4_Chapter 3_ Blockaded

CHAPTER 3 BlockadedBattle_Cry. 1 Sherry Cromwell retained her grace and elegance even as she walked through the gunshots and whirling dust clouds on the battlefield. A stone statue stood in front of her like a giant shield. Its form had been created from floor tiles, sign boards, and pillars—anything that it could find here in the underground mall, rolled up like clay. It was easily four meters tall, but that made its head hit the ceiling, so it was constantly hunched over. She sliced her white oil pastel through the air. That action became an order, and the giant statue advanced. There were Anti-Skill officers clad in jet-black armor before her. They had brought tables and couches from a nearby café out into the passage to create a barricade. They were laying down heavy fire from behind them. They were separated into groups of three, so that when one group had to reload, another one would begin to shoot, thereby eliminating the potential opening—just like the firearm squads of Oda Nobunaga. They have some skill, but they lack style, Sherry judged, disappointed. The halls of the underground mall were narrow to begin with, but the statue—the golem, Ellis—was like a moving bulwark. Not even one bullet made it past the golem to where she was. Hundreds of them impacted Ellis, but none made a decisive hit. The bullets could open holes in its limbs, but it would automatically repair all damage by tearing off wall tiles nearby, sucking them in like a giant magnet. Ker-click , came a metal noise. One Anti-Skill had lost his temper and pulled the pin from a hand grenade. He tried to hurl it under the statue’s legs and past it in order to deal damage directly to Sherry. “Ellis.” A second before he could, Sherry swiped her oil pastel across the air. The statue stomped on the ground. Grrunch The floor of the underground mall shook badly like a boat being tossed around by large waves. It took less than a second, and that was the very moment the grenade left the Anti-Skill officer’s hand. It stole his sense of timing, and the pin-less grenade rolled right back to his own feet. A shout. Then an explosion. Blood spattered. It was a shrapnel grenade rather than a firebomb, so it didn’t blow away the barricade, but she still smelled blood from just across the thin separation. Even those who managed to avoid the storm of shards were forced to dive behind the barricade to escape the explosion. Many of the officers had dropped their rifles from the impact. Bwshing The oil pastel cut through the air like a sword being drawn from its sheath. A shadow appeared above their heads. Ellis brought down its arm like an industrial construction machine. They reached for their spare sidearms, but it was too late. They were far too weak to stop this enemy. 2 It was a battlefield. The very moment Kamijou turned the corner, he wanted to cover his mouth with his hands. It was a real-life battlefield. In the scene that lay before him, there was no fighting, no gunshots, and no shouting. Wounded people, broken people, and people whose bodies were torn limb from limb were leaning against pillars and walls. These weren’t the front lines. It was a field hospital, the place to which the defeated could temporarily retreat and tend to their wounds. They were Anti-Skill officers. Twenty of them, he estimated. Their wounds were not normal ones. Just how strong had their opponent been? Their injuries demanded more than simple bandages and dressings. It was like their bodies were ripped fabric, and they needed to be repaired with a needle and thread. How crazy is this enemy? You’re telling me a sorcerer can do this much against this many Anti-Skills? He was speechless. Even an amateur like him, with no knowledge of the inner workings of their respective organizations, knew that there was a science-based faction and a magic-based one. Yet he’d always vaguely assumed that the power levels of each faction were roughly balanced. But look at this. Kamijou had crossed paths with a number of extraordinary sorcerers, so he thought he understood how strong they were. It came as no small shock to see the reality before him—of the science faction getting crushed like this. These people were supposed to protect the peace in Academy City, but they were no better than the cannon fodder in a Godzilla film. In spite of all that, they had no intent to withdraw. Anyone who could move, even the slightest bit, was taking chairs and tables out of the nearby stores and trying to build a barricade. Actually, it had nothing to do with whether or not they could move. They were beyond the stage where they could even care about that. They weren’t doing this under the assumption that they’d die. Kamijou felt their absolute resolve—to complete their mission even if it cost them their lives. But why…? He didn’t know what to say to that. They may have had plenty of training as professionals, but…they were really just schoolteachers. Nobody was forcing them to do any of this, and they weren’t getting paid for it. There was simply no reason for them to risk their lives fighting like this. They weren’t real police officers; they hadn’t passed civil service examinations. Who would blame them for running away under threat of death? And yet… Then, an Anti-Skill officer leaning against the wall found him standing there in the corner in a daze. Surprisingly, it was a woman. She stopped what she was doing—wrapping an injured comrade’s arm in a tourniquet—and shouted. “You, the kid over there! What on earth are you doing here, huh?!” All of the Anti-Skill members present turned to look at him when they heard her shout. Kamijou stood there, unable to answer. The woman who had shouted began to look really angry. “Damn, it’s one of Ms. Tsukuyomi’s brats. Were you locked in here? That’s why I told them not to rush to close up the walls! Young man, you need to run in the other direction, got that?! There are Judgment reinforcements at Gate A03, so if you can’t get out, then evacuate there first! And here, take this helmet! You’re better off than without it, got it?!” Tsukuyomi—that was Miss Komoe’s last name. That meant that she might have heard about Kamijou from her. The Anti-Skill woman removed her own helmet while shouting and heaved it at him. Flustered, it bounced about in his hands like a basketball before he finally stopped it. He looked around again. And then he realized the reason why they wouldn’t retreat. He took another step farther in. “Where are you going, young man?! Shit, I can’t even move! Somebody, anybody, hold that civilian back!” The Anti-Skill officer shouted and held out her hand, but she couldn’t reach him. A few people answered her call and tried to stop him, but they could barely do that much with their injuries. They didn’t even have the strength to stop a single high school student with no training of his own. But they still weren’t running away. They weren’t official police officers. No matter how much professional training they got, they were just teachers. This was really nothing more than an extension of patrolling the streets in the evening so that nothing bad befell the children. Perhaps that’s exactly why they understood. Nobody was forcing them to do this—so they understood how easily they’d fall if they let their own weakness conquer them. And they knew precisely who would suffer the consequences if that happened. Anti-Skill and Judgment members were never recommended or enlisted. They were always built from those who volunteered as candidates. It was simple. None of them were asked to do so; they were just here because they dearly wished to protect the children. Goddamn it…, Kamijou swore to himself. He brushed off the Anti-Skill members trying to stop him and proceeded forward. There was still a load of these idiots farther into the darkness—and from the looks of things, they were in a desperate situation. He tightened his right hand into a fist. He simply ran, gaze fixed ahead of him. If conventional attacks stood no chance…well, the opponent was a sorcerer. If he used his trump card, his right hand, they might be able to turn the tables. He headed deeper into the passageway, then noticed something strange. I don’t…hear anything? There should have been a gunfight raging down here, but it was too quiet. He couldn’t hear anything—not gunfire, not footsteps, not shouting. No floor-shaking tremors were happening, either. He got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. The feeling began to slip and slither through the rest of his body like a fungus. Could this be…? He ran forward, through the passages bathed in dim red light. What was waiting for him? “Heh. Hello. Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee-hee.” A husky female voice echoed through the darkness. A woman wearing a pitch-black dress with mussed blond hair and skin the color of chocolate stood in the center of the passage. Her skirt was long enough to conceal even her ankles. Its ends were frayed, damaged, and some of its seams were torn, perhaps because it had been dragged along the ground for such a long time. A statue stood there, shielding her. It was a giant puppet, made of iron pipes, chairs, tiles, dirt, lamps, and everything else in the area all balled and mixed together by force. And around them… What had once been a barricade was now a mess on the floor, scattered everywhere. It looked as though it had been directly hit with a cannonball. Covered in those fragments were seven or eight Anti-Skill officers lying defeated on the floor. Their limbs twitched—they must still have been alive. “Heh. Interesting. They’re wearing shock-absorbent armor. That must be how they survived a direct hit from Ellis…Well, I had a pretty good time because of it.” Her smile was a cruel one. Kamijou didn’t know what she meant by “direct hit from Ellis,” but he got the idea. An attack from that stone statue. He could imagine its power just by looking at what was left of the barricade. “How…” …can you do this? he finished mentally. On the other hand, the blond woman wasn’t especially interested. “Oh, my. You’re Imagine Breaker. I see the key to the Imaginary Number District isn’t with you. Hmm…What was she called again? Kaze, or wait, Kaza…something-or-other. Damn, why are Japanese names so complicated?” She played with her hair, as if all of this was a lot of trouble for her. “It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters. I don’t absolutely need to kill that brat. No, not that one.” “What?” He doubted his ears. He had guessed already that this woman was after Kazakiri and him. Why did she seem so uninterested? “What do you mean what? It means I can kill you instead” The woman whipped her oil pastel to the side. As if connected to that movement, the stone statue stomped one foot into the ground. There was an enormous crash, and Kamijou lost his balance. Then, the statue brought its foot down again. Unable to withstand the second pound, he fell to the floor. The woman, however, stood calmly in place—was she using some sort of trick? It was like she’d been cut out of the background. She was taking no damage from the quakes. “The earth is my power. Before Ellis, none can stand atop it. Come on, start crawling. Think you can bite me like that, you dog?” she said pridefully, glaring down at him. It was clear that this ground-pounding tactic could turn situations one-sided pretty quickly. The Anti-Skill officers with their guns wouldn’t have been able to do much, either. Actually, if they accidentally let their aim wander, they could even end up hitting allies. Kamijou tried to get back to his feet, but the woman preemptively flashed her oil pastel once more. The stone statue’s foot came down again and rattled the earth. If he could touch it with but a finger, the Imagine Breaker would destroy the preternatural power, but he couldn’t even take a step. “Y-you…!” “I’m not you, I’m Sherry Cromwell. Remember this…well, actually, never mind. You’re going to die here anyway, so I shouldn’t even bother naming myself as a member of English Puritanism.” “What?” He scowled. English Puritanism was the group Index belonged to. Sherry grinned thinly at him. “I’m starting a war, and I need a trigger for it. I need as many people as possible to know that I’m a pawn of the English Puritan Church…right, Ellis?” Sherry swung the oil pastel around with a flick of her wrist. Guided by her movements, the giant statue put its foot down on the ground, then swung its gigantic fist way up into the air. This had crushed the barricade in one shot, hastily constructed though it may have been. Kamijou tried to avoid it, but he found it difficult to move due to all the shaking. He desperately swung his right hand up and— “Get away, boy!” Suddenly, he heard a shout from beside him. One of the injured Anti-Skill officers, still on the ground, was gripping his rifle. Before Kamijou could do anything, fire erupted from its small barrel. The dim passage was filled with the sound and flash of a gunshot. Bullets ripped through the air one after another, impacting the golem’s legs in an attempt to stagger it. However… “Agh?!” He felt a blast of hot air graze his cheek and cried out unintentionally. Ellis’s body, blocking the passage, was a conglomeration of metal and concrete. Its weight must have measured in the tons, so bullets were obviously going to ricochet off it like a pinball. The Anti-Skill was trying to defend Kamijou from Ellis, and to his credit, the golem had stopped. Because he was aiming for the legs, it also couldn’t stomp its feet. If it tried to, the bullets could hit Sherry, who was standing behind it. But at the same time, the bullets were reflecting off of Ellis’s body in every direction. As a result, he couldn’t get up from taking cover on the ground. The officer single-mindedly continued his barrage. Though Kamijou was afraid that at some point one of the bullets would hit him, all he could do was cover his head with his hands. Shit, if only I could just get my hand on that giant bastard… There were less than three meters between Kamijou and Ellis, but he couldn’t carelessly make physical contact with it. Obviously he’d be at a higher risk of a stray bullet hitting him the closer he got. If he had one chance, it was when the officer reloaded. There was no way in hell the Anti-Skill’s rifle would be able to take down that statue. It didn’t have infinite bullets. He’d run out before long. In those few seconds he would spend replacing the magazine, the curtain of bullets would lift. He needed to rush Ellis during that time. Kamijou readied his body, filling it with strength so that he could leap out at any time… Pit-pat. Suddenly, he heard quiet footfalls behind him. Somehow, the weak footsteps left a clear imprint on his eardrums even as the sound of consecutive gunshots slammed against them. He looked behind him, moving only his neck in order to avoid the bouncing bullets. The red emergency lighting wasn’t useful, and it couldn’t light up the entire underground mall. It only illuminated a couple of feet. Darkness dominated the hallways beyond that. The footsteps were coming from that darkness. They didn’t sound like trained steps. They weren’t the fearless steps of a new enemy approaching, either. They were the steps of someone tiptoeing through a haunted house. The steps of a child who had come back to school at night to retrieve something he’d lost. Helpless, quivering footsteps. A terrible premonition rose in Kamijou’s chest. Then, as if to answer his unease… “…U-umm…” …he heard a girl’s voice. The silhouette of the voice’s owner appeared, coming out of the darkness and stepping under the red emergency light. He knew this girl. Straight, long hair that went down to her thighs, one bunch of hair sticking out the side tied up with a rubber band, thin-framed glasses on her nose—it was Hyouka Kazakiri, standing right in the middle of the hallway. “You idiot Why didn’t you wait for Shirai?!” His shout was loud enough to resound in the mall, even within the vortex of gunfire. She was just standing there defenselessly. He wanted to get up and run to her, but he couldn’t, because of the bouncing bullets. Kazakiri, however, didn’t seem to understand the situation. “…Oh. But, well…” “Just get down” “…Huh?” Kazakiri said, taken aback by Kamijou’s yell, but right then… Boom Her head flung backward. “Huh?” Kamijou muttered stupidly. Human eyes were, of course, not good enough to keep up with a speeding bullet. But anyone could still guess what had just happened. One of the rifle rounds had bounced off Ellis’s body and stricken Kazakiri directly in the face. Something skin-colored came flying off. Her glasses frames were ripped up and flew apart. But even though he knew all that, he couldn’t wrap his head around it. He didn’t want to. His brain reached critical capacity and blanked out. The gunfire had stopped at some point. The Anti-Skill officer was looking at the shot girl, looking quite dazed. Sherry frowned somewhat at the sudden development—her own target had suddenly self-destructed before her eyes in such an unexpected way. Amidst it all… Kazakiri leaned backward like a bridge… …and collapsed to the floor, limp, like a puppet. He heard the parts making up her face breaking. They crumbled. What looked like a piece of her head fell to the floor separately, long hair still attached to it. The bullet had hit the right side of her face, but this destruction…it was like her very skull had been distorted. The broken glasses frames fell to the floor. One of the severed earpieces on the end of the frame was still attached. “Ka…za…kiirii” Kamijou panicked and stood, then ran over to her. His posture and gait made him look drunk. When he reached her, his feet stopped abruptly. His face was covered with an expression of surprise. But not at the terrible sight. Her wound was severe, to be sure. After all, the right half of her head had been totally blown away. It was a chaotic, terrible injury that looked more like something inside her body had exploded rather than a bullet hitting her. It was completely outside the realm of everyday violence. Maybe that’s why it didn’t feel real. The destruction was so complete, so overwhelming, that it very nearly appeared comical. But that wasn’t the issue. There was a much bigger issue, a giant problem, and it made all that seem insignificant in comparison. Kamijou looked at Kazakiri’s wound again. The insane wound. Half of her head was blown off—but inside it was nothing but emptiness. There was no flesh. No bones. No brain. Nothing. Not a single drop of blood flowed from her wound. It was like papier-mâché or a 3D model made of polygons. From the outside, it looked like the elaborate skin of a human, but on the inside, it was like a smooth, light purple sheet of plastic. A small object floated in the middle of her head cavity as if held there by magnetism. It was a tan-colored triangular prism. Its bottom was a triangle approximately two centimeters square, and it was a little less than five centimeters tall. It sat there in a fixed location, rotating around and around. Its sides were tiled with rectangles that were around one millimeter high and two across. It almost looked like a tiny keyboard. As if invisible fingers were clacking away on it, the rectangular keys on the side of the prism were rapidly moving in and out. What…is this…? Kamijou was bewildered. What he was seeing was completely unrealistic. He couldn’t connect this to simple words like that looks painful or that must hurt. Was this another esper ability? Was her Identity Unknown power responsible for all this strangeness? Kazakiri looked nothing like a simple esper, though. Even the seven Level Five espers in Academy City, people like Railgun and Accelerator, had the same physical makeup and structure as a normal person. But Kazakiri seemed fundamentally different from a human. “Ugh…” As he struggled to think of what to do, she groaned softly. Perhaps in reaction to her awakening, the keys on the keyboard on the spinning triangular prism in her head began to oscillate more quickly. They were going as fast as a sewing machine. No… Finally, Kamijou got a very realistic chill. Isn’t that…backward…? Was the prism not reacting to Kazakiri’s movements? Were Kazakiri’s actions and expressions instead being created by the prism’s movements? He forgot all about Sherry’s attack. He watched the sight that confronted him, baffled, unable to move. The sounds of the prism’s keys going clack-clack-clack-clack whispered like falling rain. The prism began to spin as fast as the wheel of a trackball. How was that being converted into action? Missing part of her face, she slowly brought her head up. She stared blankly at Kamijou with her one eye. She looked like she was waking up from a nap. She didn’t seem to be feeling any pain. With slow movements, she sat up on the ground. “Huh…?