“A crack…,” mumbled Itsuwa, carrying her spear.
The giant double-doored front entrance had been blown out from inside, and the windows on high floors had been smashed up along with the walls nearby. He started hearing sporadic gunshots and the sounds of explosions.
“Damn, it’s already started. Let’s go, Itsuwa!!”
“R-right!!”
Going into a building noisy with gunshots was far from a normal thought to have, but they had no choice.
2
Motoharu Tsuchimikado had blood on him.
It wasn’t from being shot by powered suits; rather, it was a side effect of using his origami sorcery to divert their attention.
But now he had a chance, incredibly slim though it may have been, as he ran down the narrow, winding road before rolling behind a parked car.
Several reports screeched through the air toward him.
Those blanks were strong enough to suppress insurgents, even though they were nothing but masses of air. In one volley they shattered the car’s glass, sonic masses pounding on its metal doors and instantly denting them.
You’ve gotta be kidding me…Tsuchimikado tsked, still clinging fast to the side of the car. He wouldn’t easily die if one hit him but getting knocked out was a foregone conclusion. Now motionless behind his shield, Tsuchimikado suddenly heard a dull bang!!
Surprised, he whipped his head around—just as one of the several powered suits that had been pursuing him bounded over ten meters through the air with shocking power and readied itself straight above him.
“Shit!!” Tsuchimikado immediately retreated, just as the suit’s massive bulk crushed the car underfoot. Unable to stand the weight, the vehicle crumpled and exploded all at once. Tsuchimikado took the shock wave and was sent careening farther than his own jump.
As he bounced and rolled onto the road, the powered suit in the flames calmly aimed its gigantic shotgun muzzle at him.
He was in an area with cliff-like buildings lined up on either side of a tight road. He tried to swing around a corner to use a building as a shield, but the powered suit moved before he could. A mass of air fired with a crack, landing a hit on his leg.
The leg sweep sent him tumbling.
As he lay on the ground, he managed to round the bend.
Guh…ahhhhhh?!
He looked around his ankle and saw it change to a bluish black. His bone seemed to have managed to remain unbroken, but he made no mistake: It would limit his movements.
As far as I can tell, there are…fourteen powered suits. Their armor looks thin, but they’d be able to take an anti-tank missile head-on. Plus…
As he listened to the mechanical operations from around the corner, Tsuchimikado took out emergency tape from his pocket and tied it firmly around his ankle.
…they’re using the new drive compensators. They’ll learn from the battlefield conditions and adjust themselves to give the most efficient performance.
Using such weapons would be more or less effective given the environment, such as a tropical rain forest or Antarctica. In a desert, sand getting in would require care, and in wetlands, one would need to make sure mud didn’t get caught up in it.
Most machines were maintained to be easy to use in specific environments, their weapons’ features naturally changing with the region, but these powered suits were different. These machines would scan the nearby environment and automatically adapt themselves to it, allowing them to perform well at default settings in battlefields throughout the world.
And they’ll be exchanging their auto-adjust info to every unit in the operation. Ha-ha…They’ll probably know how to traverse Avignon better than the locals.
Maintaining balance was the bottleneck for legged weapons, but Tsuchimikado wouldn’t be able to use that weakness against them. Even if the ground under them was falling apart, they’d walk more skillfully than a human and overcome it.
Damn. How do I attack…? He muttered to himself as he double-checked the tape on his ankle.
And all the while, they were approaching.
3
The Papal Palace’s interior was spacious.
But it had a loneliness to it, Kamijou thought. There were no things here. Not even wallpaper—the stone walls surrounding them stood bare. Other than the evenly spaced pillars supporting the ceiling, nothing was in here. It was like a pyramid after someone had run off with all the treasure.
Like we thought…It doesn’t look like the Church stationed a major force in Avignon. If they’re only using a small elite team, does that mean they want to hide the document from the rest of the Church, too? Terra might even be the only one on the team.
“It…doesn’t look like anyone is here,” said Itsuwa, holding her spear at the ready. This place was open to the public on weekdays for tourists, but that was out of the question right now. Avignon had been scared of the rioters’ shadows until now, and the building was the center point of the rampaging powered suits.
The gunshots and explosions continued even now.
If they were continuing, then was there an actual battle happening rather than just a one-sided subjugation?
Other sorcerers besides Terra seemed to be here in Avignon to use the Document of Constantine. Academy City’s powered suits were one thing, but the Church was another. They couldn’t afford for both factions to attack them here and now.
However, Kamijou’s pace had slowed. “…Those powered suits…Where did they come from anyway?”
“Huh?” Itsuwa looked at him.
“Are there Academy City people piloting those, or did they lend them to some group?” he continued. “Besides, they can’t possibly hide them after standing out this much. What the heck is Academy City planning to do…?”
His cell phone had a television function. Making any careless noises in this situation was dangerous, but he decided he wanted information more.
After making sure nobody was around, Kamijou got his cell phone out and turned on its television, but it didn’t show anything, probably because it didn’t work with overseas stations. He thought for a moment, then brought up his saved numbers list. He chose one and called it.
