Volume 2, 4: The Phenomenon of Kamijou Touma — Not_Right_Hand.(1/3)
Part 1
It was two against two.
“Hmm.”
The small girl smirked.
She was the monster who would simply travel along a straight line to her destination, destroying all that stood in her way.
“Now, this is a little more interesting. Can you expand on this unexpected turn of events and send it my way?”
On one side, Kamijou Touma and St. Germain.
On the other, Anna Sprengel and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass.
“One step.”
The naked little girl who looked about ten held the red cloth to her skin below the falling snow and smiled confidently with the bizarre angel by her side.
She seemed to threaten the hospital’s front gate like it was a mystical barrier.
She began to walk with an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who looked like you could blow her over with your breath. And that strength was not just figurative. The snow at her feet really was blown away, the asphalt sank down slightly, and cracks formed around her.
“If you’re going to talk big, then stop me from taking this one step. R&C Occultics is a new trend the world over. If you can’t push back a mere global trend, I will be sorely disappointed. And you can figure out for yourself what that would mean.”
“..”
Kamijou Touma silently clenched his right first.
But that was not all he did.
He pressed his other palm against the center of his chest and spoke toward that point.
“St. Germain, can you do this?”
“Who do you think I am? Leave the ley line landmines to me. You only need to fight the threat before your eyes.”
Two different statements came from the same mouth.
historical
Kamijou saw Anna Sprengel’s eyebrows move ever so slightly.
That other voice was audible to other people and it was accompanied by a visible breath.
And it was Kamijou Touma who readied his fist now. He would not hold back no matter what form his enemy took. In fact, something inside him was telling him it was abnormal for an enemy so great to be contained in a body so small.
He could not ignore what R&C Occultics was doing. Or that the girls who had stood up for him were collapsed on the ground here.
He could work to understand this person after he had punched her and settled this.
They were still a good bit apart.
Kamijou would have to take five steps to reach her even when running at full speed.
But..
“Aiwass.”
The instant Anna’s young lips whispered that name, the angel next to her was gone.
No. She had clenched and unclenched her small hand and gently swept it to the side like she was using a fan.
And she made an announcement.
“Open the pathway from Gevurah to Hod and reside in my right arm.”
The distance did not matter. That was all it took for the five distant skyscrapers that formed a crucial corner of the scenery to be sliced through and drop to the ground like a poorly-made Daruma Otoshi. Since the buildings had no windows, they must have been automated agricultural buildings that could be harvested more than twenty times a month.
“Structure Breaker,” said her small mouth.
That great firepower had been entirely unpredictable.
That kind of unfair attack would normally kill you before you even realized what it was.
Yet Kamijou Touma remained alive.
“!!”
He had dropped straight down.
He got face-down on the ground with his limbs spread out, grabbed at the ground with his arms and feet, and then launched himself toward Anna Sprengel while down on all fours like a beast.
Right hand clashed with right hand.
Of course, the symbolism brought in by the Rosicrucian leader was worse than the actual destructive power.
“Shall I take over?” asked St. Germain. “The slightest hesitation will lead to death here, esper!!”
“Not yet!!”
Anna apparently had no intention of keeping her distance and wearing him down with a barrage of attacks. It was possible that over-the-top attack had only been a way of shocking Kamijou into moving in closer since he had no projectile attacks of his own.
She had only moved her opened hand as casually as swinging a tennis racket.
That was all it had taken to mercilessly slice through space itself with no regard for distance or material. The mere touch of her palm would negate the world, tearing through whatever was there along with the dimension and space itself. Kamijou felt impatience burning at the back of his mind, but he was now within a meter of Anna Sprengel.
He took aim at her small jaw with an attack that tore upwards from below.
“Ohhhh!!”
That fist could return all magicians to being mere humans. That attack stole their means of fighting back against the cruel world and threw them out into the wilderness with no way of defending themselves. But Anna calmly took a step toward that critical attack. That was all it took to avoid it.
She seemed to be nestling herself up against the boy’s chest.
Moving even closer than the swinging fist naturally kept it from hitting her.
And.
With her other hand, the left one, she held a perfectly ordinary but deadly knife.
