A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 22

by Kazuma Kamachi

  The man who controlled Red, Right, Flame, and Michael gave a low chuckle.

  “…So what?”

  The words fell out of him.

  Something like a strange, deep-seated grudge leaked from the mouth of the man who had incited worldwide strife and controlled it all completely.

  “It’s not only me. Nobody living on this planet has ever experienced destruction on a legendary scale due to the simple fact that they’re still alive. And do you have the right to criticize me for that? Are you saying you’ve felt power enough to save the world?”

  “Of course I have.”

  But the answer Fiamma received in turn toppled his expectations.

  Touma Kamijou even made this assertion without a second’s pause, too.

  “We humans living on Earth aren’t anything special. If you looked down at the planet from a satellite or something, we’d probably all look like insignificant ants. But I’ve saved them. Call it insignificant or whatever, but I’ve seen the moment people have saved the world for a single person.”

  Yes.

  Kamijou had been wrapped up in incident after incident in the past. He didn’t want to see those he knew spattered with blood in front of him, so he’d always desperately gripped his fist. He was carried off to hospitals all the time, and now even his right arm had been cut off—and his memories? They’d broken off at one point, and beyond that instant, he couldn’t remember anything.

  So maybe what he’d been able to obtain really was trivial. He did sometimes feel like the result wasn’t worth the effort. Simply put, if he’d been stronger, he’d have been smarter about how he went about resolving things. If he’d been wiser, maybe he could have gained much more.

  But.

  It was for that very reason that he truly felt as though he’d gained something important.

  He knew that the things he’d so desperately grasped in his clumsy hands were definitely not worthless.

  If Fiamma had been less concerned with the greater machinations of the “world” and simply helped those in front of him, he never would have had to fear how much power was needed to save the world. Even without a grand master plan, or a huge temple, or special traits, or a strange right arm, he wouldn’t have questioned it.

  But Fiamma hadn’t done that.

  And that was why he couldn’t see it.

  Ever.

  “Nobody who says they’re gonna save the world can protect it.”

  It was so obvious.

  If Kamijou had been acting under the same impression, he’d have lost everything, too.

  Under the golden firmament…

  To a lonely man who had never gained anything and had never even reached out, Touma Kamijou quietly said:

  “Our world isn’t so weak it needs someone like that to save it.”

  INTERLUDE SEVEN

  Mikoto looked straight ahead.

  For some reason, the night sky was glowing with a weird golden light, but she didn’t have time to take note of abnormal weather events. A nuclear device was quite possibly about to go off, and if someone could be worrying about something like that in such a dire situation, they’d probably get into the book of world records just for that.

  “…”

  The propulsion flame had vanished from the ballistic missile with the Nu-AD1967 on board. The large missile stood upright, but it was in an unstable position, about to break away from the arms. It didn’t seem like it would be able to maintain that position for long—it slowly but surely tilted over. Once it passed a certain point, it fell toward the ground like a tree chopped down by a lumberjack.

  Now nobody could launch the missile anymore.

  Exhaling lightly, Mikoto glanced around.

  Black smoke was rising. It was billowing from the wreckage of the tanks and armored cars the independent unit had been controlling. Everything from their assault rifles to their spare guns had been cleanly cut in two by the friction of iron sand vibrating at high speeds. The carnage was so great that it was a mystery nobody had died.

  “…Welp, guess that’s it,” said Mikoto in a half-hearted tone, searching for the Sister.

  The girl she was looking for poked her head out from the hatch of a tank parked in the middle of the enemy formation. “A one-sided display of violence against an entire company two-hundred strong. With what you’ve done, even I cannot help but feel an inferiority complex building, says Misaka, somewhat glum.”

  “What’re you saying? There are almost ten thousand of you altogether. That’s like a brigade or something. And you can use esper abilities and coordinate through the network, and you have Academy City’s latest tactics regularly fed into you. You’re on a whole other level from these guys.”

  “I would still appreciate a modicum of individuality,” mumbled the Sister before her eyebrow twitched and she put a hand to her headset.

  “What? Intercept some Russian military communications again?”

  “…It appears as though disorder has erupted—they cannot contact the person named Nikolai Tolstoj, assumed to be the mastermind, reports Misaka with a serious face.”

  “You always have the same face, though. You mean the enemy’s forces are imploding on their own? I wonder if Academy City carried out some kind of raid.”

  “Details are unknown, but it seems opinion is split between units over whether to continue the operation or not, adds Misaka.”

  “…There are other units? But if the boss character got done in, that means—”

  “It looks like they decided to go on with it, says Misaka, adding the conclusion.”

  “Oh, come on already! They just had to be super-zealous types!!” cried Mikoto bitterly, venting, sparks flying all about. “So?! Where’s the next unit?! Don’t tell me they can fire the Nu-AD1967 from a whole bunch of different places at once!!”

  “Judging from the contents of their communication, it does not appear to be that bad, says Misaka in denial. The remainder of the independent unit consists of around ten officer-class people who have no direct combat power. And apparently the Nu-AD1967 lying there is the only one they can use, says Misaka, listening to the contents of the communication.”

