Part 1
The foreign unit of mercenaries known as privateers began their invasion.
Hamazura Shiage and the others could do nothing about it.
As expected, the privateers showed no sign of worrying about the injured Russian soldier. They were putting everything into the invasion.
"This way."
Digurv led them into the basement of the clinic. It seemed the space was originally used for storing cheeses and smoked meats. Of course, it did not have the durability one would expect of a shelter. It could not defend against attacks, so it's only purpose was to keep the enemy from finding them.
The frostbitten Russian soldier seemed able to move a bit after having warmed up next to the electric heater. They gave him some preserved cheese to help him recover his strength, but his expression looked like sorrow itself. He seemed more bothered by having been abandoned by the army than by his physical condition.
Hamazura embraced Takitsubo's limp form.
He had never expected things to turn out that way. He had thought the back alleys of Academy City were bad, but they were not the only hell. In each place, a different mouth of darkness opened to swallow them whole. Hamazura and Takitsubo had thought they were desperately running from the darkness, but it turned out "somewhere other than here" was not necessarily a paradise.
Low vibrations resounded from the ceiling.
They didn't sound like explosions. It was similar to a car engine, but the vibrations were too loud.
"What is that? Treads?"
"They may have come in tanks," responded Digurv. "There aren't many. Two I'd guess. They don't care about the theories followed by a normal army. They probably haven't brought any infantry with them. …But tanks on their own are more than enough of a threat."
As the low vibrations brought him fear, Hamazura also had a question.
"We know we don't have any, but for all they know, we could have people hiding in or behind buildings with anti-tank rockets, right? Wouldn't they normally destroy the main pieces of cover from a distance before charging in?"
"They aren't a normal army. They only want to rampage around and they were just given the latest equipment, so normal military theory means nothing to them. It may leave some openings, but they are more brutal than some more mechanical soldiers. It's best if we aren't found."
A terrible splintering sound could be heard from overhead.
The two of them stopped talking.
The sounds of a building being demolished continued. Instead of blowing it away with a shell, they were using the thickly armored vehicle itself to plow into the building. It certainly did not seem like the proper way of doing things.
(…They're playing around.)
Hamazura gritted his teeth while embracing Takitsubo.
(They're waiting for us to not be able to withstand the fear and come running out. That way they can carefully aim and shoot us while we're in a panic.)
The privateers enjoyed the act of killing more than achieving the objective of their mission. Tearfully surrendering would be of no use. There would be no point in begging them to let Takitsubo live. They would just shoot both of them in the forehead.
Intense anger boiled up from the bottom of his gut, but there was nothing he could do. Jumping out before the privateers would just be playing into their hands.
Digurv must have been feeling even more anger than Hamazura.
It was Digurv and the others who had so much riding on that land. Seeing it all mercilessly destroyed half for fun must have doubled his anger.
Digurv managed to endure it both so he personally would survive and so Hamazura and the others hiding there would not get wrapped up in it all.
Hamazura knew for sure he shouldn't take any careless actions.
But the danger did not leave after only that.
The ceiling suddenly collapsed and the armored vehicle fell down like an avalanche.
Most likely, the privateers hadn't meant to do that. They had run through the clinic without realizing it had a basement and had fallen through the floor.
However, that was not something Hamazura and the others could endure.
A large number of wooden boards came tumbling down and Hamazura and Digurv desperately rolled out of the way. The sharp edges of the broken boards pierced into the plaster wall. The armored vehicle had a gun turret on the top. The turret did not move. The sudden fall down into the basement had bent the end of the gun.
"Run!!" Digurv yelled.
A metal door on the front of the vehicle started to open.
Hamazura dragged Takitsubo along. He handed her to Digurv who had made it up to the surface.
That was when the door on the vehicle fully opened.
Hamazura managed to climb out along with the frostbitten Russian soldier at almost the exact moment rifle bullets began spraying around at random. The clinic was pretty much gone. Its roof and walls were missing. It was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
They had managed to avoid getting shot by the rifle bullets by getting to the surface.
However, they did not have time to relax.
Digurv spoke with a pale face.
"If we stay up here, we'll be killed. The other privateers in the area might find us and it's all over once the ones from the armored vehicle climb out. We need to find some other shelter before they catch up to us!!"
Something nearby exploded. Hamazura and Digurv were knocked in different directions. There was something wrong with Hamazura's eardrums.
From his position on the ground, Hamazura could see Digurv. It seemed the man had taken less damage than him. Digurv was holding Takitsubo and he looked over at Hamazura for an instant, but he was then forced to run off somewhere. He was likely fleeing towards some other basement.
