Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter5 (section)

===Part 4===

The Astra named Parashu’s primary characteristic was simply how sharp it was. In legends, it was known to have beheaded many an enemy.

Naturally, it could easily remove the head of a flesh-and-blood human.

Ureapaddy created a stable cycle of attacks made up of several methods in order to build up pain and exhaustion that would rob the enemy of their ability to think. Once they were driven too far to accomplish even simple tasks, she would let loose a definite attack which would take their life before they could evade or defend.

It was quite simple.

It was the job of an expert to construct methods to make difficult things simple.

Or so it should have been.

However…

Kamijou Touma did not even try to use his right hand.

He avoided the deadly Parashu by twisting his upper body just barely out of the way.

“?”

Ureapaddy was a bit confused by this change in the pattern of his actions. He had evaded rather than defended. It sounded simple enough in words, but her magic could slice his body in two if it even just barely touched him. When faced with that sort of magic and when he had a perfectly effective shield, choosing to not use that defense would have been a difficult decision.

And Ureapaddy had cornered him, exhausted him, and robbed him of his ability to think so that he would not be able to make such a decision.

With only the level of thoughts that were welling up within the boy named Kamijou Touma, it would have been hard for him to take that action that strayed from the previous path.

So where had the thought come from?

“…Pinakapani.”

“What?”

“The one who wields Pinaka. That is one of the many alternative names for the god Shiva. That is an Astra that holds such great meaning and yet its actual form is not known for sure. …Or you could say it can fit in the space provided for it no matter what its form.”

That was correct.

He was correct.

But the situation had not been one which would lead the boy to the correct answer.

“Wait. Wait a second. What is going on here? Where did it go wrong!? It is true you have made it this far, but I do not detect the hint of magic from you!! So…how?”

She fired Gandiva.

Several arrows of light rained down from the heavens to stop the boy’s movements by sealing off his expected escape routes.

But the boy was not stopped.

He continued forward regardless.

“And…”

The cycle had been broken.

The situation had left its set rails.

“Nataraja. The lord of dance is another name for Shiva. You can use various spells by expressing them in the form of dance. That is the true form of your Astra. Even if you appear to be still and even if your arms and legs are motionless, you always dance when you use your magic. You can still dance. After all…”

He was supposedly an amateur when it came to magic.

Ureapaddy did not know the details, but he was supposedly just some person who had ended up mixed into the world of experts.

Even without knowing the specifics, she could tell just by looking at the way he stood.

And yet…

“After all, the gods of Hindu mythology do not necessarily have just two arms and two legs. Gods with a whole lot of eyes or arms aren’t too unusual. You modeled your spells off of that, so there is no real reason for you to always have two arms or two legs. For example…”

He knew too much.

He had fully analyzed it.

It was as if a god had whispered the answers in his ear.

How was an amateur boy supposed to see through that specialized spell designed to deceive expert magicians? For one thing, he did not have the knowledge necessary to solve it. How could someone solve a math problem without knowing the formulas involved? How would they figure anything out?

“That long hair. You have a magic dancing arm hidden in there. That is your spiritual item known as Pinaka and it is the single point that controls all of your Astras!!”

She had a reason for hiding it.

Ureapaddy controlled her various Astras in the form of dance, so if one could see the dance, one could possibly see through the type, target, and timing of the coming attack.

And so she hid it.

Hid it in her hair.

Now that he knew the location of her Pinaka, could that boy foresee Ureapaddy’s attacks and evade them?

It was simple enough to say.

But…

“You can’t do it,” muttered Ureapaddy. Her voice eventually grew to a shout based in confusion. “Even if you know where my Pinaka is and even if you can directly observe my dance! Only another expert magician can interpret what spell I am going to use and how!! So…how? How!? How was an amateur like you able to comprehend my spell to such a concrete level!?”

“…Isn’t it obvious?”

In response…

The boy named Kamijou Touma forced his body to move despite the pain and weariness and raised his right fist.

“This wasn’t just my own power. I obviously had help!!”

After hearing that, Ureapaddy finally caught on.

She looked around and spotted a flashing light in the distance. It was blinking at a regular interval; it obviously held some meaning. It was a code that allowed communication based on the length of the flashes.

And she recognized the light.

It was the incomplete Astra that her younger sister had forcibly used despite the burden it put on her body.

It was the base form of Agni’s Festival Fire, the Agni Astra.