  Even if those officers had multiple warheads or missiles, they apparently needed to walk through several processes to fire, like positioning related vehicles and doing electronic adjustments of control bases. And Mikoto had just smashed all the people with the skills necessary to do those things. The remaining officers couldn’t set up a new missile, nor could they transport the warhead.

  “But they can’t fire the missile now that it fell over, right?”

  “The officers haven’t realized that fact, and they seem to be trying to give the fire order by force from a distance, says Misaka, thoroughly appalled.”

  Mikoto blinked. “That means…”

  “The missile won’t launch even with the emergency-use remote command, but wouldn’t the warhead still ignite right here? says Misaka, mentioning her own prediction.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!!”

  Misaka, flustered, glanced toward the missile on its side.

  “We’d die! If that happened, we’d definitely die!! You said a remote command, right?! Then if I jam it with my ability—!!”

  “The signal is optical, using infrared beams, so wouldn’t your electromagnetic jamming be ineffective? warns Misaka.”

  “Gah, come on! What is it, some kind of TV remote control?!”

  She doubted radioactivity would leak that easily, but they were still talking about a jack-in-the-box nuclear missile. She walked around it, beginning to observe it. Just the missile itself was over twenty meters long.

  “Wouldn’t I have shorted its comms circuitry with my lightning bolt from before…?”

  “The vital circuits should be secured behind a layer of thick lead and reinforced glass, reports Misaka. And since intercontinental ballistic missiles are designed not to malfunction even when going through cumulonimbus clouds, it should be designed to re
sist high-tension currents, says Misaka, explaining an obvious thing. Did the missile not stop earlier only because the vehicle-based launch system was blown away?”

  “If it’s infrared, that means it has a light receiver, right? I should be able to block the communication just by stuffing some rolled-up cloth in it!”

  “I wonder if we’ll make it, says Misaka, sighing and cheering you on. Do your bessst. Sigh, when will I be able to meet that person?”

  “Says the one not doing anything!!”

  CHAPTER 11

  In Skies Glittering Golden

  Star_of_Bethlehem.

  1

  An intense pressure struck Accelerator’s chest.

  His breathing stopped.

  Obeying some kind of logic beyond his comprehension, the entire night sky tore wide open, and from it, an immense golden light poured forth. Due to the relationship between sunlight and the atmosphere’s refractive index, colors that should have been absolutely impossible on the earth blotted out the skies, driving away all darkness from the world. Unlike before, when it was dyed the color of darkness, the dignity of the fortress occupying the skies flew into his field of vision more clearly than before.

  Even the night sky prior to now had been abnormal enough, considering the actual time of day.

  It had been eerie, as though human hands had pasted it there, and thinking astronomically, the positions of the stars had probably also been utterly impossible.

  However.

  This gold was in a different class. The only impression it gave was that just talking about it within an astronomical framework was a mistake to begin with, that scientists all over the world would throw in the towel, saying it wasn’t possible from a commonsense point of view—and yet it was still there, so they had to give up.

  Everything had gone crazy.

  The scene, in which science’s fundamental rules didn’t apply, was of course already mad—but the situation itself, too, where not a single person was trying to hide a phenomenon of that scale, spread across the skies all around the world.

  In Academy City’s darkness, Accelerator had witnessed every incident under the sun and the espers behind them and seen the bleeding-edge technology covering it all up. From his point of view, the scene was absurd.

  Maybe in this one second, in this one moment…

  Maybe at this very instant, the world itself had undergone a drastic metamorphosis.

  But.

  …Like I care.

  With just a few words, Accelerator ignored the monumental transformation.

  His breath was ragged as he brought a slender hand up to grab a spot around his chest.

  Last Order’s life was still in danger, even now.

  In such danger that unless he removed the source as quickly as he could, he would never be able to take it back.

  He figured it was selfish.

  But even so.

  What did he care about something vague like the “world” changing? If there was anyone who declared him a self-centered evil, Academy City’s most powerful monster was prepared to take them all on. No matter what he had to fight, no matter how much he had to lose, there was something he needed to do, no matter the cost.

  Rescue the girl named Last Order from everything in this unfair world.

  Accelerator confirmed his reason for living, here and now.

  “Misaka Worst. Did you get the data on the song that got rid of Amata Kihara’s virus?”

  “Turns out it was pretty easy to find in the Misaka network. It looks like the single, large will in network form sensed something wrong about this song, too. Bet the Sisters were reorganizing their calculation capacity into a parallel system, regularly trying to analyze it over and over. Thanks to that, Misaka got the latest data without having to worm too far in.”

  After saying the download was complete and putting her index finger to her temple, Misaka Worst gave an evil-looking grin.

  Accelerator, without thanking her, said, “The data.”