(…Fuck. I don't know where that basement is!! He damn well better not let Takitsubo die!!)
Hamazura slowly stood up. He was almost completely in a state of panic. The frostbitten soldier must have gone somewhere, because he didn't see him anywhere. He smelled smoke. The smells of food, cigarettes, and other signs of human life were gone. They had been completely blown away.
He knelt down behind some rubble and looked around the area.
Already, almost half of the log houses had collapsed and he could clearly see the tracks of treads in the white snow. They did not seem to belong to the armored vehicle from before.
(A weapon. Is there any kind of weapon I can get…?)
He couldn't overcome that crisis with just the handgun in his pocket.
For better or for worse, there was a machine gun emplacement only 10 meters away. A rather large machine gun was placed in a half circle of sandbags. Surely it was not there to shoot down an attack helicopter. It was possible it was there to merely look like it could do so in an attempt to prevent any from passing by overhead.
Of course, Hamazura did not know how to operate a machine gun.
He would just end shooting wildly unable to deal with the recoil.
But it was better than nothing.
Hamazura was so nervous that he was afraid his raised heart rate would tear his heart apart as he dashed out from behind the rubble and onto the white snow. He was almost falling more than he was running, but he managed to make it to the gun emplacement surrounded by sandbags. It had only been 10 meters, but it had seemed a path through hell to Hamazura.
The machine gun was fixed in place on 3 legs. The joints were made to rotate and the ends of the legs were completely fixed in a square piece of concrete with stakes. It couldn't be taken out without some tools.
"Fuck!!" Hamazura swore as he pulled out his handgun.
He could still hear explosions in the area, so he guessed that a few gunshots would go unnoticed.
Just as he thought that, an armored vehicle with treads came out from behind a different building. It was about 20 meters away. It had a rotating gun turret with barrels lined up in parallel on both sides. It also had a plate-like antenna. It may have been more of an anti-aircraft gun than a tank. It had those large machine guns instead of something to shoot explosives like a tank. They really weren't doing things the normal way. That vehicle was not meant to be on the front lines chasing enemies on the surface.
But a flesh-and-blood human would still be turned to mincemeat if they were hit by those guns.
Hamazura was so shocked he thought he was going to bite his tongue, but it seemed they hadn't noticed him.
They were after another target.
It was a woman in her 30s who was desperately running away while holding a young baby in her arms. A girl of about 10 was running just a bit behind her. The woman holding the baby's expression was twisted in fear, exhaustion, and humiliation. Hamazura couldn't tell who she was, but he managed to pull some information from the back of his mind. She was most likely one of the people who had come to the village after having been rescued from the trucks. Her clothes were subtly different from Digurv and the others'.
The anti-aircraft gun adjusted slightly to aim at their backs.
If even one shot hit them, they would be damaged so badly it would be hard to know how to bury them.
Hamazura's arms jumped up.
The next thing he knew, he was holding the machine gun set in the emplacement.
He didn't have time to aim carefully.
He pulled the trigger.
The thing was supposed to be set in the ground, but a shock still ran through his right shoulder as if it had been hit by some kind of power tool. The immense shock blurred his vision. Even so, Hamazura gritted his teeth and continued to pull the trigger.
Sparks flew from the anti-aircraft gun's armor.
Assuming one managed to hit it, the large machine gun did have the destructive power needed to damage a small aircraft.
The force of his barrage must have altered the rotation angle of the gun turret by just a little bit.
When the large guns started firing, the bullets flew by the woman and the girl instead of hitting them in the back.
"Run!!" Hamazura yelled over the gunfire despite the fact that they likely didn't understand Japanese.
The anti-aircraft gun did not leave it at that.
Using a large motor, the gun turret rotated. They seemed pissed that he had ruined their fun. The barrels looked like a golf ball could easily fit inside and they were now pointed toward the gun emplacement Hamazura was in.
"Oh, shit!"
Hamazura immediately let go of the machine gun and hid.
The spray of bullets began immediately afterwards.
The sandbags burst one after another and the soil packed inside was blown away. The large machine gun was torn to pieces. At that rate, he was going to lose his wall in a few dozen seconds. But leaving the wall in the middle of that storm of bullets could very well make his body explode.
Hamazura was unable to move, but the anti-aircraft gun ceased firing.
(Did it jam…?)
Hamazura thoughts moved in a positive direction, but that wasn't it.
Those privateers did not follow proper military theory like normal soldiers did.
They were doing this for fun.
