A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 14

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “But…,” he added, “it originally belonged to the Church, right?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Then why not the Papal States…er, the Vatican, I should say…? Why don’t they just use it there? I don’t see any special reason to take it out of their base. Avignon is just for remote controlling Vatican facilities, not for sorcery they can only do in Avignon.”

  “I have a few theories about that, but…” Itsuwa thought for a moment, then slowly continued. “I wonder if it takes a huge amount of time to get permission to use it. The one hundred and forty-one cardinals at the top of the Church have to all agree on it. The pope has great authority in the Vatican, but I still don’t think he could use it arbitrarily. I think that’s also why they couldn’t be reckless with it before.”

  Itsuwa explained that even the upper echelon of the Roman Orthodox Church had its turf wars, so the arrangement was probably to avoid using the document for those purposes.

  “However, we have information saying control through Avignon is irregular and doesn’t need the agreement of all the cardinals. But in exchange for activating it outside the Vatican, they can’t do it instantly—they seem to need preparations in Avignon. To be blunt, if we act now, we might still be able to stop them from using it and calm the chaos throughout the world.”

  “But either way, we can’t do anything without investigating the Papal Palace…”

  “I—I almost have enough information for Amakusa to act. I think we should begin our charge on the Papal Palace in a few days.”

  In a “war” that was a confrontation of science and sorcery…it seemed Itsuwa and the others would fight to stop the Roman Orthodox Church.

  The English church probably didn’t appreciate the Roman church at the helm for the sorcery side. Still, they didn’t want to make trouble by openly opposing them. She used the word Amakusa, but never the English Puritan Church. Which meant that they were using Amakusa, under their umbrella, to obstruct the document. And if Amakusa failed, they could claim that a smaller faction of theirs were acting on their own accord, with no connection to the Puritans’ intentions as a whole.

  “…”

  Kamijou had already been separated from Tsuchimikado. Instead of going by himself to the recognizably suspicious Papal Palace and upsetting the situation, he felt like acting in tandem with Itsuwa and helping Amakusa with their plans was more reliable.

  For Kamijou, it was simply more efficient to help Itsuwa gather information so Amakusa could break into the place. “Itsuwa, is there anything I could help with?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said you’d rush the palace in a few days, but the sooner the better, right?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, trying to answer despite her confusion. “If you want—”

  But he didn’t get to hear the whole thing.

  Because, with a dull roar…

  …the window facing the road suddenly shattered all at once.

  It hadn’t been a thrown rock. And not a bat or metal pipe, either.

  It was hands.

  Dozens, hundreds of human hands had pressed against the glass, and their pressure had caused it to shatter inwards. He heard several shrieks in the store, but even that was drowned out by a vortex of people flooding inside. It was like a horror scene in a zombie movie.

  It was clearly abnormal, but Kamijou knew the cause immediately.

  “A riot?!”

  “Th-this way!!”

  Itsuwa grabbed her things at her feet with one hand, Kamijou’s arm with the other, and immediately ran. They went toward the emergency exit rather than the front entrance. Meanwhile, a throng in the hundreds entered the shop, very quickly transforming it into a jam-packed space like a full train car.

  <“Japanese people!”>

  <“From Academy City?!”>

  <“Kill them. Don’t hesitate. They’re the enemy!!”>

  Kamijou didn’t know a lick of French, but the emotion in their voices rang strangely clear in his ears.

  He turned around behind him. Several screams overlapped. There were women and children inside, too. But before he could go back for them, Itsuwa had kicked the emergency door closed.

  “Itsuwa!!”

  “The way they’re moving, nobody will die. There are too many of them. The rioters are restricting their own movement. As long as they don’t start falling over like dominoes, nobody will be seriously hurt.”

  “That’s not the problem!! At least the children—”

  “Is that all?!” Itsuwa shouted, interrupting him. “…If that’s all, then that’s happening all over the world. And what do you think we could do if we went back into that human wave? We came this far so we could pull this disaster out by the roots as soon as possible, right…?”

