A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 15

by Kazuma Kamachi

  “I see,” replied the girl, not particularly emotive. “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m still not getting involved in the Accelerator fight.”

  “What?”

  “My Heart Measure ability changes the distance between people’s hearts. So if I held the same distance to Accelerator as whomever he’s closest to, I might be able to force him to hesitate to attack.”

  “And?”

  “But that doesn’t guarantee he’ll stop when confronting the person closest to him. Some people go crazy and attack even more fiercely. Why’d you betray me, bastard—that kind of thing…Could you trust Accelerator on that front? I’m sorry, but I feel like no matter how I adjusted the distance between us, he’d attack me. He’s a mess, and I can’t predict what he’s going to do.”

  “Huh,” answered Kakine boredly. He didn’t sound disappointed—he must not have been expecting much from the girl in terms of fighting force.

  She looked at the nails on his right arm. “Once you’ve got a result, tell me. Once we have direct bargaining rights with Aleister.”

  “Right,” said Kakine, before the girl in the dress left School’s hideout.

  Teitoku Kakine stared at the Tweezers and grinned lethargically.

  “…Accelerator, eh?”

  CHAPTER 5

  One to Overcome the Strongest Black Wings

  Dark_Matter.

  1

  With Block’s eradication, the incidents had ended for the moment.

  Tsuchimikado was cleaning up the mess it caused, Musujime was tending to her wounds, and who knew where Unabara was or what he was doing, though he was probably fine. Accelerator, without anything in particular to do (nor the motivation to do it), took the train back to District 7, went into the first convenience store he saw, and got a can of coffee.

  Then his phone rang.

  On the screen was Tsuchimikado’s number, registered as “Contact 3,” but when he picked up, someone else was on the other end.

  “Excellent work, Accelerator. Block’s attempt on the General Board chairperson’s life has terminated. This is all thanks to you and Group.”

  “You again?” answered Accelerator, clearly annoyed.

  “I’m happy to have such capable subordinates.”

  “…It sounds a lot like you want me to kill you.”

  “No, not at all. I really am grateful this time. So in addition to the stipulated payment for your normal business operations, as personal thanks, I have a useful piece of information for you.”

  “Useful info?”

  “Yes. Information regarding a fatal threat to Serial Number 20001—Last Order.”

  2

  Kazari Uiharu and Last Order were at an open-air café.

  Last Order was really worked up about searching for this lost child, but since they’d been walking so long, her feet hurt, and now she was slumped over the table. Uiharu, for her part, was taking on the shop’s specialty: a huge, sweetly flavored parfait.

  “So what happened to the child? Did your silly hair stop reacting to him?”

  “‘…Misaka doesn’t have silly hair,’ answers Misaka answers Misaka, wilting.”

  Despite what she said, that one piece of hair on the top of the ten-or-so-year-old girl’s head was drifting left and right in the autumn wind. The oddly sticking-out piece of hair was certainly very silly—you probably couldn’t find a sillier one if you searched the whole world, thought Uiharu.

  Misaka groaned. “‘I definitely sensed him wandering around here before, but it looks like he went somewhere in the meantime,’ says Misaka says Misaka, fed up with all the fruitless walking.”

  Abruptly, the flabby Last Order’s face shot up.

  Did she find him? thought Uiharu, but it looked like she was wrong:

  Last Order was staring at a group of girls walking by, each with a key holder that came with meal sets at a different café chain.

  “‘M-Misaka wants that, too,’ says Misaka says Misaka even though she doesn’t have a wallet so she starts making her eyes sparkle at the nice lady Uiharu!!”

  “Oh, come on. Weren’t you looking for someone who got lost?”

  “Mgh! Misaka senses that he’s in that café over there—!!”

  “You mustn’t be so quick to tell lies like that. Besides, I’ve only just gotten past the fresh-cream-zone prologue of this big parfait, so I couldn’t possibly leave now.”

