Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter1
Chapter 1: Fleeing Time Bomb – DEVIL_in_Science_World.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
Midnight.
The world was meant to be tumbling toward destruction at this time, but Academy City remained intact. But that wouldn’t last if Great Demon Coronzon was allowed to get away. Then the overtime they had earned would only delay that doom until tomorrow.
The red snow had absorbed the explosive soot, dust, and other impurities produced by a warlike situation, but it had ceased.
“Sitra Achra… I knew the theory, but I never imagined I would see it for myself,” said Index in a daze.
Othinus emerged from the white hood and moved to Kamijou’s shoulder.
Wasn’t that the thing Coronzon had used to blow away the thick clouds overhead?
The only one here who seemed sleepy was the calico cat in the girl’s arms.
“That doesn’t help us,” whispered mourning clothes Mikoto, her voice low. “A clear night sky will only allow the temperature to drop thanks to radiative cooling. The red snow has stopped, but there’s enough on the ground to keep traffic a mess. All it did is make this city even more deadly.”
Snow plowing, distributing food, distributing warm clothing – there was a lot that had to be done. But Coronzon was the greatest threat and, until she had been dealt with, everyone had to focus on her. They couldn’t afford to dedicate sufficient manpower to those other tasks.
They had to end this before someone died.
…And Kamijou was also worried about Human Aleister, who remained inside the great demon.
“Teacher!”
“Fool, explain the situation.”
A few more people approached at a run.
Alice Anotherbible, Anna Sprengel, and some more.
Coronzon had mentioned some spatial trickery preventing them from approaching this place…but that must have stopped functioning after she chose to run.
Kamijou intended to give a succinct explanation, but Index and Mikoto joined the conversation too. Even Othinus tugged on his ear from his shoulder. A lot more people than he thought had questions.
He looked up to see the friendly(?) flying pair of the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. The term “air support” sounded so reassuring at the moment.
He saw another winged girl too.
That one was the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.
“Wh-what about my master? Has the Board Chairman come to yet?”
“Dammit, I don’t think we can expect any support from him. We’ll just have to do this ourselves.”
“~ ~ ~!!!”
With some noisy flapping, Qliphah Puzzle 545 rapidly took flight.
“Where is she going?” asked Alice Anotherbible, tilting her head up toward the night sky.
She may have been on her way to Accelerator’s secret base. Kamijou didn’t bother stopping her. He didn’t know what she intended to do, but if Accelerator was unconscious, he would need someone’s support.
A loud voice reached him from elsewhere.
It belonged to Kanzaki Kaori.
The Anglicans had to have tens of thousands of people in Academy City.
“We must set up a surveillance network centered on District 7. With her wings damaged, Coronzon will be limited to travel on foot. If you do spot her, do not attempt to face her on your own. Make sure to share the information you receive with your own eyes and ears. Losing that information will only give her a chance to escape!”
She was one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints.
Kamijou had heard she could run at supersonic speed if she wanted to, but she was matching the others’ speed now.
“I can’t push my body too hard.” Looking composed, Kanzaki answered Kamijou’s gaze. “I will of course remove that limitation once Coronzon has been sighted, but I want to avoid breaking the sound barrier without a solid lead. Because I don’t want to be too worn out to fight by the time I do reach her.”
He doubted that was her only reason.
In the end, Kanzaki was afraid. They were up against Great Demon Coronzon. What if she moved out ahead, leaving her allies behind, and Coronzon snuck in from behind? Then the allies she had left behind in supposed safety would be killed one after another. She most feared a situation like that where only she and her Saintly luck managed to survive.
The red snow crunched below several feet.
More and more magic side pursuers were arriving: Tatemiya Saiji and Itsuwa of the Amakusas, Agnese and Lucia of the former Catholics, and the standard Anglicans.
They needed as much help as they could get.
Academy City covered around a third of Tokyo and contained a population of 2.3 million. They had to find and apprehend a single individual fleeing through that city. Kamijou had no idea if they could actually do it, but the world would be destroyed if they failed tonight.
His entire body ached.
He even felt like something was wrong with the connections between his bones.
But he clenched his teeth and spoke as if directing a challenge toward Kanzaki, who had taken charge.
“I’m going too. I’m the one who fought Coronzon and let her escape. I’m responsible for this, so use me for whatever’s necessary.”
“But…”
“Aleister answered my call. He must still be fighting against Coronzon, so I can’t just go lie in a hospital bed!”
Kanzaki Kaori sighed softly.
She looked away from him and toward Index and Mikoto.
“Always have at least two people with you who you can rely on. I am not permitting you to act on your own.”
“I know I’m asking a lot! Thank-”
“Don’t push your luck. I honestly think it would be a lot simpler to knock you out with a punch to the gut, but that would be too cruel given your injuries. I don’t want to overdo it and kill you.”
…How was he supposed to react to something like that?
Kanzaki Kaori continued in complete seriousness.
“You are in a terrible state. If you refuse to let others support you, I really will knock you out. So choose whichever option you consider safer.”
She likely only made such a swift decision because of how pressing the situation was.
“Fool,” said Anne Sprengel. “Coronzon is on her way to escape Academy City even now.”
“Yes,” agreed Index. “We need to stop her before she crosses the wall and is released into the wider world.”
Kamijou nodded at them both.
Kanzaki reacted with exasperation.
“You really don’t change, do you? I don’t know if I should call you reckless or what.”
“Sorry, but I’m not going to die so easily. I swore I wouldn’t waste this life granted to me in hell.”
For some reason, the earnestness of this response made Kanzaki recoil.
But what about an ordinary high school boy could frighten a great Saint like her?
“Heyyy!” called down a voice overhead.
The Bologna Succubus had descended to circle slowly in the night sky above. With Blodeuwedd the Bouquet dangling from her. The low angle was terribly risque when the girl was only wearing a naked apron below the thick metal coat.
“Still no hints for tracking down Coronzon? Then we’ll fly back up and continue our search.”
“W-wait. I thought magicians weren’t suppose to fly! Wasn’t there some weird rule about flying being easy but bringing you down also being easy!?”
“We can survive even if we are brought down, so no worries. In fact, being brought down would tell us Coronzon is nearby, so it would actually be good news.”
With that said, the Bologna Succubus swung Blodeuwedd the Bouquet around in one hand and ascended back into the night sky.
Yet a lively voice still came from Kanzaki’s hand. …So was Kanzaki holding some kind of communication spiritual item?
“As a lover of the unloved, I’ve honestly taken an interest in Coronzon too.”
Kamijou’s jaw dropped.
(Wait, wait, don’t tell me some weird flag has been triggered in Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!)
But he was afraid a careless question about it would push her in the wrong direction.
The Bologna Succubus’s gloomy voice responded. Sounding like she was used to this.
“Side with her and I finally have the justification I need. I will murder you, satisfying years of resentment, you lewd goddess.”
“(This isn’t good, human. For the Transcendents, their salvation conditions are even more important than their own lives.)”
Othinus was right.
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s comments were certainly concerning, but…
“Too bad. What I’m looking for is someone who’s starved for love. When people are providing a plentiful supply at their own expense and she brushes it off as an unasked-for nuisance, it just pisses me off.”
“So maybe there’s nothing to worry about for now?”
Index did not sound very confident. It didn’t inspire much confidence either.