Kamijou Touma could negate all forms of the supernatural, but he had no way of defending against those fatal ten centimeters.
“Hee hee.”
“St. Germain!!”
There was a loud clang, but the knife held by the little girl was not equipped to make that sort of noise.
So what had caused it?
“A diamond? Is that eternal light a variation on the lamps that illuminate the tomb?”
“..”
They had traded places.
An unseen baton had changed hands.
And in that moment, the weapon used by the pointy-haired boy changed from his right hand’s fist to his left hand’s magic.
Specifically, some kind of glittering particles were scattered in the few millimeter gap between the boy’s chest and the bare-skinned monster’s palm.
It was said diamonds were so hard that they were in fact easily breakable, but that did not mean the blade that hit one would escape intact. The knife’s tip broke off and the blade chipped when it split the stone.
“You were never planning to block that with the strength of the diamond. Was it more like a matador’s cape? That glitter throws off my visual aim and the chipping of the blade diverts the speed and vector of destruction. Still, Academy City must have very polluted air if you can manipulate that air to produce diamonds.”
“So what if I did?”
St. Germain’s magic did not require a special sword or cards.
He could create anything with just ordinary carbon.
“I would call it inefficient,” said Anna. “Using magic with that body requires circulating his lifeforce throughout the body and refining it into magic power, right? You will always have a large chunk of that precious magic power negated before you can use it.”
“True enough. This boy’s right hand is powerful indeed and it is not something I can fully control even with his permission.”
St. Germain could not use Imagine Breaker.
Kamijou Touma could not use diamond magic.
No matter how hard they tried, they had to support each other as they fought.
So their best bet was to switch back and forth between those two sides based on what was currently needed to fight the conflagration before them. Even if something was deadly to one of them, the other might be able to break through it. They switched back and forth like they were moving a tennis racket from one side to the other during a high-speed match. It sounded convenient, but their opponent was Anna Sprengel. One wrong decision and the ball of survival would slip past them and they would lose the game.
“But even if the Sephirah and the channels between them correspond to parts of the human body, you never hear of someone who can no longer use magic after being injured or falling ill,” said St. Germain. “Magic is a means of making up for what we lack and making our dreams come true, so a lot of students enter the world of magic after just such an injury or illness.”
“Are you saying you can separate out his right hand or divert around it?” asked Anna.
St. Germain’s words contained fear and respect, but he still bared his fangs.
“I was always a lowly magician who refused to be defined solely by the two characters of RC. I instead worked to make my mark on high society under the individual name of St. Germain. There is a considerable loss in power from diverting the flow around that hand, but I am accustomed to wasted effort and this is not enough for my diamond spells to fail. The acute version of me you created appears to be even more powerful than you thought.”
The boy’s body veered to the left while those two spoke.
But not because they had any kind of plan.
A sticky sound splattered against the ground, decorating the road with a Christmasy red.
“Gh, bh!!”
“Yes, the side effect. And let’s not act like you can do that a set number of times or anything like that. Just like Russian roulette, one unlucky round and you die instantly.” The little girl gave a cruel smile at close range. “So I think it’s about time I did this by force.”
She swung her small hand around, but she was not going for an occult attack. Her fingers tore through the gas pipe running through a nearby wall.
St. Germain had to fight against this sort of physical danger.
If this kept up, Kamijou could not rejoin the battle. And if this remained a magician vs. magician battle, it could not have been more obvious who would win between St. Germain and Anna Sprengel.
“Tch!!”
Even so, an attack based on ordinary physics would obey the well-known rules found in ordinary textbooks. St. Germain created a double layer of diamond sheets thinner than an umbrella. That was not for attack or defense. Any obstacle would change the direction of the wind, just like buildings did. And if the wind direction changed, the invisible but highly flammable gas would be diverted elsewhere.
They had avoided an explosion, but Kamijou coughed up blood due to the internal injuries.
“I was hoping to buy some time for you to catch your breath, but perhaps I spent too long talking. This isn’t over yet, esper. Back to you!!”
Something whooshed through the air.
And a supernatural attack meant it was his turn.
A powerful light returned to the point-haired boy’s eyes. As a small hand swung down toward him, he leaped to the side with all his might despite not being able to stand up straight. He ended up falling to the ground. Normally, he would have failed to avoid the next horizontal swing of her arm and he would have been sliced through.
