A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 8 (9 page)

Light erupted from Mikoto Misaka’s fingertips.

Her coin was launched at three times the speed of sound, easily slicing through the thick steel frames supporting the building. The men with the guns took a blast from the slight fragments, swept away just like that as the esper who’d been aiming at Mikoto’s head from an upper story lost his footing on the crumbling supports and was swallowed down into it. The single Railgun had crushed through almost twenty steel frames, finally coming to a stop after inflicting cracks on the wall of a different building.

A few of the flustered men tried to withdraw farther inward, but Mikoto’s electricity put a stop to that. Pale blue light flew from her bangs, striking a portion of the steel framework, then immediately ran through the entire building. Anyone touching the framework was instantly blown backward, and even those who weren’t were sent to the ground, electricity piercing them from all sides as they tried to make their way deeper into the metal coffin.

There were a few espers who remained through a combination of luck and some factor or other, and those tried to rally. They were too late. The difference in their powers was too great. Railgun blew away an aeroshooter’s vacuum blade after causing little more than a gust of wind. A telekinetic fired a handful of wooden stakes at her, but she flooded them with high-voltage electricity and they exploded. Even another electromaster had passed out from sheer terror before even using his power.

She was almighty.

This was no more than a hopeless battle, a demonstration of why Level Fives were called Superpowers here.

This was how different the abilities of the only seven in Academy City really were.

The fact that no one had died in this situation actually felt like a
joke
to Shirai. Unless she took into consideration her own attacks, her opponents’ movements, and how the destroyed objects would move, she couldn’t have such mercy. It had been an offhanded attack, and yet a mixed team of dozens of people was already in shambles.

Then, Shirai remembered when she’d gone back into her room after treating her wounds in the bathroom. The lid on the savings bank on the side table was off. The small treasure chest–themed container would have been filled with the arcade tokens she used as bullets for her Railgun.

Mikoto
still
hadn’t taken a single step. All she did was gaze levelly at the finished battlefield and announce disdainfully, “Come out here, you coward. I’m not impressed at how you use your allies as a buffer.”

“Would you like me to regale you with a sweet tale of not letting my friends’ deaths be in vain?” The voice in return was still calm enough to reply. Dragging the big white luggage with one hand and actually smiling, Awaki Musujime appeared on the third floor atop some steel beams. The men, knocked unconscious by the high voltage, were scattered around her. She’d probably warped them to her the moment of the attack and used them as a literal shield. The flashlight dangled lazily from her right hand.

“Villains like you are all so petty. You seem elated. You didn’t think escaping me for forty seconds meant you’d beaten the Railgun, did you?”

“Not at all. If you’d been playing for real, that attack would have reduced this entire area to rubbish. Perhaps that’s why?” Musujime set the luggage down on the steel beam, then sat on top of it. “Still, you seem to be in quite the rush tonight. Usually you prefer information warfare. You’ve never brought the direct force of your Railgun in to disrupt the experiment, despite its power. Are you really that afraid of the remnants being put back together? Or is it about the reconstructed Tree Diagram being mass-produced internationally? Or, perhaps, that someone will restart the experiment before long?”

“…Shut up, you foul woman.” Sparks leaped from Mikoto’s bangs with a
crack
.

Still seated on the luggage, Musujime swung the flashlight up and down as if to beckon to her.

…

Shirai took a peek around the building again to confirm to herself that it was Musujime who Mikoto was facing down. She still didn’t grasp what their connection was, but they were definitely in combat.

She thought back to the words Musujime had spoken.
You didn’t know? Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re being used without knowing it…Tokiwadai’s Railgun doesn’t have that kind of character.

They’re evidently not complete strangers…
Their conversation didn’t seem at all like this was the first time they’d met. They’d probably clashed before, and now Shirai was getting a glimpse of a small piece of that.

Clashed? With Big Sister? And she’s still at it?

Battles didn’t need to be fought cleanly, of course. In fact, given Musujime’s personality (not that she knew much of it), she seemed more the type to pull surprise attacks from the shadows.

