Volume 17, 4: Or a Taboo Brings Peace - Salvage_XXX(2/3)
Only he had said she was fine the way she was.
Only he had said a ghost was fine as a ghost.
So.
So Goryou Maya would no longer run from what she wanted to do.
To that end. The ethereal girl manipulated the “incense” coming from her chest and the nape of her neck to alter how she looked and was interpreted. If she could see that boy again and if she could see his smile again, she would become a vengeful spirit, an evil spirit, or whatever else it took to accomplish “what she most wanted to do”.
But then she heard a high-pitched voice. Cosplay Girl Olivia, who had her shortish brown hair in twintails and rode a magic wand equipped with a jet engine, used the voice of the original Magical Powered Kanamin that it was rumored not even the original voice actress could reproduce any longer.
“Wait, Maya. Something isn’t right!”
“What exactly isn’t right!?”
“This path...this way of fleeing... It has to be on purpose. I vaguely recognize some of it from when I was checking through books on ancient runes to fill in some gaps not on the released design sheets. This is based on a modified hexagram drawn with a single brushstroke and it’s used to draw out the power of the sun to-...!?”
She did not manage to finish.
And we return to the present.
After arriving in the container yard, Luca kept one hand on the wheel and spun her large musket around in her other hand. When the bullet and powder were directly pushed down through the muzzle, it was not a good idea to aim straight down, but that did not matter here.
Any hint of a muzzle flash was enough.
The orange sparks only needed to ignite the line of gunpowder drawn out on the ground.
The feathered pirate hat and eyepatch girl sang.
“Let’s kick off the show.”
The surge of flames raced around the city at 6000 meters per second.
Ghost Girl Maya had grown as tall as a high-rise building, but even she would have had difficulty seeing the whole.
The ones who were truly left speechless were those like Cosplay Girl Olivia who flew freely through the sky.
In the dark and powerless city, orange lines were drawn out like a part of a fireworks show. And they drew out a secret and mystical symbol that had no place in a city of cutting-edge science.
“This is bad, Maya!! They’re already reaching toward Kamisato-kun’s fate!! This will never work without World Rejecter as the gate. They’re just letting their emotions get the better of them and they might as well be attempting heart surgery on him with a rusty scalpel! We can’t let them do this!!!!!!”
“!?”
But their impatience did not matter.
The cart driving out ahead contained Luca, a complex tangle of Voodoo and piracy, as well as Fran, who had shed her shell as a UFO girl and returned as an unlucky star expert. They had both entered a unique mental state using a special focusing method much like those used by stage actors to get into character.
Their lips were moving. They sent a vibration into the modified hexagram they had carved into the planet.
“The peace of the six points is obtained through the four stages created by combining the great triangle of fire with the great triangle of water. But to achieve the result first and foremost, we seek the secrets of the simplified six points drawn from straight lines. We desire to summon the sun, but cast aside Apollo and retrieve Horus. Know that the world’s true image is found in the lost Library of Alexandria!!”
Something changed.
The foundation of the gray steel and concrete city was pulled out.
“Know that Horus is not a mere descendent of dead gods, but the foundation of the forces which shall cleanse the world of the accumulated stains of the cross. Correspondence, correspondence, correspondence. Shake the star which holds the opposing peaks of Da’at and Yesod.”
It was like the air had solidified with human killer intent. The extreme mental state much like “getting into character” ruled the dark container yard.
It was all remade into a tranquil sacred ground.
“Distort.”
One of the two voices sometimes passed the other, sometimes was passed by the other, and sometimes coincided perfectly with the other.
It was like two different equilateral triangles lining up and moving apart to create a different shape and provide different meaning from moment to moment. The combination of the limited resources called in endless possibility.
“The separate image of the Four Worlds from which power is drawn becomes a different Four Worlds like the moon’s reflection in a lake.”
Kamijou began to wonder if he should be here.
He had not washed his body, his face, or even his hands. He wondered if he should be standing in this sacrosanct place while so filthy.
“The sun of Horus which shall cleanse the world shall be known by the divine name of Kamisato Kakeru!!”
All the while, wedges were driven into the world.
A supposedly lost name was once more carved powerfully into it.
