A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15

by Kazuma Kamachi

  Because, with an explosive boom…

  …the freezer warehouse burst apart from within, into tiny pieces.

  The extreme force shattered all the windows in the surrounding buildings. People screamed, ran around in a frenzy trying to escape, causing minor chaos among the food trucks at the bazaar.

  The dust billowed up.

  Teitoku Kakine pierced through the cloud, slowly walking over to them.

  There wasn’t a scratch on his body.

  Not one.

  “Yo. You said you lost hope when you were twelve, right?”

  The professor frantically gave orders to his Bowing Images, but he got no response. The explosion had cleared away the particles in the air, and his nearby airborne Images had been blown far away.

  Kakine looked at the professor’s desperate expression and chuckled.

  As he chuckled, he said this:

  “Time to lose hope again, asshole.”

  CHAPTER 3

  In a Land Where Abilities Are Forbidden

  Reformatory.

  1

  A cold sweat broke out all over Yoshio Baba.

  He was in Member, just like the professor. He’d been remotely controlling a quadrupedal walking robot to support said professor, but…

  “That bastard…Damn you! How could you die so quickly?!” he swore.

  But a dead man wasn’t going to help him. He tsked, then began preparing to withdraw. He was in School District 23—in an underground town under development hundreds of meters belowground, a nuclear shelter for VIPs called Summer Resort. Originally, it was the private property of one of the General Board members, but they almost never used it, so Baba had taken it upon himself to disable the security systems and make himself at home. The “resort” had grand, villa-like furnishings, and even a special line for Net conferencing. It was a wonderful environment for Baba, a hacker. He’d had his eyes on it for a while, but getting to actually experience it that day was really something else.

  But this wasn’t a perfectly safe place, either.

  The enemy’s ability was unknown, but if it was a form of teleportation, the walls’ thickness wouldn’t do him much good. The person to easily kill the professor had been one of only seven Level Five espers in Academy City. Someone like that could tear open the shelter door with brute force. Plus, it was possible they’d bring some brand-new equipment, like an anti-bulkhead shotgun.

  They’ll notice this place soon. All I can do is get out before that happens!!

  He stuffed several devices, most importantly a laptop computer, into his bag. Then, after grabbing a sheaf of papers preserved inside the Summer Resort on the way, he headed for the exit elevator.

  But when he pushed the button, there was no response.

  “…?”

  He headed for the door to the staircase instead, but that was locked, too, and wouldn’t open.

  Then the lighting in the shelter changed to bright red. Dumbfounded, Baba looked at the control monitor for shelter safety. On it was displayed “For safety reasons, all locks have been set.”

  When Baba’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, he began to hear something strange:

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh…It sounded almost like a waterfall.

  It was considerably loud. After all, it was coming through the shelter’s thick walls.

  “Water…?!”

  Terrible images raced through Yoshio Baba’s mind.

  If someone had used a fire hose or something and was pouring tons of water into the elevator shaft or underground stairs…

  With such an immense water pressure against every door in the shelter, neither human hands nor the monitor’s automatic controls could make them move again. And even if they did open, an overwhelming devastation from terrible quantities of water would be waiting for him.

  There had been a teleport-type esper in Member, Saraku—whom Accelerator called Kill Point—but he’d been taken down in District 23 already, too. He wouldn’t save him from this situation.

  “Damn!!”

  Baba frantically took the laptop out of his bag and booted it up, before connecting to the Net conference line and contacting another person in Member. Now that the professor and Kill Point were gone, he only had one ally left—a girl the professor had dubbed a sorcerer.

  But the answer from his ally, who had learned of things through text messages, was very simple.

  “The data you were collecting on the other organizations was saved on another server, right? I just need that, not you. I’m chasing down my own enemies—I don’t have time to wipe your ass for you.”

  “You piece of shit!!” exclaimed Baba out of reflex. He considered abandoning all shame and reputation and calling their ancillary organization or the “voice on the telephone” for help, but then his laptop screen suddenly froze. A bad premonition began to set in as he tried to get it working again, but the cable for the line must have been physically cut. That was why the information stopped updating.

  He pulled the cord out of the laptop and wailed. He tried to force himself to think optimistically, but no matter how he tried, he always returned to the same answer.

  He was trapped.

  As Baba admitted that fact to himself, the thick walls, which had seemed reliable before, came at him from all directions with a dark pressure. How many rations were down here? Was there enough oxygen? When would help arrive? Would help ever arrive?

  With his panic accelerating just from the whirling images in his mind, he eventually slammed his bag on the floor, tore at his hair with his hands, and screamed like an animal.

  In the safest place in the world, which actually had enough oxygen and food to last him another year without trouble, Yoshio Baba’s mind began to disintegrate, eaten alive by the beast called imagination.

  2

  School District 11.

  Since Academy City wasn’t on the sea, goods could only come to it two ways: by land or air. And District 11, which was on the outer wall, served as a front door to the largest of those land routes.

  That was where the members of Block, including Mitsuki Unabara, were.

