence. For example, he went to one war-torn region with few medical facilities and passed on medicinal knowledge to decrease death rates, went to a starving village and taught them how to prepare burdock root as food since it wasn’t being used for it in that region…He evidently did much outside of fighting. Some people apparently called him a sage.”

  That was only something he could have done if he understood the reality of war. Some problems couldn’t be solved just by sending in a large force or donating money. It took the feel of the battlefield’s air on your skin, an understanding of what the people there needed, and an assurance that they could do what you did, too. Only that would create a permanent, not a temporary, increase in their quality of life. It would appear that Acqua of the Back wasn’t a mere battle idiot after all.

  He was an intelligent beast, with a tenacious body and a flexible mind.

  “I cannot find anything one could call a weakness,” said Orsola. “It appears he has been using his meteoric powers as a saint ever since he was a freelance mercenary.

  “…And on top of that, he wields power as a member of God’s Right Seat after converting to the Roman Orthodox Church.”

  That meant all those legends from his mercenary days were built back before William Orwell even became Acqua of the Back. His abilities were beyond that now. And it wasn’t just additional strength he had—he’d gained an entirely new game board to battle on. Once again, Tatemiya was astounded at how great this enemy they’d made was. He was probably more terrifying than their own Priestess baring her fangs.

  How on earth does he control all that power?

  If you looked at Kanzaki, it would seem like she was naturally controlling her powers as a saint. But it wasn’t actually that easy. If a normal sorcerer like Tatemiya tried to handle it, it would be so much he’d destroy himself instantly.

  And Acqua commanded even more than she did.

  …Means he’s probably stronger in magical ability, too.

  “The plan was for England to knight William, but a week before the ceremony, he vanished. An in-progress escutcheon was thus left sitting in a craftsman’s house.”

  And when he next appeared, he was an enemy of England. It was a mystery what happened in that time, but that wasn’t important right now.

  “I don’t expect you to find any weaknesses. Don’t you at least know how Acqua fights? Like what weapons he uses or what combat style?”

  “His combat style is completely self-taught. He appears to call it ‘dirty mercenary style.’ In terms of his weapons, he uses a steel mace over five meters in length. This says it outwardly looks like a knight’s lance.”

  Tatemiya and the others already knew that; they’d fought him directly.

  “Also…The way he moves during battle is unique. Instead of running, he appears to slide over the surface of the ground.”

  “…?” They hadn’t given that a thought. Was that why they hadn’t heard him approaching? Now that he considered it, she was probably right. Still, Acqua moved so fast that aside from changing direction, it pretty much looked like he just disappeared.

  “It seems to be a movement spell that uses water somehow. Cars slip on ice because of the thin layer of water between the ice and the wheels, right?”

  “Which means…He’s been good at using water even before they called him Acqua of the Back…”

  Vento of the Front, Terra of the Left, Acqua of the Back. If they were each associated with one of the four archangels, that meant Acqua’s territory was Gabriel, God’s “power”—whose attribute was wat
er. He hadn’t used any special attacks, any water spells, during their fight, probably because he thought them beneath it.

  …All right. How do we plan for that, exactly?

  There were too many unknowns, values whose upper limit was too high for them to even imagine. It made Tatemiya want to laugh.

  Then it happened.

  “Whatever our enemy, there’s only one thing we have to do…”

  Quietly.

  Itsuwa, who had been reinforcing her spear, murmured, her lips barely moving at all:

  “Isn’t that right, Tatemiya?”

  The words you better not run away were hidden in there, and Tatemiya’s hand with the cell phone in it started to tremble.

  5

  Three AM.

  Acqua of the Back lingered on a bridge in School District 22’s third stratum.

  During his route from the park to here, he’d felled eight self-propelled Bowing Image control antennae, seventeen armored cars, and thirty-eight powered suits. All were unmanned. He would defeat one enemy, move, encounter more there, wipe them out, repeat…But he still couldn’t find who was taking command, controlling the operation. His opponent must have been using their head more than Acqua gave them credit for.

