Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter1
Chapter 1: A Scene of White and Black – the_DEATH.
Part 1
This was a perfectly ordinary high school in District 7.
Or it should have been.
Every other school had already had their opening ceremony, but not this one.
A lot of people were coming and going.
The adults stood out most since this was a school.
“The florist just arrived.”
“I know, but what about the salt!? What idiot forgot to order it!?”
“The discount store that sells just about anything doesn’t open until 10.”
“Ordering it online won’t arrive in time for the ceremony. Run to the convenience store!”
Employees of various businesses were running here and there: clothes rentals, large stage lighting and sound equipment, and a caterer providing snacks and drinks for nutrition and to help people rest. The place had the feel of backstage during some kind of event. Instead of an announcer, the host was a fairly unsuccessful comedian holding a mic. He could have just worn a short-range mic on his ear, but he had insisted on a large one in a microphone stand. That was likely his personal preference rather than having anything to do with the ceremony.
Aogami Pierce sighed softly in a brand new classroom.
“Why do those people look like they put on shows in the shopping district?”
“Probably because they do. They’re primarily entertainers, but they study Buddhist temple stuff in college. So maybe this counts as practice for them?”
Fukiyose Seiri had all the information.
Come to think of it, didn’t she usually volunteer for the committees that ran school events?
Aogami Pierce took a look around the gloomy classroom.
“Did you see those weird people hanging around the front gate? They all had smartphones, so do reporters these days not lug around heavy cameras?”
“That’s why the school opened up the back entrance for teachers. The hearse, which is kept chilly inside with dry ice, should be here soon.”
Was that why the curtains were shut first thing in the morning? Carelessly approaching a window would probably end up with a toy-like drone approaching to get some footage.
The TV stations had reporters on the scene too.
They couldn’t just ignore it. As members of the class in question, it made them nervous.
They didn’t know what exactly had happened, but they could tell it was a big deal.
Something big had happened over winter break.
“If only they would send in that sexy female reporter in a miniskirt suit.”
“Honestly. This really isn’t a job for her. We’re not talking about a culinary report discussing the soul food of regions you’ve never even heard of. I did see something like the ghost of parents day wandering around, though.”
“You mean the Old Bavarian Cream Lady of the Educational World? Wow, Kami-yan’s getting the early morning human-interest story treatment.”
“Better than having a self-styled spiritualist show up and chant Buddhist incantations at him, right? Next thing you know, they’d be saying the student who died at our school was a fallen warrior and there was a grave here in ancient times or something. Thank goodness this is Academy City.”
No matter how depressed the mood, people couldn’t help but talk when enough of them had gathered. Maybe that was just human nature.
No.
Maybe the pressure of silence scared them more.
So they were subconsciously avoiding it.
Someone was dead, but the teachers hadn’t explained anything.
And a ton of reporters were here.
It was all too concerning to let it pass in silence. This naturally led to the spread of rumors. Based on absolutely nothing, of course.
“Signs of foul play and mysterious circumstances, huh?”
“Sounds like Academy City to me,” was all Fukiyose said.
As plausible as it sounded, they had no actual evidence.
It was an empty conversation. If they knew the truth, they probably couldn’t have said anything at all.
Aogami Pierce sighed again.
“I heard we’d be released by midday.”
“The other classes will be. We’re riding a bus to the crematorium, so it’s a full day for us.”
“What about lunch? I’m a little worried about that. I was so busy this morning I missed breakfast.”
“Were you too busy to see the message sent to the entire class? It said to bring your own lunch today.”
The day’s schedule had been changed last second for this, but today was only meant to be the opening ceremony. The teachers apparently didn’t think this would affect their classes. Which made the students wonder what the point of that opening ceremony even was. Didn’t that just mean they would have been wasting a day of their winter break?
A look of belated realization came over Aogami Pierce.
“Hm? Hold on. You mean I can’t use the cafeteria or school store?”
“I imagine you would only find an empty and lonely room. The opening ceremony was meant to end at midday and there were no club activities scheduled. They wouldn’t have any ingredients for lunch ready.”
“I-I-I-I- wait just a bit, I’ve gotta run to the convenience store!!”
“You can try if you want, but the closest one will probably be full of the less motivated reporters chatting in the eat-in section. Are you sure you want to go there? Your face will be on the cover of the tabloids as the sorrow-stricken classmate.”
“Hey, wait, ah!! Sensei’s here. The event’s already starting!”
Their free time had ended.
While the classmates chatted, the sliding door by the blackboard opened and Tsukuyomi Komoe, their homeroom teacher, walked in. At 135cm, she was a very compact teacher and she had chosen thick felt clothing to keep warm in the cold. If not for the veil over her head, it could have looked like a private elementary school uniform.