  Squared-off buildings were lined up around him. Unlike normal buildings, these had no walls, which made them look like parking garages. Academy City–made self-driving electric cars waited inside for shipments.

  District 11 exchanged over seven thousand metric tons of goods per day, and its “town of warehouses” was immense.

  Control near the gates directly managing entry and exit was very strict, but they couldn’t keep an eye on every nook and cranny of the warehouse town. This district probably closely resembled a pier at a normal port. Just like the fondly remembered mafia movies of old, it was quite often used as a spot for shady deals, night after night.

  And…

  So that’s the outer wall…

  Unabara directed his gaze at it.

  Despite being easily over five hundred meters away, the wall was giant, palpably displaying its grandeur. Like the Great Wall of China, there was a path on top of the wall, and if you checked with binoculars, you’d see oil drum–shaped security robots going back and forth.

  Certain sorcerers had climbed over the outer wall. However, that was because the wall’s security was protected by scientific sensors, and tended to be weak to magical ploys (…or, at least, Unabara wanted to believe that. He didn’t want to think Aleister’s calculations went that far, and that he was toying with them).

  Presently, though, because their satellite-based surveillance was gone, the security had grown incredibly weak. Now, even regular people who didn’t use magical means would have a chance.

  Five thousand mercenaries, summoned by Saku, would be waiting on the other side.

  They’d probably been waiting for Academy City’s satellite security to cut out, hiding in nearby buildings or scattered cars.

  Yet despite knowing that, Unabara was never blessed with the chance to relay that information.

  Those in Group didn’t know of this
place. Even the city’s higher echelons might not have figured it out. They’d personally resolved the immediate threat of attack from the satellite, so it was likely they felt relieved.

  Block’s objective is to let those mercenaries in and do…what? Where on earth do they plan to attack…?

  “Yamate. Are you, worried about something?” asked Megumi Teshio suddenly from nearby.

  Yamate was the name of the man Unabara was disguised as. “No…,” he answered shortly.

  Normally, he did at least a week-long investigation of the person he would impersonate. He couldn’t make any careless remarks before he knew more about his model’s personality.

  Teshio didn’t seem to think much of Unabara’s attitude, either.

  She’d probably decided he was nervous, since they were in the middle of a huge operation.

  “Sure, we got rid of the satellites, but those security robots are still up and rolling around,” said Tatsuhiko Saku.

  Teshio turned to face the bearlike man. “Is there, a problem?”

  “Nah. Those bots don’t have any firearms, so they won’t be an obstacle. We just have to get the timing right, and they can cross the wall.”

  “Why aren’t they armed?” asked Unabara, deciding to get into the conversation.

  Saku glanced at him. “Bunch of reasons. The robots up there are always protecting the periphery. They can’t risk malfunctions causing them to shoot people walking around outside the wall. Then there’s the ammunition issue. That type of robot isn’t designed to swap out magazines, so once it runs out, that’s it.”

  “Then even if they are spotted, they would only, trigger an alarm?” said Megumi Teshio, sounding deflated. “In that case, instead of going through the work, couldn’t we have just, staged a brute-force breakthrough?”

  “Nope. Those outer wall security bots have a special comm line. Once the warning comes in, they’ll send a message directly to District 23 control and call in their unmanned attack helicopters. Right now, the main one being the Hexawing, a brand-new model that showed up at the interception weaponry show. If they get spotted, we’ll have problems.”

  Saku glanced at the watch around his thick arm. “In ten minutes, the security robots on the wall will rotate out.”

  “…”

  “They run on electricity, after all. They can’t operate twenty-four hours a day, so they’ve gotta recharge somewhere. Which means the ones currently operating will naturally split away from the ones recharging.”

  Because of this guard rotation, once per day, a twenty- to thirty-minute gap would open up in the robot-based wall security.

  Typically, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Because normally, Academy City’s satellites kept a never-ending watch over the city and its periphery.

  But not right then.

  Those twenty minutes would turn into a full-blown blackout.

  “Get as many cars as possible. And don’t forget to swap their license plates,” instructed Tatsuhiko Saku to Block’s underlings. “The electric self-driving cars for planned shipment parked in the garages—we need to transport five thousand people in them, after all.”

  3

  The twenty minutes of blackout began.

  In the District 11 warehouse town, surrounded by squarish parking garage buildings, Mitsuki Unabara directed his attention to the obsidian knife in his inside pocket.

  He wouldn’t get the chance to contact Accelerator and Group.

  Even if he did so right now, there was no guarantee they’d come running here right away.

  From what he’d gleaned by eavesdropping on Tatsuhiko Saku’s radio chatter, the mercenaries were throwing ropes up the wall to secure a path. And Unabara could already see several scaling the wall by peering through binoculars an “ally” had handed him.

  …I have to do it, he thought.

  The Spear of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli reflected Venus’s light, then dismantled whatever that light touched. It was a projectile spell. As long as the light directly hit, it would break apart any kind of matter, but he couldn’t aim for multiple targets at the same time.