The Transcendents really were a challenge.
Also, why even bring the naked apron girl along? But Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t seem particular bothered by it.
“Those two must be really good frien- dwah?!”
Kamijou didn’t even finish his comment before something fell from the sky.
If he hadn’t noticed it and dodged out of the way, a glass terrarium heavier than a flower pot would have struck him right in the head. Othinus, who had nearly become collateral damage on his shoulder, looked up into the sky and said something.
“That’s the same deadly prank pulled by rude city crows up on building rooftops.”
The sound of something beating at the air interrupted them.
Was the dazzling light a searchlight or something?
“This is Yomikawa of Anti-Skill! We can only perform a primitive search in the helicopter, but we can’t expect any help from drones or satellites right now!! Where should we start looking!?”
“Fool. It looks like the search can continue even if those silly magicians are brought down by an interception spell.”
And…
“Wait,” said a voice. A flat female voice. “I’m going too.”
It was the track suit girl. Wasn’t her name Takitsubo Rikou?
Her tone was flat, but the sound of her breathing showed something was wrong.
“You are injured.”
Golden retriever Kihara Noukan kept it at that. …Was that dog capable of being considerate enough to refrain from digging deeper?
It was hard to tell because Takitsubo rarely showed any expression, but she appeared to be in a fair bit of pain. Most likely, the condition below her clothing would be shocking to see.
She had contacted Great Demon Coronzon before Kamijou arrived.
Since she had collapsed, she had most likely been attacked in some way.
Kamijou’s eyes widened.
“Are you kidding me? You look closer to death than me. To be clear, the Anglicans alone have tens of thousands of people out working, so it’s no problem if an injured person or two sits this one out. We can’t bring you along in that condition!!”
“Hamazura.”
The track suit girl’s eyes were on another boy who lay unmoving in the red snow.
Hamazura Shiage.
…Kamijou couldn’t remember clearly since he had been near death, but he was pretty sure that guy had sided with Coronzon shortly before the Adikalika large-scale attack spell was activated.
He had betrayed them.
And now Adikalika had failed and Coronzon had fled on her own.
Left behind, Hamazura’s position was looking worse all the time.
“Hamazura will be in trouble. I don’t know what system of rules will punish him, but I need to create some kind of bargaining chip before that punishment can happen. So I will do whatever it takes to protect him.”
Kamijou looked to Index. This had to do with magic, so would jurisdiction fall to the Anglicans?
Kamijou couldn’t say if the “bargaining chip” Takitsubo had in mind would mean anything to them.
But that had to be the only thing left for her to rely on.
“What can you do now?” pressed Mikoto in her black mourning clothes.
That wasn’t disgust in her voice. Was it a hint of fear?
“(I know she’s on our side now, but a first impression like that one is hard to shake.)”
“My AIM Stalker is useless on someone without an AIM Diffusion Field. So I can’t directly search for Coronzon.”
But Takitsubo Rikou didn’t hesitate to respond.
While looking Mikoto square in the face.
“But I also have a history gathering and analyzing information for Item. I am used to tracking down and hunting people in this city.”
“Yes, we could use a tracker from the science side. Especially with that new Board Chairman out of the picture,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder.
Whether she actually meant it or was only trying to put injured Takitsubo’s mind at ease, Kamijou couldn’t tell.
Kamijou waved both hands to call over Kanzaki who was giving instructions to Tatemiya and Agnese a short distance away. Next to him, Alice hopped up and down and waved her hands along with him.
Kanzaki sighed when she heard what he had to say.
“Then have her start at the beginning.”
She kept the instruction short.
Of course, they weren’t relying only on Takitsubo. The magicians would be performing their own magical search. But they were searching for Great Demon Coronzon, who lurked in the abyss to guard magical knowledge, so those attempts would likely be blocked at every turn.
“Coronzon has fled. However, I doubt she has continued running in a single direction. Takitsubo, was it? How can you track her?”
“That demon(?) fortunately lost the use of her wings, so she can’t cheat by flying. And if she is escaping on the surface, she will leave tracks. Especially on a snowy day like this.”
“She will notice any obvious tracks. Won’t she cover them up?”
Good point.
“So it comes down to the balance between the tracks that cannot be prevented and the tracks that will definitely be erased,” said the golden retriever in a highly refined voice.
Takitsubo Rikou plainly continued.
“It is true footprints in the snow can be easily erased. She might not have ordinary fingerprints to leave behind. And given the state of the city, we can’t hope to search for footage of her from security cameras or security robots.”
“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou. “Then how are we supposed to track down Coronzon!?”
“How about this?”
Part 2[edit]
Academy City District 3 was the northernmost district.
The dead office area had no lights in the windows or even in the traffic signals.
She had managed to shake those loathsome Magic Gods, Nephthys and Niang-Niang.
If she could cross the wall here, she could leave the city to the north…and into the Saitama area.
Great Demon Coronzon hoped to quietly slip past the wall. Ideally, her pursuers wouldn’t realize she had escaped.
Her useless wings were folded up for now.
She did not let unnecessary regrets hold her back. The Adikalika large-scale attack spell had been stopped. She accepted that result. Which was why she had decided to crush them with all her might.
For her, a few troublesome people were mixed in with her pursuers.
For example, Index, the grimoire library who had memorized 103,001 grimoires. Or Anna Sprengel, the Rosicrucian magician whose skill exceeded that of Mathers or Crowley. And Alice Anotherbible, the oddity who had been too successful.
Trump cards weren’t only valuable when actually used.
Think of them like nuclear weapons.
Showing them off without using them could restrict an adversary’s actions.
…In truth, Coronzon’s greatest concern was Alice. She couldn’t accurately judge the threat level of that girl. And there was no such thing as a surefire countermeasure against an unknown.
She wanted to escape as soon as possible and eliminate any trace of her path. Even if it meant tearing down any obstacles that got in her way.
She truly felt that way.
Yet she didn’t do it.
After coming all this way.
“Oops,” she said quietly, pressing against the back of a thick roadside tree.
She had spotted a few figures on the large street. Their odd dress made them seem not a part of this world and they held a variety of spiritual items that ignored the laws against weapons and any sense of realism. That was definitely the gear of those who were “in the know”. These had to be the filthy Anglican magicians.
Had they gotten ahead of her? How? Could they have sprouted wings and flown over her head?
No, they had used a more normal method.
(Cars. Maybe I should steal one next.)
They must have assumed there would be no ordinary vehicles out since people had been ordered to stay in. They had abandoned some vans and trucks in the middle of the three-lane street.
Killing a hundred or even a thousand magicians would be easy enough.
But the rules had changed.
Now that she was trying to escape without being found, her power as a great demon actually hindered her. Anything she did would mean using a major spell, so it was best not to use anything if she could avoid it.
To reiterate, the ideal result was to escape quietly.
That was also why she had “shaken” Nephthys and Niang-Niang instead of immediately killing them with brute force.
“But this is odd…”
She slipped from the tree to a building wall.
Coronzon whispered to herself as she observed the situation on the street.
Kamijou Touma’s side had been precise. Too precise. They had to know her goal was to escape outside Academy City, but they shouldn’t have had any way of detecting what route she would use to cross the wall. After all, the wall surrounded the city in all 360 degrees. So how had they known she was going north to escape into the Saitama area from District 3?