She spoke with just her head poking up above the lectern.
Even for that, she was probably on her tiptoes.
“Himegami-chan, Fukiyose-chan, and the rest of you. Before the classes head to the auditorium one at a time, I want to take roll, so to your seats. The first years go first, so we don’t have much time.”
“Why send us there class by class?”
“Someone messed up designing the auditorium, so its entrance is too narrow. If everyone tried to enter at once, I think we would get stuck,” explained Fukiyose, sounding exasperated.
A gym teacher called to them from outside. The busty one who always wore a track suit.
The students filed out into the hallway.
This was the first day of their third term, but there was no opening ceremony.
Today was a special day.
It was Kamijou Touma’s funeral.
Part 2
Inside a student dorm in District 7.
Specifically, inside a room on the seventh floor.
Palm-sized Othinus, the 15cm god, stood tall on the glass table. The kotatsu had been put away since it used power.
They had to pack their things.
“Leave the key next to the phone.”
“I know. I do have a perfect memory.”
That was true of Index, a girl wearing a white nun’s habit with gold embroidery making it look like a fancy teacup, but Othinus couldn’t trust the girl’s accuracy for a very different reason. Remembering everything she saw and heard was all well and good, but then how did she explain being told very clearly that the industrial-sized bag of rice crackers was for everyone to eat through little by little over the course of January and then leaving nothing but the empty bag the very first chance she got?
A cat mewed.
“Oh, right. Him.”
“We can’t leave Sphinx here, can we?”
Index picked up the calico cat.
Just like she always did.
The cat didn’t seem to understand the human circumstances.
Othinus didn’t want to be stuck with him, so she looked away from the ferocious beast only to meet the eye of a dove sheltering from the rain on the narrow balcony railing.
The symbol of peace looked her in the eye and tilted its head. The feathery thing didn’t seem to mind the January chill.
“Is that everything?”
“It should be.”
Index was carrying the cat in her hands. She hadn’t said anything, but Othinus was already up on her shoulder.
Othinus arrogantly crossed her legs and whispered with her voice low.
“Then are you ready?”
“…Yes.”
“The cat is really the only thing you’re taking from the room?”
“Because this is Touma’s room.”
“That it is.”
Their circumstances differed, but they were both freeloaders here.
The room belonged to someone else.
And looking at it now, they could see just how much that boy had shared with them. Even though he hadn’t been in any way obligated to do so. He hadn’t been particularly well off and had constantly lamented being a poor student. But when accepting them, he had done it without a second thought.
Index put on her shoes at the front door.
Would she never complete that simple action again?
She didn’t say anything for a while.
After tapping her toes against the floor to adjust the fit of the shoes, the white nun opened the front door. Index looked back into the room just once, but she saw only an empty space.
“…”
The thin door to the student dorm room shut and the click of its lock rang loud.
Part 3
The excitement of beginning the third term was nowhere to be found.
“Does this look right?” asked Misaka Mikoto.
It was 8 in the morning.
Only convenience stores and casual restaurants would be open at this time, but Mikoto was inside a kimono store at a giant shopping mall. She stood quietly in front of a large mirror. She wore her short hair up and she wasn’t wearing her usual Tokiwadai Middle School blazer. She was wearing a black kimono, which seemed out of place on a 14-year-old girl. The half moon comb designs were the Misaka family crest.
These were mourning clothes.
She of course wasn’t going to attend her school’s opening ceremony dressed like this.
(This is nothing like a New Year’s furisode. It’s heavier.)
“Misaka-saaan, are you ready?”
A familiar face poked in.
Shokuhou Misaki appeared to have chosen Western mourning clothes.
Except why were they so see-through and revealing?
That looked more like a black party dress.
Specifically, it was a gorgeous black dress and veil, but it had slits all over the place with pearl accessories glittering here and there. Did that girl ever stop showing off?
For some reason, the weird girl gave Mikoto a weird look.
“Japanese clothing is a terrible choice for someone who doesn’t know how to put it on themselves. My choice is definitely going to be easier.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. That isn’t a character costume – more goes into it than just zipping up the back, I’m betting.”
“Come to think of it, you never wear long socks, do you?”
“Anything that would turn into something like melted cheese when exposed to a high-voltage current gets a no from me.”
And so she had chosen Japanese clothing.
Misaka Mikoto wanted nothing to do with garter belts or stockings.
…Still, she was glad she had gotten the scheming queen’s help since she knew how to rent out a kimono store before it opened for the day. This store’s quality was superb even with a rush job like this. But maybe that was always the demand for mourning clothes. On her own, Mikoto wasn’t sure she would have even considered getting mourning clothes. That said, Tokiwadai’s uniform was too bright for a sorrowful ceremony like this, so she had wanted something else to wear.
