Volume 13, 3: Beyond the Broken Spider Web — Nightmare_to_Ray_of_Hope.(1/3)
Part 1
Akikawa Mie had thought she would be relatively safe once she boarded the train.
After leaving the building with the vault, not many people would be thinking of that liquid diamond. Their greed might be stimulated if they caught a glimpse inside her sports bag, but she would be fine otherwise. That was how she saw it.
But reality saw things differently.
She heard a heavy metallic scraping and the train lurched to a halt. She had nothing to hold onto, so she bumped into some young people nearby.
“Dwah!!”
“S-sorry!”
Her reflexive apology reminded her of her father bowing over the phone and that reminder of their genetic link made her feel a little blue. However, the others seemed to be having some trouble, too.
She looked more closely and realized they looked like delinquents. One of them was a skinny boy wearing black clothing and the other was...more of a mystery. The girl wore a yellow mini yukata, had lots of hairpins in her brown hair, and had an unusually dark tan for December.
“Hanzou-sama, don’t tell me you took advantage of the commotion to immerse yourself in a molester’s heaven.”
“That’s a complete lie! Someone else bumped into me!”
“Oh, how heartbreaking!! Beauty is the standard among standards of an Iga woman, yet this was enough for you to lose your self-control? Fine then. I, Kuruwa, shall retrain you from square one starting today!!”
“Please noooo! The seduction techniques of a legit kunoichi will only ensure I never trust a woman again!!”
Mie did not understand, but if they were going to keep the focus off of her, she was fine with that. But before any complaints could erupt from the others on the train, the train’s lights went out in the tunnel. The area was nearly pitch black.
(What? What is this!?)
Everything seemed suspicious. She was worried that masked men were going to break into the train.
A speaker somewhere produced the carefree voice of the conductor.
“Um, a malfunction in a transformer substation near District 5’s central park is affecting our train. We have no word on when it will be repaired. I greatly apologize for the inconvenience, but please follow our instructions and make your way to the tunnel’s emergency exit. I repeat...”
“...”
There was nothing she could trust.
As soon as the tightly shut metal door opened, Akikawa Mie jumped down to the gravel-covered subway track.
“Ah, wait!! It’s dangerous here, so please don’t run! Oh, honestly. If I could see, I could at least teleport over, and...Uiharu! Is the power still not back up!?”
The words of a girl seemingly from Judgment stabbed into Mie’s back, but she did not know if the girl was being honest, if it was a trap, or even if the girl was really from Judgment.
The middle school girl ran to the exit with the six trillion yen liquid diamond in her grasp.
Part 2
As Misaka Mikoto sat sideways on the acrobike’s back seat with her arms around Kamijou Touma’s waist, she felt extremely uneasy.
But not because their lives were in danger.
Nor because their city was being destroyed.
This was a smaller and more personal issue.
She could not accurately put it in words, but that was not because her vocabulary was lacking. Putting it in words would be too much to bear, so she instinctually brought her thoughts to a stop.
It was possible she was a horribly tiny and unsightly individual.
The answer was covered up and hidden, but she accepted it like that.
“It’ll be okay,” said the pointy-haired boy as he pedaled the acrobike.
He continued facing forward instead of turning back toward her.
He spoke with his back to her.
“Sorry about getting you wrapped up in all this, but I’ve always managed to get by somehow or other. I’m sure I’ll figure something out this time too. I’ll get you back to where you belong, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
He may have had no proof of that.
He may have been reassuring himself as much as her. He would protect her, protect that underclassman, protect the girl. He may have been placing himself in that role as a desperate attempt to restrain his uncontrollable heart.
But...
Something sharp stabbed into Mikoto’s chest as soon as she heard it.
She knew that all too well.
Part 3
First, they had to double check their location.
“Um, we’re in District 5’s central park, so the neighboring districts are 1, 4, 6, 18, and 23! We definitely can’t go to District 1 because the administrative facilities are gathered there or to District 6 because it’s a giant amusement park. Who knows how much damage it would cause if we led him there!!”
“District 23.”
Kamijou forced out the words as he pushed his body past its limits to pedal the acrobike after using up most of his stamina.
“District 23 is filled with aerospace facilities, right!? That would be the best place for a confrontation with the High Priest! At the very least, a flat launch site won’t get anyone else involved and they should have plenty of firefighting equipment in case of an emergency!!”