  Without a glance to the artificial night sky projected by the planetarium canopy overhead, he found himself thinking, Vento’s divine judgment would have made this easy…

  Still, it hadn’t even been an hour yet, and the enemy had withdrawn. It was such a one-sided defeat that the Academy City leaders must have decided the battle a waste of military resources. Acqua agreed. He shuddered to think how much capital had gone into manufacturing those metal trash heaps. People poured insane amounts of money into modern weapons—so much the numbers stopped making sense. He thought they would be better off finding a more economical use for it all.

  “…But surprisingly, they don’t seem to be idiots.”

  That was his evaluation of their skillful withdrawal. You could say it about any field: Professionals had a lot of pride in their own work. For someone in the service, that was straight power. The thrashing he’d given them would make everyone talk. Their withdrawal meant Academy City had a leader who had pushed that aside, used enough logical arguments to force the others to understand the actual situation, and urged a swift retreat.

  Of course, it didn’t matter how excellent that leader’s political skills were, nor how much strength and brawn they commanded. It didn’t change what Acqua had to do.

  Destroy the Imagine Breaker.

  …And intercept all elements who would block him.

  Now, then. Acqua took out a pocket watch and checked the time. Still nineteen hours left until the negotiated time is up…

  He closed the watch, put it back in his pants pocket, then looked to the side using only his eyes.

  “Come to a conclusion?” said Acqua into the darkness. “You have half a day until the time limit. Have you made the preparations already?”

  From out of the dark came a scrape…of footsteps.

  More than one set. Around fifty of them in all. All of them members of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, known as a branch of English Puritanism. Their footsteps, surrounding him, were three-dimensional, meaning that they had all appeared, as though seeping out, from every nook and cranny in the metal bars making up the bridge.

  There were men, women, children, and adults, and all of them wore normal clothing you could find anywhere. But their hands gripped swords, spears, axes, bows, whips, and other weapons, all ominously reflecting the streetlights. Among them were weapons that even Acqua, as a mercenary, hadn’t seen before—a kusarigama and a jitte, characteristic of the East—and even one that looked like a flute made of metal.

  At the front stood the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church’s vicar pope, Saiji Tatemiya.

  There was a simple reason he knew his name: He’d heard it muttered during the previous battle, called among allies and when changing tactics. Intelligence gathering on the battlefield was another necessary skill for a mercenary.

  “Well, I mean, you gave us an impossible problem,” said Tatemiya. “Means we don’t have to worry about it, so we came to a quick decision. Guess I have you to thank for that, at least.”

  Tatemiya held a large sword, a flamberge. Like claymores and other two-handed swords, it had been made extra-large for crushing both thick armor and the enemy inside.

  His weapon was enormous, 180 centimeters in length. But from Acqua’s viewpoint, it still looked no longer than a child’s stick.

  “An impossible problem?” he repeated, smiling as he tapped his foot on the ground. Without a sound, his shadow wriggled, and out came a lump of metal over five meters long. “You stand against the Roman Orthodox Church’s two billion, and yet I said you’d get out of it with a mere arm. I would think this a bargain.”

  “The Roman Church isn’t our enemy. It’s people like you—the ones making the normal God-fearing people dance for you, preying on them.”

  “Hmm. Does this mean our negotiations have failed?”

  “What else could it possibly mean?”

  “Nothing, I suppose. It’s not for me to worry about. You’re the ones who should be worrying—because you’ve abandoned the only possibility you had of living through this.”

  Acqua reaffirmed his grip on the gigantic mace stretching from the shadow under him, then gave it a light swing with his wrist, as though flicking a tennis racket.

  “I’ll say this once more to be certain,” he said. “I am a saint.”

  “…”

  “And I also have power as part of God’s Right Seat.”