She wasn’t used to carrying around a small purse. For all the annoying insurance-related paperwork, she had agreed to all of the employee’s recommendations and then paid by card.
The two of them left the store together.
Shokuhou Misaki immediately began clutching her shoulders and shivering. Was she trying to accentuate her boobs?
“Brr!! It really is January, isn’t it? I thought all the slits and sheer lace would be sexy, but the winter chill is piercing right through it.”
“Huh, imagine that.”
“Wait, why don’t you understand me? Misaka-san, is your mourning clothes ability stuffed with fluffy cotton or something!?”
“Hey, quit it, don’t grab onto me, you made your choice, you exhibitionist idiot, so now deal with the consequences on your own.”
Really, those were supposed to be winter mourning clothes, so why was her skin showing through?
And wouldn’t you normally at least drape a shawl or stole over your shoulders to stay warm when outside?
“Mikoto stared into the distance and muttered to herself.
“They do say children don’t feel the cold. Or is the saying that idiot’s can’t catch cold the one I want here?”
“I don’t want to hear that from the girl who wears shorts no matter how rainy or windy it is.”
Shokuhou was lucky she wasn’t wearing a shawl. Because Mikoto might have strangled her with it.
Just as Tokiwadai’s Ace and Queen were about to start grappling on a 2nd story outdoor passageway, something flashed in the corner of Mikoto’s vision.
It came from the open terminal at the interior of the large C-shaped shopping mall.
It was a taxi’s headlights.
The tall-roofed light station wagon taxi was modeled after the London ones. It was very round and cute.
Shokuhou Misaki was using her phone as she walked.
She appeared to have used a taxi hailing app.
“We can’t exactly walk through the entire city dressed like this, can we?”
“No, we can’t,” honestly admitted Mikoto.
Yes…
“You’re dressed as provocatively as a video producer desperate to get her subscriber count up. If you were walking out in the open, Anti-Skill would be on the scene in no time even this early in the morning.”
“Sigh. I really don’t want to hear that from the girl strutting around in the much freakier combination of a 14-year-old in mourning clo- gbhbhbhbhbhbbh!?”
Oh, it turned out the chain of her purse could also be used to strangle.
The mall hadn’t officially opened yet, so the escalator wasn’t running. After using it like stairs to reach the ground floor, Mikoto and Shokuhou climbed into the taxi’s back seat.
The driver was a woman. Maybe that was something the app let you request.
“Where to?”
“To the District 7 high school that was recently rebuilt. The one requiring black clothes like this to get in today.”
“Right.”
That was all the driver said.
The taxi smoothly pulled out onto the public road.
The driver thoughtfully switched off the overly bright LCD advertisement.
Mikoto’s warm Japanese clothing was fluffy enough to make fastening her seat belt a challenge. After making sure she heard it click, she sighed.
“So are we splitting the fare 50/50?”
“Sorry, but this is a hired vehicle with a contract updated every six months, so the distance of a single trip like this doesn’t really have a price. Or were you offering to pay for a full half month?”
“Go to hell.”
Their wealthy surroundings had its pros and its cons. Showing off with vehicles like this tended to escalate in any surroundings, but at Tokiwadai some girls went as far as hiring a helicopter. And unlike in the movies, they couldn’t just land on any building roof, which made them extremely inconvenient for getting around in a city.
The taxi…or was it technically a hired vehicle? Whatever it was, the car traveled smoothly.
The city had a unique feel this early in the morning.
Some of the restaurants were serving their morning menu, but most other service industry locations had their metal shutters down. The city still hadn’t woken from its slumber. In some places, both sides of the major street were rejecting customers.
No.
Was it more than just that?
“…”
Since she had nothing to discuss with the scheming queen, Mikoto looked out the window.
Academy City was torn up.
Buildings here and there were covered by soundproofing sheets and construction equipment like bulldozers and concrete mixer trucks were traveling every which way on the morning streets. At some intersections, the streetlights were dark and adults were directing traffic. They must have been using noise canceling technology, but a closer inspection showed the flashing light of welding being done this early in the morning.
Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible. The repairs to the city had been delayed by one major incident after another.
(I wasn’t involved in it all, though.)
Would the outcome have differed had she been?
Mikoto wasn’t confident she could have survived an incident not even that idiot had managed to overcome.
She didn’t feel like she had survived.
She had been left behind.
That more accurately summed up her feelings.
Those who had lost their lives may have been furious to hear her say so, though.
She saw a city of white, black, and gray.
The pretty exterior had been stripped away.
Just viewing it brought a gloom drifting down onto her like volcanic ash.
She muttered a few words with her eyes still directed outside the window.
“…How much longer?”
“We’re almost there.”
Part 4
At the international airport in Haneda.