But still, just being able to
stand
after fighting Railgun was abnormal.

She considered how to best make use of the current situation. She couldn’t just saunter on out there; there was a marked difference in her and Musujime’s skills. Besides, she absolutely wanted to avoid acting carelessly, messing up the battle, and causing Mikoto to get hurt because of it.

“Heh-heh. Why do you worry so much about weaklings? Besides, those things you seem to hold so dear were
created
for the experiment. It should be fine to destroy them. It was the original intention.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Oh, come now. In the end, you’re fighting me for
yourself
, aren’t you? Well, so am I. Those who fight for themselves, with their own strength, in a way that suits them get other people hurt. What’s wrong with that? It’s stranger to be patient with something you hold in your hands. Right?” scoffed the one who had calmly used her allies’ bodies as shields.

Saying that when all was said and done, she wielded her strength for her own satisfaction.

That they were the same, so one getting so violently angry at the other was strange.

Instead, Mikoto Misaka smiled a little. “Yeah.” This time, pale blue sparks started crackling all over her body, not just from her bangs. “I’m pissed off. So pissed off it feels like I’m about to burst a blood vessel. Yes. Digging up the remnants of the Tree Diagram, idiots showing up to rob something for their own profit, trying to reignite the experiment everyone finally got around to settling. Yeah, that makes me angry. So angry I have half a mind to wage a digital war on the central players involved in all this and crush them all at once.” The light in her eyes focused directly on Awaki Musujime. “But I’m even angrier than that right now.”

Those words caused Shirai, who was thinking up a plan to help Mikoto—or at least, to not make things worse—to stop thinking.

“…That idiot. Did she think I wouldn’t notice? She didn’t sign in, the room was a mess, the first-aid kit was gone. Did she think I wouldn’t realize what a terrible situation she was in just from hearing the pain in her voice from across that door…?”

Shirai nearly choked.
Now
she knew what she was mad about.

“That’s what I’m mad about most of all. The fact that I got an underclassman wrapped up in all this. She did some slipshod first aid on herself instead of going to a doctor, and even beaten up like that, she still won’t give up! To make things worse, she left you alone! Everything she told me just made me more worried!! I’m furious that my underclassman could be this stupid!!”

Shirai’s chest tightened. Musujime wouldn’t have understood what she was saying. Plus, Tokiwadai’s Railgun didn’t know Shirai was here. So who was she shouting at?

She kept it a secret from Shirai. She had a transparent excuse all ready to go about looking for accessories. She warned her numerous times with that ambiguous advice that the weather might get bad. And now, she was all by herself. What had Mikoto Misaka been fighting for until just now, and in this place?

“Yeah, I’m mad as hell right now, and it’s because I’m selfish! Mad at that unreasonably perfect underclassman, mad at the piece of trash who dared to hurt her, and, most of all, mad at myself for causing this horrible situation in the first place!!” Mikoto shouted as though she were driving a blade into her own chest. As if to put an end to both the Tree Diagram incident and to the person she was snarling at. “If you say this incident started with the experiment, then the responsibility lies with me. Responsibility for my idiot underclassman getting hurt and responsibility for you hurting my idiot underclassman! If everything is my fault, then I’ll stop you, using every last bit of privilege and duty I have!!”

Shirai knew.

Why was Mikoto trying to fight Musujime alone, behind Shirai’s back, when she was already fighting?

She was neither Shirai’s ally nor Musujime’s enemy.

She had chosen the path of stopping everybody here without going along with anyone.

All by herself.

She even pointed her metaphorical blade at whatever nightmare she was holding inside herself.

“I’m putting an end to this once and for all. There’s no reason either one of you needs to be dragged along by the experiment—by that despair.”

Crossing her legs on top of the luggage, Musujime giggled. “You’re as kind as you are sentimental. It isn’t as though you
created
the silicon-corundum unit. If you would just complain that you were a victim here, too, like normal people would, we wouldn’t have to be fighting.”

