A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 8 (12 page)

She could see it in the girl’s face—she’d predicted Shirai would do this.

She looks relieved her extra insurance paid off…!!

With the corner of the luggage quickly approaching, Shirai teleported the sharp pieces in her hand to coordinates where they would sever the squared handle on the luggage.

The luggage flew in a different direction. Musujime’s hands, now holding only the handle, swung around, with surprise on her face.

Now’s my…chance!!
Shirai poured all of her energy into her wounded right arm and tightened her little hand into a fist. It would be faster just to punch her at this range than it would be to go through the calculations for her ability.

Unfortunately…

Musujime jutted out her jaw a little bit, the flashlight still in her mouth.

“!!” Shirai was alarmed, but her thoughts couldn’t go fast enough to activate her ability in response to Musujime’s unexpected action. She immediately took a step back and watched as one color filled her vision. White. The color of the luggage, she realized, stunned. Musujime had called the flung-away luggage back to Shirai—without depleting its momentum, just correcting its direction to end up in her face.

If she hadn’t taken a step back, the newly appeared luggage might have consumed her head. But, having evaded it, the heavy, fully materialized case flew at her face with force.

She’d realized it too late.

There was a loud
thud
as the heavy strike hit her. She bent over backward at the impact; she couldn’t keep herself from falling. Her skin all tightened up, and she felt something warm bursting from the wounds on her shoulder and side. Her fist flailed, hitting nothing. Opposing her will to endure it, her feet flew out from under her.

Just as she lost her balance, Shirai teleported.

Her body vanished, then reappeared, still about to fall over, but this time behind Musujime. She used her falling momentum to whip her elbow around and slam her in the back with it. Musujime shot toward the pile of tables in front of her. Shirai hit the floor before seeing that happen, and the impact this time didn’t fail to reopen all of her wounds.

Guh…agh…!!

She rallied the last of her strength and grabbed something nearby on the floor to end things. It was the severed luggage handle. Sharpness was irrelevant for Shirai’s teleportation attacks.
This…is where it ends!!
she shouted to herself, setting up the targeting equations at the same time to warp the handle she held.

…?!

But she couldn’t use her power.

The weapon in her hands didn’t move a bit.

The intense pain and panic had shattered her concentration, preventing the activation of her ability.

“N-no…!!” The fact made her panic even more. If only the pain got in the way of
her
ability, too, she hoped optimistically, looking over at Awaki Musujime.

But what she heard was another
whoosh
. And what she saw was the pile of tables Musujime had been shoved into disappearing. And also that she’d pulled the flashlight out of her mouth like a kebab.

Shirai felt a chill and shuddered. She immediately tried to roll out of the way, but above her, gravity pulled all those tables down at her like rain.

“…!!”

Still lying on her face, she set her hands on the back of her head to protect it. The heavy, blunt attacks showered her, striking flesh, resounding inside her wounds. She couldn’t even writhe in pain with all the weight coming down on her.

Her narrowing field of vision showed Musujime, still down, kicking off the floor to avoid falling victim to the same rain of tables Shirai had. The darts piercing Musujime opened her wounds farther, and she screamed. Still, though, she used Move Point to get the handleless luggage back over to her, then, leaning against it, looked to Shirai.

Slowly, slowly, Musujime ran the tip of her flashlight over a nearby chair.

“Shirai, if you don’t dodge, you’ll die,” she said with a broad grin. She dragged her flashlight over the chair and, like an airplane coming off a runway, thrust its rounded edge straight in Shirai’s direction.

“!!” Shirai paled, but it wasn’t like she could use Teleport anymore.

A chair appeared right next to the trembling Shirai via Move Point. It crushed a table, bringing the pile of them covering her tumbling down like a pyramid of playing cards. But it had only changed its shape—it was still preventing her from moving.

“Hmm. Considering you didn’t move even then, it would seem you really can’t draw up the teleportation calculations.” The tension in Musujime’s face began to loosen.

Then she laughed.