They put aside the guns and fired a surface-to-air missile instead.
With a trail of white smoke, the explosive flew toward the half-destroyed gun emplacement.
"God dammit!!"
Hamazura frantically jumped to the side away from the gun emplacement he had been using as a shield.
An explosion occurred immediately afterwards.
His sense of hearing was blown away.
His body floated in the air from the intense blast. After landing on the snow, he looked around the area. He just so happened to be behind a building. He was pretty sure he was 10 meters away from the gun emplacement. That was not due to his own ability. That was just how great the blast had been.
His legs trembled in fear.
There was something wrong with those privateers.
Hamazura had lived a life in the back alleys of Academy City that most would not praise him for, yet the privateers' aberrant morals were enough to scare even him. There was something wrong with someone who crossed national borders to get to a battlefield just to satisfy their desire to kill.
As Hamazura realized this bit by bit, he was unable to move.
He then heard a noise.
"!?"
He just about to panic and pull the trigger of his handgun without thinking of the consequences, but he realized who it was before he did.
It was Digurv holding Takitsubo. He must have gotten there through a different route of hiding behind rubble. Digurv had not abandoned the unconscious girl.
Hamazura's spirit had been about to break, but seeing Takitsubo's sleeping face just barely managed to support him.
"Are you okay? We could really do without any more sick or injured."
"Hey, I thought you had run off to another shelter?"
"I was running around trying to stay out of sight of the privateers and this is where I ended up."
That must mean the privateers had them surrounded and were tightening the circle. Hamazura's mouth felt incredibly dry due to his tension. He was about ready to put a handful of snow into his mouth, but he had another question.
"What about some other shelter?"
"The entrance to the other one is nearby, but the privateers are wandering around near it. They don't seem to have found it yet, but they may figure out there's one there if I get close."
"Shit," Hamazura muttered.
The noise of engines was surprisingly quiet. The anti-aircraft gun from before was probably the only thing running. The armored vehicle had fallen through the floor of the clinic and couldn't be used anymore. The few privateers that had come from it just so happened to be blocking their way to the other shelter.
"What were they doing?"
"They were checking everything including the attic and the curtains. They're even looking under children's beds in an attempt to find any stash of money or valuables. They also seemed mad that they couldn't find their targets. They're all just itching to kill their enemy."
"…So they don't intend to let us get away. And they don't seem like the type that would respond to an appeal to their compassion."
The privateers ended up sealing up the entrance to the shelter.
There was no longer a safe place they could run to.
It was possible no such place had existed in the first place.
Hamazura looked down at Takitsubo's unconscious face. Her forehead was damp with a sickly sweat and her bangs were sticking there. When he kindly fixed her hair, he realized that his fingertips had stopped trembling.
He could not let her die there.
He did not want to let people who had worried for her die either.
He didn't want to be defeated without being able to do anything. He'd had enough of that in the back alleys of Academy City.
Hadn't Hamazura Shiage decided to escape all that?
He was angry at the unreasonable violence. Why did Takitsubo's life have to be targeted? Why did the people who had worried for her despite not knowing her have to be attacked for such a ridiculous reason? It was time to fight back. If it was a battle where both sides' lives were on the line, Hamazura had the right to bite back.
"…Can you hold on to Takitsubo for just a little longer?"
"Wh-what are you going to do?"
Digurv may have noticed the change in Hamazura's expression and general atmosphere.
Hamazura looked back at Takitsubo's face once more as Digurv held her.
"I've had enough of their shit. I'm gonna blow that thing to pieces."
"Just so you know, we don't have any RPGs. That thing may have thinner armor than a tank, but an AK isn't enough to get through!!"
"They're like point stickers, right?"
Digurv looked confused at Hamazura's odd remark and Hamazura repeated himself in a more understandable way.
"You said you had collected all the landmines you've dug up in one place so you can hand them over to an NGO, right?"
Part 2
He rushed from the base.
Accelerator ran across the snow.
He was not chasing anything and he was not sprinting towards a specific location.
He was running away.
Academy City's #1 Level 5 was running away while holding Last Order.
He honestly found her terrifying.
More so than Kihara Amata.
More so than Kakine Teitoku.
More so than Aiwass.
More so than that boy.
The enemy chasing after Accelerator was overwhelmingly terrifying because she threatened to destroy the pillar supporting his values.
He heard the sound of electricity sparking from behind him.
It was on a smaller scale than a Railgun from #3.
However, it was on a decidedly greater scale than the standard Sister.
He heard what sounded like a popping balloon.
