Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item7 Epilogue
Epilogue: Go Beyond the Möbius[edit]
Mugino Shizuri was only meant to set the stage.
Hanano viewed only one person as her enemy: Academy City’s #6.
The Dark Side’s Bane.
As long as she could severely wound and kill them, nothing else mattered.
She didn’t care what was broken.
She didn’t care how many lives were lost as the timeline collapsed.
She didn’t care at all.
“At long last we stand on equal footing. Live or die. Win or lose. No one can predict anything in this chaos.”
The chilly night breeze washed pleasantly over her.
And she smiled with her voice lowered to a whisper.
Now, Hanano Choubi’s true identity was a Voice on the Phone – an adult human. She had never undergone the esper development Curriculum, meaning she wasn’t even a Level 0.
She had no ability to look into the future no matter how hard she focused her mind.
The trick was a simple one once revealed.
No matter how much of a tightrope walk that technological trick was, it produced a magical effect as long as the #6 didn’t realize the truth.
(I don’t need any kind of special power and I don’t need to go through the Curriculum. With enough processing power, you can predict the future to an extremely high level of accuracy. So I simply had to use my VIP privileges as a Voice on the Phone to secretly use that supercomputer.)
“Tree Diagram. It still exists here in the past, you see.”
That was Academy City’s – no, the world’s most powerful supercomputer.
The monstrous thing precisely predicted each and every molecule to create 100% accurate weather forecasts for the entire planet down to the second.
That was enough to predict the future.
Based on what the tasks she had seen running when using her power as a Voice on the Phone to take a peek, it was currently enjoying a fairly awful part of the past related to the #1, Level 6, and 20 thousand clone girls. She honestly didn’t care about any of that. That quite literally was not Hanano Choubi’s world.
She would enjoy things in her own way.
She stuck a fresh menthol-flavor cigarette in her mouth and lit it in the darkness.
(After this…yes, if I can watch out for contact with a few exceptions, this should all play out the way I want.)
If all she needed to do was kill a confirmed survivor, then she didn’t need to put her own life at risk. For example, she could have chosen a more harmless target like Fremea Seivelun and taken her life.
However…
“Trying to kill one of those weaker types has a risk of dragging a bunch of extra people into this. …Was it called Agitate Halation? It’s always like this, I swear. A bunch of unpredictable heroes showing up is about the last thing I need.”
The world of villains had to be home to only villains.
It had to be separate.
That was the initial assumption. It was self-evident. If nothing irregular got in the way, the dark side would continue to deteriorate on its own. Then the #6 would be dragged into it when they tried to intervene. Setting up a three-way battle.
(I can change the future. Did you underestimate me because I’m in the past? Let me send those words right back at you, you goddamn #6.)
Like this, there were tricks allowing one to see the future from the past.
But…
Interfering with the past from the future very clearly surpassed the bounds of science.
(I couldn’t find the answer even in the Bank.)
It was so inexplicable that only an esper power could have done it. She knew who her enemy was, but she couldn’t move on without accepting that enemy was a true monster.
What was their power? It couldn’t be something as simple as controlling time.
Look more closely.
If you don’t let the fear win and you keep observing to the end, a weakness is sure to show itself.
Just then…
A call came to the phone Quarterback had been using. The screen said “Morning Call”, but this couldn’t actually be her. Hanano was the only one who needed to know how to bring the dead back to life.
Which member of Item would it be?
This was something of a gamble, but her guess was wrong.
“Oh, how strange. I thought for sure this would be Frenda-san running to me in tears. In fact, I thought I had specifically set things up so she would do that.”
Hanano laughed.
She had found her comrade in arms.
“I didn’t expect you to call me and I can see the future by cheating. What trick did you use here…Takitsubo-san the Traitor?”