“Then are we going to take the shortest route again!? He’ll catch up to us if we move in a straight line!!”
Rather than take the shortest route, they could cut through District 18 on their way to District 23.
But wouldn’t that mean they were selecting that district to be trampled on by the High Priest for their own convenience? Could they allow that?
(What is it I want right now?)
Kamijou thought as he gritted his teeth.
(It isn’t distance or a specific location. Those are meaningless.)
It was time.
He wanted time to think.
(It doesn’t matter if we’re only ten centimeters in front of the High Priest. He can even overtake us for all I care. ...But only if he doesn’t know we’re there and we get the time to come up with a plan.)
“Ho ho. Are you youngsters having an intimate discussion on methods of murder?”
“!?”
Before, the High Priest had been approaching from behind.
But now he was running alongside them.
(Dammit! Are my legs getting heavy because I’m more tired than I thought!? If you’re going to modify it this much, why not make it a full-blown electric motorcycle!?)
“Hoi.”
That carefree word was all it took for the earth to split open and reveal an arm large enough to grab a building. It made a horizontal strike.
Kamijou quickly jumped upwards with Mikoto still on the back seat.
But Kamijou had “waited” just a moment to draw the High Priest in as much as possible.
“It might be miniscule in comparison...”
What might be?
The High Priest must have wondered that without a hint of worry.
“But it’s time you had a taste, High Priest!!”
It happened only a moment later.
“Oh, is that a concrete mixer? Bfh!?”
Once the giant arm missed, it tore into the industrial truck parked on the side of the road. The concrete was constantly rotated to prevent it from hardening, so it poured out and onto the High Priest’s head.
No matter how much of a monster he was, he could not do anything when his eyes were covered.
The acrobike landed and Kamijou kicked at a metal pole sticking up from the sidewalk.
Technically, it was the lid to a fire hydrant.
The deep sound of the released water reverberated in his gut and it sprayed upwards like a fountain. As the High Priest awkwardly and unsteadily walked forward, he moved right into the spray of water. The dried mummy’s body was blasted several meters straight up by the intense pressure. The gray concrete soaking his clothing was stripped away.
But neither the concrete nor the water was meant to be a finishing blow.
To pull the final trigger, Kamijou glared at the falling High Priest and gave a yell.
“Misaka!! Use a lightning spear!!”
“Ohhh, I see. Okay!!”
The explosive zapping sound itself felt like a deadly weapon that squeezed at the heart.
Not only was that a one billion volt blast, but his entire body was soaked with water to raise his conductivity. What would happen to someone in that situation?
Instead of just having their heart stopped, a normal person would have been roasted alive.
But even after all that...
“Ho ho.”
They heard lighthearted laughter.
The unpleasant sweat pouring from Kamijou’s back contrasted that jocular tone.
“Uho hoi☆”
“Goddammit!!!!!!”
Kamijou clenched his teeth shut to cut off his heavy breathing and focused on pedaling.
He was adlibbing everything.
Could he really say he had been satisfied with that previous attack?
Could he really call that the best he had to offer?
It was true a Saint may not have escaped unharmed. God’s Right Seat, Thunder God Thor, or Marian Slingeneyer may have looked concerned. He may have done an excellent job of putting together that counterattack on the fly. But could he really say it was enough firepower when up against someone on the level of Othinus?
And...
If he had had ten or even just five more seconds to think, was it possible he could have put together an even more effective attack?
The Magic God was approaching from behind like a massive bomb, but they could not hide and take their time planning a counterattack. If they stopped, they would definitely be taken out, but they had no idea what awaited them if they kept running.
What if a tanker truck was stopped up ahead? What if a line of kindergarteners was waiting at a traffic light? What if a crowd of people had gathered for a concert or parade? What if they ran into another Magic God?
He did not know what waited up ahead.
He did not know what would happen.
That prevented him from preparing for his next action. They could only go with the flow and their turn to act never came.
(I have to do something!!)
At that moment, he saw something while pedaling the bike. He spotted something.
“Hey, stop! Let go! Give that back!!”
“Hell, yeah. This really is the liquid diamond! Ha ha. This thing’s worth six trillion? Really!? And I thought this was gonna be a bad day when the building started flying!!”
“We really can do anything now that the security lines are down. Damn. Maybe we should’ve checked through that broken vault a little more.”