…My glasses. Where are…where are my glasses?” Her fingers searched across the part of her face where they should have been…and then she appeared to realize something. She jerked her hand back like she had touched hot water. Then, this time with much trepidation, she brought her fingers to her face again. “Wha…what is…this?” Her fingers went slowly into the edge of the cavity. “N-no…” She caught a glance of her side in the café window right next to her. She realized it was her own face being reflected. The blood drained from the half of her face still remaining. Her one eye shot back and forth hurriedly, betraying the panic and disquiet she felt within her. “No…!…What…what…what’s this?! Nooo” Kazakiri shook her head violently and screamed at the top of her lungs, as if something she’d been holding back had just exploded. Kamijou caught his breath. She rose to her feet clumsily, like she had lost her sense of balance, and then ran away from her own reflection in the glass. She was so confused that she actually ran straight toward the giant statue—straight toward Ellis. Sherry snapped out of her thoughts at this and flashed her oil pastel across the air. The statue’s concrete arm howled. Its fist swatted Kazakiri away with the back of its hand like a fly, hitting her arm and side. Her forward momentum was completely transferred upward and she went flying. Three meters in the air, her delicate body slammed against a support beam. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, her body bounced off of it like a pinball, right back to where Sherry was standing behind Ellis. There was a sickening plop. Kamijou looked and saw that Ellis’s attack had snapped Kazakiri’s left arm at the elbow. Her side was a different shape now, too—it reminded him of a box of candy that somebody had stepped on. “Ah…” But still. Despite that, Hyouka Kazakiri’s body writhed on the floor. “Ah, agh, ag, ah, a​a​a​a​a​a​aa​aa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaa​a​aaa​aaa​aaa​aaaa​aaa​aaaa​aaaa​aaa​aaa​aa​aa​aa​aa​aa​ah​hh​hh​hh​hh​hhh​h?!” The scream unleashed from her broken, slender body seemed to surprise even Sherry. She leveled her pastel, paying close attention to her for the first time. However, Kazakiri saw none of that. Such luxury was not afforded to her. When she realized that inside her torn arm was an empty void, she began to swing her arms and legs around like she was trying to get a spider off of them. She ran away into the darkness farther down the passage. “Ellis.” Sherry lightly tapped her fingertips on the surface of the oil pastel, and Ellis threw a punch at a nearby support beam. Gr-krash The entire underground mall shook, and the ceiling began to creak. The next thing they knew, the building material right above the rifle-wielding Anti-Skill officer’s head began to crash down upon him. “Hmph. Interesting. Let’s be off, Ellis. Such an absurd, unsightly fox we’ll be hunting…” Without sparing a glance at Kamijou or the Anti-Skill officer, now buried alive, Sherry swung around the oil pastel in her hand and, as she manipulated Ellis, disappeared into the blackness—most likely to follow Kazakiri. Kaza…kiri… He couldn’t do much but stand there dumbfounded for a while. What he had just seen had been burned into his eyes forever. 3 Kuroko Shirai wasn’t sure what to do. She had brought that stupid nun and Big Sister up to the surface, but when she got back…Touma Kamijou and that easy-to-miss girl were nowhere to be found. How worrying…I could search the area, but… Fortunately, she couldn’t hear the sounds of battle, but she didn’t know when one would start up again. Plus, there were still dozens of civilians here. In terms of threat level, the terrorist was going straight for Kamijou and the girl, of course, but she still couldn’t totally ignore these people, either—they could always be hit by a stray bullet. She didn’t even know whether she’d find them if she looked, and these people who had nothing to do with this were right here in front of her. She briefly considered this and decided to evacuate the people before her eyes first. One cannot put value on lives, can they? I’m worried about Big Sister and really want to go look for her, but I feel that leaving these people here would be wrong. She sighed and walked up to the scared, trapped students. The construction materials that had fallen from the ceiling were unexpectedly light, and the buried Anti-Skill officer hadn’t been particularly hurt by them. Though the downed officers nearby were also wounded, nobody was dead, and they were busy wrapping their injuries and stitching them together with needles and thread. Kamijou helped the officer move the debris from atop him. Then, while shrugging off his urges to stop, he began to run down the passage after Kazakiri and Sherry. There seemed to be a lot of department stores in this area, and they were connected underground by a complex maze of hallways. The passages before now had been little more than straight lines, but this was a labyrinth—a veritable spiderweb. Damn it, what the hell is going on…? Sherry calling herself a member of the English Puritan Church bothered him, but Hyouka Kazakiri blew all that away. It didn’t seem like she had been aware of how strange her own body was. She’d looked at her own image in the mirror and screamed as if it were a monster. As far as he could tell, she had just learned the truth today, at that moment—and it caused her to panic. …And that means…that wasn’t Kazakiri’s ability? Or was she one of those espers who didn’t even know she was one? Shit, I don’t understand anything. Is she going to be all right like that? How…how would you even heal her? Having thought that far, Kamijou stopped. The strange scene came back to mind. Even if he were to save her, how would he do that? It only raised more questions. Should I stop Sherry or meet up with Kazakiri first? Damn, what do I do? He worried, then worried some more, and finally took out his cell phone. There were too many unanswered questions about Hyouka Kazakiri. And if he needed someone on the science side of things who had far more knowledge than he did, there was only one person to call. Komoe Tsukuyomi. Maybe she’ll know something, he thought. Unfortunately, he was out of cell range. Someone had called him when they were at the arcade, and they couldn’t actually talk then, either. First I need to get close to one of the underground mall antennae. He walked along and looked around until he spotted a sporting goods store. Something that looked suspiciously like an antenna was attached to its wall. He went right up under it and finally started to use his cell phone. After two rings, Miss Komoe picked up. “Ah! Kami, is that you?! Yay, yay! We finally got through! Kami, where have you been this whole time?” “Huh? Miss Komoe, were you looking for me?” “Himegami said she called you, but there was a lot of static.” Kamijou wondered. That meant the call at the arcade was from Himegami? “Kami, Kami! I have something a little bit important to tell you. You see—” “Sorry, Miss Komoe, but I’ve got my hands full. Could you listen to what I have to say first?” “Huh?…This really is important, but all right. What is it?” He was profusely thankful that she backed off so easily. He summarized what he knew about Kazakiri. Of course, he hid her name and the fact that they were in combat at all, and basically just asked, “Yeah, this is what was happening, is there an ability like that?” However, Miss Komoe thought for a moment, then replied, “…Kami, are you talking about Hyouka Kazakiri, by any chance?” Bull’s-eye. He didn’t know what to say, and she continued, sounding less nervous. “Hmm, well. Actually, the important thing I had to tell you was about her.” “Huh? Why are you investigating her?” “You see, Kami…There’s something called security at school. We have to protect all the secret information regarding ability development, too, and nasty crimes are on the rise on top of that. Why wouldn’t we look into a non-transfer student outsider who came onto school grounds without permission?” She also remarked that she knew the nun, so they didn’t look into her too much. Suddenly, he remembered Himegami’s words from this afternoon by the school gate. —But. As far as I remember. I am the only transfer student. “And, to answer your question, Kami…There are certainly espers like that. For example, ones with metamorphosis. They can change their body into whatever they want!” “Then is Kazakiri a…” “No. Metamorphosis is an extremely rare ability that only three people in Academy City have. Hyouka Kazakiri isn’t one of them.” Her voice hardened. “And even if she were just a metamorphosis esper, it wouldn’t make sense.