It was the sound of an iron nail about 2 cm long being fired at just over the speed of sound.
Its power was on the level of a handgun bullet.
The iron nail had been fired from behind Accelerator and it accurately pierced into his left arm halfway between the elbow and shoulder.
It wasn't that he hadn't been able to reflect it.
He hadn't been sure if he should reflect it.
No, what he couldn't decide was if it was okay to kill the attacker by reflecting it.
He may have been able to alter the angle so it only injured her, but he could not deny the fact that he might end up reflecting it and killing her due to a mistake or slipping back into old habits. When he thought about that possibility, he could not act.
Strength left his arm.
The small girl it was supposed to be supporting flew through the air.
The warmth of the girl who was supporting Accelerator's mentality was swept away by the freezing cold that seemed to split through the snowy plain.
"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"
His scream reverberated throughout the area.
Last Order's body landed in the deep snow.
Accelerator could not even reach his arm out towards her. He lost his balance and disturbed the white snow as he almost completely collapsed.
He almost felt like laughter was going to overflow from the bottom of his gut.
Accelerator had a rule he had imposed on himself.
In the past he had killed a large number of clones for his own experiment.
That was why he had decided that, no matter what happened, he would never again hurt the clones known as the Sisters and Last Order.
To accomplish that, Accelerator had taken part in many bloody battles. Kihara Amata, Kakine Teitoku, and Shiokishi of the board of directors. His body and mind had been worn down during his fights against various monsters. He had lost to Aiwass. That was why he had fled to that land of snow. His efforts had hardly been perfect, but he had felt that he had done an okay job of protecting the lives and lifestyles of Last Order and the Sisters. He had believed that he had done what was necessary for that.
But of all things, Academy City had put together a plan that seemed to be pinpointed to break exactly that. This plan took his desire to protect them even if it meant making an enemy of the entire world and used it as a tool for fighting against him.
(They're fucking insane…)
He needed to protect Last Order.
He needed to defeat the Sister assassin.
If he protected the one or let the other live, Accelerator would be breaking that rule he had risked his life to protect.
(The Third Season? They created more of them just to create this situation!? They did it just to stimulate my trauma and break my mind!? Academy City is fucking insane. Now that I can see those bastards from the outside, it's even more obvious. There is something fundamentally fucked up about that city!!)
He could not accomplish any kind of normal thought pattern.
That was proof that the attacker's mere existence had shaken Accelerator's mentality.
It may have been true that a mental strategy would be more effective against someone who had the power to reflect a nuclear attack.
"Oh, dear. Do you think you're protecting Misaka? No one asked you to do that. In fact, it's rather arrogant of you to think that's enough to make up for killing over 10,000 people."
Those words stabbed into him.
The tone of her voice was the same, but the feelings packed into them were overwhelmingly different.
"You should just bring yourself to ruin already. If you just break your rule and fight all out, surely you could kill Misaka," said the voice coming from behind the mask with the lenses arranged like the face of an analog clock.
There was no fear in the voice.
She may have been sure that he absolutely could not attack back.
She was about 10 meters away.
"It looks like Misaka's countermeasure for your electrode may have been unnecessary."
Electricity sparked from the bangs visible at the edge of the mask. She may have been attempting to jam the signal with her electrical powers. Or perhaps she was directly interfering with the Misaka Network.
After thinking that far, a question floated up in Accelerator's chest.
Last Order was a special clone that held control over all the orders to the Sisters connected to the Misaka Network. If that attacker was one of them, Last Order should be able to seal her movements with a single order.
The higher ups had to know that Accelerator had brought Last Order with him.
Would they still send a Sister who could have her control stolen at any time as an assassin?
That meant…
(It's a disguise!!)
Accelerator stopped running once he came to that conclusion.
The snow was blown away and the earth below shattered and flew towards the attacker with overwhelming speed. It was like a shotgun fired using natural objects.
In response, the attacker merely lay down.
However, it was a smooth motion of just lowering her hips.
She easily evaded the uppercut-like strike that had mainly been aimed at her face and upper body. However, the fragments of earth caught on her mask and blew it away into the air.
Her face was now exposed.
This time Accelerator fell down on top of the white snow.
He had not been hit by some strange attack. He just felt an intense resistance to accepting the face below that mask.