  “Just hear Misaka out for a sec. Useless trivia is a reward for headwork, you know. Like a mug of beer after working overtime.” She sighed as though disgusted, then took out a portable device from her pure-white combat uniform’s pocket. “Misaka got her hands on the song, but her spec isn’t right for expressing it. It’s not simply a matter of using the throat—judging by the breath usage and the way the sound reverberates inside you, this song isn’t normal. In this case, it would be faster to convert it to electrical signals and output it using a speaker. You want the score, the quasi-sound data, or an amplitude graph?”

  “Give me all of them. Holding back is for third-rates. Chumps like that would get a pat on the back if they just did it right. Instead, they try to act cool, fuck it up, and then all their achievements are meaningless.”

  “Gee, you’re a wonderful person. Misaka would be more comfortable doing it that way, but whatever.”

  Bzz. A sound like white noise began. Immediately, a change occurred on the device’s screen. Several files had been added to it.

  Accelerator took the device, then put his fingertips to the screen. Misaka, peering at the small monitor from next to him, said, “But this song isn’t gonna be enough, will it? You’ve gotta replace the exclusive parameters or something. What will you do about that?”

  Swinging the device at her to make her move—the back of her head was in the way—Accelerator answered, “I’ll manage.”

  He took something out—a sheaf of parchment.

  Written on the sheets, in sticky-looking black ink, were creepy spells and magic circles and what have you from who knew where. The descriptions and contents were indecipherable and utterly disconnected with Last Order, a crystallization of Academy City’s cutting-edge technology. Looking at them, even Misaka Worst had to frown.

  “…Are you making fun of Misaka?”

  “Glad to see you can express so many emotions. Still, guess I wouldn’t want the other puppets to learn from you.”

  “Oh, quit talking like you’re our dad or something. That demon-summoning text reeks of the occult. You’re telling Misaka the required parameters are hidden inside this thing? Hah! You gonna take a shady twenty-minutes-once-a-day-self-learning course to become an expert spiritualist, then get an angry goat-headed freak to pop out of a pentagram and grant whatever wish you want?”

  “No.”

  “And besides!” interrupted Misaka Worst without listening to him, malice clear in her words. “Last Order’s issue has to do with stuff inside Academy City, right? And you think the answer booklet is way out here in some other place? What’s that about? Also, you just happened to go to Russia, and you just happened to run into the appropriate solution? It’s basically a video game at this point. They’ve got hints laid out across the whole path. Now you just need a gun to fight zombies, the hero’s sword to defeat the demon king, and a note from a researcher or sage or something, and you’ll be fully decked out. You really think the harsh real world is gonna be that convenient for you?”

  “…I already said that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes! Misaka has to wonder about your parenting certification with you pointing a gun at her forehead, no questions asked. I’d appreciate it if you treated her as equal to the other Misakas.”

  Accelerator had tucked the portable device and sheaf of parchment under the pit of the arm on the crutch and had a lump of metal rattling just under the center of Misaka Worst’s forehead as she groaned. But the very fact that she’d bothered him so much and he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet would have been impossible the way he’d been before. Academy City’s monster really had been through a lot and gotten a little bit softer.

  “Advanced security encryption for computers, encryption for drawings during da Vinci’s time—both are worlds fundamentally built on numbers. At their roots, they’re the same; it’s just that they have a slightly different number of digits. Even the encryption guaranteeing privacy on a cell phone can be decrypted by repea
ting simple calculations over and over. We only think it’s safe because there are so many digits that it would take too long to decode. It’s not like encryption methods themselves are insanely complicated.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “So I dealt with it using mathematics. I broke all the information down into zeroes and ones and put together the puzzle in my head. Thinking normally, that should have been enough to unravel it. At the very least, I should have gotten a clue to what encryption method was used…Leaving aside how many digits there actually were and how many centuries it would take.”

  “Should have? Misaka smells the kind of bad luck and frustration she really likes.”

  “I couldn’t solve the puzzle,” answered Accelerator plainly. “Numbers by themselves aren’t giving me enough pieces to figure it out. I can manage up to a point, but something important is different. Like how if you want to calculate pi, no matter how many times you do it, you’ll get a deviation on the hundredth digit. Some other rule set is mixed in with this. If I can’t fill in for the missing pieces, I can’t fix the deviation. The more calculations I do, the more the deviation gets out of control, until I can’t make out anything at all.”

  “You mean it doesn’t matter what the parchment actually says—you can’t get the necessary parameters?”

  “I can’t manage with just mathematics. But I need to do something to solve it. So I put every last iota of the knowledge inside me to full use. I may look like this, but I am the number one brain in Academy City. Can’t brag about it, but I’ve got all sorts of things stuffed in here. And I did a self-search, from one corner of my mind to the other, pulling out every last bit of knowledge, then more, then more, then more, then more.”

  His words alone continued.

  Misaka Worst would have known what he meant. His calculation abilities and language faculties were being supplemented by the excess calculation power of some ten thousand Sisters. Meaning his actual intellectual abilities were absolutely massive.

  “And then I realized something.”

  “What?”

  “Something I couldn’t understand was already inside me.”