As soon as he heard it, Kamijou Touma locked both wheels, bringing the acrobike to a rapid stop.
Powerful tension burned into the atmosphere.
“Why are you stopping!?” asked Mikoto from the back seat.
“When the building started flying? It sounds like that girl was caught up in the trouble that the High Priest...no, that we caused. I don’t know the details, but someone’s been taking advantage of the confusion.”
“...”
Tokiwadai Middle School’s Ace looked between two different points.
The first was the middle school girl surrounded by a group of college students. The second was the rampaging mummy charging their way.
Kamijou had to understand how dangerous their situation was.
He may have understood it far better than her since she had only gotten dragged into it.
But...
“Misaka, can I make one – just one – incredibly selfish request?”
“What is it?”
She urged him on even though she was pretty sure she knew what it was.
The boy gave the exact answer she had been expecting.
“I want to save that girl right this instant.”
She smiled without meaning to.
It came out of nowhere. He was ignoring their current predicament. The fear of the High Priest had to have permeated his very being, but he still looked away from the approaching mummy.
However, Mikoto did not need to analyze why she was smiling.
She simply gathered strength in the arms wrapped around his waist and gave her answer.
“Don’t worry. I would’ve had to punch you if you hadn’t said that.”
Nothing more was needed. They did not even need to discuss what they would do.
Kamijou forcefully turned the acrobike in a new direction.
He charged full speed toward the other commotion they had created.
Part 4
What happened in that instant was extremely simple.
An acrobike running at full speed collided with the college student holding the liquid diamond’s storage tube.
It may have been a light bicycle, but it was still moving at over sixty kph.
The front wheel dug into Kenzan’s side and he really did bend into a shallow V shape.
“Ghgah!? Bhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!?”
He was sent flying.
He had been holding the storage tube up out of reach, so it was left behind like a game of Daruma Otoshi. Akikawa Mie grabbed it and tossed it from hand to hand like she was juggling it.
“Wah, wah.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the college group was not happy.
“What!? Are they after it, too!? Did everyone have the same idea!?”
Kamijou ignored them and shouted to only the middle school girl.
“Hold on to that and get down!! He’s coming!!”
He did not have time to explain any further. He pedaled with all his might and left with Mikoto.
“Eh? Ehh!? Wait, where are you going? I thought you were helping me!?”
Mie felt abandoned, but she soon realized he had been telling the truth.
The High Priest arrived.
That monstrous mummy charged through, destroying the entire landscape as he did so.
It was like fire racing along a trail of gasoline.
The Magic God accurately followed the route Kamijou and Mikoto had taken and ran right into the college group that was standing there completely defenseless.
“Abhaaaaahh!!!???”
“E-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!?”
One flew through the air and slammed into a tree. The other seemed to have escaped harm by falling tearfully to the ground. His legs seemed to have given out.
“Kyah!!”
Akikawa Mie held onto the liquid diamond’s storage tube and held down her short skirt as she blankly watched that disastrous storm move on.
Finally, she bowed just once.
(I have no idea what just happened...)
She then started running as quickly as she could. She could not afford to stick around.
As she did, that show of good will filled her heart with warmth.
The impression she was left with may have seemed strange to some people.
(I was just saved by an extremely powerful old man.)
Part 5
“Oh, no,” said Kamijou while pedaling the acrobike as hard as he could.
He knew the pointless speaking would interrupt his breathing, but he could not erase the unease rising from his chest.
“Oh, no. Oh, no! Oh, no!! He’s even closer than before!!”
“Uho hoi☆ I finally caught a glimpse of it, Kamijou Touma. Now, I’m getting excited. So what kind of selfishness will you present this Magic God next?”
He did not have time to listen to the High Priest’s nonsense.
If they were caught, it was all over. He had known that before taking the detour.
Mikoto gave a frantic shout as she looked down at her cellphone’s map.
“Wait!! If we keep going this way, we’ll reach a railroad crossing known for causing traffic jams!!”
“Then what are we supposed to do!?”
“For now, turn left!!”
He did as he was told and sharply turned the handlebars, but that was only a reflexive reaction to the situation. He was not thinking for himself about how to change the rails of destiny.
And as soon as he made the turn, something kicked at the acrobike’s front wheel.
It was a hurdle made from a line of three red cones and a plastic pole lying on its side.