Kanzaki Kaori was Japanese, so she could blend into the crowds easily enough (including her 2m katana she had slipped through hidden among her luggage). She knew she had been chosen for this role for that purpose.
The Amakusas were currently being protected by the Anglican Church.
This naturally had an affect on their actions.
(But…)
She was gathering a lot of attention.
And not because she was wearing a midriff-baring top and jeans with one leg cut off at the base of the thigh.
“How long are you going to keep crying?”
“But…but…”
She was with Itsuwa.
They had received word of that boy’s death some time ago. Nevertheless, Itsuwa had been like this the entire flight here. The flight attendant kept giving her worried looks and the child in a nearby seat had snickered, probably because he thought she was overreacting to a movie.
Yet she was supposed to be a member of the Amakusa Church who stuck to their faith even if it meant going into hiding.
As Itsuwa finally replied, her eyes were red from rubbing them so much.
Tatemiya, Tsushima, and the rest had managed to restrain themselves, but Itsuwa hadn’t.
“It doesn’t bother you, Priestess? I mean…we can never…never see him again.”
“…”
Kanzaki had failed to save someone.
She was always insisting she would save everyone, yet this was a familiar feeling for Saint Kanzaki Kaori. She was always the only one to survive and the world never did change.
He was dead, but time marched on.
Mercilessly.
No, she couldn’t just let death happen and move on. There was much that had to be done because someone had died.
Kanzaki sighed softly.
The smell of morning curry wafted in, presumably from the lounge. Just like any other day.
Academy City’s District 23 had an international airport. There were direct flights there from England. So why had the Amakusas entered Japan through Haneda, which was outside the city?
Kanzaki Kaori quietly asked for confirmation.
“You know what we must do, don’t you?”
“Yesh…”
Part 5
Gray Academy City was falling apart after so many consecutive battles.
A long narrow polished car drove slowly through the city, looking out of place among all the damage that had happened too quickly for repairs to be made.
It was colored black and gold.
It was a hearse.
There must have been a tacit understanding because the workers directing traffic rotated their red poles to keep the hearse moving.
Academy City had the unusual feature of a population 80% made up of students. The housing was overwhelmingly made up of student dorms. This greatly changed the methods for wakes and funerals compared to ordinary cities. For example, the majority of people had no blood relatives in the city, so the body was generally not returned home for a wake after the death was confirmed at a hospital. A wake was either held at a ceremony hall or the body was stored in the morgue a while longer.
Also, funerals were usually held at the student’s school.
This served several purposes: it helped reduce the impact of the death on the teachers and students, any specialized facilities for that purpose would be too few in number to cover all the city’s dead, and most importantly of all, it made a clear statement of who had jurisdiction over the body that had gone through the esper development program.
Altogether, this meant there was no hiding the date of a funeral.
Because of this, if you knew the start and end locations – the frog-faced doctor’s hospital and an ordinary high school in this case – you could predict what route the hearse would take. It helped that the unusual length of a hearse restricted what streets it could use.
A building was leaning at an angle after its rebuilding had been delayed.
On its roof, Human Aleister clutched the twisted railing and stared intently down at the ground.
The hearse couldn’t have been more vulnerable.
He could only imagine they were unaware of the value of what they carried.
The golden retriever by his side spoke bitterly.
“Don’t.”
“But this is the last chance.”
“See him off. Like a true friend should.”
“I know that!! But this is the only chance to steal the body intact!” he roared.
Anyone could choose to do the right thing. But there were paths that could not be reached in that way. Throughout this human’s history, he had been despised for taking those paths.
He didn’t ask for others’ understanding.
He had learned all too well over the course of his life that someone who feigned intellectualism by lobbing criticisms from a position of safety could never direct history in a positive direction.
If he was going to change things, it had to be now.
Chances were slippery. They were reduced in real time.
And they never grew.
“He will be at the crematorium in a few hours’ time!! Once even his bones have been burned and not even a hair remains to retrieve his DNA map from, it’s all over. Then I truly will be powerless. …Doing the right thing? Nonsense. What good is that other than a salve to dull the pain of failure??? This is how it always works in my life! It’s too late to regret your actions once it’s all over!!”
The boy’s death had already been confirmed.
He was past the point of being revived by electric shocks or a cardiac massage.
Why?
Why obsess over the presence of the body at this stage?
Why must he steal it intact?
Aleister’s opinion was simple.
He simply couldn’t accept it.
He had seen the moment of death more times than he could count.
But that didn’t mean he was used to it.
“Academy City has clone technology.”
Anyone would feel this way.
If there was a means of overturning death, what was wrong with relying on it?
This really could be the last chance. So struggle. He had no obligation to nobly give up and protect the natural order.
He shouted.
With all his strength.