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kamijou got an instinctive bad feeling. He couldn’t determine whether that feeling was correct, though. “Kami, as I said before, the school has a security system. There are cameras set up on the premises. However…” She paused. “Hyouka Kazakiri didn’t show up on any cameras. We contacted Anti-Skill and asked for the satellite images, but there still wasn’t anything suspicious on them…You and she were having such a pleasant conversation, so where did she come in from?” “Wha…” “When she disappeared from the cafeteria, did you notice it? I didn’t notice it. It was like she just suddenly disappeared into thin air!” “H-hang on a second! Then what, are you saying that she can use both metamorphosis and teleportation?!” “Kami, double espers have been judged realistically impossible. There would be too much load on the person’s brain! Of course, my explanation for this is even more unrealistic.” For some reason, he was hesitant to hear the rest. But he couldn’t get started if he didn’t go ahead with it. He gulped, then asked, “…What do you think, Miss Komoe?” “Well, you see…,” she began in a slow, relaxed voice. “Involuntary diffusion fields—I think they’re deeply related to all this.” Kamijou didn’t immediately understand what she meant. “You mean that power that espers give off unconsciously or whatever?” “That’s the one! Adding to that, the fields are so weak that you need instruments to measure them, and the type of power each esper gives off is different.” “So how is that related to Kazakiri? Is the power she’s giving off unconsciously, like, crazy strong or something?” Komoe didn’t answer his question. “I said this morning that I was helping a friend from college with research on involuntary diffusion fields.” He heard the sound of paper rustling from the other end. “Leaking someone’s thesis information is strictly forbidden, but I have faith that you’ll keep your lips zipped…The research itself is investigating the waves that are created when multiple involuntary diffusion fields collide with one another.” He was getting further and further away from understanding what she was trying to say. Did any of this really have to do with her? Was she just complaining? Or gossiping? “Kami, you know how you can get all sorts of data by measuring people with machines?” “Huh?” “Generation, emission, and absorption of heat…Reflection, refraction, and absorption of light…The creation of bioelectricity and the formation of magnetic fields that go along with it…Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide expulsion…Mass and weight are two of the more simple data points you can collect. I could go on all day giving examples! We can gather thousands, if not millions, of data points with different varieties of machines.” “What about it?” Kamijou urged, still attentive to the darkness around him. “This is purely speculation…” Miss Komoe paused for a moment. “If, instead, all these humanlike data points were collected and put into one place, would that mean there was a human there?” “Wha…?” He broke off. “There are many kinds of espers in Academy City. And all of them constantly emit a weak power without knowing it. Even if each individual one is weak, what might happen if a lot of them overlapped and combined into one meaning? See, think about the letters B, or P, in the alphabet. By themselves, they don’t do anything, right? You put them together into words like select and start, and that’s when they take on meaning. What if that’s fundamentally what Miss Hyouka Kazakiri is? In my view, Hyouka Kazakiri is like programming code, made up of countless letters that form commands. Every student in the city is typing in one letter at a time. Those letters form commands, and all those commands come together to create a program,” she explained. She had said that it was like Hyouka Kazakiri had disappeared into thin air. But that wasn’t it. What if there was never a person named Hyouka Kazakiri from the start? What if the process was backward? What if one didn’t feel body heat because a person was there—what if one only thought a person was there because he measured body temperature? Pyrokinetic espers create body heat, telekinetic espers create feelings on skin, and audiokinetic espers create sounds of voices. All different sorts of involuntary diffusion fields were like innumerable letters of the alphabet. They combined to create commands, and those were then combined to create a program—what if that was it? What if it was creating a perfect being? “Wa…wait a minute! That’s crazy talk! You keep mentioning humanlike data points, but you just said yourself that there’s, like, a million kinds!” “I did! There are 2.3 million espers living in Academy City, right? For example, the body heat is provided by pyrokinetic espers and the bioelectricity by electro-espers, all without them realizing it. They’re all creating one big computer application called Hyouka Kazakiri.” Her confident, unhesitating voice took Kamijou aback. The blood drained from his fingertips. He felt that he might even forget that he was deep in enemy territory right now. Sure, if you used telekinesis to push on a finger, you might be able to feel the elasticity of human skin where none was. If you manipulated the vibrations in the air, you could hear its voice, and if you manipulated light refraction, you could even get somebody to see them. “According to Himegami, there’ve been stories of sightings of an incomplete Hyouka Kazakiri for a long time. I think that back then, she was a vague, indistinct being—like a ghost. Going along with the programming code analogy, it’s like the commands were missing certain letters, and there weren’t enough of them. So she couldn’t function properly, and you couldn’t sense her with sight, or smell, or any of your five senses. Though even if you couldn’t physically sense her, you might have been able to sense her presence. The Hyouka Kazakiri research lab said to be at Kirigaoka—perhaps it was specifically for investigating such vague, ghostly beings as closely as possible. Or maybe it was designed for researching involuntary diffusion fields?” A vague, ghostly being. He shuddered, the image of Kazakiri’s head cavity coming to mind, but at the same time, he remembered something. “But Kazakiri herself didn’t seem to realize any of this. She’s just a normal person, so she didn’t know about how strange she really was. When she found out, she got scared and ran away. It wouldn’t make sense if she was something so inhuman ever since she was born, would it?” “What wouldn’t make sense?” “What? What do you mean, what…?” “If she thought she was human ever since she was born, then she wouldn’t have any doubts as to her own existence, would she?” “Wha…” What the hell…? he thought, nonplussed. According to Miss Komoe, Hyouka Kazakiri was an existence created from the involuntary diffusion fields of the 2.3 million espers who lived in Academy City…apparently, anyway. In other words, nothing was the way it was because she wanted it to be like that. Even her very own emotions she felt—they were all just created by outside sources. “Skipping to the conclusion, Miss Hyouka Kazakiri isn’t human. She’s a type of physical phenomenon, created from involuntary diffusion fields.” Kamijou felt his body go cold at her words. “Shit…That’s…that’s insane. How cruel can this get?” “Cruel…? Kami, you seem to have the wrong idea.” “…? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you telling me that empathizing with a simple natural phenomenon is a stupid thing to do? Is that it, Miss Komoe?” “You have it backward, Kami. If you keep on talking like that, then I will have to seriously lecture you!” For some reason, she seemed angry. “Listen to me, Kami. If my hypothesis is correct, then Hyouka Kazakiri isn’t human. Even if she has assembled all the necessary pieces of a human, she is certainly not one. It doesn’t matter how much she struggles or how hard she works. She’s a fleeting illusion—one who, if we knew her essence, would just disappear. However…” Miss Komoe paused. “Is it such a problem that she isn’t a human?” she asked, clearly and without hesitation. “I have never talked to Miss Hyouka Kazakiri, so I cannot say, but what was she like in your eyes? Did she look like she was just an illusion with no life or heart? Did she look like a cardboard cutout just standing around?” “…” No. She didn’t. He thought back. When she was with Index, she seemed like she was having fun. She got scared at every word that came out of Kamijou’s mouth, too. She was definitely thinking for herself and acting under her own volition. “Was she somebody so inconsequential that you wouldn’t care about losing her? Would it be okay to alienate her for an absurd reason like whether or not she’s human or whether or not she’s fake?” “…” No. Of course not. He could say it for sure—she was suffering. She had suddenly learned of her true identity, and she couldn’t accept it. She didn’t know what to do. All she could do was run away into the dark. He bared his teeth in anger. There was no reason that would ever convince him it would be okay to let her be killed. Even if she was no more than an illusion that would disappear if he touched her with his right hand… It wasn’t right for her to just disappear. Not by a long shot. “Tee-hee-hee! Excellent. I do so love when my little lambs grow up so nicely!” Kamijou was relieved to hear her laugh, but soon other misgivings arose. Miss Komoe had been looking into involuntary diffusion fields for her college friend, hadn’t she? “Miss Komoe, I just have a question. Was your friend investigating Kazakiri’s true identity?” “I wonder. Investigating the effects of multiple fields was definitely the idea, but who knows if it ever got this far. At the very least, I never heard anything about her when we discussed it. My hypothesis is purely my own, based on my friend’s data.” “…” “Hmm? What’s wrong? You got quiet. Oh, it’s all right! I won’t tell my friend about any of this. She