“Legba Atibon is a frightening being who can surpass even time as the gate to manage all ceremonies. But just as the Qliphoth becomes a powerful compass that points to the truth of the world when used with truly accurate discernment, the curse of the second Aeon can be used as a powerful prism to divide the forces. This shall distort the line to the planet which descends toward the six-pointed star and thus shall substitute the symbols.”
There was no obvious light or sound.
But that was only because Kamijou could not see it. Just like the boy on the ground could not perceive the magic circle drawn across the city with gunpowder.
“Bind and strengthen the planetary symbol with the star of power carved into the earth.”
Something was changing.
No, it was being intentionally changed by human hands.
Even so, the girls’ power must not have been enough because they revealed the existence of a powerful trick up their sleeve.
“The symbol’s name is A.A.A.”
Finally, even an amateur like Kamijou could detect the change.
One of the metal containers forming a great pyramid began to glow despite its component materials and how thick it was. It was like the north star that guided sailors.
“Just like the endless reflection of opposing mirrors, they overlap like the rings of a powerful tree and provide the power to gaze into the abyss. As the identical symbols approach, have them resonate, just as the slightest breeze can occasionally break a stone bridge and send it plunging into the sea.”
What did it look like from above?
It may have been like being trapped in a harmful hallucination after reaching the end of an endless task, such as peering to the very back of the image in opposing mirrors or continually opening a Russian nesting doll until an electron microscope was needed
Or perhaps it was like peering into the depths beyond the deepest depths.
And after they broke through that thick wall, would they find that other boy they needed to drag back up?
“Edward Alexander, aka Crowley, says a great demon never before seen and not mentioned in any holy text can be summoned through a combination of the existing methods. So he said to learn that method and to break through the common view of the world with something that can be found anywhere!!”
A name was spoken.
It was the name of someone who had shaken the world to the point that it was thought he would destroy it.
“Tonight, we shall destroy one of the impossibilities facing the world! Summon the divine name of Kamisato Kakeru with physical form and fix him to Olam Asiyah, the surface of the Four Worlds!!!!!!”
In that instant, everyone there had to have been thinking the same thing. That of course applied to Kamijou, Fran, and Luca, but it was also true of Maya, Olivia, and the other girls pursuing them.
They wanted Kamisato Kakeru to return.
But because that missing boy was so important to them, the girls had taken different paths.
As Ghost Girl Maya, Cosplay Girl Olivia, and the others watched the ceremony begin without them, they all thought the same thing.
They wanted Kamisato Kakeru to return.
But they could not entrust his life to an untrustworthy doctor.
Because they had just the one chance, they could not let this group waste it.
The command was given by Olivia, the girl with shortish twintails who could see the entirety of the scene from her jet engine magic wand.
“Mayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
They knew what they had to do.
Kamisato Kakeru had disappeared, but they would still protect him.
If they tried this without Kihara Yuiitsu’s World Rejecter, it would all fail and the perilous suspension bridge would definitely fall. So to stay just a hair’s breadth away from that “definitely”, the girls could not allow anyone else to act on any other hopes.
They did not have time to analyze the entire scene from the foundation to the corresponding tools, so they did not know what method this magical ceremony was using. So Maya used her high-rise building height to attack the most obvious thing.
One thing stood out here.
Among the countless metal boxes in the container yard, a single light glowed like the north star above the dark sea.
It was the A.A.A.
The Anti-Art Attachment.
There was a roar.
The swinging fist could not attack just the one container, so it blew away the entire pyramid of metal boxes.
Part 6
“Kh...”
Kamijou Touma could only watch as it happened before his eyes.
The A.A.A. was the other mirror that corresponded to the magical circle carved into the city. That symbol created an endless array of images to create a normally impossible resonance, but it was shattered by an attack that tore into the very landscape.
“What happened to the ceremony? What about Kamisa-...!!”
He did not have time to finish his question.
The pyramid did not vanish after it was knocked into the air. The airborne objects were pulled back down by gravity. And they were not at all concerned about the tiny cart as it drove along.
As they fell all over the place, bounced around unnaturally, and sometimes broke apart or burst, Pirate Girl Luca desperately operated the steering wheel, but she could not handle it all. The cart could not support all three people’s weight as it swerved in a sharp S-shape, so it rose from the ground. The situation took a decisive turn when Fran let go of the roll bar lest she be trapped between the cart and the ground.
The cart rolled sideways.