  “…”

  “If you’ve properly understood that, and still say you will risk your lives to fight and protect someone, then I look forward to it—the possibilities of man, or what have you. I look forward to your vaunting being more than nonsense. I’m sure you’ve poured every bit of your strength into tricks and aces. I will accept every last one of them.”

  Acqua changed.

  Not in a visible way. He didn’t sprout angel wings or a halo overhead, or anything concrete like that. However, something unseen had spouted from his whole body.

  “And I will still win.”

  With a rumble, Acqua took just half a step forward.

  He didn’t do it to move but to prepare his metal mace. It was a quiet, grave, decisive motion to display his resolve and determination to crush every last one of those he saw as enemies.

  “I will prove that battles are not decided by good or evil, but by strength and weakness. I pray that you will draw out at least one of my own trump cards. If you cannot even reach that point, then I will grant you not the title of weak, but that of fools—”

  Acqua didn’t continue after that.

  Ga-bam!!

  Itsuwa, having lost her patience, ignored their conversation and struck suddenly, her full intent behind it.

  The Friulian spear she’d stabbed wordlessly shot toward Acqua in a line, as fast as a flash of lightning. Immediately, she activated a spell on its tip, one she’d built using the cold night air—and detonated it. Boom!! Flashes of light scattered while bursts of wind whipped about, mercilessly smashing everything to pieces—not just Acqua, who had taken the hit directly, but the asphalt nearby.

  It even flipped over her own ally, Saiji Tatemiya.

  “I-Itsuwa…Hello…?” he said softly, shocked, but Itsuwa didn’t turn around. He just got an electric feeling coming off her shoulders.

  She glared into the billowing dust, keeping her spear ready, and clicked her tongue. A mace tore through the curtain of gray, revealing an unharmed Acqua.

  “Do you not think it polite to listen until the end?”

  “…If you want to talk, I’ll listen later.” Itsuwa, far from growing nervous, actually took another step in. “After I’ve beaten the living, standing, walking, talking, breathing shit out of you! If your jaw is still in good enough condition to talk anyway!!”

  Itsuwa�
��s shouts could pierce eardrums, and though her face was expressionless, a strange power was gathering in the middle of her brow. The Amakusa members, with pained looks, variously put hands to their heads and looked away.

  “(…Bad, bad, bad!! Itsuwa’s gone off the deep end!!)”

  “(…It’s your fault! You were careless and told her at the hospital to prove she was the best woman out there, and now her feminine heart is at full power!!)”

  “(…Idiot. A woman in love would make even God an enemy.)”

  As the men chattered to each other quietly, Tsushima gave them an oddly cool reprimand.

  Itsuwa and Acqua ignored their exchanges, facing each other down. At some point, Amakusa’s central point had changed completely.

  “Hmm. That’s very heroic of you, but I’d rather you show me actual power to match your words.”

  “Please, don’t worry. Even if we end up pieces of flesh, we will rip and tear and cut and hack and shred you to bits so that you regret what you’ve done!!”

  A voice came from behind her, crying out, “What?! I didn’t think we were going that far!!” She ignored it and took another step forward.

  The two of them had come into definite striking range. Leaving behind Saiji Tatemiya as he watched in bafflement, they clashed.

  6

  Explosions ripped through the late-night air on the bridge.

  The difference in speed between Acqua, who wielded the immense powers of a saint, and Itsuwa, just a regular person, was vast. Acqua lurched straight for her so quickly that he disappeared from the human eye. All his muscle mass expanded at once, and he whipped his giant mace like a guillotine.

  Itsuwa barely managed to move her spear a half step later. She took a stance with it along the path of Acqua’s attack, meaning to stop it. But Acqua had no attacks that could be stopped.

  However…

  “!!”

  With a grrrrrieeek like two boulders colliding, Itsuwa’s spear stopped Acqua’s mace.

  Normally, a mere Friulian spear would have been blown to smithereens, along with Itsuwa’s slight body.