(It wasn’t the security cameras, security robots, and other parts of Academy City’s security network. I already took out Board Chairman Accelerator. And the Anglican magicians have made an awkward takeover of Academy City’s systems, but they couldn’t operate those scientific toys with such precision. That must mean…)
At first, she considered a magical searching method.
Especially when Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel and their extraordinary magic power were in the city. Not to mention that Grimoire Library Index and Magic God Othinus could provide the knowledge.
But then she shook her head.
Because she had arrived at a simpler possibility.
Coronzon’s eyes lowered to her hands.
(Could I have left a hint behind?)
“Aleister… How long were you in control of my body!?”
Part 3[edit]
Shortly before that, Takitsubo Rikou made her suggestion in District 7.
“Scent.”
Kanzaki was dubious.
It was written plain on her face that she didn’t see how something so ordinary could work.
The track suit girl emotionlessly continued.
“She might be able to easily erase any footprints she leaves, but completely eliminating the scent particles left in the air is no easy task. After all, your own body is the source of the scent.”
Kamijou looked straight up.
The red snow had stopped and there was no wind, so there was little concern of those particles being swept away.
Coronzon had scattered the thick clouds herself.
Her own actions were beginning to work against her.
“Also, I think it will be a fairly distinctive scent. Instead of just the scent of her hair or clothing, it should be an aroma intentionally left behind.”
“Hm? Why would Coronzon do that?”
“She wouldn’t. But the other one would.”
Did she mean Aleister?
“Scents are invisible. And once you think of something as your own scent, it becomes especially hard for you to detect,” said Othinus.
“It would be a convenient way to tell us where Coronzon is without her noticing,” said Anna Sprengel.
Kamijou tilted his head.
“But what distinctive scent would it be?”
“Probably the snowdrop flower,” replied Takitsubo.
For some reason, this led Kanzaki Kaori to lower her head glumly.
The track suit girl continued with no readable emotion in her eyes.
“It isn’t the best material for an aroma when compared to roses or lavender, but…um, did something occur to you?”
“It’s the title of an erotic novel Crowley wrote around a century ago. Or part of the title, to be more accurate.”
Everyone fell silent.
Alice Anotherbible looked confused.
Humanity might meet its doom before the sun rose in the morning, yet they had run across a choice that may have been serious or may have been a joke in poor taste… Kamijou was certain now. Aleister was definitely still alive.
“But, Touma, how do we follow the scent? A scent…hm, could we use a dog?”
Index sounded disappointed that she only had a calico cat in her arms, but her comment led everyone to look to the dog among them.
At the center of attention, golden retriever Kihara Noukan tilted his head while sitting.
“I do appreciate you consider me reliable, but the world will be destroyed if I screw this up, correct? This is a situation for cautious verification, not my brand of romance. And I would feel bad stealing all of your thunder.”
“Then we can use something else too.”
Takitsubo waved her phone.
But it had an eraser-sized device attached to the connector at the bottom.
“Smelling bad can be considered a form of harassment these days, so they sell these toys for a personal hygiene check. Although I heard they were really just finding ways to expand into other markets because selling breathalyzers wasn’t enough to make back the development costs.”
“But a commercial product won’t be enough to track someone,” said Othinus. “To do that, you should need to expand the hardware or boost the software to forcibly increase its sensitivity.”
“Right.”
Takitsubo tossed her phone over.
To Misaka Mikoto, who could do just about anything when it came to electricity.
“When scent particles adhere to the sensor, they are analyzed into digital values. It’s not glamorous, but the technology has been used in food and detergent labs for decades. And I’d heard there was a special forces team that used this kind of thing in Academy City, but I have no idea what they’re up to now.”
That meant they could track her.
They didn’t know how long Aleister’s hint would last.
They needed to take advantage of it before Coronzon caught on.
Kanzaki waved and the young Amakusas responded. They brought in several vehicles with chains on their tires to deal with the red snow.
“Now we can track her.”
Just like the ritual used by hammer throwers to intentionally push past their own limiters, Kamijou Touma shouted from the bottom of his gut.
Because his body was ready to break if he didn’t.
“We can settle things with Great Demon Coronzon!!”
Part 4[edit]
She wasn’t even aware of the moments when he took control and she couldn’t question the lapse afterwards.
This was a major problem for Coronzon…but at the same time, it was fortunate she had become aware of the risk sooner rather than later. Even a single second of unconsciousness during a battle could create a fatal opening.
She needed a technical solution.
But for now, she had to lose the nearby pursuers.
Kamijou Touma’s group would arrive in District 3 before long. In pursuit of her. If Aleister had used her body to leave behind a message, there was no doubting it.
(Could I make it if I rushed across the wall from District 3? No. Kamijou Touma is one thing, but the Anglicans are a group. With their coordination, they could have someone waiting there. And this doesn’t actually end after I cross the wall. If they know which direction I escaped to, I can’t disappear and they will continue pursuing me through the Saitama area.)
That meant adopting brute force methods to cross the wall would not solve this. Coronzon’s ideal was to quietly cross the wall and vanish into the greater world beyond. But this also gave her an opportunity. If her pursuers were convinced she would cross the wall from District 3, she could fully lose them if she crossed the wall from a different district.
She didn’t have much time left.
What could she do in that time?
Part 5[edit]
“She’s not here?” muttered Kamijou.
They were in District 3, a dead office area where even the traffic signals were off. It was a district for adults, so a high schooler like Kamijou didn’t know it very well. The message Aleister had left by hijacking Coronzon’s body had definitely pointed in this direction. And yet…
“The scent trail ends here,” said Kihara Noukan, sniffing at the ground.
“Confirmed,” said Takitsubo Rikou, her phone in hand.
They were in an empty plaza with nothing there but red snow.
Index tilted her head.
“Did Coronzon notice what was happening and wash it off?”
“Could she wash it off completely enough?”
“She didn’t need to.” Mourning clothes Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “Scents become something entirely different when they mix together. Which is why I really wish they would stop using cheap floral scents in shampoos and body soaps. It reacts with perfumes, ruining their scent.”
Apparently there were other opinions too.
Some were concerned that this hadn’t been Coronzon’s doing.
“Could the message from Aleister itself have been a bluff? I mean, this is Aleister we’re talking about.”
Agnese may have been pushed forward by the many other nuns. She expressed this suspicion as their representative, but Kamijou rejected it.
He had no proof, of course.
But he didn’t want to think that the Aleister who had answered his call would then take Coronzon’s side and try to destroy the world with her.
(What if?)
Kamijou lowered his head.
He pondered the issue with a hand on his chin and his eyes staring down toward his shoes.
(If the message from Aleister was correct and we still lost sight of Coronzon…then one of our assumptions must be wrong. But what could that be?)
Then it hit him.
“I forgot. One basic fact completely slipped my mind.”
“?”
Kanzaki gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t even glance her way.
He used his foot to scrape the red snow away from the ground, but it wasn’t asphalt below.
He found a thick metal manhole.
All that thought hadn’t been necessary. The answer was so simple!
The loud roar of water rushing by below meant this probably wasn’t an ordinary sewer. It had to be an artificial waterway flowing by below the city.
Humans could not swim in a half-frozen river in January.
Humans could not breathe underwater.
So this couldn’t be called a route. The river wasn’t usable.