On one hand, the Astra could be used offensively to destroy the enemies of the god with tremendous lightning and flames. On the other hand, the god that held the Astra held the characteristic of light that possessed symbolic meaning…that is, the festival fire.

And that light had given Kamijou Touma the magical knowledge he lacked.

“…She couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“There is no way she could. She could not even use the large scale Agni’s Festival fire prepared by the cabal. So if she tried to use Agni Astra with no alterations or support…”

“Then what is that over there?” asked Kamijou quietly. And then he gave the answer. “Even when it did not produce the results she wanted, she did not give up on it. And she found a way to use Agni Astra in a new way. I can’t speak on the more difficult issues like the concepts of absolute good or evil, but I prefer the direction she takes things. Instead of sweeping everything away with overwhelming violence, she supports her allies.”

“…”

Ureapaddy had been so focused on the enemy before her eyes that she had forgotten about that possibility.

She had assumed he had made it all that way on his own. 

But she was wrong.

“Stiyl drew Anti-Skill away while the rest of us headed here. I confronted you directly while Index viewed you from afar to analyze what exactly you were doing. And then Sozty got that answer to me.”

If she had known about the analysis team, crushing them first would have made the most sense.

But she had not thought her methods would be revealed.

It was a simple division of roles.

However…

“Sozty.”

Ureapaddy’s smile froze on her face.

The look in her eyes silently yet surely changed as she spoke her sister’s name.

“Sozty Exica!!”

“That was your reason, wasn’t it?”

Suddenly…

The boy’s words seemed to cut off the flow of events up to that moment.

But he did not see it that way.

To him, this was more important than her methods or a means of defeating her. This may have been the question he wanted answered the most.

“You could never get that look in your eyes for a complete stranger you do not care about. If the magic cabal had continued as it was, the other members might have taken part in projects similar to or even worse than the one you experienced. If the conflict between science and magic intensified, everyone you knew might have been thrown into a hopeless war. And so you tried to stop it. Using every means at your disposal.”

“…”

“I am not trying to say that thinking is wrong in and of itself. But this is meaningless. If you use Debris Storm to scatter Brahma Astra across the world, it will affect the very person you are trying to protect! You are making an enemy of the world to protect that person, so why would you destroy her with your own hands!?”

“Wait. You’re not making sense. That is not my goal. She has worked to keep me from achieving my goal, she has opposed me, and she has come to fight me to the death.”

“Where did you go wrong?” asked the boy with the expression of someone who had bitten into something bitter. “Was it when you decided to attack Academy City? Was it when you decided to carry out that surprise attack on your fellow magicians? Was it when you decided to attack both science and magic with Brahma Astra? …Was it when you realized you had to do this to protect your sister? Was it when you could not bear to take so many lives to save just a single life? Was it when you decided you wanted to protect your family nevertheless?”

That was why she had changed what she was weighing on the scales.

She was no longer weighing her sister’s life against the many lives that Brahma Astra would take.

She was now weighing the many who belonged to science and magic against the comparatively few whose lives would be taken by Brahma Astra.

“But that changes nothing.”

“Wait.”

“You were going to sacrifice everything to save just one life, so it does not really matter whether it was comparatively large or small!!”

“No, that makes no sense. It isn’t logical. I simply want to save the world! I will bring an end to this pointless arms race between magic and science. That is all I want. There is nothing more that-…!!”

“The anger you felt towards your sister was not because she had stood in the way of your plan!!”

That boy walked directly towards Ureapaddy.

Parashu, Gandiva, Trishula, Pashupata. She fired Astra after Astra, but nothing could stop Kamijou anymore.

His courage and the support of those he called his comrades cut open a path for him.

“It was because the one you wanted to protect more than anything else had put herself in a position where she would be blown away by Brahma Astra!! It was because you would now need to hurt her with your own hands!! Am I wrong? If you were simply angry, you would have turned that anger towards me. But you turned it toward Sozty who is so far away instead of me, the enemy right in front of you. That means your anger had some other reason behind it!! Am I wrong, Ureapaddy Exica!?”

His right hand reached out.

It reached out to rob her of the spiritual item hidden in her long silver hair.

“Let’s end this. You do not need a tool of killing! There must have been some better option!!”

She was unable to avoid it.

Or perhaps she had not wished to avoid it.

As if tearing it off, the boy’s right hand destroyed the thin, doll-like arm hidden in her hair.