Kamijou’s vision was utter chaos.
He had no idea where he was rolling to. After the countless containers had fallen randomly around, the yard was like a giant labyrinth. The surface of his body felt hot. He felt ill like his body’s core had been shifted sideways by an invisible hand. He flipped from his back onto his stomach and took several deep breaths. If he had stayed on his back, he had seriously feared he would vomit and be unable to avoid drowning to death in it.
(Why am I feeling nauseous...after a blow to my body? Dammit, what is happening to my body?)
He shook his woozy head and somehow managed to grab onto a nearby container wall. He slowly stood up.
What had happened to Fran? Was Luca all right?
And what had happened to their magic ceremony?
“Yeah...”
Kamijou Touma had no specialized magical knowledge. Index and Leivinia Birdway had explained it to him, but that had not reached the level of techniques he could actually use. However, there was one thing even his spiky-haired head could intuitively understand.
After all, Kamisato Kakeru was nowhere to be seen.
So there was no way it had succeeded.
He was surrounded by silence.
No one was moving.
As he stood there, Kamijou finally spotted Fran’s small form in the disastrous scene. She was resting her back against a collapsed container. The overstuffed backpack may have saved that rabbit-ear antennae girl.
“Fran! Hey, Fran!!”
Kamijou Touma walked unsteadily through the labyrinth to approach her.
She did not respond.
She was simply staring up into the night sky.
Was she searching for something there or trying to suppress the rising tears?
historical
He also spotted Pirate Girl Luca.
She was collapsed near the toppled cart, so he passed his arms below hers and dragged her away in case the engine caught fire.
She was limp.
She seemed to be conscious, but she felt as heavy and hopeless as a corpse in his arms.
(Why?)
Kamijou bit his lip.
(Why did this happen!!!???)
It had looked like something would happen. Even an amateur like him had felt the signs of success. They had to have been so close. If they had given it just a small push more, it would have been like pouring one last drop into the cup so the surface tension broke and water spilled out. They might have broken down the wall between worlds.
No one here hated Kamisato Kakeru. They were all fighting based on their feelings for him. And yet this was how it had turned out. It had all stayed on the preset rails, they had failed to save Kamisato, and the girls were still trapped by the right hand and only able to obey Kihara Yuiitsu’s every word.
There was no light anywhere.
Kamijou could no longer tell where the A.A.A.’s container was. And the fact that the glowing container had fallen silent seemed to imply that something had ended. After all, they had nothing else to use. Rescuing someone who had been sent to an isolated frame by World Rejecter had always been like grasping a cloud. They had only found a point in common because Kamisato had just so happened to fight the original A.A.A. beforehand and had sent that device to the “other world”. That was not the kind of coincidence they could hope to find again. With that single opportunity stolen from them, no amount of struggling would-...
“...No?”
Something caught in a corner of Kamijou’s mind.
There was something he could not afford to overlook. Kamijou and Kamisato had not known each other for very long, but that short time had been packed full of events. He thought back over all of those.
Was the original A.A.A. really the only starting point for rescuing Kamisato?
Was there really nothing else?
He needed to recall everything he had been involved in.
Was there an item in common between the two worlds?
Was there something deeply linked to the world of magic?
“Wait.”
He had assumed it had been erased. He had assumed he would never see it again and had driven it from his mind.
But if he was going to seek Kamisato Kakeru who had also been erased...
If he was allowing himself to think about the people who had supposedly vanished...
“There is something.”
“?”
Fran had looked like an empty-eyed doll, but her head finally moved. There was still no light of willpower there, but the spiky-haired boy understood his next words would greatly influence the fate of everything here.
“It isn’t just the original A.A.A.! There’s something else with extremely powerful magical symbolism that exists in both ‘this world’ and ‘that world’!! We still have hope!!”
So he said it.
He gave his conclusion.
“It’s Nephthys!! 90% of her was erased in advance and the remaining 10% was remade into Patricia Birdway’s body. That Magic God exists in both worlds!!”
Part 7
A brown goddess with long silver hair rubbed a scar on her cheek.
“Oh dear. It must be difficult to send us here without leaving a mark.”
Part 8
On occasion, a short statement could dramatically change the world.
“!!!!!!”
“!!!!!!”
As soon as they received new hope from Kamijou, Fran and Luca shot to their feet. They actually grabbed his arms and dragged him inside one of the containers that had burst open from the fall.