won’t need this information to complete her thesis.” “I don’t know how much it’s worth, but isn’t this, er, a huge scientific discovery or something? Should you really keep quiet about her to your friend…?” “Ah-ha-ha. You’re right—if I’m correct, then it would revolutionize the entire involuntary diffusion field…well, field! The one who discovered it would go down in history. In exchange, Miss Hyouka Kazakiri would get locked away forever in a cold room. Kami, are you really implying that your teacher would want such a thing?” “Well…” “If you were, then I would seriously get depressed! What kind of person do you think I am, Kami? Listen—I am a teacher. That fact may sound stupid and simple, but it’s the strongest thing I’ve got that’s supporting my heart. Selling out my students’ precious friends to gain fame isn’t part of my job description!” Precious friends. That’s what she said. Kamijou knew just how much those words implied. “Hee-hee! Please try your best not to make her cry, okay? I’ll talk to you soon,” she finished, then hung up. “…” He looked down at his cell phone for a few moments, but finally flipped it closed and shoved it into his pocket. He knew what he had to do. He knew where he needed to go. “But…” He gritted his teeth. The statue. He knew he couldn’t take that thing on alone. He couldn’t even stand in the ring with it. The huge tremors from its foot stomping were all it took for him to end up prone on the ground. Think. Calm down. Find the answer, and fast! Damn it, Kazakiri might pay the price for my screwup! He was well aware that this wasn’t something he’d be able to solve easily. In the meantime, he just didn’t want to stop thinking. He searched every nook and cranny of his mind, examining every possibility. A sneak attack. That won’t work. The shock waves from its stomp go out in all directions. I can’t dodge it just by getting behind it! Weapons. That’s no good, either. What weapon would I even need to bring down that huge hunk of junk? It must weigh in the tons. Knives or bats aren’t gonna cut it! Anti-Skill officers might have rocket launchers or something, but high school students can’t use stuff like that! He scratched his head madly, beginning to panic. If he had to pull out every hair on his head to think of a solution, then he’d gladly do it. Every second that passed, his nervous sweat worsened, and he felt more and more like roaring like a beast. Suddenly, he noticed somebody reflected in the glass window behind him. “?!” Kamijou turned around so fast there might have been a gust of wind. There was… “Hah…” A smile crossed his face. His pent-up sigh turned into a laugh. His expression had made its way onto his face without his permission. For a few moments, he looked at the reflection in disbelief. Finally, he constructed a smile of his own. “That’s right…” He grinned. “…How stupid of me. The whole world would look at me and call me stupid. Right, Touma Kamijou?” He grinned fearlessly and made up his mind. The ultimate trump card against that giant statue was standing right in front of him. 4 Hyouka Kazakiri, at long last, began to feel a scathing pain. “Ugh, guhh…?!” Half her face, her left arm, and her left side. Each of them throbbed with the burning pain of molten steel. She couldn’t even stand, much less run, and she fell to the cold, hard floor. Then she began to flail her legs and roll around to try and distract herself from the pain. The pain signals were enough to make a normal person die outright, but she was not even allowed to escape into death. It was truly a living hell. However, it didn’t last long. “Ah…?” A terrible change occurred. There was a squish like jelly, and her wound began to close up. It was happening at a pace impossible for humans—like she was watching a videotape being fast-forwarded. Within moments, the cavity had repaired itself. The madness-inducing, intense pain suddenly withdrew like a fever breaking. It had clearly been a fatal wound. It would be far stranger if she lived through it. It wasn’t only her skin, either. The glasses that had been blown off her. The fragments of torn clothing. Each began to slowly but surely return to its original position. “Ah, ahh…!” As the pain faded, her mind was now free to think again—and her memories unfolded before her eyes. Her body was empty. She thought she was normal, but she was as far from “normal” as you could get. Now that the lid on her memories had popped open, they all started to flood into her mind’s eye. “Agah…gh! Gah, guh…uhhggghh Geh…gh…kah…gh…gh…! Hih, gah, ghggkkuh…igh! I…ugh…gah…aaaahhh” She lacked the composure to form words, but the vast pressure crushing her very soul forced screams from her lips. Then, as if attracted by her despair, another reason to despair appeared. Grishhh A tremor shook the entire underground mall. Kazakiri flew into the air like a rider thrown off her horse, but she still tried to look into the darkness. There she saw a twisted monster, made of iron and concrete. Behind it was somebody even more worthy of fear—the blond-haired woman. She was smiling. As if to remind Kazakiri that humans could look more twisted than monsters. “Hee…ah…!” She remembered the pain of being crushed by the monster’s log-like arm and reflexively tried to run. However, her overload of terror and panic prevented her from moving her legs. The woman said nothing. She silently waved her chalklike white oil pastel, and the stone statue let loose with a fist at Kazakiri’s back. She immediately tried to get down. However, her long hair fluttered a second behind the rest of her, and it got caught in the stone fist. She felt extreme pain, like her head was being completely torn apart, and her body went flying like a cannonball. “Geuh…?!” Clonk A dreadful noise sounded from within her. As she slid along the floor at a terrifying speed, she felt more pain, like her entire body was being shaved down with a giant file. “Ah, agh, agh…!” She left a meters-long trail of torn skin fragments and long strands of hair behind her on the floor. She heard a strange gzzt noise coming from her face. She brought her hand up to her face to find that its surface was billowing strangely. The part of her face that had been torn off and dragged across the floor was trying to return to normal. “What exactly is that, I wonder?” Finally, the blond-haired woman spoke. Her odd smile implied that the scene before her was just too strange. “I had wondered what the key to the ith School District looked like, but this is ridiculous! Ah-ha, ah-ha-ha! These science people cherish something like this? Hah, you’re all insane” Kazakiri’s body restored itself as the woman continued to cackle. The wet, sloppy sounds ceased before even ten seconds had passed, and her face was back to normal. “H-hee?!” She felt dread and hate at her own body. Then, Sherry declared in amusement, “Heh-heh. Killing you seems like it would be a pain. Oh, then let’s try something, shall we? Let’s see if you can still go back to normal after I’ve crushed you into ground meat!” “Wh…wh…why…?” “Eh?” “Why…why are you…This…this is terrible…!” “Hmm? Oh, I don’t really have a reason.” Kazakiri had nothing to say at those incredible words. “There’s no particular reason it has to be you. It doesn’t have to be you! But you seemed like the easiest to deal with, that’s all. See? Simple, right?” Before Kazakiri could ask what she meant by that, the woman brandished her oil pastel, and the stone statue, Ellis, lunged at the downed Kazakiri with another fist. She managed to roll to the side, but Ellis’s fist hit the floor, and the tiles it shattered struck her all over her body. The impact launched her into the air. There was an incredible sound, and somewhere in her body twisted up. Her mind went entirely blank from the intense pain. But even as she tumbled across the floor, she began to recover extremely quickly. She had been launched all the way to the far-off intersection, and yet she was still breathing. Once again, she had failed to die. And the woman’s expression, despite failing at killing her, didn’t change a bit. It was like she didn’t care at all whether she lived or died. The humiliation at her life being treated as if it were nothing caused tears to form in her eyes. The fact that she could do nothing to stop this situation, despite how mortifying it was, made her even more upset. The woman saw this, and she seemed to have lost some interest. “Hey, wait. What are you making that face for, hmm? What? You’re not gonna start saying that you’re scared to die, now, are you?” “Eh…?” “Hey, hey, wait, wait! Don’t look at me like that’d be the obvious thing to do. Would you just realize this already? Look how much I’ve crushed you, and yet you’re still alive and kicking! You’re not a normal human, damn it!” “…” “Oh, don’t get all blue in the face. Now you want to call for help, is that it? Not gonna happen. You think this world would lose anything if someone like you disappeared? For example…” The blond-haired woman tapped her index finger to the side of the oil pastel she held. A moment later, the stone statue swung its fist to the side. It went straight into the wall, and its arm burst apart from the inside. “This is all I’m doing to you, isn’t it?” “Ah…” “All I did was crush a monster’s limb. Of course it’s not gonna start crying! You understand? What on earth are they projecting feelings into an object for? Creating a puppet, a mere personification, and making it able to cry? It’s disgusting. I’m not some kind of pervert who gets excited when she undresses a puppet.” “Agh…uah…” The stone statue’s destroyed arm began to regenerate once again before her hopeless gaze. It returned to normal with fragments of glass and building materials nearby—it was, curiously, just like her. This was Hyouka Kazakiri’s true form. Her ugly, horrid true self, underneath her skin. “You understand now, right? You’re a monster, just like Ellis. You