But that was not what happened.
After a dull sound, he had all of a sudden jumped several meters straight up into the air.
“St. Germain, take care of this!!”
“Fine, but switching back and forth like this will only shorten your life. Back to you!!”
Instead of jumping up with his legs, it was more like he had been hit by a car. A diamond hexagonal pillar had thrust up from below him, launching him about three meters into the air. Anna’s fingers missed the human torso and instead sliced through the thick mass of diamond.
The two minds took turns controlling the single body by switching between right and left.
They really could overcome it this way. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak against multiple simultaneous attacks, but St. Germain’s diamonds could defend against them all. St. Germain’s magic could not fully stop Anna’s brute force attacks, but Kamijou’s right hand could forcibly blow them away.
“Ohhh!!”
The right fist clenched tight, so this was clearly Kamijou Touma in control.
It was the ordinary boy’s turn to attack from midair.
He held the blood back in his mouth while clenching his fist again. Anna should have had no way of stopping this since she was already in the middle of casually swinging her palm to the side.
The little girl looked up with just her eyes and smiled.
Her fingers had been gently bent like claws, but now she extended them straight. That spread out the angle of her deadly fan without changing the force of the swing.
As a result, the snow and asphalt at her feet were torn through and the ground collapsed below her. She was taken down along with it.
Changing the height of the ground greatly threw off Kamijou’s aim from midair.
There appeared to be a subway platform directly below.
That counted as indoors, but the chill grew even worse.
He did not recall there being a subway entrance nearby, so this appeared to be a fairly complex underground structure. Or maybe it carried some kind of secret, like it was connected to the basement of that hospital.
“Gah!?”
Kamijou failed his landing and rolled along the rubble-covered floor, but he did not have time to writhe in pain. He spat blood from his mouth while diving behind a drink vending machine with its clear cover broken.
He and St. Germain could keep up with the fight, but that still had not allowed them to actually strike back.
Anna had already swung her right palm to the side.
“Oh?”
But then she sounded somewhat impressed.
She had come across something slightly unexpected.
As soon as the little girl sliced through the boxy mass of metal she had been guided toward, the chemical coolant that preserved a temperature well below zero came in contact with the ordinary air. Only a brief moment later, white steam resembling a cumulonimbus cloud expanded in every direction like a smoke bomb had gone off.
It was an obvious smokescreen.
Attack, escape, hide, rest, or think.
With the flow of battle delayed, Kamijou and St. Germain now had endless possibilities.
Part 2
Things had crossed a dangerous line.
The ICUs, the operating rooms, and even the treatment rooms for new arrivals were at max capacity.
The ambulances just kept bringing in too many patients.
“Get back!! Authorized personnel only!!”
“Get some extra sheets over here so we can block them from view! Don’t leave them exposed to the phone cameras!!”
Angry yelling and shouting were traded back and forth and the tension had spread even to the Christmas-decorated main lobby.
But it could have been worse.
This hospital had been receiving so many ambulances because the others had already stopped functioning altogether and this one still had its personnel and supplies in some semblance of order. What would happen to the patients if they were turned away here as well? Every second counted in EMT work, so they would know all too well that these people could not just be handed off to someone else.
But there was no saving them without solving the fundamental problem.
Closing up their wounds and stopping the bleeding would only buy some time unless the patients stopped doing what was causing them new wounds.
“Use localized anesthetic. Don’t knock them out. If they go under now, they might never come out of it!!”
“What is all that shaking outside?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care as long as it doesn’t knock this patient from their stretcher. But do make sure to be extra careful with the IV needle due to the shaking. Don’t harm their blood vessels!”
The elevator hall looked like a battlefield, but then a small set of footsteps cut across it.
For some reason, no one paid any heed to the white nun while everyone else was running around in a hurry.
“Wait, what was that?”
When they turned around again, she was already gone.
The young doctor looked to the patient on the stretcher and then stared at the medical monitors lined up alongside it.
“Why did their vitals just stabilize? What just happened!?”
Hearing that, the girl walked to another stretcher.
She was Index the Grimoire Library.
“Hm, hm, I see, hm.”