Yes, if you were human.
“But Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human!!”
Part 6[edit]
The water temperature was 2 degrees.
The width was around five meters and the depth was maybe a few meters. Even with microbes and other factors producing some heat, this was a half-frozen January river. If an ordinary human fell in, their life would be at risk.
Of course, that was only for an ordinary human.
“It doesn’t apply to me.”
As she had announced from the beginning, she was a great demon.
Not even the moonlight could reach this place below the city. The ceiling was about two meters up, so a large man would bump his head on that thick concrete.
Maybe there were different areas that required different authorizations to enter and maybe the divisions were out of convenience for the government, but fences and chain-link doors blocked off the passage in places. Coronzon only had to lazily wave her hand to slice right through them.
The rippling water was a deep dark color, but not just because this was a subterranean space ruled by darkness. Jagged metal and what looked like rotting lumber were floating by. One squishy object looked to be a clump of oil larger than a bowling ball.
Great Demon Coronzon sighed in exasperation at herself for hesitating even momentarily.
(Places like this are my proper home. An embodiment of evil shouldn’t avoid impurities. Maybe I spent too long playing the bright and shining Anglican Archbishop.)
This time, she jumped in.
Once the torrent took her away, she would leave District 3 and travel through Districts 14, 19, and 12 to reach the eastern wall bordering the Shinjuku area. That was an entirely different place from the northern wall bordering the Saitama area.
(I don’t know what scent you sprayed on me, Aleister, but now those scent particle can’t be tracked to me.)
Of course, an ordinary human would die before riding the current even 100 meters, but that was no obstacle for Coronzon. She would have no trouble taking this 10+ kilometer water slide.
Part 7[edit]
Aleister hadn’t lied.
She had been in District 3.
It was a failure on Kamijou’s group’s part that let her escape. They had been wrong to think they could capture Great Demon Coronzon if they surrounded her the same way they would a human. If you were trying to capture a bird or a fish, blockading the roads and setting up checkpoints like you would with a human wouldn’t accomplish much of anything.
Coronzon had thrown herself into the artificial waterway below the city so she could quickly travel long distances.
“The water is two degrees…and she just jumped in?”
Mourning clothes Mikoto couldn’t believe it.
Her phone wouldn’t give her that data, so she may have used her power to hack the river management network. The thing that let you check river water levels during a typhoon.
“The waterway branches out quite complexly. The water generally flows west to east, but it covers a wide area. Predicting her final destination isn’t going to be easy.”
Kanzaki’s assessment didn’t provide any valuable hints.
They didn’t even need to head down underground. They knew Coronzon was using the waterway, but unlike her, they were human. Jumping into filthy half-frozen 2-degree water and letting it carry them for more than 10 kilometers wouldn’t let them track down Coronzon.
“What about the girl?”
“No, Alice.”
Kamijou quickly stopped her.
Alice Anotherbible might be able to survive down there, but that didn’t mean she could catch Coronzon in the endlessly branching waterway. The return was too uncertain for such a definite risk.
They had to come up with some other way.
Even now, Coronzon was being carried rapidly below the city.
Toward some part of the outer wall.
Takitsubo Rikou made a quick decision after simply peaking into the subterranean world through the open manhole.
“We can’t track the scent particles anymore.”
But if they gave up, Coronzon would escape.
Without another hint, humanity was doomed.
“That’s no problem…right? Science isn’t everything. Hey, Index, what ever happened to the magical search methods!? If we try a different approach, we can still-!”
“Touma, what are we supposed to track her with? Some of Coronzon’s blood or hair would be perfect. And if we are going to do it, some more detailed information on that great demon would be helpful.”
Despite the situation – no, because of the situation, Index gave a calm and composed response.
“The famous Aleister Crowley would be one thing…but Coronzon is from the world of myth. Finding detailed information on her will not be easy,” said Anna Sprengel, who seemed fairly legendary herself.
They couldn’t use magic.
But Kanzaki Kaori, commander of the Anglican forces here, wasn’t done.
“There is still something we can do.”
Part 8[edit]
A large metal object was lowered into the concrete waterway, covering the full width of the dark subterranean space. This wasn’t just grating or a floodgate. This was more brutal. The closest comparison was a giant propeller. But this had several of them arranged along a single shaft to smash up and break down floating objects.
“A public garbage disposal, huh?”
It was more than just the heavy rotating blades. To keep the thick blades sharp, metal-degrading bacteria were made to live on the net-like surface.
She had seen jagged metal and rotting lumber several times on the way here. None of that large trash could be allowed out of the city when the river water flowed out. To prevent any chance of the city’s technology leaking out. So devices to smash up whatever was floating in the river had been placed at regular intervals (and there were likely specialized facilities nearer to the outer wall). The Anglican pursuers in control of Academy City had activated them all.
Coronzon pulled her upper body onto the concrete edge and held her other hand out toward the giant machine.
Destroying it would be easy. It wouldn’t take more than a moment.
But she wanted to avoid triggering an alarm that would inform her pursuers where she was.
That left only one thing to do.
“So the easy ride ends here.”
Coronzon crawled fully out of the filthy water.
There were no signs telling her where to go, but she found some stairs leading up. Still wet, she placed her hand on the railing and got moving.
(I should assume they are guiding me to an extent. It may soon be time to switch to brute force tactics.)
Which district was she in?
She would know as soon as she opened the thick metal door.
Part 9[edit]
Kamijou heard something like the breathing of a monster.
Something white was being expelled from the pipes on the wall or the metal grate on the ground.
It was hot steam.
This was District 19.
“Hey, Kanzaki. Are you sure Coronzon is here?”
“Assuming the emergency exit sensor was triggered by her. She isn’t an embodiment of science, after all.”
Kamijou spent most of his time in District 7, so he didn’t know much about this one. It was crammed full of short multi-tenant buildings. Overall, the streets looked old and faded. Non-LCD signs had a variety of advertisements posted, but the advertised products were things like cathode-ray tubes, vacuum tubes, records, and steam engines…
“It feels like we’re surrounded by a collection of forgotten technology. Or like the flow of technology branched off and evolved in a unique direction here.”
Mourning clothes Mikoto seemed half taken aback by it all.
A device with several rotating cloth wings slowly passed by on the street. It wasn’t quite a helicopter or a drone. And it was larger than a small truck.
Kamijou looked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“What is that? One of da Vinci’s models?”
“Uneducated fool, that is Cayley’s steam-powered flying machine.”
…Had designs for flying cars been around for centuries?
Whatever the case, technology was branching off in weird directions here.
(On any other day, I’d love to explore this place.)
Several giant round metal objects were visible in the distance.
In fact, several of the round things were clustered together.
“Looks like a pack of takoyaki.”
Index was right. That was the best comparison Kamijou could come up with too.
It looked a bit like a gas tank – no, a gas holder, but in District 19, that wouldn’t be what it was.
“The Central Boiler,” explained Takitsubo Rikou. “The fuel is burned in a single location to produce a large quantity of steam and then piped out across the district. There is infrastructure for the excess energy produced by a large factory’s boiler to be sent to smaller factories, but this is a larger scale version of that. So maybe like a steam version of the thermal power stations in the age of electricity?”
Of course, Academy City’s power generation was done with the many wind turbines distributed across the city. This produced steam instead of electricity, it was centralized instead of distributed, and it created energy using fossil fuel…
Othinus sighed in exasperation from Kamijou’s shoulder.