can’t run away from that. Where would you even run? You think anywhere would accept a monster like you? You get it, right? Come on, work with me here. Why don’t you understand this? You don’t have anywhere to go!” The oil pastel in her hands wobbled from side to side. The stone statue began its slow approach. Hyouka Kazakiri could do nothing but look at it, dazed, still fallen in the middle of the intersection. She couldn’t move. There wasn’t any damage to her physical self. Her wounds had long since healed. There wasn’t any fear seizing her mental self, either. Her mind was screaming for her to run right now. But… Where should she even run to? She thought back. —This was the first day she’d gone to school. So she figured that she was a transfer student. —This was the first day she’d eaten a school lunch. So she said that she wanted to eat at a school lunch restaurant. —This was the first day she’d talked to a man. So she thought that boy had been hard to deal with. —This was the first day she’d bought juice from a vending machine, too. She knew how to buy the juice, but she had never actually experienced drinking it. What logic had allowed her to put these strange situations to the side for this long? The first time. The first time. The first time. The first time. The first time. Every single thing, top to bottom, A to Z, everything was the first time. Why hadn’t she noticed it? What on earth had she been doing before then? It was almost as if she didn’t have a past at all. It was like she was nothing more than an illusion, a shadow, that had suddenly just appeared from the mists. There was no meaning in looking away from it. Pain wouldn’t go away just by looking away from a wound. And now that she had realized this, it was too late. There was nowhere for her to run to. Nowhere for her to hide. There was no paradise in this world that would welcome her horrid self with open arms when she didn’t even know who she was. In her skirt pocket were the photo stickers she’d taken with a certain girl in white. Index may have been smiling in them, but she didn’t know. She didn’t know that Hyouka Kazakiri was actually a monster. She… If she knew what lay under but one layer of skin… She wouldn’t be smiling anymore. She might even think back to how she smiled at Kazakiri, ignorant of her true nature, and hate herself for it. The smiling Hyouka Kazakiri displayed in those photographs wasn’t around anymore. All that was here, if you removed her human shell, was a monster. Tears welled up in her eyes. She wanted to be in a warm, kind world. She wanted to smile with others. Just for one minute. Even for just one second. If she could spend a tiny bit of time peacefully, then she would cling to anything with her life. But in the end… There was nothing she could cling to. “Stop crying, you monster.” The blond-haired woman said mockingly, waving her oil pastel into the air. “It seriously grosses me out.” The stone statue’s arm, which seemed to be able to break even large trees, closed in slowly. Aahh…, Hyouka Kazakiri thought hopelessly. She didn’t want to die—that wasn’t it. But above that, if she was just going to be treated as a monster everyone would throw stones at as soon as they saw her, and she wasn’t useful to anybody ever again…she thought that dying might be the better way. She closed her eyes tight. She braced herself for the hellish pain to come… …but she never felt an impact. She never heard a noise, either. But the eerie silence came over her gently, like a blanket. It was almost like she had stepped back into a warm, indoor room after having been caught in a terrible storm. “…?” She opened her eyes in trepidation. She thought she knew somebody standing there, but her eyes were filled with tears, and she could only make out a blurry image of the stone statue. The somebody looked like a boy. Kazakiri was in the middle of the intersection. The young man had walked between her and the statue from a nearby passage. She could vaguely make out the boy’s profile. The stone statue’s movements stopped. The boy had casually stuck out his right hand and grabbed the statue’s giant arm. The fist had such immense power that it could bat away a tank as easily as a fly, and yet he was holding it back with the palm of his hand. That’s all it took for the statue to stop moving—and not only that. There was a crick-crack as fissures began to shoot through it. “Ellis?” From somewhere far away, she heard the woman’s voice. “Ellis. Answer me, Ellis! Shit, what’s going on here?” The young man didn’t turn to look at the woman, despite her uncharacteristic panic. He simply stared straight at Hyouka Kazakiri. “Looks like I made you wait.” Her shoulders twitched at his voice. She couldn’t make him out because of the tears, but she knew that voice. She only knew so many people, after all. His voice was strong. His voice was warm. His voice was trustworthy. And above all… His voice was kind. He went on. “But everything’s gonna be all right now. Would you give it a rest, okay? Quit crying over the small stuff.” Hyouka Kazakiri rubbed at her eyelids like a child. The curtain of tears cleared. And beyond them was him. Touma Kamijou stood there. He smiled at her like she was the most important friend he’d ever had. Behind him, the statue’s body began to crack apart and rattle and collapse. As if the insurmountable wall of despair were breaking. “Ellis…Are you kidding me?!” Her enraged shout trembled. Her hand tightened around the white oil pastel so firmly it seemed sure to break. Then, with the speed of a master drawing his sword from its sheath, she began to scrawl something on the wall. At the same time, she began to rattle on very quickly and without pause. The concrete wall crumbled like dried mud. It assumed a form, as if invisible hands were kneading it, and within mere seconds, she had completed a stone statue whose head butted up against the wall. Her face had been tinged with panic, but she still hadn’t lost her calm. This was her trump card—however many times it was destroyed, she could create another one. This was her greatest strength. She could use it as anything—a shield, a decoy, a suicide attack. Touma Kamijou turned around. He stood there before the distorted statue, as if to protect the cornered girl. Kazakiri was surprised at the sight, and the blond-haired woman’s grin split her face in two. “Kuh…ha-ha. Bwa-ha-ha! Where do you get such funny stories from? Who brought you up, anyway? They must have been feeding you garbage! Ha-ha! Be happy, you monster. This world hasn’t given you up just yet. There’s one moron like this in it, after all!” Kazakiri’s shoulders trembled at her rusty voice. Yes, she was happy that this young man came along. But she couldn’t stand him getting in the middle of a fight between monsters. Those warm, fluffy days Hyouka Kazakiri wished for, and the young man who created them—she wouldn’t be defeated by them here. But beside the horrified Kazakiri, the young man didn’t move an inch, even before the giant stone statue. “There’s not just one,” he said. “Huh?” the woman said stupidly, and at that moment— Crash A brilliant light fell onto her. “?!” Kazakiri had to shield her eyes from the blinding pool of white light with both hands. She was sitting in the middle of the intersection. Light was being directed at the blond-haired woman from all three of the other passages. Her eyes stung from the intense light, but she managed to squint and look around. First, the lights, as stark as car headlights. Those looked like flashlights with mirrors attached to them. Not just one or two, either. There had to be at least thirty or forty people here. Anti-Skill. Not a single one of them was unharmed. They stood with their bodies and heads wrapped in bandages, dragging their arms and legs behind them. All of them seemed a better fit for a hospital bed than to be standing at all. But they did not hesitate. They didn’t take notice of their own plight. They didn’t utter a single word of complaint about their pain. They had run here, without skipping a beat, to what was nothing less than the jaws of death. They were not only the strong, brawny men seen as the heroes of action films—there was a woman, too. She brandished a transparent shield and was smiling an intrepid grin, despite her own injuries. Her eyes were saying that everything was going to be okay. “Wh…why…?” asked Hyouka Kazakiri, truly baffled. They didn’t know who she really was. But they should have at least figured out that she wasn’t an ordinary person. They should have witnessed her face being broken by the ricocheted bullet. They should have seen her abruptly getting up after being punched by that statue. So she couldn’t help but ask why. Why? She deserved to be pelted with bullets just the same as that terrorist did. Why had they stepped out to defend her? She didn’t understand any of it. “You’re an idiot. We don’t need a reason,” answered the boy, however, without missing a beat. Kazakiri knew she was a monster, but Kamijou didn’t look away from her for a second. He wore the same expression he had when they talked at the arcade. Bathed in light, he spoke. He spoke normally, casually. His voice was like a cloudless sky. “There’s nothing special about any of this, you know. I just told them something.” Within the overflowing light, he spoke. “I told them, please help my friend.” For a moment, Hyouka Kazakiri didn’t understand what he meant. After all, she wasn’t human. She was a monster. Her body was empty on the inside. There was nothing there if you peeled away one layer of skin. She could survive a gunshot and a punch from a stone statue. Doctors and scholars would look at her body and be astonished. Would they not care? Would they abandon her? Somehow she hoped they would. If she had been in their position, she would abandon this hopeless Identity Unknown body. Perhaps that’s just how this city was. Eighty