  “…Damn it.”

  “If we can just do something about the document the Church is using, this will quiet down. If we get caught in the riots, we won’t be able to move. And then there won’t be anyone to quiet them down.”

  “…Goddamn it!!” he spat, grinding his teeth. The Roman Orthodox Church is making all the riots they want, and Academy City won’t do anything about it so they can use it to their advantage, he thought. And the only ones suffering in the end are the ones caught in the middle! How am I supposed to ignore this? I’ll stop it right now. I’ll stop this stupid nonsense as soon as I can, I swear!!

  Kamijou and Itsuwa ran down a back road, towered over by buildings on either side. Somewhere behind them, a large man shouted. The sound of glass breaking found its way to their ears. And whose shrill crying was that? Even an explosion shook the air; someone must have lit some gasoline.

  He couldn’t figure out the goal of this.

  Were they after a Japanese business chain in Avignon? Did they want to attack a hotel with a lot of Japanese tourists inside? Whatever the case was, they’d already forgotten their original purpose, and now the streets were flooded by people who just wanted to go on a rampage.

  “Itsuwa, how far are we running?”

  “For now, we just have to get somewhere we won’t be caught by the—”

  Her words suddenly cut off.

  She’d just seen a new crowd on the other side of this narrow street.

  …Such perfect timing…, thought Kamijou, his shoulders giving a jerk. “Hey, Itsuwa, you’ve been looking around here a while, right? Ever been caught in a riot like this before?”

  “Huh? N-no. Amakusa specializes in blending in with their environment. Normally, we see beforehand when a riot is going to happen and then leave the area before that…”

  “…Thought so.” That informed Kamijou of an unpleasant fact. “Their timing is too good.”

  “What do you…?”

  “If we assume the enemy using the document is hiding in Avignon like us, they might have seen me falling with my parachute. Even if they didn’t get a clear look, they should have been able to detect a supersonic passenger plane made in Academy City slowing down and air-dropping something. If they’re on the lookout for me, this kind of reaction makes sense.”

  “Wait, so…”

  “These riots…They’re intercepting us!!” cried Kamijou, just as the crowd blocking the road started moving toward them.

  The old city of Avignon, where the Papal Palace was, was small, closed in by these old ramparts. They’d kept on putting buildings in this already limited space, and the paths were so small even bicycles had trouble getting through. Add to that the ten-plus-meter-tall buildings towering over them, and all this city gave him was a bizarre sense of oppression.

  Their narrow road was blocked in several places by the human hordes.

  Those participating in the riot actually looked like they were hurting themselves physically.

  Kamijou thought for a moment, then made up his mind. If they didn’t go against the flow of the crowds in front of them and break through, they’d never reach the Papal Palace. And at any rate, if they didn’t go there, the problem would remain unsolved. The longer ti
me dragged on, the more everyone got hurt.

  “Let’s go, Itsuwa.”

  “Huh…?”

  “Doesn’t look like we have time to wait for Tsuchimikado to call. Amakusa won’t be here right away, either, right? We should squeeze by them and go for the palace. Now that the enemy knows about us, even they might not be around for long.”

  And…

  “In the worst case, they might still be able to use the document if they go back to the Vatican. Even an amateur like me knows this’ll get worse if they take it back to their base. We need to wreck that thing here and now!!”

  Itsuwa vacillated a moment but eventually nodded.

  She must have decided they didn’t have time to waste summoning the members of Amakusa scattered around France.

  In the meantime, hundreds of rioters were getting closer from the other side of the narrow road.

  They looked packed in like sardines—a thick wall made of people.

  “…When we go in, please stay low,” said Itsuwa quietly as she stared at them. “If they see our faces in the middle of the pack, they could target us. But that’s less likely if we can stay hidden in the crowds. Even if this riot is the enemy intercepting us, it doesn’t look very precise.”