"It's no use," said the attacker without even a smile on the face that would be the one Last Order could have when she became the same age as high schoolers. "You use the Misakas' network for your calculations. Misaka is part of the Third Season, so she can monitor the activities of the Misaka Network and read what your next attack will be. It'll take quite something to fatally wound this Misaka. Do you really have room to hold back? If you're gonna do this, you need to be intent on killing Misaka. C'mon, if you understand, come kill her. Of course, you can't do that. If you did, all your work up to now would have been for naught. Then could you shut up and let Misaka kick your ass? Gya ha ha ha!!"
She was a fake.
She was using special makeup.
She was using some kind of esper power.
Accelerator stood up thinking those things, but…
"Help me. Misaka is scared."
"…!!"
Hearing the girl's tone of voice, the monster froze.
As blood dripped from his left arm where the iron nail had pierced it, Accelerator could not even swing up his fist for self defense.
"By the way…"
The attacker brought her hand up to her neck.
He saw a thin scar there that would be easy to overlook if he were not paying attention.
"Misaka has sheets and selectors installed in her. Even if Last Order sends a signal to stop Misaka, it's set up to automatically reject the signal as long as an approval code is not sent from the board of directors. You can't stop Misaka even if you pathetically rely on that little girl."
"…"
The answer thrust before him was quite simple.
It was kill or be killed.
However, that did not apply only to Accelerator.
If it did, he would just give up and let her finish him off.
The problem was the fact that Last Order was wrapped up in the assassination.
It was not the same as destroying some lowly thug.
Nor was it a situation where giving up his own life would solve everything.
Neither way would save them.
Accelerator was prepared to point a gun at his own head if it meant keeping another Sister from dying. He could not kill them. Even if it meant making an enemy of the entire world and even if it meant he would have to fight countless monsters from the bloody darkness of the world, he would never, ever bring pain or fear to the girls who held that face. He didn't think that his bloody self would make them smile, but he wanted to at least protect the smiles they had for themselves.
And yet both winning and losing would create a dilemma for a Sister in his current situation.
Having gone through that experiment, Accelerator knew that Academy City was 100% serious if they said they would kill the Sisters. He knew they would not hold back and fail to go through with it or anything like that.
But…
This was…
Accelerator knew that he would likely completely lose it if either of the Sisters died.
"…The Third Season," Accelerator muttered. "If they've started that and created you, then replacements can be made for the other Sisters at any time. I'm sure they've made that decision both from a cost and ethics standpoint."
"They have. And the command tower of Last Order is no exception."
Academy City was carrying out some kind of experiment. He knew that Aiwass was involved in that plan and that the Sisters and their network were being used for it.
"But the board of directors wants to maintain control of the Misaka Network at all times, so I'm guessing the major decision to redo the Network wasn't made until Last Order went missing. Everything would've been fine if you hadn't needlessly taken her away and now it's come back to bite you in the ass."
Basically, that meant she was there to kill Last Order not to retrieve her.
If they were remaking the Misaka Network and its command tower, the old numbers were no longer needed. In fact, having two command towers might actually harm the network. That was why Academy City was taking the initiative and having Last Order killed.
Yet she had done nothing wrong.
It was all for an unnecessary reason that was just for someone else's convenience.
"What're you gonna do?" the attacker smiled.
It was a wicked and emotional smile that did not match his impression of the Sisters.
"If you don't want to kill any Sisters, you have no choice but to let Misaka do you in here. But Misaka will attack Last Order once she's killed you. Even if you stop her by force, Misaka will still die. Gya ha ha ha ha!! Either way, your mind is done for. Misaka'll make sure to play with you until your personality is completely shattered, so let's have some fun!!"
Those words of despair marked the beginning of the battle to utterly destroy the pillar supporting Accelerator's heart that he had worked so hard to build up.
Part 3
A Russian navy submarine had circumvented the intense battlefield of the Sea of Japan by heading through the Pacific Ocean. It was currently near Indonesia.
It was not making preparations to fire ballistic missiles at Academy City from an unexpected place.
Russia was already firing missiles from all sorts of angles, but they were all being accurately shot down. Most were being intercepted outside the atmosphere, but some were being blown away by a mysterious beam 5 seconds after launching.
Given the known history of missile development, it was a completely impossible feat.
The interception systems humanity had put together were a concentration of many different technologies, but they still did not have perfect accuracy. The fundamental theory for dealing with ballistic missiles was to take political action to prevent them from being fired in the first place.
The submarine was near Indonesia to carry out the countermeasure the higher ups had come up with. The submarine's goal was to cut off their supply line.
Academy City was part of Japan which was an island nation. Unlike Russia, its resources were scarce. The Russians hadn't thought the war would go on that long, but that meant the strategy of cutting off Academy City's overseas resources was an effective one.