percent of it was students, and every single one had awakened to some kind of ability. Every single person knew they were a bit different. Maybe that’s the only reason they could accept Hyouka Kazakiri, who was different from others. Was it really okay for her to stay here? Would they accept her existence with a smile? She was still dazed as the boy continued. “Wipe your tears and look ahead. Stick out your chest, too. Everyone here would rather not let you die.” Kazakiri looked up. The world of darkness she had been looking at this whole time was no longer anywhere to be seen. “We’ll show you that we can still save this world you live in!” She knew. This underground mall might have been plunged into darkness by the blond-haired woman’s tempest of cruelty. But he stood up to that darkness with the light. He was reaching his hand out to grab someone drowning in the darkness. Finally, he said, “And I’ll show you! That illusion of yours—the place where you belong—isn’t something that can be broken so easily” 5 “Ellis…” Hidden in the shadow of the stone statue, Sherry’s voice trembled with anger. “…Kill them all! Leave not a single one alive! I’ll use their flesh as part of your body” As she screamed, her oil pastel ripped through the air. Dozens of overlapping lines became strings to control the statue. “Not so fast Position B! Top priority is the civilians’ security!” With that one yell, fire erupted from every gun at once. The Anti-Skill officers were set up with a front line wielding the transparent, polycarbonate shields and a back line firing their rifles from behind them. The shields were not meant for Ellis’s attacks, but rather to block ricocheting bullets. As the ear-splitting gunfire rang out, the female Anti-Skill pulled the nearby Kamijou and Kazakiri down to the ground. She held the shield up to defend the two of them. Chak-chakka-chak-chik-chik rang the shield. Kamijou, surprised, stared ahead. Simple ricocheting bullets coming off of Ellis’s body were enough to do all this. Kazakiri shook like a dog during a thunderstorm, perhaps because she’d been hit by a bouncing bullet herself once. He looked at the stone statue in front of them. The gunfire was focused on Ellis’s leg like a magnifying glass focusing sunlight, and the golem had stopped. It seemed to be desperately trying to walk against a raging vortex, against gales blowing at it. Because its body was spread like a wall, it almost looked like it was being tossed around by strong winds like the sails of a yacht. Pieces of concrete and glass that made up its body tore off and fell, one after the other, but it immediately regenerated itself using the nearby floor, walls, and even the bullets being fired at it. “Shit” He heard Sherry shout from behind the curtain of gunshots. “Likeness of God, Michael! Healing of God, Raphael! Power of God, Gabriel! Fire of God, Uriel! Symbols of the four heavens representing the four planes—guide us with your righteous power, in a righteous direction, in a righteous position” Distorted crosses appeared from the oil pastel and began to scribble themselves all over the air nearby. Ellis’s body made a loud creak. It was crying out. It was a cry of pain from every joint of the stone statue, which had no mouth to create words. The command forced these dangerous creaks from the stone statue’s giant body, like cogs jammed with a cloth beginning to move again anyway. And still, Ellis moved. As it created those eerie noises, it took one step forward. Thud. The heavy sound shook the floor just a little. Sherry, pleased by what she saw, accelerated her frantic waving of the oil pastel. “Ah…ah…We can’t…,” muttered Kazakiri without thinking, in the midst of the roar of gunfire. “It’s all gone according to plan so far. I don’t like the fact that we went straight for the worst case…It would have been better if we could push it back or at least hold it in place, but I guess we’re not that lucky.” His words made her doubt her ears. Then, the Anti-Skill woman holding the transparent shield spoke up. “Young man, are you sure you want to do this? No one will blame you for chickening out at this point, you know.” “It’s not about me wanting to, it’s about it needing to be done. You saw what happened before, didn’t you? When I crushed the entire pile of garbage just from a touch of my right hand? That’s the kind of ability it has.” “Well, yeah, Tsukuyomi has told me about that before, but…” Kazakiri felt the energy steadily draining from her fingertips. What is this? she thought. It feels like something crazy was decided without my knowing it… “Whatever you choose, that thing’s gonna get here soon. And even if it didn’t, you don’t have infinite bullets, right? Even your arms won’t be able to hold out for very long.” “You’ve only got one shot at this. If you fail, we can’t come back for you. We’ll have to begin firing again, and when we do, you’ll get shot along with that statue, you know.” Kazakiri was flabbergasted at her words. “…Wait, just…wait a…wait a minute…umm…What are you—?” “That’s obvious,” Kamijou interrupted. “I’m gonna go stop that monster now.” The statue brought down another dull footstep. It was stronger than the last one. Sherry and Ellis would adapt to the firing very soon. “You…you can’t…! It’s…it’s too dangerous…” “Yeah, but I need to touch it with my right hand for my power to work. I mean, sure, it would be way more convenient if it were a long-range attack like a certain Railgun…” Slam! The ground shook again. The stone statue trudged its way forward like a traveler fighting against a northerly wind. It was less than ten meters away now. “I’ll give the order. One last time—you sure about this?” “…Yeah.” He’d known what he needed to do before coming here. So he only needed to give one word in reply. That way there would be no regrets. “You’re really pushing it, kid—how cool can one student be? Jeez, why does she get all the good students?” The Anti-Skill chuckled, taking out her small transceiver. “All right, I’ll go along with this! But make sure it works, no matter what—and come back alive. We’ll do as much as we can for you.” Kamijou smiled in spite of himself when he heard that. At last, Kazakiri realized that he was desperately holding himself back from shivering. “Preparations!…Count down from three!” She gave a command through the transceiver. Kazakiri was stunned. Was he actually going to leap out from behind this shield and make a run for the stone statue? Into this storm of pinballing bullets that not even the shooters could predict the trajectories of? He’d die if he got hit even once. He should be too scared to breathe. “…Two!” Kamijou, who had been lying on the floor until now, raised his upper body ever so slightly. “Wait…you…you can’t!…You’ll…you’ll never be rescued…like this…! I don’t…I don’t want that! I…!” “Don’t stop me, Kazakiri.” For some reason, Kazakiri was on the verge of going crazy, and Kamijou was the one to speak in a calm voice, despite being in the most dangerous situation here. “I think my right hand is why you’ve been avoiding me. It erases every strange power out there, whether or not it’s good or evil. You’re probably not an exception to that.” So don’t reach out with your hand and touch me without thinking. Kazakiri caught her breath as if she’d been punched in the gut. “…One!” Sherry, perhaps having realized something was coming up, began to wave her oil pastel with even more frenzy. Ellis, taking the brunt of the bullet rain, stepped forward with more strength. But in that exact moment, Kamijou wasn’t even thinking about Sherry. He just looked at the girl in front of him. How surprised she looked, now that she knew Kamijou’s power and the reason she’d been avoiding him. “Don’t worry so much about it. We can still be friends even if we can’t touch each other, right? Also, don’t kill me off like that, got it? I’m coming back alive for sure. Got it?” “…Ah. You’ll…you’ll come back…?” “You got it. And then I wanna go out and do something with you and Index afterward,” He said simply, giving a single smile. Then, he directed his gaze ahead. As if cutting the final binding thread between Kamijou and her, the Anti-Skill officer announced, “…Zero!” In that moment… The Anti-Skill officers pouring all of their rounds into Ellis—all of them stopped at once. Sherry probably hadn’t expected anything like this. After all, those bullets were the final barrier keeping Ellis at bay. They’d be dead meat as soon as they stopped shooting. However she looked at it, it seemed to be the very definition of suicide. But it did have an effect. Ellis’s slow, stolid body suddenly began to fall forward. It was like the raging winds it had been putting all its effort into walking against had suddenly stopped. Its own power had been used against it, and it lost its sense of balance. Kamijou leaped over the clear shield like a hurdle and made a mad dash toward it. It was about seven meters away. “Damn. Get him, Ellis” Sherry hurriedly swung her oil pastel again when she saw Kamijou approaching like an arrow. Ellis loyally obeyed her command and balled its hand into a fist. However, it still couldn’t stand up straight. It was about to topple over—if it were forced to throw a punch, it would end up sprawled out on the floor. And then, Kamijou wouldn’t even need to bring down his hand. Sherry would lose her own shield and wouldn’t be able to escape the gunfire. He’d just have to get back down on the ground so that no bouncing bullets hit him. And yet, Ellis still swung its fist. As expected, this completely destroyed what little balance it had left, and it fell toward the floor. The statue was a little more than four meters tall. Given the seven meters he started from, Kamijou wouldn’t get buried under it. He aimed for where Ellis would fall, tightened his fist, and… Thud! Ellis delivered its punch. It did so even while it was falling. It had ignored Kamijou and gone