“The people of this district must really not want to follow the mainstream of Academy City.”
Part 10[edit]
“And.”
Great Demon Coronzon was also grinning. It only took her an instant to detonate it from the outside.
“That gives me an opportunity.”
Part 11[edit]
A deep, muffled sound rumbled out.
The city distance looked white.
Like the cityscape was being obscured by a giant piece of cotton candy.
But that wasn’t what this was.
The exhausted, late-night city had been overwritten. Kamijou definitely saw something pop like a balloon in that white-covered scenery. Even though the thick steel shouldn’t have been able to burst from within like that.
Wasn’t that…?
“Run, fool.”
“Hey, don’t tell me…”
“Coronzon blew up the Central Boiler,” said Anna Sprengel. “Steam of more than 400 degrees Celsius is about to engulf this district. And we will be swallowed up along with it!”
“If we stay outside, the outdoor steam oven will remove all the oil from our bodies as it boils us up nice and healthily. Just like the chicken tenderloins you parboiled for me,” said Kihara Noukan. “If that does not appeal to you, I would recommend hurrying indoors.”
There wasn’t time to think too hard about it.
Kamijou and the others rushed to the nearest concrete structure.
The deep, muffled noise had grown sharper. A lot like the sizzling of water on a heated frying pan. Which wasn’t that far off from the truth. The red snow on the ground was melting, starting from the distance. And the growing mass of steam discolored the roadside trees and peeled the paint from the cars parked on the curb. Like playground equipment in a long abandoned park.
Anna Sprengel and Kihara Noukan were right. A human wouldn’t last an instant in that.
Index, Mikoto, Kanzaki, Anna Sprengel, Alice, and Agnese rushed inside the same building as Kamijou. Othinus and the cat were with them too. The others would have escaped to different buildings.
Kamijou’s eyes widened.
“Who is she!?”
“Don’t ask me! Why was an ordinary person – and a student at that – wandering around outside at this hour!? And after we ordered everyone to stay at home!”
That meant the girl held under Kanzaki’s arm was not a camouflaged Amakusa.
After diving into the reinforced concrete building, Kamijou kicked the door shut from his position down on the ground.
A scorching sound soon followed.
A male voice came from the radio Kanzaki held. It didn’t seem magical.
Was that one of the Anglican magicians managing Academy City? No, it may have been one of the city’s technicians obeying the magicians.
“Boiler #2…and #8 have already…no, it’s no use, it’s fully ruptured!!”
“#5 isn’t looking good either…the boiler pressure won’t stop- we need to evacuate now!!”
An unpleasant straining sound surrounded them.
The entire building was groaning.
Was the great heat causing the metal to bend, or was it the steam pressure?
“Damn!” cursed Kamijou.
Either way, this made running outside and catching up to Coronzon a complete impossibility. That world of 400 degrees Celsius was melting the asphalt of the streets, so they would need to walk on the sidewalk tiles with thick shoes or else suffer severe burns. In fact, if a human simply took a step outside, their flesh, bones, and eyeballs would boil.
But Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t human.
They had been taught this lesson over and over now…but could she really brute force her way through like this? What route would she use to escape in that world of scorching heat and death!?
Part 12[edit]
“District 19’s Central Boiler just exploded!?”
Yomikawa Aiho of Anti-Skill’s eyes widened at that report.
(First those Anglican people take over the city’s law enforcement and now this!?)
She didn’t even need to check the camera footage on the helicopter’s multipurpose monitor.
From her vantage point in the night sky, one section of the surface was visibly expanding. The scale was hard to judge, but the buildings being easily engulfed had to be more than ten stories tall.
The male helicopter pilot adjusted his grip on the control column and asked a question.
“Is this that Coronzon person’s doing too? What the hell!? Aren’t fugitive’s supposed to hold their breath and sneak around!? Why would she go out of her way to cause a scene like this!?”
“Just get us there! Who knows how many people were caught in the blast!”
“I’ll try, but there’s honestly only so much we can do from the air!”
Several shouting voices came over the radio at once, ignoring the aviation radio rules. The pilot was using the radio to pickup as many signals as he could, hoping to get some picture of the situation on the inside.
“Where are the first-aid kits!? Why can’t I find one!?”
“Damn, more burns. There are too many injuries here!! Can someone tell me how I’m supposed to triage this!?”
“We can’t do it in that steam. It’s 400 degrees. We can’t even get close to the storeroom!!”
Yomikawa Aiho glanced aside.
First-aid kits could be found just about anywhere. There was even one belted to the helicopter’s wall. Was the chaos and confusion inside the Central Boiler so bad they couldn’t even find something so basic?
Yes, she had what they needed here.
The pilot must have wanted to help them too, but he gave his expert opinion.
“It’s not happening, Yomikawa! You can see that boiling steam, can’t you!? The steam pressure is disturbing the air currents near the ground too badly to land! If we carelessly descend now, the helicopter will be flipped over on its side!”
“Then what about an ambulance!? If we can’t go by air, we can send someone by ground!”
“What part of ‘boiling steam’ didn’t you understand? An ambulance is little more than an ordinary vehicle, so it just isn’t tough enough. Everyone inside would be steamed to death before they arrived. At 400 degrees, not only would the rubber tires melt, but the asphalt would probably be soft and squishy. Any vehicles will be stuck and the steam getting in through the air conditioning vents would bring the high temps inside too.”
“Then we’ll just have to make do with the helicopter. I know, let’s simulate it!! If we feed the satellite data into the quantum computers and DNA computers, those air current disturbances aren’t an obstacle!”
“How do we do that with the Board Chairman out of commission!? He’s the only one who can use the Master Key!!”
“Kh.”
“We can’t use the satellites, supercomputers, or any other Academy City facilities. Maybe we could use the individual devices, but we can’t tie them together. So my pointstands: it’s not happening, Yomikawa!!”
The helicopter could not descend as the Central Boiler continued to explode.
But voices were calling out for help.
Even an ordinary first-aid kit would be able to save the lives of the people injured by the burning heat and steam.
Yomikawa Aiho saw only one option.
“Then I just won’t use the helicopter.”
“Hey, Yomikawa?”
“You don’t have to do anything crazy. I’ll use this parachute to jump down on my own.”
“Are you stupid!? I said this 5.5 ton piece of metal would be flipped over on its side! You’ll lose all control over a parachute made of flimsy cloth in no time at- wait, no, you idiot!!”
She didn’t bother listening to the end.
Yomikawa Aiho grabbed the first-aid kit in both hands and threw herself out the open side door.
Without hesitation.
It went well. At first.
But 180 seconds after the parachute opened at an altitude of around 20 meters, things rapidly changed. The air current disturbance hit her like a punch from the side. Her neck hurt. She gritted her teeth and tried to restore her balance, but the winds buffeting her from all sides spun her parachute around.
All this and she hadn’t even been directly exposed to the steam. In the last few meters, her parachute turned completely inside out and she landed on some kind of machine. Only after her body badly dented the thin metal panel did she realize it was an industrial air conditioning unit. It had apparently absorbed the force of her landing.
The first-aid kit clutched to her chest had survived too.
Despite the burns and lacerations they must have suffered, the workers ran toward her. Ignoring their own woes and looking worried for her.