  “‘How can you be so relaxed?!’ says Misaka says Misaka, banging on the table, throwing a tantrum!!”

  “Come to think of it, didn’t you get a lot of change from the taxi?”

  “‘Ah!! Now that you mention it,’ says Misaka says Misaka, reaching into her pocket and grabbing a bunch of coins and dashing out of the café!!”

  Before she even finished talking, she had run off. Uiharu waved a handkerchief after her, figuring she’d give her a cursory warning, saying “Be sure to come back here!”

  With that, Uiharu set to work, diving into her large, sweet parfait’s ice cream zone…

  “Excuse me, miss.”

  …when suddenly, a voice addressed her from the side.

  She put her awfully small spoon down and looked over to see a somewhat ill-bred-looking boy standing there. He had suspicious nails made of machines on his right hand.

  He smiled gently, which didn’t suit his appearance.

  “Yes…? Who might you be?”

  “Teitoku Kakine. I’m looking for someone,” he said, handing her a photograph. “Would you happen to know where this girl went? She’s called Last Order.”

  “…” For a few seconds, Uiharu stared intently at the girl in the picture.

  She looked back and forth between it and Kakine several times before shaking her head. “No. I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen her.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you really can’t find her, you should probably put in a report at an Anti-Skill office.”

  “Okay. I’ll try looking for her a little bit longer before that. Thanks,” said Kakine with a smile, walking away.

  Uiharu stuck her slender spoon into her parfait and was about to dive back in.

  “Oh, right, miss? I forgot something I wanted to say.”

  “?” Before Uiharu could look up, the next words came.

  “I know you were with Last Order, you fucking imbecile.”

  Wham!! An impact shot through her temple.

  Before she realized she’d been punched, she’d already fallen out of her chair. Her legs swung out wildly, knocking over the chair and her table. Her parfait, almost entirely uneaten, splattered all over the road like a crushed fruit.

  Several nearby pedestrians screamed.

  Still unable to figure out what had happened, Kakine stomped on her with his sole, holding her to the ground. “That’s why I asked that question. Not Have you seen this girl? but Do you know where she went?”

  He leaned into his foot.

  With a dull crack, the intense pain of bones scraping together tore through her. Her joint had popped out. It hurt so much that she wanted to writhe around, but Kakine’s iron foot wouldn’t move.

  She let out not so much a cry as a scream, but Kakine’s face didn’t change in the slightest. “I’m certain you didn’t let her escape because you knew I was coming. I may be a wicked asshole, but I try my best not to get normal people wrapped up in my business. Just work with me, here, and I won’t have to resort to violence.”

  The open-air café was next to a major road, and it was a holiday afternoon. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic nearby, but they’d all distanced themselves from the scene—not a one ran to Uiharu.

  Which made sense.

  She had a Judgment band on her arm. Judgment was really for dealing with disputes in school, and even had its fair share of elites and dropouts. But any normal student who didn’t know much of its inner workings would simply think “anyone with an armband is part of a peacekeeping organization.” They were like the police or the self-defense force. Seeing the cons
ummate ease with which one had been overpowered made it unthinkable for anyone to jump to her aid.

  With Uiharu left high and dry, Kakine’s sole dug farther into her dislocated shoulder. “…But I don’t have mercy on my enemies. It’s one thing if you were with her by coincidence and don’t know anything, but if you’re voluntarily protecting her, that’s different. Please, miss. Don’t make me kill you.”

  Crick-crack-creak!! Another wave of vicious pain hit her as her dislocated bone was manipulated even more.

  By the time she decided she’d endure it, there were already tears falling from her eyes. She felt unfairness at not knowing why this was happening, fear at the overwhelming violence rendering her helpless, and frustration at her inability to break free. All the negative emotions mixed and muddled together, turning into a great pressure beginning to blossom within her very personality.

  And now, purposely presented to her: a single escape route.

  “Where is Last Order?”

  As her consciousness flashed in pain, only Teitoku Kakine’s voice came to it.