“What about powered suits filled with life-support devices, cyborg tech, artificial ghosts, or even giving his preserved corpse autonomous movement! Yes, he’s dead, but so what? Death is no reason to give up!! If I make all the mistakes myself, then he can again smile in this world!!!”
The golden retriever said nothing.
Aleister had to know he was wrong.
But Kihara Noukan understood how foolish it was to reject someone’s emotions based on what was logically right. Besides, the Kihara family placed no importance on what the general public considered to be “right”.
Aleister was human through and through.
For better and for worse.
Kihara Noukan actually liked that messier side of him. That was a fact.
“But.”
The golden retriever used a skinny mechanical arm to place a cigar in his mouth.
And he prepared a special lighter to light it.
“Not everyone is going to understand your idea of romance.”
Without warning and as cheaply as in a TV drama, a cold rain began to fall.
Kihara Noukan stared at his top-quality Cuban in disappointment.
The rooftops were private property, so Academy City’s no smoking ordinance shouldn’t have applied there.
“…”
There had been no advance sign.
This rain was blatantly unnatural.
Then again, maybe it was wrong to look for anything natural inside Academy City to begin with.
A voice spoke within the pouring rain.
“Cool it.”
He wasn’t actually here of course.
The familiar voice was not playing from a speaker. Even a researcher with the Kihara name was a smidge impressed.
“That’s the sound of the falling rain. So are you superimposing your voice onto the vibrations of the raindrops themselves?”
Meanwhile, the human spoke with his voice low.
As if he were uttering a powerful curse.
“The new Board Chairman, huh?”
“And get a clue. You don’t have a choice here. That third-rate bastard used up all his options that day. That’s all there is to this. Neither of us can waltz in after the fact and start messing with things.”
This rain didn’t just seem artificial.
It truly was artificial rain created by Academy City technology.
He could freely control the entire world’s weather and environment, but a single person’s life was beyond his reach. Controlling so much great knowledge wasn’t enough to make someone happy.
But this wasn’t enough to extinguish Aleister’s obsession which burned as hot as scorching lava.
Like steam, incredible emotion rose from his shoulders.
“You can’t just let this happen, can you? You must understand. He didn’t need to die. Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible – those were all issues we should have solved! But he carried it all on his shoulders when there was no need to!! And now you’re going to give up? Surely you understand! If we follow the ordinary morality that everyone understands, we will lose him forever!!”
“Yes,” admitted Accelerator.
He accepted the possibility that something that should have ended could be made to continue using a cruel and grotesque method.
If all you wanted to do was make the flesh and bones called Kamijou Touma continue operating, that could be done.
You could mend the stopped brain and send electrical signals through it again. But only that.
However.
Even then…
“But this isn’t your city anymore.”
“Kh.”
“I didn’t unfairly usurp it from you. You handed the keys to me yourself because you were satisfied. Coming back now and trying to take it back is just sad.”
He wasn’t level-headed.
He knew what this meant.
He had his own thoughts on the matter. But Accelerator appeared to be fighting his own emotions. And the #1 knew what happened when his emotions and his reason fought and the emotions won. After crawling through the city’s darkness, he knew all too well.
And he knew that bloody path led nowhere.
So he would show that his desire to not turn back and to keep his path a one-way road was more than just wordplay.
“I know,” said the new Board Chairman. His voice firm. “After choosing to participate in that experiment to kill 20 thousand clones, I know what it means for someone to die. The living are free to struggle against death. And I think they should. But someone else messing with someone who’s already dead is something else entirely. It’s similar, but so very different, Aleister.”
The 20 thousand clones’ numbers had been reduced to less than 10 thousand.
Could he atone for his sins by using the same cells to produce another 10 thousand girls with the same face?
Like hell he could.
…Those unspoken words left Aleister stunned.
Even an idiot could understand this.
Accelerator was undeniably in the right here.
Kihara Noukan’s wet and unlit cigar wiggled uselessly in his mouth.
(The military clones, hm? That experiment was meant to evolve the #1. Or that was the official story anyway. It pushed him to grow in an unexpected direction, but you’re still the one that gave him that push, Aleister.)
“People mustn’t defile the deaths of others. The question isn’t if it’s possible. The fact that it is technologically possible is why we must show restraint.”
Part 6
“…”
Aleister listened to it all.
He listened to the raindrop voice.
It didn’t reach him.
Not that he didn’t understand it.
That wasn’t what he wanted right now.
How could you find ordinary peace by following that sort of path?
Human Aleister clenched his teeth and whispered in a terrifyingly low voice.
“Now that I’ve heard you out.”
“Huh?”
“What if I still refuse?”
“Then I’ll stop you of course, outsider. I won’t let you turn Academy City back into what it was. Like I already told you: this isn’t your city.”