The Anti-Skill woman was truly glad she had come to help them.
She pressed the first-aid kit into the chest of a battered-looking worker.
“Are any of your people missing?”
“Th-the chief isn’t here, but his time card shows no record of him arriving. I think he took the night off without calling in…”
Then no need to worry about him.
“No ambulances are coming.”
She made sure they knew their situation.
“I doubt the fire trucks can make it either. So we have to prevent any further harm from the Central Boiler on our own. Where should we start!?”
Something exploded. Very close by.
She heard something whiz past her and felt something sharply stroke her cheek. A pipe must have burst from the internal pressure and a shard the size of a guitar pick had grazed her face.
No one could predict what would explode or when.
As the giant facility collapsed, it was like a single big balloon.
“Just one more…” said a young man, barely breathing. No, he was probably gathering all the strength he could. “Eight boilers make up the giant overall boiler and two of them have already blown. If just one more goes, there will be no stopping it. The reinforced concrete surrounding the place will collapse from the extreme steam pressure!”
“Then that’s what we have to deal with,” said Yomikawa.
“We can’t. We don’t know what happened to the general steam control room. No one can get there. Pipes have burst all throughout the building, so there’s hot steam everywhere!”
“Then I’ll go and check!!”
They could have just told her where that general steam control room was, but a few of the workers whose injuries were relatively minor came with her.
They all wanted to stop this tragedy if they could. Despite saying they couldn’t, they hadn’t given up.
Yomikawa Aiho smiled a little.
“Lead the way.”
She dove into danger.
She was no one special.
Today might finally be the day she died.
However, that was no reason to not protect the Central Boiler and District 19.
Part 13[edit]
They couldn’t head outside thanks to the intense steam.
Only Coronzon, who had caused the disaster, could move freely in it. They just didn’t know if she would take the subway, the sewers, or what.
Kamijou clenched his teeth.
“We can’t just stand around here. Coronzon must even now be working to cross the wall and escape the city!”
Was there a loophole anywhere? Or a safety measure that would let them travel through the ultra-hot steam? The idea sounded too absurd to even consider, but then someone spoke up.
The girl who Kanzaki had picked up somewhere.
“…in the car.”
Kamijou had a bad feeling about this.
This definitely wasn’t a hint.
The words oozed with an ominous air that made him reluctant to hear the rest.
“My parents are still in the car. They said the city is too dangerous to stay, but then we got stuck in the red snow. I didn’t want to hear them arguing, so I got out of the car on my own. Then that steam came, so they’re probably still in there…”
…In all that steam?
Othinus and Anna Sprengel made an honest simulation rather than being weirdly considerate.
“Even in this thick reinforced concrete building, the door could buckle or the windows could break at any time. And if we’re talking about an ordinary car with no bulletproofing or blast resistance…”
“Fool, even if they covered the A/C vents with balled-up cloth, I’m not sure how long a car with windows on all sides would last. And once the windows break, the people inside will be exposed to the 400-degree steam.”
…Kamijou himself had seen the tough paint peeling off of cars. A human wouldn’t last ten seconds exposed to that.
Kanzaki’s eyes widened.
“It’s past midnight! Why would someone be out at this hour!? Especially when the entire city was ordered to stay in!”
“Because the Anglican grip on the city is weakening. Even as we speak.”
Kamijou gave a calm response to Kanzaki’s shouted question.
Maybe it was hard to grasp for a Saint who lived a proper life day in and day out, but human beings tended to want to do the things they were told not to do. All the more once the authority holding them back loosened its grip. Or once they found a loophole.
“I succumbed to temptation. I couldn’t resist.” Mourning clothes Mikoto scratched her cheek. “Phrases like that have existed since ancient times, which tells you a lot about human nature.”
“It’s not that. …They were just willing to try anything if it would keep their precious family safe.”
“Fool,” curtly called Anna Sprengel.
He didn’t need to hear any more. That magician used her wickedness as a great weapon, so he knew what she was trying to say.
If Coronzon was allowed to escape the city here and now, the entire 7 or 8 billion population of the Earth would be headed toward its doom. Once the process started, no one could stop it.
So they couldn’t afford to lose track of her.
They couldn’t stop to save a couple of unrelated people in the middle of the fight against Coronzon.
He knew that.
He really did, but…
“It’ll be alright.”
The next thing he knew, Kamijou Touma was kneeling down in front of the small girl.
And doing the opposite of Anna’s unspoken advice.
Because it was the right thing to do.
“There are a lot of different people here – the Anglicans, the Amakusas, some who were originally Roman Catholic, and even a Magic God and some Transcendents – but none of them are going to abandon you. Because every one of us are here because we want to help people.”
He just had to remember what kind of being Great Demon Coronzon was.
She tore people apart from each other and kept humanity from reaching magical knowledge.
So this was another side of the battle.
In the fight against Coronzon, they would continue to encounter frustratingly malicious “coincidences” as well as trouble and accidents that seemed designed to test them. Because that was the kind of being she was. Just like there was an angel of love and an angel of righteousness and just like there was a demon of wrath and a demon of envy, she was the great demon who specialized in that sort of thing.
He wouldn’t let those bonds be torn asunder.
…An emergency? An urgent situation? The entire human race’s doom would be assured once the dawn arrived? He still wasn’t going to give up on being human. He couldn’t defeat Coronzon if he wasn’t willing to say that!!
No one stopped him.
Not Index, not Misaka Mikoto, not Kanzaki Kaori, not Agnese Sanctis, not Alice Anotherbible, and not even Anna Sprengel who had given him her advice as a wicked woman.
They had all fought against Coronzon.
“I promise you everything will be alright. We’re going to save your parents right now!!”
Part 14[edit]
Yomikawa Aiho clicked her tongue.
The equipment in the Central Boiler’s general steam control room had survived, but none of the six remaining boilers responded to anything they did in that room lined with the CRT monitors only found in this district.
One of the workers explained.
“The equipment here is all working. It isn’t malfunctioning, but the steam isn’t reaching the condensers… My guess is the distribution board is to blame. We need to head there and fix it.”
“Distribution board?”
Even as Yomikawa asked, she realized it had to be like a fuse box but for steam instead of electricity.
“Where is it? Tell me and I’ll go check it!”
“But…”
“There’s no time! Which is going to take more work: a small distribution board on the wall or this entire giant general steam control room? And to be blunt, it doesn’t look like there’s much for me to do here!!”
The worker nodded a few times at that.
“I’ll sketch you a simple map. Thanks. The boilers can’t stand this much pressure for long. We’ll have a chain reaction of ruptures in the surviving ones soon!”
Yomikawa Aiho grabbed her radio and stepped out the door.
There was so much white steam.
Had the damage to the facility progressed since she arrived in the room?
The 400-degree steam burst from the walls and ceiling as sharp as blades. Even if it didn’t directly hit her, it made the entire space as hot as a sauna. She wouldn’t be killed right away, but it was sapping her stamina.
The spraying steam made it hard to hear the voice from the radio. But then a loud voice came from the facility’s speakers.
“I’m amazed you decided to rush in here with everything going on. Personally, I have half a mind to run away.”
“But you haven’t run away, have you? So we’re not that different. You see, I have some freeloaders living with me and I want to protect their home. With people’s lives in my care, I can’t half-ass it.”