“That leaves Kamijou Touma...”
The ground trembled as the ghost girl’s giant foot dropped down surprisingly close nearby. It did not seem to be a specific attack because the “footsteps” continued on with the same rhythm.
“If we bring his head back, we can preserve the current status quo. We can protect Kamisato-kun...!”
That girl had no guarantee either. Even if the plan had failed this time, she could not allow Fran and Luca to escape if she decided those two could do the same thing again. And Kihara Yuiitsu had specifically ordered the death of Kamijou. He doubted she would leave before taking his head.
“First of all, explain this. Is the Patricia you mentioned that Patricia?”
“Yes! I mean the blonde girl who met Kamisato during the whole Sample Shoggoth business. You were there for the attack on my dorm, so don’t you remember what happened at the end there? The brown Magic God sacrificed herself to save Patricia, right!?”
“Come to think of it, I think I saw her watching us from the hospital window.”
“You’re right about that too. Our goal is the hospital Misaka led us to. It’s in District 7, so that’s pretty far away. But can we still do it!?”
There was no way they would argue with him.
They would grab at even the slightest hope now.
“The A.A.A. and Nephthys will have quite different symbols.”
“And this sounds like it will involve infection magic in addition to imitative. But Crowley is a magician deeply rooted in Egypt. If we can somehow link this to the secrets of Isis, Osiris, and Horus, we can use that as a starting point...”
“Hey.”
An amateur like Kamijou could not judge the value of the information, so he threw out everything he had learned speaking with that true Magic God.
“Nephthys said something about having a habit of crying. Othinus said something about her not using a set system and instead helping out whatever human is around when she feels like it, but is that related to her traits as a god?”
“The crying woman at Osiris’s funeral...!! Luca, what about that!?”
“It’s a bit of a detour, but we’ve got our connection. Crowley viewed Osiris less as a god than as a symbol of death and we’re dragging Kamisato-kun up from the bog of death. Nephthys is related to funerals, so we can try to use that to achieve a resonance with the hexagram drawn out across the city!!”
That just left one question: how to return to the District 7 hospital. The cart had rolled over when the container yard had been blown away, so it was useless now.
“Luca, is there some kind of vehicle in the container yard you can drive? It’s a distribution base, so they should have plenty of trucks, mobile cranes, and forklifts.”
“I’m only licensed up to mid-sized motorcycles. Only that trucker Deborah would be able to drive those giant things with weird centers of gravity and wheel positions. If I try to drive one of those like the cart, it’ll topple over at the first curve.”
“And don’t forget about my heat wave microwaves. Even if a truck was abandoned here, it wouldn’t run anymore. All the electronics would have been wiped out.”
“Then what do we do!? Even if Ellen is out of the picture, Olivia and the others are still overhead. We can’t lose them on foot or on bicycles!!”
Then again, that would be true even if they could still use the cart.
Without enough speed to lose Olivia, the former Kamisato Faction would be hot on their heels all the way to the District 7 hospital. And instead of the original A.A.A. which was essentially a pile of junk, the attack would hit the hospital and Patricia this time.
What could they do?
And as they all tried to think of something, they heard rotors loudly chopping at the air.
They were large transport helicopters. Not many people still had functioning engines at their disposal in the dead city and one option came to mind immediately thanks to all the chaos they had experienced on the way here.
“Useful Spider!?” shouted Fran. “If they survived, they should’ve just stayed put!!”
“Well, it was your station that supplied the finishing blow to their observatory.”
With their base destroyed, they must not have been able to acquire more equipment. They were no longer fighting on equal footing with the former Kamisato Faction. They were trying to land here and there on the container yard, but most of them were shot down by Magical Girl Olivia and the others flying around.
And it seemed Useful Spider was after more than just a chaotic brawl.
Someone spoke from the loudspeaker on one of the helicopters that lowered its altitude while spewing black smoke.
“If you’re stuck, we can lend a hand!! If you need transportation, hop onto any one of the choppers!!”
That helicopter could not maintain its position and made an emergency landing behind a pyramid.
Kamijou and the girls exchanged a glance.
“Is it a bluff meant to lure us out?”
“They’re losing far too many helicopters for that, don’t you think?”
