Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item7 Ending
The man heard himself groan.
He was puzzled to find he was still among the living.
“Still alive there?”
A fully mocking voice reached him from above.
From very close above.
Perhaps his wound had been treated in some way while he was unconscious.
No, the first shot aside, had the one shown to Shizuri and the rest over the phone even been a real bullet?
Hanano Choubi looked down at the man collapsed on the ground, stuck a fresh cigarette in her mouth, and ignited her oil lighter, its small flame pushing away the cold shadows.
“And now you are dead. It’s important that I sow confusion. Particularly when it comes to throwing off the #6’s reading of the situation.”
“?”
“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t understand the value of that since you aren’t from Academy City. To be clear, that’s something I wish I could say about myself. What you do about it is up to you.”
She had successfully set up a fight to the death between Hanano Choubi and Mugino Shizuri. She had dragged the #6 into it.
All three of them were confirmed survivors.
If any of them died, the distant future timeline would fully collapse. She could finally do real damage to the #6 who was meddling from a position of safety.
…Everything was going as planned. But on the dark side, where the unexpected was common and the rules were constantly broken, it was best to be on your guard when you couldn’t find a single thing at all that wasn’t going to plan.
She had to account for the backup backup plans and even unexpected misfortune.
She had to predict it all.
Leave even a single pinhole open and the #6 would use it to launch a counterattack.
She wanted a solid defense.
She was the one drawing up the plans and launching the attack, but she still wanted a trump card that even she couldn’t predict. Without that, she couldn’t fully ride the wave of the dark side.
So she wanted another joker.
(The Mugino Family head is actually still alive. The #6 will be too focused on finding some way of stopping my clash with Mugino to notice this.)
“What happened to Mujinayama?”
“You already asked that. Is it always like this with you? How many things do you value above your own life?” Hanano looked exasperated. “If someone isn’t a confirmed survivor, it doesn’t affect the timeline whether they live or die. So I have no interest in them.”
“…”
“And I have no reason to go out of my way to kill someone who doesn’t need to die. I don’t have time to spare on meaningless detours.”
The elderly man remained silent for a while.
Eventually, he opened his mouth again.
“The Mugino Family will not take it sitting down if I am considered dead. That would mean ignoring the person who killed their head. So you will be pursued by an international criminal organization numbering in the hundreds of thousands.”
“There is no chance at all I will be killed by outsiders like that, so don’t worry about me.”
“Even if Mugino Shizuri counts among them?”
A short silence fell.
But it wasn’t fear or surprise that had left her speechless.
Hanano was clearly enjoying herself.
“That’s exactly what I want. This wouldn’t be a gamble otherwise.”
If she only wanted to break the timeline and destroy the future, she only needed to kill herself as a confirmed survivor.
Her awareness of the future gave her that absolute power against the world as a whole.
So why didn’t she?
(If my survival route and death route can both destroy the future, of course I prefer the one where I win while living and laughing.)
She wanted to survive and she wanted to laugh in her victory, so the hell she had planned out included the incomplete irregular choice of letting the head act freely.
She knew that was weakness on her part.
It was excess unrelated to her initial objective of defeating the #6.
But Hanano wouldn’t deny that part of herself. For one thing, she hadn’t started this fight with a noble and wise objective in mind.
As a master of disguise and infiltration, she wasn’t interested in ordinary beauty standards.
When presented with her own weakness and ugliness, she could bring herself to love the flaws others had discovered in her.
(If any one of us three dies, the timeline collapses. …And if that isn’t enough, I now have the Mugino Family head as a trump card. This three-way battle isn’t just three-way. The #6 can’t ignore this. They will do something. But this irregular move should help me tear down whatever that is.)
She lit another new cigarette.
After enjoying the cheap flavored smoke, she gave her answer.
“I am a villain.”
“…”
“That is why I’m willing to bet my life on something as trivial and insignificant as this. Humans will do anything to avoid humiliation. …So I’m more than willing to make a gamble if it lets me get back at that goddamn #6. It’s always like this, I swear.”
Now, make your way to Academy City’s wall.
That absolute wall divides the world in two: inside and outside.
Her direct clash with Mugino Shizuri awaits here there.