(Can’t go this way either.)
Even on the way to the general steam control room, they had encountered a few unopenable metal doors. Instead of the force of the explosion bending the doors, it seemed like they were automatic doors that used steam rather than electricity to open. That meant all the steam erupting from the pipes worked against her. Without sufficient pressure supplied to the doors, they couldn’t open. It was actually an adaption of a 2000-year-old invention known as Heron’s steam turbine.
She broke the hinges with her gun and kicked down the door.
That was a convenient tool for opening any door in here, but firing too recklessly could break a thin pipe and trigger a steam explosion nearby.
Something the size of a rugby ball – probably some kind of drone – was ejecting steam to weave across the floor.
The steam-powered lift was unusable. Yomikawa grabbed some rags from the ground and used them like potholders to grab the metal ladder. Several things exploded as she climbed. Sharp shards flew like flying disks and stabbed into the wall much too close for comfort.
The steam obscured her vision more than she had expected.
She had a hastily sketched map, but she felt like she would get lost even with it.
And she wasn’t looking for a special room. It was only a thin metal box attached to a corridor wall.
Finally, she found it.
“That must be the distribution board!!”
“It’s simple enough to operate. Open the cover and you should see 16 levers. Since our commands aren’t getting through, something must have moved some of the levers. Maybe one of the explosions and maybe the vibration of the steam hitting the wall. The levers have two options: up or down. The pattern we want is YNYNYYYNYNNYYYNY. Look for any that are wrong and flip them to the correct position. That should give us back control! And if you can, use tape or something to fix them in place!!”
She found them.
Three of the levers were in the wrong position.
“If I fix these…”
The ceiling exploded.
Yomikawa jumped back as the white steam passed sharply in front of her. Like a dropping guillotine or shutter. She could feel the 400-degree ferocity raising the air temperature in the corridor.
A voice practically screamed out of the speakers.
“Yomikawa-san! Please respond! Boiler #5 isn’t going to last much longer! You need to hurry!”
The worker couldn’t see the situation here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that.
400-degree steam was blocking the way right in front of her. A human would be boiled to the bone by that. She couldn’t even entertain silly ideas about slipping through a gap in the erupting steam.
But if someone didn’t do it, the boiler would rupture. Then the reinforced concrete barrier surrounding them at 3 kilometers would be destroyed by the steam pressure. And everyone working so hard to prevent that would be obliterated along with it.
Could she really let that happen?
(I think this really might be the end for me.)
Yomikawa Aiho honestly accepted that.
But the distribution board was within arm’s reach. Operate that and she could save everyone.
So she had to act.
Misaka Worst, Last Order…and Accelerator.
Academy City was far from a peaceful utopia. It had plenty of flaws. But this was the city that had raised those children. They deserved to smile after everything that had been taken from them. She couldn’t just go, ‘Welp, the city’s destroyed, so that’s that. Bye.” and leave the debt unpaid.
She was afraid to die. Which was why Yomikawa Aiho reminded herself she wanted to be the kind of person who could look those kids in the eye.
So move. Do it.
She was Anti-Skill. She had to focus only on protecting the city.
Part 15[edit]
They had decided to rescue the ordinary people trapped in a car out on the street.
Hiding inside a reinforced concrete building, mourning clothes Mikoto was the first to speak up.
“The biggest problem with the steam outside is the immense heat and pressure.”
“That’s two problems,” complained Kamijou.
“No, it’s one. The heat is what causes the moisture to expand and produce steam. And that expansion is what creates enough pressure to destroy concrete walls.”
It was important to confirm the basic facts of the situation.
The only flaw was how learning the extent of their hopelessness depressed him so much.
But Kanzaki, who was listening in, saw things differently.
“So we just have to cool it. Is that what you’re saying? The solution is simple. If we cool all that steam, it will return to harmless drops of water.”
Everyone would say that wasn’t possible.
After all, there was enough steam to engulf an entire district. And it was over 400 degrees Celsius. That was hot enough to melt car tires and soften asphalt. Dumping a bucket of water on it wasn’t going to cut it.
“But her logic itself isn’t wrong,” said Othinus.
“Fool. That kind of logic is a crucial condition for magicians. It may look like we can do anything, but we actually achieve our desired result by following a set of laws not found in your chemistry or physics textbooks,” added Anna Sprengel.
Kanzaki listened in while spreading out a large piece of paper on a table.
“We need a simple Christian legend related to cooling. I would suggest St. Dorothea and Theophilus. Agnese, may I borrow a few of your Catholic nuns?”
“Could subordinates like us say no if we wanted to? But that story is the opposite of what you want. The legend says the fresh roses and apples were delivered in the freezing February winter.”
“Which is why we reverse it by adjusting the symbols. Index.”
“That should be easy.”
And they only needed the logic to be sound.
No matter how absurd it looked, they only needed to have “correctness” on their side.
Kanzaki Kaori boldly made her claim.
“From there, I can force it through with my power as a Saint.”
At first, Kamijou thought a machinegun was firing outside.
But no.
Rain was pouring down outside the window. The white steam filling the district was instantly cooled into drops of water. There was so much of it it seemed like the weather had completely changed.
They had altered the scenery itself. The logic may have been sound, but the scale was something else entirely. How many tens of thousands of tons of liquid nitrogen would you need to cause this?
Kamijou felt silly even trying to calculate it.
“This won’t last long… Let’s head out!!”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
But once outside, he found a brown muddy river.
He had stepped down out of the building on pure momentum, but now he couldn’t take another step forward. Everything below his hips felt wrong. If he didn’t keep a hand on the wall and watch his step, he would be dragged down and swept away by the water. He was pretty sure only Alice would be able to stand in this muddy current without difficulty.
The car in question was less than 100 meters away.
Yet getting their was no easy task.
“I think you overdid it!! This is going to wash the car away!”
“This was the only way to keep the hot steam from boiling us!! Everything we do is on the level of changing the weather or dropping a shooting star from the sky!”
The scale of everything with Saints was off the charts.
Kamijou nearly stumbled on the way, but not just because of the current. Something was wrong with the ground. The melted asphalt may have re-hardened in the wrong shape.
Kamijou and Index somehow managed to reach the light car that was rocking like a small boat. The weird round car’s engine compartment looked like a metal drum on its side. Since this was District 19, did it run on steam? No, the lack of smokestack suggested it used coal instead.
Somewhat exasperated, Othinus spoke up from his shoulder.
“If it was a car that used a huge battery to power heating elements that heat water into steam to power the car, it would have been a high-tech eco car.”
This was the part that worried Kamijou.
“The car’s partially submerged, so touching it isn’t going to give me an electric shock, is it? Damn…”
Something banged on the glass from the inside.
Someone was in there. Two someones. Just like the girl had said. Hard to tell if they were more afraid of the steam or the muddy river, though.
(I’m risking my life here too. But I made it this far, so I’m going to save them!!)
The car’s doors weren’t going to open outwards while partially submerged like this. Kamijou grabbed a branch floating down the muddy river and climbed up onto the car’s hood. Sensing his weight, the car’s alarm started beeping, but now wasn’t the time to complain about that. This was probably being recorded by the drive recorder, but he still swung his makeshift bat down towards the windshield.
He smashed right through it, but that wasn’t enough and Kanzaki moved in to tear the rest out along with its frame.