They couldn't wield that seemingly all powerful technology forever.
The day they ran out of stamina would mark their death.
That was what the higher ups had thought.
To make sure that not a single transport ship made it through, over 20 submarines had been prepared.
But…
"Nothing's showing up," someone muttered as no ship appeared no longer how long they waited.
The channel they were in was like a highway with ships headed to places all over the world instead of just to Japan. They had actually seen ships heading to many different countries. But not a single transport ship headed to Japan had shown up.
Maybe they were using a different route and maybe their ships were disguised as ones heading to different countries. They thought of various possibilities, but they couldn't find the answer. All they knew was that Academy City could not continue functioning without a large number of transport ships coming and going.
A transmission came in from one of the other submarines in the fleet. Both amateurs and soldiers got bored with nothing to do. Not finding a single target was extra irritating when shut inside a submarine.
"Are they really using ships? I've heard they're using some amazing aircraft back home."
"I doubt they can bring in every sort of material including items for daily living with only those monsters. Don't let the impact of their tech lead you astray. None of that changes the fact that sea routes are the most popular for bringing in large amounts of goods."
"But we haven't seen a single transport ship headed for Academy City. We've even carried out a few pirate-like forced inspections, but that turned up nothing. Where are they? They aren't on the sea or in the air. They aren't heading underneath the sea, are they?"
"Couldn't be. Submarines can only be so big for their noise to not be detected. They can't be used for large scale transports."
"…What do we do? That was a pretty close guess," said the young communications officer in an Academy City submarine.
They were slipping past one of the Russian submarines at a distance of only a few meters. Most of their cargo was supplies for Academy City. The Russians' conversation had hit on the truth.
The only thing off was the size.
While the Russian sub was only 100 meters long the Academy City one was easily 5 times that.
Academy City was not on a coast, but a few of the organizations that worked with it had prepared that secret weapon based on the technological information Academy City supplied them with. When the sub entered Japanese waters, smaller subs would meet up with it and take the materials to the port.
The navigator sitting near the communications officer responded to the young man.
"They haven't detected us with their radar or sonar, so officially we don't exist."
Normally a submarine that large would be quite noticeable by the propeller noise alone. The sound of the water being disturbed would be detected.
That didn't happen because that submarine did not have a propeller. Instead, the surface of the sub detected the movements of the ocean currents and used water jets to propel itself so that the noise would be blend in with the currents. The noise of the sub itself was impossible to completely eliminate, but the water jets interfered with it so that enemy sonar would not detect anything unusual.
"If we used our ultrasonic weapons, we could make it look like propeller trouble instead of an attack."
Just to be sure, the surface of the sub was made difficult to detect which even prevented the sub from being detected by magnetism.
Even so, if it rose above a certain depth, it could still be detected, but that also meant that the odds of detection approached zero when it was below that depth.
"Our orders are not to sink the enemy," the navigator said as if confirming that with himself. "We just need to carry out our mission. The greatest victory for us is to guarantee safety."
Part 4
The landmines were stored at the edge of the village.
As the fear-inducing sound of the anti-aircraft gun's engine continued, Hamazura darted out from behind the rubble. He continued along the snow while hiding behind bits of cover that were just barely maintaining their form as buildings.
He was heading for a small hut.
The wooden building was so small a minivan would not even fit inside of it.
He opened the simple door that was reminiscent of the door to a bathroom stall and saw objects carelessly piled up as if they were magazines. They were pentagonal metal plates that looked a bit like a home base from baseball. In addition to those items that were tied up with string were cylinders about the size of soda cans.
"So this is it…" Hamazura said in almost a groan.
According to Digurv, the home base-like ones were anti-tank mines. Hamazura grabbed one of the tied-together bundles with both hands and placed it atop the snow. It was the kind of action one would not expect someone who knew what the mines were capable of would be able to do.
He untied the bundle and grabbed the edge of one of the home-base like objects.
There was a small triangular part sticking out at each corner of the pentagon. They were most likely the fuse that detected weight. When he flipped it over, he saw that the center was sunken in slightly and a branch a few centimeters long was stuck in horizontally. It was pressing on a pin-like object. The branch was not a part of the mine. It had been hastily installed by the villagers after digging up the mine. Digurv had said the mine worked the same as a grenade. If he pulled out the branch and put it on the ground, it would be ready to go. After that, a rhinoceros beetle climbing on it would set it off. There may have been tools for operating the pin after setting it up.