It was clearly meant to keep people out.
Up ahead, he saw an obvious construction site and the acrobike drove right into a pit that was four stories deep.
The large rectangular opening was larger than a school’s twenty-five meter pool.
Kamijou could only look down at the work lights installed at the bottom of the pit to know how deep it was, but that slight information was enough to make him shrink back in fear.
For a while, his sense of gravity vanished.
His sense of time also disappeared.
As time seemed to stretch out infinitely, he guessed they were constructing a multi-level crossing so the railroad could pass below instead of causing traffic jams. He even had time to wonder if they were building a new underground mall while they were at it.
There was a lot he wanted to say, but he only spoke the first phrase that came to mind.
“Misaaaaka.”
“B-blame the map!!”
Their sense of time soon returned and the boy and girl were filled with fear and the tremendous Gs of the fall.
Part 6
“Hm?”
The purple-robed mummy came to a stop after turning a corner.
Part 7
Kamijou and Mikoto were thrown out into the pit, but they did not dive straight down.
To lower their speed as much as possible, Kamijou pressed the acrobike’s wheels against the side wall. With some help from the gyros, he forced the tires to dig into the nearly vertical wall. Rubber screamed as they slid to the bottom instead of simply falling. Kamijou was too much of a beginner to know, but this was the Rapid S, one of the most difficult cycle arts.
Even so, he nearly bit his own tongue when they landed.
The powerful suspension caused the acrobike to hop back up and Mikoto floated into the air a bit.
The electrically-assisted bicycle somehow regained its balance while swerving in repeated S-shapes. The ground was mostly flat concrete, but some of it was more like rough gravel. Still, they did not blow a tire.
However, Kamijou was more worried about pursuit than the tires. While pedaling, he looked back again and again, using the work lights to see when the High Priest would show up.
And...
“He...isn’t following us?”
Afraid to stop, he continued pedaling without a destination in mind.
Mikoto also looked back in confusion.
“I doubt that monster would be afraid to jump down because of the height.”
Was there a meaning behind it?
Or was he trying to confuse them with meaningless actions?
They had no evidence for either option, so the phenomenon alone was not enough for them to relax.
And it seemed they did not have much time anyway.
A high-pitched beeping came from the acrobike.
“What is it now!?”
“Something’s flashing on the handlebar grip. The green light just turned orange,” said Kamijou while pedaling. “That’s for the acrobike’s battery. Is it running out!?”
Losing their means of transportation would be disastrous here, so Kamijou frantically reached for the battery pack attached to the frame and pulled out a cable like the ones on vacuum cleaners.
Mikoto looked confused.
“Do they have recharging stations in construction sites!?”
“Look at the plug. A normal household outlet is enough and there are lights all around here. We should be able to recharge if we have half an hour. We should probably recharge as much as we can while the High Priest is gone.”
He applied the acrobike’s brakes.
With the disk-shaped gyros on either side of the two wheels, the acrobike did not fall over even when it came to a complete stop and the two of them quickly stepped off.
They needed half an hour.
If they had that long, they could escape the current danger.
But the very next moment, the Magic God rushed straight in, breaking through all the bedrock.
His incredibly violent arrival was not going to leave even the terrain behind.
The dirt writhed like a living creature and threatened to swallow up Kamijou and Mikoto as they stood there defenseless.
“!?”
“Get on, Misaka!!”
Kamijou himself also hopped onto the acrobike. As soon as he felt the weight on the back seat, he pedaled as fast as he could. Sometimes pieces of rock larger than refrigerators were scattered about, sometimes they flew overhead, and sometimes they rolled in front of the acrobike to block their way. Kamijou pedaled the bicycle out of pure desperation. He used the cycle art named Lunatic G. To avoid the obstacles, he used centrifugal force to shift from the floor to the wall for a few seconds.
They could not recharge and they had no idea how long the battery would last.
“Ho ho.”
They were pursued by what looked like a giant maw.
The wrinkled old man’s voice reached them from beyond the dirt filing the entire tunnel.
“Ho ho ho. Uho hoiii☆”
“Dammit!!”
Tunnels branched off here and there, but a commercial map app could not tell them where they led. Of course, that was not surprising when the entire area under construction did not show up.
They were fleeing with everything they had, but where did this tunnel lead?
What if it led to a dead end?