“Misaka!!”
“Wh-what?”
He was calling Mikoto Misaka.
“I wanted to ask you something. Do you have time right now?”
“R-really, now. It has to be me, does it? You can’t ask someone else? My mother, for example?”
“Huh? …Oh, right, I guess so. I could just ask Ms. Misuzu instead of you.”
“Non, non, non, non, non!! H-hold on—didn’t you call me because you wanted to ask me something?”
“??? Well, I suppose you’d be better than Ms. Misuzu since you live in Academy City.” Kamijou was a little confused but got to the point. “Can you turn on the news? Or the Internet. I want you to check foreign news to see if something’s happening in a city called Avignon.”
“What?” muttered Mikoto, probably because the question was so sudden.
…That was what he thought anyway. Apparently, the reality was different.
“What the heck are you talking about? There’s news flashes going on every television in the city. Avignon is that city in France, right? They’re talking about how some religious group made special weapons of destruction against international laws and started trying to gain total control of the place.”
“…What?” said Kamijou, startled.
“Seems like the French government would normally settle this, but they needed experts in special technology, so Academy City is pretty deeply involved…Wait, where are you anyway? I’d think it would be harder to find a place where you didn’t get this information.”
“Um, well, that is…,” stammered Kamijou, wondering how to fool her, but his thoughts were interrupted.
The roaring had ceased.
The sounds of battle, mostly gunshots, had suddenly stopped without him realizing it. The painful silence of the Papal Palace’s normative state was sl
owly returning.
…
Mikoto said something on the other end. Kamijou didn’t answer her. He held his breath and listened, but he still didn’t hear anything at all.
He exchanged glances with Itsuwa and slowly walked forward.
What is this…?
He felt an indescribable sense of tension seeping to him from down the passage, from between the walls, from past the doors. It was like the very air around them was being remade into something other than what was already here.
Kamijou couldn’t penetrate the cause.
Because before he could, the answer came from the other side.
Wsshhwwsshh!!
With a roar, the thick wall right next to Kamijou suddenly broke.
The identity of what had crashed through the wall was quickly found to be a powered suit. It rammed into Kamijou, instantly knocking him to the floor. The cell phone in his hand clattered away, its liquid crystal display smashed to bits.
“Urgh?!”
Itsuwa hastily thrust her spear’s head toward the attacker, but her hands stopped halfway.
The powered suit’s limbs were hanging limp, driven to a state of dysfunction. Someone had thrown it—that seemed the most apt way to describe it.
Cylindrical objects were scattered around where it landed—juice can–like cylinders, 350 millimeters wide. Were they the shells for the suit’s anti-bulkhead shotgun? A giant revolver that looked like their source was lying nearby.
“Ugh…” Kamijou stood up and shook his head, then heard the ka-click of a footstep.
He looked up.
Itsuwa had her spear up, standing before him as a guard.
Past her…
…on the other side of the wall, broken down by sheer force, was a sorcerer holding a giant white blade.
Terra of the Left.
The man who had just used his prioritize spell to destroy the powered suit didn’t have a bead of sweat on him.
“You certainly got me good,” he said in a slow, relaxed tone with just a hint of irritation mixed in. “To stop the chaos of the riots, they caused an even greater chaos to swallow it up. I suppose Academy City is quite serious about this in their own right. They must want to deal with this little thing even if it draws a certain amount of international criticism.”
His left hand, opposite the one holding the white guillotine…
…gripped a rolled-up piece of parchment. A small paper, condensed to about fifteen centimeters long and three centimeters in diameter. Sealed with wax, it was none other than…
“The Document of Constantine…,” breathed Itsuwa, amazed.
The Soul Arm was mighty enough to make someone believe anything the speaker said was completely correct in Roman Orthodoxy. If Terra had it, rather than the original caster using it, that meant…
“I say, they are quite the bothersome lot. I could easily rout them all myself, but when they focused their attacks on the caster using this, it affects even my spell usage. I swear, my body’s makeup is such a problem, what with it unable to use human techniques. Average spellcasters ended up holding me back because of it…so I suppose calling it quits here would be for the best.”
“You think I’ll stay quiet and let you go?” demanded Kamijou, slowly readying his right hand. “You can use the document even after you go back to the Vatican. You know that, and you still think I’ll let you go?”
“But what’s the point? Even the forces of Academy City suppressing Avignon here cannot stop me. Do you mean to say your right hand surpasses them all? Have you any proof for such a declaration?”
“…” Now that the gunshots in the Papal Palace had ceased, it was best to think Terra had defeated all the powered suits attacking it.
Boasting that much true power, the man laughed, further scorning Kamijou and Itsuwa. “Still, I suppose it would be difficult to convince you while doing nothing,” he said, putting away the document in his left hand and calmly taking up the white guillotine in his right.
“Please fight to your heart’s content and resign to your heart’s content. I do so love it when things are interesting.”
4
The Avignon townscape was coming down, piece by piece.