Kamijou stuck his head out of the container’s broken door and looked up at the helicopters shining spotlights down.
And he spoke.
“Let’s do it.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
Kamijou did not answer. When the spiky-haired boy took the first step outside, Hoodie Bikini Fran and Pirate Hat Luca followed.
With Maya swinging her arms around while standing as tall as a high-rise building and with Olivia using her jet engine for aerial combat, the container yard had become hell on earth. Useful Spider was sporadically fighting back with the heavy machineguns sticking out from the side cargo doors, but it felt more like a way to distract their opponents than to defeat them. Useful Spider was buying time while knowing they would be defeated. They wanted to get as many helicopters to the ground as possible so they could wait for someone.
A bright spotlight briefly shined down on Kamijou and the girls, but instead of stopping like in the theatre, it quickly moved away. Useful Spider may have decided drawing attention to them would only show the enemy where they were.
If Useful Spider intended to shoot them, they would have kept the light on them and started firing the heavy machineguns, but they did not.
“Hm? What’s going on?”
Luca frowned as they approached a helicopter that had finally managed to land. The man operating the heavy machinegun was beckoning them into the cargo door.
“Hurry up!! Hurry!!”
Still confused, the three of them piled on as the rotor above grew louder. The floor rocked due to the unstable motion, but the helicopter managed to rise.
Kamijou asked a question while still collapsed on the floor.
“Did you read the message I left?”
“Yeah, you mean the memo saying to help out if we really wanted to resolve all this, right? We thought it was just some kid’s nonsense, but then that station fell on us. That finally told us who was in control of this terrible situation, goddammit!!” The gunner looked up into the night sky while holding the heavy machinegun’s grip. “Also, we heard from that guy that there was a kid who charged right into a rioting crowd to save a filthy old man who wasn’t some cute girl or rich or anything.”
“?”
“Do you not remember the man you met in the park? Well, that’s probably even better. It shows all the more how virtuous you are. Oh, right, right.”
The last thing he said was not directed at Kamijou.
The gunner turned to Fran.
“We heard your confession too. If there’s a chemical fire or biological disaster coming, we’ll charge right in, but not even we could do that.”
Her words had gotten through.
They were standing on the same stage.
It had not been intentional and there had been no plan, but this situation was a direct result of that girl working up her courage.
“The resolution we’re talking about might not be quite the same as the one you’re imagining,” warned Kamijou.
“Anything’s fine as long as it brings light back to Academy City. Look at this city. It’s completely dead and covered in darkness! We’ll accept whatever nonsense the world might throw at us if it means getting the power, gas, and water back up and running!! That’s what Useful Spider is for! Listen, we aren’t going to let you spend Christmas surrounded by rubble!!”
This was all part of the 48 Hours to Restore Order. Kamijou could not approve of everything they had done to achieve that goal. He still remembered how they had mercilessly sprayed high-pressure water on rioting boys and girls to throw them from an elevated highway and how they had used giant fans to tear down the shelters that were hiding weapons.
But this was the desire at the base of it all. They wanted to bring Academy City back to normal as soon as possible. They were willing to play the thankless role to that end. They too were trying to protect Academy City.
That was why they had set aside taking revenge for the damage to their headquarters and instead prioritized suppressing the former Kamisato Faction that had caused all of this mess. They had used themselves as bait and let themselves be shot down to send a transport helicopter to Kamijou’s group since they held the key to ending this.
They would not betray Kamijou.
At the very least, not until Kamisato Kakeru’s return had ended the chaos.
“We need to get to the big hospital on the south end of District 7! We can end all of this if we get there!!”
That was immediately passed onto the pilot and they accelerated.
Perhaps to hide their intent, several other helicopters took off in other directions.
“Also-...”
A loud rumbling reached them.
“Are you still doing this? You haven’t given up yet, Fraaan!?”
That voice seemed to shake the entire world and the hoodie bikini girl bit her lip.
“How can I give up...?”
But she spoke.
The small girl declared war once more.
“How can I give up on Kamisato-chan’s future!? Even if I can never be with him again and even if I know my feelings can never be fulfilled, I still won’t give up!!”
Kamijou once more focused on the people pursuing them.
And he resumed speaking.
“Also, this city’s chaos will never end if we don’t lose them and silence them!!”
Part 9
The pursuers were also racking their brains in the fac-->>