He wanted to take as many of them as possible, but the mines were heavy. He could only carry 2 or 3 at a time. If he had 4 or 5 of them, he wouldn't be able to run properly. He was already at a serious disadvantage, so he didn't want to add on any more handicaps.
(…I guess I'm limited to 2.)
Suddenly, the wall of a house relatively close to the hut was blown away.
It was due to the giant bullets of the anti-aircraft gun.
Digurv had said that only two vehicles had come to the village and the first armored vehicle had already fallen down into the basement shelter. If he could just destroy that anti-aircraft gun, the threat would be gone for the time being.
Hamazura drew back from the loud sound of the barrage and then left the hut carrying the landmines.
Next, he had to get near the anti-aircraft gun.
There was also the means of setting up the landmine in a place the vehicle was likely to pass through, but Hamazura had no proof it would actually pass through any one area. As he also had a limited number of them and he couldn't exactly head out into the open and set up the landmine, that simply didn't seem like a good strategy.
To ensure he took it out, it would be fastest to get close to the anti-aircraft gun and throw a landmine at it. He had asked Digurv to be sure, and they could indeed be used like grenades.
Nevertheless…
(Getting close enough to it is a damn high hurdle to get over.)
After all, his opponent had high caliber machine guns that could blow away buildings as well as people. If they noticed him, it was over and he was going to be charging right in making it easier for them to notice him.
He didn't really think it sounded like the best idea he had ever had.
But succeeding in that plan was the only way to save everyone in the village.
If he failed, even Takitsubo would be killed.
What was the point of having escaped Academy City if that happened? He wouldn't be able to bring her back to life even if he found something to negotiate with.
(I have to do it!!)
Hamazura ran along the side of the crumbled rubble. The anti-aircraft gun was searching for a target while crushing buildings for fun. The place the villagers were hiding in might be discovered before long. Hamazura ran along an area where the collapsing roof and walls were just barely staying up.
The sound and vibration from the treads squeezed at his heart.
The mass of steel passed by on the other side of a broken window.
Hamazura glanced outside the window while pressing his back up against the wall that seemed like it was about to collapse.
It was close.
It was about 5 meters away.
He reached for the small branch on the back of the anti-tank mine.
If he pulled it out, the mine's functionality would return. Even a slight shock would set it off. It would definitely go off if he threw it.
He took one deep breath.
And then stopped.
He pulled out the branch on the back of the mine and removed his back from the wall. He leaned out the broken window.
The anti-aircraft gun seemed to have noticed him.
But between the time it would take for the large gun turret to rotate and the time it would take for a human arm to swing, Hamazura had the clear advantage.
He threw the explosive and hid behind the wall.
The mine struck the side of the gun turret and then detonated.
A loud roar shook Hamazura's brain.
A landmine was different from a hand grenade. Mines were bombs that were meant to be placed on the ground. They could be made so the energy from the limited amount of explosive was focused up rather than in every direction.
The anti-tank mine Hamazura had thrown was made in that way.
As the mine had spun through the air, it had hit the gun turret with its bottom side. The shock had set the explosive off, but the blast had gone in the wrong direction.
The anti-aircraft gun was not blown away.
Hamazura saw the turret rotating towards him.
That was when he heard another odd noise.
It was the sound of a building wall collapsing due to the blast that had gone in the wrong direction. It was the wall of a small church across from the house Hamazura was hiding in. It was the village's only stone building and it had been on the verge of collapse even before the blast. The steeple with a bell inside crumbled and fell in the direction of the anti-aircraft gun.
The privateers inside had noticed it.
However, the steeple swung down like a hammer before they could get away. The vehicle was a mass of thick steel, so that was not enough to destroy it, but the great weight was enough to completely seal its movements. The gun turret with the machine guns on it could not rotate either.
"…"
Hamazura remained silent for a bit.
The various emotions that had been boiling up in his chest did not come out.
He pulled his head inside the window and looked around at the destroyed house. It wasn't just a set. People lived in that room.
He grabbed a bottle of vodka that was still intact from some shelves that had fallen over.
He left the building and stood before the anti-aircraft gun.
A proper tank would have light machine guns installed on it to take care of approaching infantry, but that anti-aircraft gun was not intended to be brought into enemy lines, so it did not have anything of the sort.
It could no longer hurt Hamazura.
He brought his mouth close to the small ventilation opening for bringing oxygen into the thickly armored vehicle.
"…It sure is cold today."
He was speaking in Japanese, but he didn't particularly care.
It wasn't his job to have them understand him.
"It's nice weather for cooking some meat."
When he struck the roof of the vehicle with the bottle of vodka, one of the privateers frantically popped out of the metal hatch.