“They have this all backwards. But they don’t have the necessary information, so it’s not really their fault.” The fifteen centimeter god seated on the nun’s shoulder remained somewhat cautious of the calico cat on Index’s head. “As long as they remain conscious, their anxieties remain, as long as their anxieties remain, they can’t stop using magic, and as long they continue using magic, their wounds will remain. It’s all part of that pattern.”
It was like someone who obsessively washed their face over and over to calm themselves. If they rubbed their face bloody and saw that bloody face in the mirror, they might just decide they needed to wash their face some more because it was still dirty.
The simplest forms of magic did not require tools or a specific location.
They were terrified of dying, so they could not relax without continuing to use the good luck charms and fortunetelling methods they had been taught.
And that ended up destroying their esper bodies.
They only had to stop using the magic, but they had no idea what was causing it, so they would either use magic to figure out what it was or they would conclude it would only get worse if they stopped using magic.
Left like this, their lives would eventually run out.
“It doesn’t matter how much you try to bail out a sinking boat with a bucket if more and more holes are opening in the hull. It doesn’t matter how skilled the doctors are – if the patients don’t cooperate with the cure, their injury or illness will never heal. That lead doctor has done a hell of a job for someone who looks so silly. Without his instructions, these students would probably already be dead.”
“They’re all breathing with a unique rhythm. That means they’re refining their lifeforce into magic power.”
“We need to start by confiscating the spiritual items hidden in their pockets, but the simplest forms of magic don’t rely on tools. We really will need to put them to sleep to level out their conscious breathing method to accomplish anything here.”
“It would only weaken them to keep them asleep for too long.”
“We only have to break the rhythmic breathing they’re using to refine magic power. Let’s find an arbitrary reason to hook them up to a ventilator.”
Magic was the latest fad in scientific Academy City.
Even an Anglican nun who knew how to properly manage magic could tell how abnormal this was. She had never heard of it spreading like this before, yet Index and Othinus did not make their way to the center of the explosion.
They had a clear reason for remaining in the hospital.
“That human will not consider this a win if he simply defeats Anna in a fight. If all these people die in the process, he will place the burden of their deaths on his own shoulders. Even though they are not his responsibility.”
“..”
“That colossal idiot did not rush out there to protect his own life. He says he’s scared, but he still finds the destruction of this hospital or us to be worse. Refusing anything but zero deaths against a monster of that level is about as insolent as it gets, but just this once, that fool is correct. When things get truly hopeless, downgrading your goals will only mean being swallowed up by the situation. Compromise? Adapting to reality? The opinions of the wise? They can all go eat shit. There’s clearly something wrong if people are dying. If you can’t bring your self to shout that obvious fact, you’ll only drag everything into a long, drawn out war with many more deaths to come.”
This one hospital in District 7 could not take in all of the victims across Academy City. Index and Othinus had all the necessary knowledge, but neither one could use convenient healing magic on their own.
But not being able to do that one thing was not the same as being helpless.
“Anyone could solve this if they only had a manual telling them espers can’t use magic. We need to make one and distribute it through this hospital. If they see it work once, they’ll start using it even if they don’t know how it works. That will stop the city from spinning its wheels on this issue.”
“But the people of this city might not officially recognize that magic exists.”
And there were ceremonies that managed to spread despite being unofficial.
In this country’s case, the most obvious example would be the Kokkuri-san. Because the adult organizations had taken so long to accept its existence, they had been slow to react and it had caused real damage such as mass hysteria.
“We have a source we can use,” replied Othinus with a smile. That god of deception based her answer on Academy City’s bizarre situation at present. “We use R&C Occultics. The material they’ve spread around can be used to show magic is dangerous. Anything we say might be rejected outright, but official information from a well-known giant IT company will seem more reliable. We can use that to our advantage. That information is meant to get people to use magic, but we can use it to show people the risks and keep them away from it.”
“You mean..?”
“We just have to create something that bridges the gap. An extra text that explains the problems that occur when an esper uses magic.”
Index and Othinus would have preferred to be on the front line of this fight.
Magic was their area of expertise, so they were confident they would be of some help there.
But.
They turned away from that temptation.