She practically clung to the survivors to drag them out of the car.
The car itself slid sideways, pulled by the current.
It wasn’t going to last much longer.
Clinging to a tree a short distance away, Anna Sprengel shouted over at them.
“With this powerful current, trudging back upstream would be inefficient. Fool, let the current take you! Take shelter in a different building downstream!!”
“Dammit, are you kidding me!?”
He swore, but he was the one who had decided to save these people.
He just had to stick to it to the end.
He started to jump down from the car, but he was stopped by a tug on the back of his neck. Courtesy of Misaka Mikoto.
“Stay there.”
The car clearly moved below his feet. But with a stability not found when the current was pushing it sideways. Was that because he could sense a human will behind it? She must have been magnetically controlling it.
Something shifted out of the way below the water and it began to ride the current like a boat.
Something passed by overhead. He instinctually looked up…and felt his heart freeze when he realized it was a power line. Specifically, an exposed high-voltage line like those used by trains.
“Do they have a retro streetcar running in this area? What would’ve happened to us if that had snapped and fallen into the water?”
“Why is that your main concern when you’re traveling downstream with a billion-volt power source?” asked Mikoto.
The steam car bumped into the stairs at the bottom of a pedestrian overpass.
The muddy river would have prevented them from opening any ground floor doors even if they had wound up right alongside one. Instead, Kamijou, Index, Mikoto, and Kanzaki rushed inside what looked like a department store through the second floor entrance.
Kanzaki shouted into what looked like a paper charm.
“I will be ending the cooling spell’s effects, so everyone get inside a sturdy building! You have 10 seconds!!”
Her countdown was precise.
The white steam once more ruled the world. On the other side of the glass door was a world of deadly steam that would instantly boil a human being with a temperature of more than 400 degrees Celsius.
“While this is tempered security glass, the door could break at any moment. Let’s head further up.”
“What about Coronzon?”
While they dealt with this sidequest, she was free to act.
They had given her time.
So was she already past the wall?
If she had been freed into the wide world beyond, could they even find her? Kamijou felt more and more worried.
But just then…
“Ksshh…ey…”
He heard a sound.
No, a voice. From the small radio Kanzaki held.
“Hey! Please someone listen. This is the Central Boiler’s general steam control room. We somehow managed to keep the rest of the boilers from blowing. We have control of the pressure, so there’s no concern of any more steam escaping! Oh, but call the fire fighters and tell them to hurry!! The Anti-Skill officer helping us hasn’t returned!!”
“Oh, shut up. I’m still alive. Really, if you have fireproof suits for welding work, you should’ve told me. I nearly died.”
Kamijou took a look outside…and sure enough. The density of steam had fallen to little more than a thin fog. He could see things clearly outside. This had started out as a January night cold enough for snow. Without any additional steam, things would cool down on their own.
He and the others tried heading out.
It felt like a sauna. It was hot and humid enough to forget it was January. But it wasn’t enough to burn them. And the muddy river was gone.
Othinus took a look around from his shoulder.
“Looks like you can walk around outside now.”
“I guess it was the heat, but that red snow is gone from the ground.”
Probably a combination of the river and the sauna. Whatever the case, District 19 was clean.
“Fool.”
“Teacherrrr!”
The others caught up with them in the unpleasant steam.
And regrouping meant that girl had been reunited with her parents. The reunion took the form of a tearful embrace.
The steam was no longer a concern. That much was good news. But not all the news was good.
They had lost track of Coronzon. And they had no further clues.
His selfishness had come at a steep price.
Or so he thought, but he had underestimated things.
There were others here fighting.
“Also,” said a voice on the radio. “We have a report from the vicinity of the wall. You’re pursuing a fugitive, right? I don’t know who you’re after or why, but no one has crossed the wall. That much I’m confident of.”
“Eh?”
Several voices were talking.
It wasn’t just one person on the other side of the radio.
“A university research team was still gathering data with all this going on. They’re running a microscopic and macroscopic experiment where they scatter a sticky steam with high water retention over a wide area to see if it will efficiently stick to airborne pollutants, allowing them to be retrieved. What matters to you is that they can tell if someone approaches the wall by the change in the steam distribution. But they didn’t see anything.”
“Whoever it is must still be in the city. And if they’re not there, they must have turned around and gone to another district. Hurry up and catch them. We’d much prefer things to be peaceful around here.”
“The chief was stuck in his car? Oh, he can go to hell. He left his post without taking leave, so you tell him if he really wants to protect people, he needs to do his damn job. Now, if he were alone, I would just leave him out there, but his wife and daughter didn’t do anything wrong, so I guess we’ll have to help!!”
“Coronzon…didn’t approach the wall?”
It didn’t sound real even as Kamijou spoke the words.
But it was the truth.
…This wasn’t over yet.
He had gotten distracted. Taken a detour. Put the entire planet at risk. …Even so, it hadn’t been a complete waste. Small good deeds and kind acts were gathering together to accomplish something bigger.
Because Kamijou’s group had acted selflessly, now these other people were acting selflessly in return.
They were lending a hand.
The ring of cooperation was growing.
This was a weapon they had and Coronzon did not. …Or maybe it was her complete inability to acquire this that had broken her so badly.
Whatever the case, this wasn’t over.
If Coronzon hadn’t crossed the wall, then they could still pursue her!
Then someone voiced a quiet question.
That someone was Misaka Mikoto.
“But why did that Coronzon person move away from the wall?”
“?”
“If you want to escape, it’s human nature to want to run along the wall, right? The wall is right there and if you can get across, you win. But this Coronzon didn’t hesitate to distance herself from the wall. She went away. Heading toward the center of the city should only put her at more risk. What does she gain from this?”
Now that she mentioned it…
“Coronzon is actually trying to escape…isn’t she?” asked Kamijou.
“Yes, she is,” said Othinus. “Not being caught would be her actual top priority, but she must have a goal in mind. In that case, leaving Academy City probably is her priority.”
“But her actions contradict that.” Kihara Noukan joined the conversation. “Approaching the city center and extending her time in the city should only increase the risk of her being caught.”
“The wall might not actually matter,” cut in Index. The magic side girl provided a viewpoint entirely different from Kamijou and Mikoto. “It’s like you said before, Touma: Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human.”
“…?”
Coronzon’s actions were inconsistent.
That made some sense since fleeing after Adikalika failed hadn’t been her initial plan.
At the very least, this wasn’t all some grand plan she had conceived to deceive Kamijou and the others.
So if they wanted to stop her, they had to think up the kind of idea she would come up with but before she did. They were the pursuers. If they overlooked even one thing, she would use it to slip away.
In that sense, Index was bringing them another step closer to Coronzon.
“If you think of her as a collection of Telesma…then she doesn’t actually need to cross the physical wall to leave Academy City. She just has to break herself down into a mass of energy.”
“Hey, wait a second…”
His assumptions were crumbling around him.
Was that really an option?
Could you really just throw this new way of thinking into consideration!?
“Are you saying Coronzon can send herself, and her physical body too, through the city gas or the water pipes!?”
“I don’t know what ‘city gas’ is, but she probably can, yes,” said Index. Confidently. “If she hitches a ride on a ley line – a giant energy line running below the ground – she can’t just escape the city, she can escape to the other side of the planet!!”