Despite the scattered blood from her open wounds hitting her cheek, she laughed.

She continued on, her tone jovial. “Hey, Shirai. Kuroko Shirai. Have you heard this story? Sheesh, I hear all sorts of things being close to
them
.” Musujime checked where the metal darts and corkscrew were stabbing her, and then, with a deep breath and the swing of her flashlight, each one of them vanished and reappeared in front of her face. The darts and corkscrew succumbed to gravity and clanked to the floor. “A long time ago, there was a powerful esper who ran into a certain organization.”

Musujime stood and backed up. Treating the wounds causing her pain seemed to be her top priority. She looked around, glancing here and there, searching for anything she could use as first aid. The tube of coagulant Shirai threw at her was on the floor, but Musujime kicked it away out of pride.

She’s going…to treat herself…here…? And expose herself to me? I mean, she can’t discard the possibility that Big Sister is headed this way…
Shirai was dubious, but Musujime’s expression looked rather relaxed.

Having taken the darts out of her body, fresh blood spurted from her wounds. Still, the smile on her face remained. That was gruesome in its own way. “The organization wanted to gain great power by somehow acquiring more of those powerful yet rare espers. So they decided to try and clone the esper. Do you know what the result of it was?”

Kuroko Shirai couldn’t move. She managed to stick a hand out of a gap between tables, but flailing it wouldn’t let her move the tables or attack her enemy. Musujime seemed quite satisfied at this as she tore a piece off the end of her skirt and wrapped it around a wound on her thigh.

Mikoto Misaka hadn’t come yet. With how loud the battle was and how many guests and employees they’d chased out of the place, she would have surely noticed. Had she just not heard it? Or had she decided it wasn’t related to the remnant? Shirai didn’t want to call her here, but Mikoto’s absence was quite a worry in and of itself. Shirai didn’t think it the case, but perhaps there were still a few people from Musujime’s group slowing her down.

But there was something stranger than all that.
Why does…Musujime look so relaxed…? She cannot possibly think she could win against Big Sister like that…

In contrast to her dubiousness, Musujime spoke like she had a good bit of leeway. “It went terribly. The poor lambs they created didn’t even have one percent of the original’s power. Even one percent is enough to be used in the real world, but even with ten or twenty thousand of them in a group, they couldn’t hold a candle to the powerful esper.”

Soaked with blood, Musujime tore more fabric from her skirt and wrapped it around the cut on her calf. Shirai decided, without really knowing, that she’d wounded Musujime’s pride enough that she unconsciously felt the need to tell a long-winded story to secure a more decisive victory.

Musujime’s skirt was already short, and now her underwear was exposed; she gave a thin smile anyway. “You know, Shirai. Children made through cloning technology have the exact same genetics. Even their brains are constructed exactly like the original. So then why is there such a difference in their abilities?”

Her voice was brimming with overconfidence. It made Shirai want to barf, but if she kept ignoring her, Musujime would immediately lose interest and run away somewhere. With the luggage. “Wh-what a stupid…piece of fiction. Are you not aware of how Academy City’s schools are assigned rankings…?”

The way abilities came into their own depended on the way a person was raised, even if they were the same person. That fact gave birth to all sorts of ability development theories, and the schools themselves started to be ranked with monikers such as “excellent” and “elite.”

Musujime didn’t seem to be particularly aggravated. “Oh, no. Each created individual was artificially put through the same talent-blooming process the original had gone through. And still, they couldn’t catch up to the result they wanted. If the same brain didn’t produce the same result, then don’t you think there’s something other than simple brain construction that relates to how abilities work? And if we could find those other things, wouldn’t that mean we could give processing units that weren’t human brains abilities? What I’m asking is…” Disregarding her own blood flying to her cheek, abruptly stopping her first aid, she said:

“Does the manifestation of abilities even
need
a human brain?”

Shirai gasped.