“Wh-what do we do!? We don’t know the way and the battery’s about to die!!”
“Misaaaka, can you try putting this plug in your mouth?”
“Don’t joke!! The battery pack would probably overheat and explode!!”
The dirt that was crushing and breaking through everything was right behind them now. They even felt a gust of wind just like when a subway train passed by. A human body would be destroyed instantly if it was swallowed up. Not even controlling rebar and metal beams with magnetism would be enough to avoid being buried alive.
“What is with this guy? He can move around in a mummy’s body, he can brush aside my Railgun barehanded, he can swing around buildings, and now he’s trying to crush this entire tunnel!! The mass he can use is on an entirely different scale! ...It feels like he can do anything. Is it a waste of time to even give it serious thought!?”
“...”
“Hey! Are you listening!?”
Mikoto shouted from behind, but Kamijou remained silent.
That was not it. There was something more important than what she was talking about.
He could not let himself be distracted by the impressive visual. He could not lose sight of what he needed to think about first.
“How did he know where we were?”
“What?”
“He must have lost sight of us when we first came down here. But why? ...No, that isn’t what we need to think about. Right, that’s right. When we left my school and when we were talking with Fiamma through the spiritual item, he immediately interfered. Ahh! For that matter, how did he locate my school in the very, very beginning!?”
Kamijou left Mikoto behind as he lost himself in his own thoughts.
It did not matter how powerful the High Priest was if he could not locate them. Unlike Othinus at full power, he was not attacking by distorting the phase or the world. While they could not defeat this Magic God, it at least gave them some time to think. And if they thought and thought, they could always find some deeper rules.
Where could they go to escape the High Priest?
What could they do to defeat a Magic God?
That was why he could not let this go. He had to shift from passive to active. To alter the rails of destiny themselves instead of simply going with the flow, he had to discover and break down those rules.
“Does he know where we are once he gets within a certain range? Can he detect us if we stay in the same place for a certain amount of time? No, that isn’t it. Give it more thought. There has to have been an obvious point in common. Where did he pick up our tracks... Wait, our tracks? It can’t be...”
After gathering his thoughts, Kamijou looked up in surprise.
They continued through the upwards sloping tunnel.
“It can’t be!”
“What is it!?”
“We might be able to do this after all. As long as this battery holds out!!”
He leaned even more of his weight on the pedals.
The mummy High Priest pursued them with a deluge of dirt.
The noisy warning continued beeping.
A white light appeared in front of them.
It was the tunnel’s exit.
Part 8
The dirt carried by a powerful gust of wind made it visible.
The dirt blasted from the tunnel’s exit like when cleaning a bath tub’s pipes. The people walking on a peaceful riverside path looked over in surprise, but the High Priest was not bothered by that.
“Hm.”
The mummy stepped onto the carefully maintained bricks of the walking path, split his dried skin, and tilted his head.
A rhythmic sound came from a work ship passing by on the cold river.
The High Priest observed all of his surroundings.
“I’ve lost his signal again.”
Part 9
A mere fifteen meters in front of the High Priest, Kamijou lay face down on the deck of the work ship noisily travelling along the river. He had used a major trick known as Swing J to make a large jump from the bank.
“It’s dirt.”
“Dirt?”
Mikoto was lying alongside him.
It may have been a sign of her unease, but without realizing it, her hand was tightly holding onto the bottom of Kamijou’s coat.
They had done it all to hide from the High Priest using the raised edge of the ship.
After reaching the end up the slope, the acrobike had shot from the tunnel like it was a ramp. Landing on the work ship had been a complete coincidence.
But Kamijou felt the result would have been the same had they fallen into the cold water.
“When you think about it, he’s been controlling dirt this entire time. In that case, we should have assumed he was searching for us using the same thing he uses to attack.”
He finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“While pedaling the acrobike, my feet were off the ground. When speaking with Fiamma over the spiritual item and when preparing to recharge the acrobike in the tunnel just now, the High Priest attacked the instant I placed my feet on the ground. It’s like he’s a part of the dirt or like the ground is his skin.”
Mikoto did not seem to understand what he meant by becoming “a part of the dirt”.
That was not surprising. While esper powers and magic were both supernatural, the science and magic at their base were entirely different. It might have angered a magician to hear it, but the knowledge acquired in Academy City is completely different to the knowledge acquired by mag-->>