“You say that the reason you started this fight was because of our experiments. Whether that was the Level Six Shift experiment or the Radio Noise trials.”

??? Level Six Shift? Radio Noise?
They sounded like code to Shirai. What did they refer to?

Musujime, however, seemed to understand. “They were not
yours
—they belonged to the Sisters and the strongest of the espers, didn’t they?…And I see you’ve wrested the story from the
allies
of mine you took down. About my reasons. As you’re an esper yourself, then, you should understand—I cannot be caught here. No matter who I need to sacrifice, no matter what means I need to use, I will have you let me escape.”

She got rid of her lighter tone with that last sentence, at least. Shirai readied herself from around the corner of the building. What was Musujime’s maximum teleportation range?

Mikoto narrowed her eyes a little. “…You think you can run from my electricity with a measly Level Four ability?”

“Oh, my. I certainly wouldn’t be able to avoid an attack at the speed of light after looking at it, but that’s about all. If I just read your movements beforehand and warp in conjunction—”

“That won’t work.” Mikoto cut her off cleanly. “This isn’t the first time we’ve fought, you know. I’m sure you’ve realized it yourself. There’s a little hitch in your ability. You can move whatever objects you please, but you can’t move your own body. I can understand that. If you warped somewhere dangerous, like inside a wall or into traffic, it would be all over. You don’t care how many others get hurt so you can save yourself. You’d want to eliminate the unlikely possibility of destroying yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“…”

“Why don’t you say something? Did you think I wouldn’t have noticed that by now? You use your Move Point on the bodies of allies and signboards and stuff as a distraction, but you still physically run away. Of
course
I’d see something wrong with that.” Mikoto sighed, thinking it absurd. “Besides, anyone normal would have run away in such a disadvantageous situation. Or are you just unwilling to do that? Anyone could see you don’t have any room to relax, here.”

Awaki Musujime smiled thinly. But perhaps someone with good eyes would have noticed her fingertips trembling just slightly, but unnaturally.

“It’s probably got something to do with that incident in the data banks where your powers went berserk. You don’t hesitate to teleport other people or objects. It’s only if you have to teleport yourself, isn’t it? I bet you’d have to spend two or three seconds to make absolutely sure your calculations were correct.” And then Mikoto said, “How many shots do you think I can fire in three seconds?”

“…Was there that much information in the data banks?”

“Don’t make me answer that again. It doesn’t all need to be written in the data banks for me to figure it out just based on your face and how you fight.”

In response, Awaki Musujime’s smile deepened. She brought her hanging legs onto the steel framework. Then, lifting herself off the luggage she was sitting on, she stood up elegantly. The languidly moving flashlight stopped. “But you see…”

—
If it’s not my own body, then I won’t hesitate to use Move Point on it.

At her words, Musujime gathered almost ten people right in front of her. Each was one of the ones Mikoto had knocked unconscious with her attack. There were Academy City outsiders and espers alike. Adults and children. It was a literal human shield.

However…

“That shield…It’s got a lot of holes!!”

Mikoto let sparks loose from her bangs anyway. Human bodies couldn’t form a flat surface like metal plates could. If you got a bunch together, there would always be holes. She was going to penetrate through those slight gaps.

A lance of more than one billion volts of electricity. A moment before it fired out of Mikoto’s hair, Musujime smiled from the other side of her shield. “A question for you.” Her tone was cheerful, despite the situation. “How many unrelated people would you say are in this shield?”

What?!
Mikoto immediately slammed on the brakes.

In her hesitation, the three-second delay came and went. A moment later, Awaki Musujime disappeared into thin air. With the luggage.

Every one of the unconscious people fluttered down toward the steel beams below. They were all people Mikoto had just taken down. Musujime hadn’t used a single unrelated person in her shield.

“Damn it!!” she swore, looking around the area. She hadn’t moved to anywhere in sight, of course. The annoying thing about teleportation was that it moved from one point to another, so there was no obvious line to her anyone could follow.