for the ground under them. “Wha…?!” Fissures spiked out of the floor for eight meters around Ellis like a spiderweb. The ground undulated like a trampoline, tossing Kamijou’s body up into the air. The walls, ceiling, and support beams all began to creak and squeal uncannily, echoing throughout the underground mall. And now, Kamijou, on the ground, saw. The golem, Ellis, had used the reaction from its fist to spring back up to its feet. Sherry’s right hand flashed to the side. Its giant fist swung around and down, once again, to crush the bug crawling around beneath it. “Damn it…” Kamijou heard faint, metallic sounds. The Anti-Skill officers must have taken up their rifles again. But they didn’t shoot. If they began firing another shower of bullets, they would deflect and hit him for sure. Argh, this is bullshit! Think! Think… Ellis was towering over him at the moment, bringing down its fist. Even if he used his right hand to stop its descent and destroyed it with the Imagine Breaker, he would still be hit by a multiton avalanche of debris. He would only be able to take a single step if he tried to run. But Ellis, more than four meters tall, had an arm bigger than him. Jumping or rolling to one side or the other wouldn’t get him out of range. Damn it, shit! Isn’t there something I can do? Anything?! Ellis’s fist, with all its weight behind it, came down straight onto Kamijou’s head. At the very least, he knew that stopping it with his right hand would be tantamount to suicide. He brought up his legs, using all of his mental strength, and leaped, praying. Not to the right, not to the left, and not behind—he leaped forward. Ellis’s body was more than four meters tall. That meant it had a lot more weak spots to close in on than humans did, and there was a gap of almost two meters between its feet. Still, it would, under normal circumstances, immediately deliver a kick as he tried to get under its legs. However, in the moment that it let loose with its punch… Just for that one moment, its body was unstable. It wouldn’t be able to kick its feet around without compromising its balance. Kamijou knew how this worked—he was used to city brawls by now. An over-swing might look strong and flashy, but it was weak in that it was simple to counter. Its center of gravity ended up right in the middle of the attack, so any sort of evasion is impossible. Ellis couldn’t move its feet before it finished its swing. The fact that it was forced to try and maintain its balance like a human was its failing. Kamijou crouched and, so low he could lick the floor, sprang forward. He went as fast as an arrow and dove straight through Ellis’s legs Right after that… Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang Sparks began to fly from Ellis’s body. The rifle-wielding Anti-Skill soldiers had opened fire. Ellis’s movements were once again restricted. And funnily enough, none of them hit Kamijou, who now stood behind it. He stood up slowly and was about to touch his hand to Ellis’s back, but he thought about it for a moment and decided not to. He took his eyes off of the statue and turned around. There was Sherry Cromwell. “Eh? Ellis…,” She said, her voice tinged with panic and fear. But she probably understood as well. If she were careless in moving Ellis, they both might end up on the wrong end of the Anti-Skills’ bullets. And she also couldn’t get out of the tiny little boxing ring in Ellis’s shadow. The oil pastel in her hand swam clumsily through the air. The act had none of her previous resolve behind it. She didn’t know what to have Ellis do at this point. There was no one she could ask for help now. Her ultimate weapon was right there in front of her, but not only could she not move it, it was even shielding Kamijou from the bullets. “All righty then,” he said. He swung around his right arm, testing out his shoulder. “Hah…” Despite herself, Sherry bared a pained smile at this hopeless situation. “Ha-ha. What’s this? I can’t run away like this!” “You don’t need to run.” Kamijou shut one eye within the resounding gunfire. “You just need to shut up and go to sleep.” He punched Sherry Cromwell across the room, showing not a scrap of mercy. Her slender body rolled across the floor like paper trash blown by the wind. 6 The guns still hadn’t quieted. Ellis had stopped moving because Sherry had been taken down, but he hadn’t dealt the finishing blow to Ellis. It was only natural that the Anti-Skill officers weren’t letting up. Kamijou took his eyes from Sherry, collapsed five meters away, and turned back to face Ellis. But if I break this too suddenly…Man, I’d better not get hit by any stray bullets. Slowly and carefully, he reached his right hand out to Ellis… “Heh. Heh-heh-heh.” Then, he heard the woman’s laughter and whipped back around to look at Sherry. Did I not hit hard enough? Wait, was she the one who jumped back…?! She was grinning. She was laughing down there on the floor. But her hand still gripped the white oil pastel. Bsh-wshh! She swung it almost as fast as a fencing master, frenetically scrawling some sort of characters or symbols he didn’t understand onto the floor. “Wha…Shit! Making a second one, are we?!” Kamijou was about to rush over there to stop her, but before that, she said, “Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Eh-heh-heh-heh. No, I can’t do that. If Ellis is out like this, I won’t be able to control another at the same time. Besides, if I could make more than one at a time, I would have brought an entire Ellis army with me. When I try to force a second one into existence, I just can’t maintain its shape. It gets all squishy like rotten mud and collapses. But—” She gave a ferocious grin. “By applying it well, I can do this, too” A moment later, the entire floor beneath her collapsed, with the characters she wrote at its center, stretching out about two meters in every direction. She was caught up in the collapsing ground and disappeared as if it had swallowed her. “Damn it” Kamijou rushed over, but only an empty hole remained. It was deep—he couldn’t tell how far down it went. However, he could feel air flowing from within it. She got away. There’s a subway line right under here… Kamijou cursed his luck, and at the same time, the unmoving Ellis broke up into a lot of pieces and noisily rattled down to the ground. Since she couldn’t make two at once, she had probably broken the old one to make room for a new one. As the old Ellis fell apart, the vortex of gunfire ceased abruptly. But that’s strange… Kamijou had a sudden doubt as he peered into the dark hole. Sherry Cromwell didn’t seem to have any real attachment to any one target. She was clearly different from the sorcerers he’d met before. None of them would have ever run away so easily with Hyouka Kazakiri (and, well, Kamijou as well) right before their eyes. Think back. What’s wrong with this? Scraps of Sherry’s words floated across his mind. He looked down, his face deep in thought, but after a few moments he looked up abruptly. “Oh dear, I see the key to Imaginary Number District isn’t with you. Hmm…What was she called again? Kaze, or wait, Kaza…something-or-other. Damn, why are Japanese names so complicated?” Now that he thought about it, she never seemed to have much interest in Hyouka Kazakiri from the start. “I’m starting a war, and I need a trigger for it. I need as many people as possible to know that I’m a pawn of the English Puritan Church…right, Ellis?” What if Sherry had some other objective, and Kazakiri was just one of the options she could have chosen? “It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters. I don’t absolutely need to kill that brat. No, not that one.” What if she could substitute others for Kazakiri instead? “Hee. Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee-hee. The Index of Forbidden Books, and Imagine Breaker, and the key to the Imaginary Number District…Which one should I choose? Can I have any of them? Tee-hee-hee. I don’t know! So many options to choose from!” What if she hadn’t fled… …she’d just decided upon a different target? And… She had three targets. Right now, Kamijou and Kazakiri were being guarded by Anti-Skill here. The only one who wasn’t here, who wasn’t being protected by Anti-Skill, was… “Damn…She’s going for Index?” INTERLUDE TWO Footsteps echoed through the dark subway passage. They weren’t the kind of sounds a human could make. They were the footfalls of the golem, Ellis, made of concrete and rail tracks, boasting a height of four meters. Sherry sat in Ellis’s arm, motioning with her oil pastel to control both of Ellis’s legs. She knew where she needed to go. Before she made the second Ellis, she had released dozens more mud eyeballs and located her target. They would have gotten in the way of creating a second golem, however, so she’d already destroyed them. She felt her cheek sting from the punch. Normally, her feet, hidden beneath her long skirt, didn’t touch the ground—they floated a few centimeters above it in order to avoid Ellis’s earthquakes. Unfortunately, when that boy had punched her, the impact had ruined her levitation spell. Thus, Ellis was carrying her at the moment. She looked around, then whispered. “How wretched.” This concrete underground maze was wretched. This foul stench was wretched. This filthy, dusty air was wretched. The one who created all this was wretched. The very ability to create this was simply wretched. She hated this city. She hated this city’s water. Its wind. Its earth. Its fire. She hated all of it. She wished she could rip it off the map. Out of history. Out of peoples’ memories. Out of the world itself. The cheek the esper had punched flushed redder with heat. Sherry cursed. It was all because of this city. Nothing was right. “Ellis…,” she said. Ellis was not the name originally given to this type of golem. It was the name of an esper who had died twenty years ago. Word Cound: (14653)