Hamazura aimed his small handgun towards the hatch.
There was no hesitation in his aim.
Part 5
Kamijou Touma ran about the half-destroyed plaza.
The result of the encounter had been terrible.
Three professional magicians, Lessar, Elizalina, and Vento of the Front, had been defeated, Sasha Kreutzev had been taken away by Fiamma, and only the scars of the battle remained.
Currently, Kamijou was treating the injured magicians. However, he did not have the proper knowledge to do so. He was mainly following their instructions.
"Vento…"
"If you're trying to thank me, there's no need," she said with her tongue sticking out despite the fact that she could barely move otherwise. "I didn't like Fiamma's way of doing things. That's all. I couldn't allow him to have free reign over the Roman Catholic Church any longer. My actions just so happened to be to your advantage."
"…"
Her voice was filled with hate, but Kamijou felt somehow relieved.
Not everyone in the Roman Catholic Church agreed with Fiamma. There were people in that organization who would object to his methods. Learning that anew relieved his burden much more than he had expected.
Elizalina spoke while lying on the ground unmoving.
"I did not expect for Fiamma to be able to use the knowledge from the 103,000 grimoires."
"Index does not completely cover spells for God's Right seat. I'm betting Fiamma is using her to fill in some gaps to raise efficiency."
"Do you know where Fiamma of the Right went?"
It would probably be best to take Elizalina away on an ambulance, but she refused to. She may have been feeling guilty since the people had been exposed to magic during the fight against Fiamma. She may have wanted to avoid leaving the scene at such a difficult time. Only Elizalina herself knew for sure.
"...He probably headed for a certain base across the border," Kamijou responded to Elizalina's question after thinking for a bit. "He was already making some preparations there and he went as far as evicting the people living in the area. My guess is that he's taking Sasha there to do something."
It still was not clear what it was that Fiamma intended to do.
However, the preliminary preparations had already caused so much damage and it was possible that World War III itself could be considered part of his preparations. It was possible what Fiamma was going to do from then on would cause damage on an even greater scale. Whatever it was, they could not sit idly by and let him do it.
"I'll do something," Kamijou said to Elizalina after thinking a bit more. "I'll do something about him. I need to save Index. You all stay here. Whatever it is Fiamma is doing could very well end up reaching this place again."
Just when Kamijou was about to head out, someone grabbed his arm.
It was Lessar whose injuries had been relatively light compared to the other two. She didn't say anything, but Kamijou could tell she wasn't going to let go of his arm if he didn't let her come with him.
Kamijou hesitated for an instant, but finally nodded.
Lessar let go and stood next to Kamijou.
"We don't have time. We need to get some help from the Elizalina Alliance. We can borrow a car to get us close to the base."
"They're enemy nations. Wouldn't that put us at even more risk?"
"The Elizalina Alliance is a collection of countries that split off from Russia in recent years. They use almost the exact same type of cars as Russia, so we should be fine as long as we can get through an area of the border with light security."
"…"
Kamijou hesitated.
"…Is it really okay to get them involved in this?"
"?"
"As I said before, they're enemy nations. Getting help is fine, but if Russia finds out, they could be killed. Is it really okay to ask for help in this situation?"
"That isn't for us to decide," Lessar unhesitatingly said.
At first, it may have seemed like she was just saying that, but she was just that accustomed to life or death situations.
"The ones whose lives are on the line should decide that. At the very least, they should decide what they do with their own lives. If they refuse, we can just find some other way."
"…"
But Kamijou remained silent once more.
Lessar then put her index finger to her temple and spoke in an annoyed fashion.
"In the end, I think it's the same."
"What is?"
"Whatever Fiamma says, people should choose how to live their own lives."
"…Maybe."
"And even if you have been hiding something, you haven't been frozen in that state. You have still continued to move forward, right? And as a result, you have saved quite a few people and even stopped the coup d'etat in the UK. Honestly, I think that's a life you should be proud of."
Perhaps it had not been wrong to hide the fact that he had lost his memories.
Perhaps it had not merely been selfish of him to do so to protect Index's smile.
That was true.
Kamijou had resolved plenty of incidents and saved plenty of people's lives. Most likely, those were admirable things. There were quite a few people he had met after losing his memories. To those people, it did not matter if he had those older memories or not. The lack of those memories did not change the fact that he had fought for them.
But…
"Even so," muttered Kamijou as every word seemed to stab into his own chest. "Even so, I'm not sure it's up to me to decide whether the actions I've taken were really for Index's sake."