The voice carried by the raindrops pounding against the rooftop conveyed icy killer intent.
Academy City began to move.
Rotors loudly sliced at the air.
“…”
These were unmanned Six Wings attack helicopters.
Those had been used in combat for a while now, but they had only become known to the media at large during World War Three, which was arranged in secret by Fiamma of the Right. The world had been shocked by the sight of the helicopters accurately locating an enemy tank battalion in the middle of a raging blizzard and then destroying only the enemy weapons while avoiding all the anti-air fire.
It was an older weapon at this point.
Daily progress was a thing everywhere, but the value of each and every minute and second was so much greater in Academy City.
Weapons several generations ahead of the current standard had to be lurking deep within labs across the city.
This was an attack with overwhelming numbers by a known technology. It was effective, but it brought no risk to the one giving the orders. It was a boring “no risk, high return” strategy. The leader safely surrounded by thick walls only had to view the distant future and spit out logical arguments.
It was the method of Academy City’s Board Chairman.
Aleister felt like he was seeing his old self.
(He’s dealing with me, who, for better or for worse, knows Academy City inside and out. I thought he would at least silently distribute nanodevices modeled after a deadly virus, but does he not even have that much left to use?)
“Is that all?”
Aleister felt no fear.
He only felt rage.
Take this seriously.
This is literally the final line to determine his fate.
“Did you really think this was enough for someone as stubborn as me to quietly back off!?”
A giant blackness appeared with so much force it seemed ready to engulf the world before concentrating powerfully down into a single point above Aleister’s palm.
Black.
That was a pitch black flame not found in the natural world.
It was the ultimate destruction controlled by “the wickedest man in the world” who prophesied the outbreak of World War One and, since he couldn’t stop the death it would bring, considered putting together a massive spell using all the bloodshed.
“Protector of the abyss – that is, the barrier none can cross – and the monster that severs the bonds between people to prevent their evolution. Your value is 333, your meaning is dispersion. Demon who I have named, gather in my hand, Coronzon!!!”
He felt his own heart crawl disconcertingly.
Something unseen had been carved away.
He could tell.
But this was what it meant to stick to your guns.
Had he thought he could do this without any risk to himself?
As long as it would not force misfortune and tragedy onto an unknown third party, Aleister would use any forbidden magic.
This would scatter “sparks” from the collision between phases, but he would direct that side effect onto himself.
A cold sweat very different from the chilly rain formed on his face, but he bared his teeth and spoke.
“You’re no monster. You’re as much a human as I am.”
“…”
“And as you have gathered all the ugliest parts of that humanity, allow me to gift you the ultimate foolishness. …This is death. If you would dismiss human death as something that ‘can’t be helped’, then raise your head from your paperwork and look me in the eye. I will test the rawness of death for you!!!”
The voice didn’t even respond.
It was a thorough rejection. The ultimate lack of understanding. Which may have been why the new Board Chairman was so disappointed.
It didn’t end with bringing down the Six Wings.
Far below, on the surface, a monster emerged looking like a tank gun attached to the roof of an 8-wheel armored truck. That was a Predator Octopus. By breaking the pillars in accordance with careful calculations, even a building like this could be brought down.
A mere 120mm gun?
Laughable.
Who did they think they could destroy with that?
It all felt like a desperate attempt to cover up a lack of forces. After the consecutive attacks of Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible, Academy City was run down. It didn’t have many remaining forces.
If an individual wanted to have their way within the city, now was the only chance.
The 8-wheeled vehicle turned its gun to aim at Aleister.
It didn’t bother thinking about cover or an escape route.
That suggested it was unmanned.
An explosive sound erupted out.
It was a roar.
Produced by a human body. The wall of compressed air blew away the airborne shell, crushed the unmanned weapon, and caused a circle of asphalt to sink down. Deep down.
(I will not let him be taken to the crematorium.)
Thus, Aleister was leaning forward in that moment.
(As long as I can secure Kamijou Touma’s whole body, there are still options. Plenty of options!! I don’t even need any help from Academy Ci-)
Crash!!!
Without warning, a powerful lightning bolt fell from the sky, piercing Aleister’s body on its way down.
Part 7
Accelerator had not left the District 10 prison.
Not a single step.
That was the restriction he had placed on himself.
And he didn’t even need to.
“Hmph.”
Gas pipes, water pipes, and fiber optic cables.
All sorts of plumbing and wiring was laid out like a spider web below Academy City. The total length could wrap around the earth two and a half times with more to spare.
So.
With the ultimate vector control power, there was no need to leave the strictly guarded prison. As long as he knew an effective path, he could easily use the artificial objects underground to manipulate the atmosphere, create pressure differences, and send down an electric attack like a spear piercing the human who was located several train stations away.
He had never said he was helpless just because he wouldn’t leave.
