Kihara Amata's smile grew even deeper and fiercer.
Accelerator had stood up.
Despite how much Kihara had hurt and beat the boy, he was running forward while yelling Kihara's name.
It was as if he was trying to protect the space behind him.
It was as if he was trying to save the two girls hiding behind that office desk.
"…Interesting," said Kihara when his enemy would not be defeated.
His face was filled with ferocious joy.
"That's right!! This wouldn't be any fun if you were defeated so easily! I'm glad you know how to provide excellent service, Accelerator! You've never done anything but piss me off! I won't use a gun. I'll sink my fists into you before killing yoooooouuuuuuu!!"
Kihara's mind seemed to snap.
He shouted out like a wild animal. But that cry did not stop Accelerator or the strange girl's song. The girl seemed to be in a trance where she was so focused she was not aware of her surroundings. Kihara was surrounded by nothing but enemies. No stage could have been better.
(This all would have been perfect if you had been dead, so why the hell are you still alive!?)
Kihara intercepted Accelerator.
He clenched his fists and cracked the knuckles.
After clenching his one fist until it was as hard as steel, he mercilessly threw it toward the center of Accelerator's face.
A roar rang out.
Kihara could feel slight cracking feelings transferred up his arm.
And yet Accelerator did not stop in the slightest.
"Ooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
Despite having his face smashed, he sent a counter punch at Kihara's face. Kihara's nose broke and pain exploded out. That strike had had the boy's entire strength behind it. Kihara could tell without having it explained to him.
(…Gh…bh!!)
Kihara moved his head back to its original position, pushing the fist back with it.
He further hardened his fist.
"That's not gonna cut it, boooyyyyy!!"
He slammed that fist against Accelerator's slender face. The boy's body spun around and collapsed to the floor. He writhed around on the floor, but Kihara slammed his foot down with all his body weight on top of it.
It was like hammering a thick stake down.
This produced a great roar of impact. Kihara repeatedly shouted out meaningless statements while he stomped here and there on Accelerator again and again. He heard the sounds of things breaking and a red liquid flew out.
"Okaaay! Now we're talking! My engine's all heated up, but what about you!? Fucking amazing! Can you not actually save that brat at all?"
Accelerator gave no response to that amused voice.
But the light in his eyes did not diminish even as he lay crushed on the ground.
He needed to rescue that girl. He needed to protect her.
And so he could not let his heart break.
"Pant!! Pant!!"
Kihara was putting so much effort into stomping on the boy that he was out of breath.
"Ha ha ha!" he laughed as he looked around.
The incompetent Hound Dog subordinates that Accelerator had defeated were lying on the floor. And so were their guns. Kihara had gotten fed up with it all, so he approached them and crouched down.
"I was just starting to have some fun, so could you give this a little more effort?"
He picked up one of the weapons and gave a thin smile. This was the expression of a runner after completing a marathon.
Kihara Amata lightly tossed the object in his hand at Accelerator.
It was an anti-personnel grenade with the pin removed.
Not only had Accelerator lost a portion of his brain function, but he was lying collapsed on the ground after being thrashed by Kihara. He had no means of avoiding or knocking away the grenade.
With a light thunk, the grenade struck his forehead and bounced slightly.
The small object did not even have time to hang in the air.
With a tremendous noise, the grenade exploded. A shockwave and a large number of fragments flew in every direction and gray smoke blew out. The explosion had been close enough for one of the fragments to scratch Kihara's cheek. That was enough to slice open the skin like someone had taken a chisel to his cheek. But Kihara was smiling. He was filled with nothing but exhilaration.
Silence fell.
Only the entranced nun's quiet and lengthy singing continued.
"Hyah."
He had won.
"Gya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!"
Kihara laughed from the bottom of his gut.
He was dead. That boy was dead. That grenade had exploded only a few centimeters from his head. No flesh-and-blood human could survive that no matter what they did. The area was still covered in smoke-like dust, but once it cleared, Kihara would only find a corpse so torn to pieces its original form would be unidentifiable.
The gray dust produced by the grenade thinned out as it spread. It surged behind Kihara like a wave and fully covered his vision.
Once it cleared, Accelerator's corpse would be visible.
Once he saw that boy's pathetic end, Kihara Amata's fight would be over.
(Aleister said not to kill that mass-produced brat but that means anything else is fair game. I'll give his corpse to that strange singing nun as a souvenir to completely break her mind.)
"Ha ha."'
Just as that thought came to Kihara…
Someone grabbed the front his face.
"…!!"
Someone was standing in front of Kihara Amata.
The dust prevented him from seeing exactly who it was.
(Gah…!?)
Normally, Accelerator would have been the most likely candidate. But Kihara could not accept that. Without his powers, Accelerator was weaker than your average high school student. He could never survive that grenade blast without some sort of trick.
And it was hard to believe that his reflection would have returned for some reason. The hand grabbing Kihara was covered in soot. If Accelerator's reflection had been functioning, even those small stains would have been deflected.
"What…?"
But it was unmistakably Accelerator standing there.
Kihara saw white hair, red eyes, well-formed facial features, supple skin, a slender body line, a choker, mostly gray clothes, arms and legs with little muscle, and glittering black shoes.
But he ignored all of those and shouted about something else.
"What the hell are those black wings growing from your back!?"
They looked more like jets than wings.
Some unknown substance was being sprayed out as wings that were darker than ink and swallowed up even the light.
Kihara had seen an "angel". He had understood that he had helped make it appear. But he was still unable to properly grasp the scene occurring before his eyes.
(Th-that bastard…)
Accelerator's power gave him control over all vectors regardless of what type they were. His speech ability, walking ability, and the acquisition of this new power had likely all used some kind of power that existed in that local space.
Scientifically speaking, Accelerator was currently unable to perform any physics calculations, so it should have been impossible for him to control any physical force.
But what if there was some other power?
If he had grabbed ahold of some unscientific theory, did it matter what calculations he could make?
The occult.
That was what appeared to be a set of irregular laws that showed themselves ever so slightly after thousands and tens of thousands of experiments and that only a researcher of Kihara's level would know about.
(He's achieved a new clearance level for what he can control? What values did he input into his Personal Reality? What has he secured a method of communicating with!?)
The only possibility he could think of was the representative example of a power filling Academy City.
(AIM!? …Wait, it can't be! Is that power actually that angel or whatever!?)
But Accelerator was not going to wait around.
He poured more strength into his grip as he squeezed Kihara's skull.
"…"
He smiled. He silently smiled.
"Ha ha ha," laughed back Kihara Amata as his arms and legs hung down limply.
And he asked a question.
"H-have you…seen what's behind you, you monster?"
"ihbfKILLwq"
The black wings explosively burst out.
An unexplainable and invisible power burst from Accelerator's hand and assaulted Kihara Amata.
His body left Accelerator's hand, shot through the abandoned office at terrifying speed, flew out of the broken window, and cut across the night sky at dozens of times the speed of sound. He moved so quickly that he turned to plasma and left behind an orange afterimage.
It was not necessary to check to see if he was dead.