Ideas based on quantum theory were deeply involved in development of abilities in Academy City. The abilities conducted measurement and analysis of reality using purposely distorted processing and decision-making dubbed a “personal reality.” Then, depending on the results, they would achieve the creation of some phenomenon by unnaturally altering the probabilities of the infinitesimally microscopic world.

“What…are you talking about?” But Shirai still couldn’t help asking the question. “The curricula in Academy City…They’re the culmination of
brain research
, aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, but you see…The processing for all these phenomena—the observation and analysis of a target, I mean—do you even need to be human to do it?” she asked, seeming delighted. “For example, even plants can measure light. Some leaves and flowers close up at night. Can you say those kinds of plants
aren’t
measuring the world?”

Musujime tried to close the wound on her shoulder, but her skirt was already an unusable mess. Instead, she removed the winter blazer she wore over her shoulders, tore off a piece of the long sleeve, and used it as a bandage.

This isn’t good
, thought Shirai. Once Musujime finished her stopgap treatment, she’d do something. But the only means Shirai had of hoping to hamper whatever that something was was to attack with her words. “Th-that’s absurd. Do you even hear yourself talking? If
reacting
to light is all you needed, then you’re saying photographs and posters faded by ultraviolet light can observe the world. The basis of abilities is what to
do
with that information. That’s why Academy City goes through the whole personal reality business, which is different for everyone. What’s special isn’t our five senses, it’s our ability to process things.”

Musujime didn’t show much emotion at those words, either. She took the belt her flashlight had been on and tried to wrap up the last wound on her side with it. Unfortunately, the thick belt made of metal plates didn’t allow that. Instead, she removed the bandage-shaped pink fabric around her chest and wrapped that around her side. Despite them being the same sex, Musujime didn’t appear to have any misgivings about exposing her breasts to a complete stranger. The most she felt was a little bit of apology as she swept up her winter blazer with the torn sleeve to hide her naked chest. “You’re saying you can’t use abilities without a high degree of mental activity?”

“Yes,” answered Shirai, though she felt a discomposure in her heart. She knew she was being led on. The lack of argument from Musujime proved it.

“Then what about ants? They move in groups, using mass psychology to manufacture colonies and secure food. They receive honey from other organisms called aphids, and they repel ladybugs—it’s a simple symbiotic relationship. A primitive form of reasoning, if you will…If you think their mental structure is irregular, then you’re denying the way people think who are basically the same as you
.
They just have a minor difference in level,” declared Musujime, making sure the cloth on her wound wouldn’t loosen.

“You’re just splitting hairs now…”

“Splitting hairs? Even they have a society with labor divided according to physical structure—king ants, queen ants, worker ants. Are you trying to discard their signal-based communication abilities that use their antennae or bioluminescent organs depending on the species, as well? If you are, then what exactly does a
humanlike high degree of mental activity
mean? Even insects have ethics and morals. Parent ants will protect their own eggs just like the rest of us.” Awaki Musujime smiled very, very, very thinly. “Even ants can measure phenomena.” She paused. “Them and us. Is it up to you to decide which of us perceives these phenomena correctly? How can you say for sure they would never be able to use abilities?”

Kuroko Shirai felt a chill go down her whole body. A single shiver, threatening denial of her very foundation as an esper. She looked at the thing Awaki Musujime was leaning on.

“Don’t you think there could be plenty of things that are as good or better than humans? If it doesn’t seem that way to you, then perhaps it is human hubris.” Musujime smiled slowly, then stroked the luggage with a fingertip. “If you just changed your perspective slightly, you might learn how close such a thing really is. Yes, how extremely close it is.”

The surface of the luggage gleamed sharply with reflected light.

The remnant.

The silicon-corundum processing core.

The Tree Diagram.

An artificial brain more efficient than humans’, larger than humans’, more complex than humans’…and yet slightly less flexible.

“Kuroko Shirai, you know how we sometimes say things have a mind of their own? If you’re so stuck in your opinion that humans reign supreme, then I must say I’m a little disappointed in you.”

Measurement of nature even ants were capable of.

Supernatural abilities that could manifest as long as one had a “mind.”