They had chosen to fight alongside him, so they had to do everything they could to face the problems they had found. So they could avoid the horrific conclusion where that boy dragged his battered body back to the hospital only to find after the fact that everything had fallen apart.
“Listen, we can’t let anyone die.”
“Right.”
They would protect Academy City, the people who lived there, and the home he would return to.
“This hospital is a sanctuary. We start here, establish a methodology, and then spread that sanctuary out until it covers Academy City as a whole. And that will also help that softhearted human.”
“I know that already!”
So this was their battle.
It was fought in a different place and in a different way, but those girls were giving their all just like Kamijou Touma was.
Part 3
The biting cold swept across the platform of the District 7 subway station.
As soon as Anna’s vision was obscured by the white steam, Kamijou rolled across the platform and through the broken platform screen door to drop onto the tracks. The landing added another dull pain to the already lengthy list, but now was not the time to be counting up his injuries.
This had not bought them much time, but even thirty seconds would be more valuable than a jewel at the moment.
He clenched and unclenched his right fist.
It was Kamijou Touma’s turn right now.
“As I imagine you have noticed by now,” began St. Germain.
“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t understand a damn thing about this.”
“Anna Sprengel’s spells are not pure Rose spells.”
Like any wise saying, that one carried several different pieces of important information at once.
A sizzling like water on a hot griddle echoed through the area. The white steam curtain made from hydrofluorocarbon had unnaturally burst into flames and holes spread through it like a paper photo exposed to a flame from behind, correcting the distorted scene.
Anna Sprengel was smiling atop the platform while gently spreading her burning right hand.
She was the master of a different right hand.
“Found you☆”
“!!”
Trying to run away along the tracks would accomplish nothing.
She placed two fingers horizontally against her soft lips and blew out like this was a sort of whistle. The air immediately expanded at an explosive rate. Just like a picture book dragon, sticky orange flames left her mouth to cover the tracks a step lower than the platform.
This did not seem like normal fire. The way it moved like a sticky liquid was reminiscent of a flamethrower or napalm. It filled every nook and cranny of the train track like a sudden downpour filling the ditches and waterways.
“Ohhhh!?”
“Your right hand, esper.”
St. Germain pointed out the obvious solution.
The one without, the one looking up from below, and the one that yearned for it urged the Level 0 boy to action.
“Panicked or not, that is the only card in your deck, so master its use!! Just like I focused on mastering the manipulation of diamonds and carbon!!”
He could only swing his right hand around wildly in a struggle to survive. He negated the massive sea of flames that splashed up the concrete wall and ran along the groove of the track.
A power created by a right hand could be destroyed by a right hand.
But he had something else on his mind.
(That was different from before!?)
“Aiwass,” called Anna with a snap of her small fingers. “What shall I call this one? Item Breaker perhaps?”
Bluish-white sparks scattered like when an electric lighter failed to ignite, but that ephemeral flashing did not go away. Once it grew as bright as a blowtorch, the LCD signs, the lights, the air conditioning equipment, the train’s power line, and all other electrical equipment was transformed into a bomb.
It was like a cluster bomb had been dropped into this small space.
And Kamijou had a phone in his pants pocket.
“Gahh!?”
It happened just as he ran from the platform area and into the tunnel.
Excruciating pain jabbed down all the way to his thigh bone and it rattled his consciousness.
“Not yet, esper. The bone is not broken. And even if it was, I would support you with a diamond exoskeleton, so you can keep going regardless!”
The biggest problem was their location: an underground facility. With all electronics dead, a veil of darkness had fallen, preventing him from seeing his hand in front of his face.
And he heard a singsong voice within that dense darkness.
“Hee hee hee. You are in my grasp now.”
“!?”
She was holding out her small hand and accurately targeting him even in the darkness.
Would it be Escape Breaker next? Or Shield Breaker?
Whatever it was, she would have changed her right hand to something else now.
Kamijou always had to rely on fistfighting, so he had no way of fighting in this darkness.
She was coming.
She had jumped down onto the track and was slowly walking toward the tunnel.
She gave a casual swing of her palm and it sliced through something. A high-voltage power line danced madly about while scattering electricity.
This was a physical attack.
“St. Germain, take care of this!!”
Something flipped around at his left -->>