  The problem is finding where to aim that one attack.

  There were five thousand mercenaries in total.

  Aiming the Spear at them wouldn’t mean much. It would just reduce the number of perpetrators to 4,999.

  He could aim at Block’s official members.

  …Taking down Saku, the commander, would have some effect, but now that their plan had already progressed this far, losing their leader probably wouldn’t completely stop them.

  I need a more effective point…, thought Unabara, taking his eyes from the binoculars. A target that would bring this all to a halt in one strike…

  He then averted his gaze from the climbing mercenaries and set it in a completely different direction.

  An intense tremble ran through him, but he didn’t have the time to hesitate.

  …It’s there!!

  He slipped his obsidian knife out.

  The light of Venus reflected toward…

  …the parking garage right next to them.

  Although Tatsuhiko Saku and Megumi Teshio saw him bring out the obsidian knife, they just stared blankly. They had no knowledge of sorcery, so they didn’t understand what he was doing.

  But when Unabara suddenly broke out into a run toward the building, and then the parking garage began to collapse without warning, they put two and two together.

  A sharp ba-keen rang out.

  The reinforced concrete parking garage in Unabara’s path began to break into pieces, as though the pillars supporting it were being pulled out one by one. Every time one of the building fragments collided with the ground, it smashed the asphalt and whipped up clouds of dust.

  “What…? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaamate!!”

  Unabara heard Saku’s scream from behind.

  The sound of several guns being leveled at him followed.

  Unabara ignored them and ran.

  With clatters and rumbles, the giant concrete fell at him like a cave-in. The pieces actually shielded Unabara’s back from the rain of gunfire. A self-driving electric car, crushed in midair, stabbed into the ground with its sharp cross section. The only good thing was the lack of an explosion, since it didn’t use gasoline.

  Unabara pointed the obsidian knife down.

  Venus’s light destroyed the ground. He jumped down into a sewer to try to protect himself from the concrete falling above.

  However, there were so many fragments that they began to crush the sewer itself, quickly approaching Unabara.

  “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

  He ran, tumbling, then actually tripped and fell, but still got up and crawled forward.

  Eventually, the rumble of the parking garage’s collapse ended.

  The impact had damaged every part of this sewer; the area behind him was blocked, of course, but even in front of him was collapsed, too.

  The ceiling had crumbled, and bright light shone in from above.

  Unabara looked up at the dusty-blue sky as he grabbed a ruined wall with his hands and climbed up.

  There, he saw…

  4

  District 23’s air control center received an emergency signal from District 11 near the outer wall.

  But the unmanned helicopters wouldn’t immediately launch from there. It was possible the signal was incorrect. Final judgment was left to an operator, who would personally connect the line’s plug and input the command. Only then would the helicopters take defensive action.

  Normally, there was a complicated manual, dozens of pages long, waiting.

  But the control center, having temporarily lost hold of the satellites, had taken up a special security status. The operator didn’t do a single check against the manual before promptly pushing the plug in and issuing the dispatch order.

  Three unmanned attack helicopters were standing by on the vast asphalt ground.

  They were HsAFH-11s, code-named Hexawings.

  When th
ey got the order, they increased the rotational frequency of their blades and slowly lifted off.

  5

  The unmanned Hexawings flew through the air above District 11.

  They were similar to AH-64 Apaches, with “wings” along either side of the fuselage for loading machine guns and missiles.

  The definition of a helicopter is an aircraft that generates lift using rotors attached on its vertical axis and uses the angle of those “wings” to move.

  By that definition, you could certainly call the Hexawing a helicopter.

  However, whether or not you could really call the Hexawing a helicopter—when it contained two rocket engines as auxiliary power sources and could, at max speed, reach Mach 2.5—was up for debate.

  The unmanned attack helicopters’ arithmetic processors first confirmed the collapse of the parking garage, and then the group of suspicious persons scaling the outer wall of Academy City just a few hundred meters away.

  There were about five thousand.

  Acknowledging them as hostiles, their processors quickly and automatically began to attack.

  “Damn that Yamate bastard…!!” shouted Tatsuhiko Saku bitterly as the Hexawings moved.

  With a metallic ga-shoo, the wings on either side of the machines split into three. They were indeed six-winged, and the slender wings even had joints in them. They pointed their weapons in six different directions with movements like human arms.

  “Here they come!!” shouted Megumi Teshio.

  The Hexawings’ machine guns began to wail.

  It was less a rake of gunfire and more a series of blasts.

  Megumi Teshio dove behind the station wagon they’d been using, but then the shield took the machine gun fire, becoming dented and misshapen. An orange glow engulfed the vehicle, and a moment later, the whole thing blew. Teshio was sent flying meters back, but after hitting the ground, she ran off to look for another shield.

  “Frictional bullet tips?!”

  Super-heat-resistant metallic bullets, with special grooves in them so they could use air resistance to heat up to 2,500 degrees Celsius. When one hit armor, it would quickly burn up circuitry and fuel from within.