  “Right,” said Kamijou, feeling something between fear and excitement. “Let’s run!”

  That moment, Kamijou and Itsuwa each plunged into the crowd of rioters.

  They twisted and turned, wriggling through the riotous crowd as thick and dense as the walls that guarded the city. There were too many people to run. He could just barely walk and even then, only a few meters at a time.

  Suddenly, with a shout, someone punched him in the head.

  When he tried to keep going, large fingers grabbed his shirt.

  From there on out, Kamijou was just as frantic as them. He bit an arm coming to grab him, pushed through the wall in his way, and went forward, albeit still dragging the hangers-on along behind. Blood crept from his side where nails had dug into him, and he caught the scent of excited men’s body odor. Explosive yells right in his ear rattled his brain, and as the crushing pressure from every direction increased, his mind began to steadily wear down.

  Shit…Little by little, his legs grew dull. Shit…!!

  Just as the disgusting mass was about to swallow him whole, the wall of people suddenly parted. A breath of fresh air rushed in, untainted by all the human gasping.

  “A-are you all right?!”

  Itsuwa’s voice came from right near him.

  Blood was trickling from one of her temples. It didn’t look like she could get through this crowd unharmed, either. She had mentioned a spear being in her bag, but she must not have felt like swinging it around.

  Kamijou, heaving, ran to get out of the throng. Somehow, his feet felt wobbly and unreliable. If he wasn’t being careful, he would have rammed a shoulder into the narrow road’s stone wall.

  “…I-Itsuwa, where’s the palace?”

  “Still up ahead. That roof all the way over there is it…W-we’ll have to get past that next,” she said, pointing.

  Kamijou looked over slowly.

  It was another human vortex, this one incomparably larger than the one they’d just struggled through.

  5

  The way to the Papal Palace was too perilous for them to make it through.

  The old city of Avignon where Kamijou and Itsuwa were was a small one, spanning four kilometers and enclosed by stone walls, but they weren’t making any progress toward their destination. The parts of the old city around them, at any rate, had tight roads. There were only about three meters from one side to the other, and on each side were housing complexes towering like ramparts, all made of stone as well. With the fifteen-meter-tall walls blocking them, it would be too hard to take a detour…and if they tried to plunge straight through, a riotous crowd of hundreds or even thousands would be waiting for them. When so many people crammed into such a narrow space, they formed a thick wall. It was like trying to walk from one end of a fully packed train car to the other.

  They wouldn’t get to their destination like this. The crowds seemed like they would do them in before they got to destroy the document.

  “Again…,” said Itsuwa, breathless, staring at the new mobs filling the space in front of them.

  Kamijou didn’t know French, but several of the men were shouting and pointing at the two of them, eyes bloodshot. Maybe they were calling out that the pair was from Japan or Academy City. Before the men could move, Itsuwa grabbed Kamijou’s arm and started running.

  “That…won’t work. Please, come this way. Otherwise, we’ll be trapped!”

  “Hey, wait, what about the palace?” he shouted; Itsuwa had headed back down the road from which they’d come. The men staring at them before seemed to try and give chase, but they were immediately engulfed into the swirling riots.

  Itsuwa, meanwhile, gritted her teeth, not happy with the situation, either. “…That mob is past critical numbers. We can’t get through them by running!”

  “You’re going to use a different route? But…”

  Kamijou was cut off by several young adults from a different riot showing up in their new escape route. The already tight path was now perfectly closed in by human walls.

  Which made sense. Kamijou and Itsuwa had just gotten out of that one a few moments ago.

  “Here too?!!” said Itsuwa, her voice unusually angry, pulling Kamijou’s hand and running toward the housing complex walls. They burst inside one building, which looked like cliffs rather than stone-built structures. They shut the thick wooden door by ramming their backs into it.