With blanks like shock waves, the knocked-out rioters were being dragged away by sturdy powered suits, piled up into mountains, thrown into balloons woven with bulletproof fibers, and then sent off to who knew where.
In the midst of it all ran Motoharu Tsuchimikado.
Changing from one position to another, from behind rubble to behind cars, he continued his flight from the powered suits pursuing him by making minute changes to his movement. Despite making a myriad of course corrections to put himself behind as many obstacles as possible, bursts of gun discharges were still intermittent. He had to avoid flat ground as much as possible, choosing places with fallen streetlights or ruined roads to advance, but…
Shit. This isn’t enough to trip them up. Those drive compensators are really working…!!
Regardless of being unbalanced bipedal creations, and despite their considerable weight, the powered suits didn’t seem harried in their movements in the slightest. This wasn’t the kind of walking they’d done on flat ground, with each step a destructive stomp, but rather smooth, cockroach-like movements.
These powered suits would scan and automatically optimize for every environment and circumstance. They advanced as fast as cars and tread across the ground more lithely than the average human as they chased Tsuchimikado.
Checkmate would only be a matter of time.
Tsuchimikado stopped in the middle of the road. The tall buildings to his left and right were in tatters, blocking it off like a landslide. The rubble was fairly large. He’d be able to get over it if he grabbed the fragmented bumps and climbed, but the powered suits wouldn’t give him that kind of time. They’d shoot him in the back as he clung to it, and that would be the end.
The ka-click of metal sounded behind him.
A dull sound like gears turning.
A chill crawled up Tsuchimikado’s spine. He hadn’t heard this sound yet—the sound of something switching. It was easy to imagine what had caused it.
…The anti-bulkhead shotguns.
It was the sound of them switching from their riot-suppression blanks to the real bullets, the kind that could break down nuclear shelter gates.
Here it comes!! Without turning around, he jumped to the side with all his might. A moment later, the burst of an explosion hit his body. The landslide of rubble blocking the way forward vanished into thin air with a roar. That single shot had opened up a circular hole meters wide.
“…!!” Covering his ears, Tsuchimikado glanced behind him.
The powered suit aiming its fist-sized barrel at him put its finger to the trigger again.
Avignon’s roads were narrow.
It was impossible to jump to the side any farther to dodge.
“?! Hey, wood-for-brains, you can at least serve me as shields!! Use the green tree talisman and protect my body!!”
The same moment Tsuchimikado took out a piece of origami and shouted, the gunshot roared from right in front of him.
With a thunderous bang!!, dozens of anti-matter shots burst forth—only to bounce off the tiny shield in front of Tsuchimikado. They scattered, destroyed the surrounding buildings’ walls.
A chunk of blood spurted from his lips.
The side effect of sorcery.
Nevertheless, he took out another piece of origami, black this time, and shouted.
“Wake up, you shitheads. Bust up everything so we can go home laughing!! The color black is the symbol of water. Use its violence and open the path!!”
A watery orb about one meter across suddenly appeared out of thin air. It shot into the powered suit, sending the machine flying backward all at once.
But that was the limit.
Tsuchimikado’s side was slowly leaking blood now from using sorcery in succession. He tried to put his hand on what remaine
d of an old building, but his legs gave out from underneath before it reached.
“Damn…”
A quick glance around revealed several exoskeletons. Others were aiming at him from building tops, too.
…As Tsuchimikado checked where each of them was located, he slowly raised his hands. He moved his lips and produced the words: “I surrender…Do with me what you wish.
“That is,” he added, “if you can.”
The instant he said that, a change occurred in the powered suit that held its barrel toward him.
Ga-clunk.
The powered suits, which had been moving more fluidly than normal humans, had suddenly tensed up. They quickly began to do an actions check, but they simply creaked and groaned as though their gears had clogged. They couldn’t move a finger, so he would hear no gunshots.
“You want to know?”
He slowly approached and communicated with them.
They may have been powerful weapons, but people like him were controlling them.
“You’ve got those new drive compensators in those things. Whether you’re in a desert or Antarctica, the machines will automatically investigate the environment and do their own maintenance for you.
“But,” he said, “that can end up tying you down in certain cases. You know how automatic systems can have errors when you travel a series of routes with specific conditions? To put it simply, it’s a security hole—tell it to turn right and turn left at the same time, give it any contradictory conditions, and its decision-making functions will dull. The HsPS-15 just got displayed in an interceptor weaponry exhibit. Did you forget it was a prototype?”
To make matters worse, this version of the powered suit was built to share everything. In other words, if one malfunctioned, they’d all be affected.
Tsuchimikado drew close to one stopped powered suit, then wrenched the anti-bulkhead shotgun out of the machine’s arms. “…One drive compensator’s error will propagate to all the rest. If you want to get out, you’ll have to switch the ejection function to manual and do it yourself. It’s an annoying process, too, so it’ll take you ten minutes at the least,” he said, putting the huge shotgun, which looked like a sawed-off tank cannon, on his shoulders.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 14 Page 14