  “That’s all you need to tell me, and I’ll let you go.”

  She looked back and forth, but there was no sign of an exit from this labyrinth—just a goal set up at a single point. Thrown into the darkness of violence as she was, she couldn’t help but consider giving up. Her pride as a member of Judgment and her personality as Kazari Uiharu both began to waste away under the temptation to be released from pain.

  Her lips slowly moved.

  As her tears fell in big drops, her mouth moved.

  She couldn’t just remain silent.

  Mortified at her own ungainliness, she said her last words.

  “…What…?”

  Teitoku Kakine’s eyebrows knotted, as though he didn’t understand.

  Kazari Uiharu worked her trembling lips again.

  “Did you…not hear me…?” she said with all the power she could muster. “I said she’s in a place you’ll never, ever find her. I don’t remember…telling you any lies,” she said, even sticking her tongue out at him, trying to make as much of a fool of him as she could.

  Teitoku Kakine was silent for a moment.

  “…All right, fine,” he said, taking his foot off Uiharu’s shoulder.

  But he didn’t set it back on the ground—instead, he moved it above Uiharu’s head and stopped. “I don’t lay a hand on civilians, but like I said, I don’t have any mercy on my enemies. You knew that, and you still decided to refuse to help me. You leave me no choice.”

  Teitoku Kakine’s raised foot tensed.

  Then it moved, with the same casual fluidity as someone stomping on an empty can.

  “This is where we say good-bye.”

  A burst of wind hit her, and Uiharu shut her teary eyes. That was about the only thing she could do.

  But his foot didn’t crush her head.

  A new roar thundered through the city streets.

  Grrushh!!

  A gale kicked up. A massive one—practically a shock wave. When Uiharu opened her eyes, she saw an ATM machine shatter to pieces, its walls and glass exploding, its fragments forming a whirlwind and zipping at Teitoku Kakine, colliding with him. The attack threw him off-balance. His foot, which he’d planned to crush her head with, had stopped on the ground mere centimeters away.

  Paper bills fluttered out of the utterly demolished ATM like feathers.

  And then she heard it.

  “…Shit, man. Don’t get so worked up over a dumb game.”

  The white-hot, clouded, insane, demonic voice of Academy City’s strongest Level Five.

  “Let’s do something a little more fun. I’ll give you a nice lesson in how villains are supposed to act.”

  3

  “That hurt.”

  Teitoku Kakine shifted his gaze from Uiharu to Accelerator and spoke quietly.

  “And it made me mad. I figured the number one would be crazy good at making me mad. Looks like I’ll just have to kill you first after all.”

  “Hah. You’re intimidating me, you chicken? You’re the one who was too scared to fight me and went looking for a handicap. The moment you decided to go after that brat, we all knew the difference between us.”

  “What are you, stupid? She was insurance. Who’d ever challenge you to a fifty-fifty fight, asshole? You’re such a pain. You think you’re worth that much?”

  Academy City’s number one and number two.

  Accelerator and Teitoku Kakine didn’t bother to keep everything secret.

  Cleanup was a job for someone else, not them.

  “You swine. Your prep work done now, or what?”

  “I gotta say, Underline is something. You showed up way earlier than I thought.”

  “Eh?”

  “Don’t make me laugh, you lapdog. You think fighting for the weak like this is gonna make you a good person?”

  “Hah. You don’t get it, do you?” said Accelerator quietly, tossing his cane to the side. “This is great. I’ll show you how villains come in many colors.”

  Bwoom!! An explosion rang out.

  Accelerator and Teitoku Kakine clashed head-on. The aftermath shock wave blazed through their surroundings equally, mowing people down, shattering glass to smithereens. In every direction, clamors broke out—but neither paid attention.

  Their clash had shown clear results.

  Accelerator’s attack had sent Teitoku Kakine flying back. He shot into a café on the road, and a series of cracking and breaking noises followed as he tore through furniture. Accelerator’s expression, however, was nothing if not displeased. The feeling of his punch having purposely gone awry remained in his palm.