  Violent pounding and impacts recoiled through the door at them. It wasn’t someone trying to bust down the door but rather the rioters’ shoulders and arms scraping together.

  Kamijou, his back resting against the door, slid down to the floor. “…What do we do now? We can’t get anywhere near the Papal Palace like this.”

  “Yes, it does seem difficult to make any progress like this…,” his companion replied weakly. She let her bag off her shoulder and onto the floor before taking seventy-centimeter rods out of it. When she clicked them together through gas stopcock-like sockets, they formed a single, long pole. Finally, she attached a steel blade to the tip.

  Her Western cross lance was complete. He thought he remembered its name being a “Friulian spear,” something used for shipboard combat.

  He sighed. Seems like she’s rethinking the whole covert movement thing…Huh?!

  Suddenly, something caught in his throat as he thought.

  He’d just gotten a glimpse of Itsuwa’s cleavage through her blouse, which was only tied in the front. He thought to himself that her outfit was unfair in a few ways, but she didn’t seem to notice whatsoever.

  “What shall we do? I’d been operating under the assumption we would avoid the riots. I didn’t actually prepare any plans or spells for if we actually got caught in them.”

  “W-well. We need to get to the palace to calm the riots, and we need to calm the riots to get to the palace…Damn, it just goes around in circles.”

  Not only that, but if the enemy felt like they were in a crisis, they could take the document home to the Vatican while they were stopped up like this. If they used it from there, taking it back would be very difficult. Then these contrived riots could just go on forever.

  It was a dilemma—they needed to act swiftly, but they couldn’t make a move.

  Each second that went by wasted felt ten, even a hundred times longer.

  And that was when it happened.

  Suddenly, the cell phone in Kamijou’s pocket played its ringtone.

  It was from Tsuchimikado.

  “Kammy, are you all right?!”

  “Where the hell are you right now?! Wait, did you get caught in the riots, too? You’d better not be hurt!”

  “I’m heading for a building called the Papal Palace right now. That’s about the only place in France they can use the docu
ment from, nya.”

  “The Papal Palace…? You were going after that, too?”

  “?”

  Before Tsuchimikado could say anything, Kamijou added, “Which means my parachute didn’t land me somewhere strange—we definitely had something to do in Avignon all along.”

  “Well, yeah, but…Kammy, how do you know about the palace? I thought we jumped from the plane before I could explain, nya.”

  “I met up with someone from Amakusa named Itsuwa, and she told me something similar. But the riots got bad, and we can’t get close. How are you doing?”

  “About the same over here, nya. Well, some stuff happened. Avignon’s narrow streets go too well with these human wave riots. Can’t even get near the place without busting straight through.”

  With just that, each knew the other’s general situation. Tsuchimikado must have also been caught in the riots and then withdrew somewhere.

  “Hey, Tsuchimikado. I want to meet for now. Know anywhere we can join up?”

  “There’s riots happening all over the city. I’d like to avoid staying in one place for too long.”

  “Then what do we do? Wait for the riots to die down?”

  “We could, if these were naturally occurring ones. But this was all done intentionally with the document. Seeing that the Church can drag on this mess for as long as it’s convenient for them, nothing will change for the better if we just wait around.”

  “You have something else in mind?!”

  “I do,” answered Tsuchimikado simply. “An idea to turn things around. If we can’t go to the Papal Palace, we’ll just have to solve the problem in a way where we don’t need to.”

  “…?”

  “Did that Amakusa person tell you anything? No, so here’s a question for you. Why are we so focused on Avignon’s Papal Palace?”

  Kamijou thought for a moment. “It’s, uh, because they can remote control a building in the Vatican, right? That’s how they can use the document from here.”

  “That’s right. In that case, we just have to cut off the magical pipeline connecting Avignon and the Papal States…or the Vatican now. If we do that, they shouldn’t be able to use it. Even if it’s too hard to get to the palace, we might be able to reach a pipeline on the way.”