No matter the reason, he would not use a crisis as an excuse to cut his punishment short. But with so much power at his disposal, he couldn’t just let people die when he was capable of saving them. Both of those were absolutes in his mind.
He would make them both work together.
So the new Board Chairman had honed his #1 Level 5 power to this point.
Could he win against that bastard now?
(A meaningless question.)
Accelerator shook his head.
What good was winning?
For that matter, did he even need enemies?
Creating a world with no need for a division between friend and foe would be the much greater challenge. But there was a boy who had accomplished something close to that. He hadn’t cared too much about the level system, he had understood adults and children alike, and he hadn’t cared if someone was from inside or outside Academy City. It was a small thing, but someone had created a world like that.
He hadn’t feared failure.
Even if it meant embarrassment, injury, or acting in vain, he hadn’t hesitated to reach out his hand.
It was the same for Accelerator. In his fairly short life, the moments he sensed obvious growth in himself were generally when he was crawling through the mud. The #1 could count his experiences like that on one hand, but that boy had done it every single day like it was normal.
He had grown so much more.
Which explained why Accelerator had never been able to catch up.
Board Chairman of Academy City?
Maybe all forms of information gathered here.
But that boy’s field of view had to have been much wider.
(Focus on the immediate issue.)
Accelerator looked to one wall of his cell.
The LCD monitor there displayed all sorts of information at once and it was currently producing a voice.
This was not a voice of fiery rage.
The emotion was more like a resentment with the sticky consistency of mud.
It was the voice of a cornered beast.
“That was roughly a billion volts. Did that wake you up, human?”
“Hm, so the artificial rain was only the rehearsal. To test how far your vector control could influence atmospheric and meteorological conditions!!”
He hadn’t used dry ice or silver iodide.
This weather control had used an entirely different principle to alter the atmospheric pressure.
Should he create some scorching plasma next?
“That level of deception is standard on the dark side. People have a bad habit of readily accepting lies they find convenient. Ridiculous. Like I would change the weather just to help you cool your head. Civilian companies have weather forecast apps these days. And there are tons of people who would rate them poorly after just one prank like this.”
Part 8
Burning wasn’t quite the right word.
All the oxygen molecules in the air were split into individual atoms before rebonding and giving off the distinctive odor of ozone.
Aleister clenched his teeth while doubled over on the rooftop as a second punishing blow dropped toward him. A blinding flash and deafening boom followed.
“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
“I don’t need a big, one-shot attack.”
These words rejected everything Accelerator used to be.
And he spoke them without a hint of hesitation.
Were the logics of an offensive battle and a defensive battle entirely different?
“If I have a way to whittle down your stamina bit by bit, I just have to keep doing that as long as it takes. I can slowly but surely wear down your defenses. I will continue to fight with the resources I have. Can you kill me right away? If not, you’re screwed. It doesn’t matter how boring and silly a win this will be.”
“Gh, khh!!”
A third bolt. A fourth.
But he didn’t break.
Aleister Crowley did not fall.
Everyone else was accepting that boy’s death.
He had to consider what would be lost if he broke now.
Just once more!!
“Not…yet!! I will have my way this time… I will use every piece of knowledge at my disposal!! But not for myself. So that he can stand back up and once more reach out that right hand to save many more people! I will break any taboo that stands in my way. If it will keep them from giving up on a human life, I will stand up to even the most powerful enemy!”
“What does it matter if you defeat that enemy? Why do you even need to make enemies?”
He had no answer.
He couldn’t find anything to say.
He was the human who had belonged to the world’s largest magic cabal and had made full use of his notoriety in that world but had also made countless enemies and ultimately vanished into the shadows of history. Aleister himself knew what would happen if he bragged about being the most infamous magician in the world.
A life of making and defeating enemies did not lead to happiness.
The effort spent on gathering the power to kill and end problems that way could instead be spent on working to explain yourself. To avoid opposition and misunderstandings in the first place. Effort toward that was much healthier and correct.
The Golden cabal had been the world’s largest.
Aleister Crowley was the magician who had won and survived the Battle of Blythe Road.
But.
In the end.
Had he found happiness by only pursuing the power to master magic and to fight?
What did it matter if you were the strongest?
Someone else had once walked that path.
The old Board Chairman had stayed there, but the new Board Chairman had begun searching through the darkness for a different exit.
His voice spoke.
The collection of raindrop sounds carried human emotion.
No matter how many detours he had taken along the way, his continuing effort to atone for his sins had allowed this monster to begin down a different path from Aleister.
“You could have risked your life to reach out a helping hand. You were in the city, so you weren’t just an observer. You had what it took to take part in the conclusion. But now isn’t the time for that.”
“!!”
“It’s already over.”
One by one, the new Board Chairman’s low words stabbed deep into his own chest.