  “You control the vectors here and now,” said the voice from inside the shop, which looked like it had been bombed by terrorists. “I thought I could manage by using so much mass you didn’t have enough vectors to move it, but I guess that won’t work. I can’t do anything if you’re controlling my own vectors, too.”

  Unharmed.

  When Kakine came out of the store, he was wrapped in a white cocoon. No, not a cocoon—they were wings, spread on their own. Six angelic wings flapped slowly behind him.

  Accelerator frowned a bit. “Those look terrible on you. What are you, from a fucking fairy tale?”

  “Don’t worry, I know.”

  With those words, they moved again.

  Accelerator charged straight at him while manipulating the vector of his legs’ power, while Kakine made a leap to the side, wings batting the air. He shot dozens of meters over and landed on the road’s central divider; meanwhile, Accelerator swung his arm, cutting through the air and literally grabbing hold of the air flow’s vector.

  Roar!! A blast of wind burst forth from behind him. The air hit 120 meters per second, turning into a cannonball to knock Kakine off the divider.

  “!!” Deftly moving his wings, Kakine avoided it.

  And then he heard a clack. When he looked, he saw that Accelerator had just put a foot on the side of the road next to the divider Kakine was standing on. How had he gotten so close—when had he done that? Before he got answers, Accelerator charged into range and thrust out his right hand.

  Kakine said, “Fun fact. Everything in the universe is made up of elementary particles.”

  As he spoke, he protected himself with a wing. When Accelerator’s hand pierced it, he changed his own wing into countless feathers, preventing the impact from reaching his body.

  “I’m talking about particles even smaller than molecules and atoms. Gauge particles, leptons, quarks…Even hadrons, made from antiparticles and quarks combined, but, eh—you can group them into a few things. Anyway, these are the particles that make up this world.

  “However,” he said in a low voice:

  “My Dark Matter doesn’t play by those rules.”

  With a loud roar of wind, six new wings grew out of Teitoku Kakine’s back.

  “The Dark Matter I create is something that doesn’t exist anywhere in the un
iverse. Not because we haven’t found it, or because theoretically it should exist, or anything dumb like that. It doesn’t actually exist.”

  A new type of matter created by a Level Five that didn’t fit into any academic categories.

  His white wings ignored the laws of physics, as though he’d dragged them straight out of an alternate universe. But Accelerator wasn’t shaken at all.

  Whatever they were made of, he would crush all of it with his vector control ability.

  “ ’Kay. I’ll bury you with the rest of the trash.”

  Accelerator stepped in closer, trying to grasp at Teitoku Kakine’s heart.

  But…

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  As soon as Kakine said that, his white wings suddenly let out an intense, bright light.

  “?!”

  Accelerator felt a pain like he was being slowly roasted, and reflexively got away from Kakine. Then he realized the strangeness of what had just happened.

  Accelerator, who reflected every vector, had just been affected by an outside force.

  “That was diffraction. When light waves and electrons pass through a slit, the waves scatter in different directions. It’s in high school textbooks. If you make more than one slit, you can make the waves interfere with one another.”

  Basically, his white wings had tiny gaps too small to see, and those gaps changed the nature of the sunlight coming through them and attacked him…or so Accelerator figured. His wings hadn’t made light—they’d altered the light passing through them.

  “Yeah, like everything, it all depends on how you use it. How’s it feel to die from a sunburn?”

  But…

  “…Looks like you flunked physics, moron. Use diffraction all you want—you can’t change sunlight into a death beam.”

  “Maybe not, if I was obeying this universe’s physics.”

  Kakine began to boost his wings with power as though drawing back a bowstring.

  “But my Dark Matter is a new kind of matter that doesn’t exist in this universe. Our existing laws of physics don’t apply to it. Any sunlight that touches the Dark Matter and reflects off it starts working on independent laws. It’s called a foreign substance for a reason. A tiny bit of it and the world changes completely.”