“You were in the city, weren’t you? Then location wasn’t the issue. Like I said, it was an issue of timing. You chose the wrong time to play your trump card.”
Aleister’s mouth opened and closed, but no words left it.
And not because of the lightning.
They were both unusual geniuses, so he understood what the #1 was trying to say.
Simply put…
“Accept the truth. Stop blaming it on everyone else. …This is all the result of your own choices. Trying to cover up your own failures will only distort the world around you.”
“Oh, oh.”
He crumbled.
He couldn’t even breathe.
His voice eventually rose to a cry – the cry of human lamentation.
…It wasn’t like he had especially cared about the boy to begin with.
No matter how unusual they were, his plan had him observing all residents of Academy City equally.
“Let’s do this.”
”No words are necessary. We know each other better than that.”
But in truth, that boy had delved deep inside the Windowless Building and, with Mina Mathers’s help, smashed Aleister’s plan with his right fist.
“Then prove that we can defeat Coronzon without using Lilith!! What other way is there to protect your precious baby!!!???”
He had saved Baby Lilith and battled Great Demon Coronzon.
During a large-scale battle covering the entire United Kingdom, if not the entire world, Aleister had somehow ended up fighting alongside that boy.
How much had that saved him on the inside even as he maintained a cynical attitude toward the world?
Without seeing that boy’s way of life up close, Aleister could never have faced his own inferiority complex and would have been killed by Mathers then.
“Ahhhh!! Ahhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”
When Alice Anotherbible appeared and delivered a devastating blow to the dark side, Aleister had once more entered Academy City.
The monster himself had forgotten how that boy had wept upon learning of Human Aleister Crowley’s survival.
“Run away with me, Anna Sprengel!!!”
He and the boy had stood on opposite sides on the question of what to do about Anna Sprengel.
From an efficiency and safety standpoint, Aleister hadn’t been wrong.
He was sure of that.
But Kamijou Touma had been right.
That boy had clearly been correct.
Aleister knew that wicked woman had smiled happily by Kamijou Touma’s side after her poison had been removed and the threat negated. That had been a win for the boy’s belief in human possibility.
Aleister couldn’t abandon him.
Even if they had parted ways after failing to reach an agreement.
But.
This was that human’s selfish desire.
Was it not what that boy wanted and would it not make him happy?
This desire wouldn’t lead anywhere.
The memories of him that Aleister had worked so hard to gather up were spilling away.
It was time.
Give up.
If you truly want to focus on a life more precious than your own.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
Yes.
The final person accepted it.
Accepted his death.
Part 9
Inside a District 7 hospital, it was still early morning.
No one else was inside the hallway waiting area where a few vending machines were lined up. The frog-faced doctor sat alone on the artificial leather sofa there staring out of the window as raindrops pounded on it.
The paper cup in his hand hadn’t moved in a while. The coffee had long since gone cold.
“…Phew.”
His let out a heavy breath.
He had seen the hearse off.
It was necessary, but this was his hardest job as a doctor.
Would the funeral be starting about now?
He drew the line here.
As the doctor who had failed to save him, he felt wrong heading to the funeral. He wished the boy’s surviving family could at least direct all their anger at him, but his parents wouldn’t even be in the city.
There were lives he could not save.
No matter what strange alternate name he was known by, there was nothing he could do when the patient’s heart and brain activity had stopped by the time they arrived at the hospital. The frog-faced doctor could only save the living.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder.
What if?
If he had broken more of the rules, could something have changed here?
(Does it make me coldhearted that I can calmly say I shouldn’t do that specifically because it is technically possible?)
“…”
Hurried footsteps snapped the frog-faced doctor out of his reverie.
Someone poked their head out from around the hallway corner.
It was a familiar face.
It belonged to a young medical intern.
“Doctor, we have an emergency! A District 7 ambulance is headed our way. There was an accident at a construction site and a worker had their hand caught in the machinery.”
“Understood. Prepare to receive them immediately.”
He swallowed the rest of the liquid in the paper cup, crushed it in his grip, and tossed it in the nearby trash can.
He stood from the sofa.
The frog-faced doctor turned around.
His white coat swishing around him.
He turned his back.
He cut off all feelings related to Kamijou Touma who was already gone.
It was a conscious choice.
Nothing he could do would bring back the dead.
But there was another emergency patient he could still save.
Part 10
In a brand new high school in District 7, Komoe-sensei spoke to the students in her classroom.
“Fukiyose-chan, Aogami-chan…and the rest of you too. The ceremony is about to begin, so please move to the auditorium.”
They filed out.
It was all in motion now.
The final obstacle – Aleister Crowley – had been removed.
The world had accepted it.
Kamijou Touma’s funeral was finally beginning.
