A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 8 (6 page)

The unexpected development gave her alarm.

“Next is the tag. Oh, but before that…Shirai, I have a request. Can you change your phone to RWS mode and take another picture of the tag? There’s a red square on the right side of it. Focus on that.”

“What? RWS mode?”

“It’s the mode you put it in to read electronic data from IC chips and stuff! It’s standard issue on all Judgment cell phones. I put that expansion chip in your cell phone for you, remember?! You haven’t even read the manual, have you?!”

“I know basically how to use a cell phone, so I never felt like going through the minor things in the manual…”

“Ahh, jeez! Anyway, first, open the main menu…”

Shirai followed Uiharu’s directions and came to a screen she’d never seen before on her cell phone. Then she took a picture of the tag again. She attached it to a message and sent it to Uiharu.

“Oh, there we go! Got it! Umm, let’s see what the scan says…Yep, it found something.” Uiharu’s tone changed to one of seriousness. “The tag itself is the real thing, and it was definitely issued by Academy City.”

“The real thing…Then it was going to the Garden of Learning like we thought?”

“Yes.”

Shirai began to think. There was no building at Tokiwadai Middle School called the “Calculation Support Facility.” By nature, if a nonexistent delivery address was written on a package’s tag, there wouldn’t be any point in delivering it. That meant this sort of message might actually have been some sort of code that would mean something to somebody else.

“The analysis on the IC chip info finished, too. It supplements the simple type of code printed on the tag. It has the frame number of a space shuttle and an outer space work schedule number. Both belong to Academy City. They match the records of District 23. This is smelling more and more like danger!”

“District 23…The whole thing is covered in airfields and launch sites for aviation and space research and development; nowhere else in the city has facilities like that. Students aren’t allowed in there.”

“Yes. And that mark on the luggage? The one with the squares inside the circle. That’s District 23’s emblem. It’s kind of like a school insignia.”

Shirai groaned. Part of her wondered why she didn’t realize that earlier, but she wouldn’t generally have remembered the emblem for a facility with no connection to students. She’d probably glanced at it before on the news during space shuttle launches or something.

“The sender on the tag is also District 23,” continued Uiharu. “Everything there is highly classified, so there’s no sensitive details written on it, of course.”

Shirai looked at the bag again. The date matched the date Academy City’s shuttle returned to Earth. And the shipper was District 23—an airfield-slash-launch-site monopolizing an entire school district for aviation and space research.

Who in the world did District 23 plan on delivering the luggage to…?
she wondered.
And who could those guys who stole it out from under them have been…?
For now, she decided to just thank Uiharu. “Thank you. I will give it some thought while I deal with the luggage and these men.”

“Ahh! Like I said before, I expect a reward! Like a proper young ladies’ teatime with a real lady like you! Actually, not just tea! It has to have the atmosphere that only proper ladies craft!!”

She sounded quite flustered. Shirai hung up anyway.

Like a scroll being rolled up, she watched as the super-thin phone was wound back up into the cylinder holding it. Then she returned it to her pocket and started giving some more thought to this.

Unfortunately, Shirai didn’t have much knowledge of space-related technology or events.

Even when she thought it over, the only space-related happening she could think of happening recently was the continuous schedule of rocket and shuttle launches by organizations all over the world, beginning with Academy City.

“It might be…a bit of a stretch to connect this to that. Still…Sheesh. After all that, I still don’t even know whether I should look inside this thing or not.” She sighed and sat down on the luggage. The men in the suits were a mystery, but then so was the one who had been carrying this in the first place. “Either way, it is not my job to think about it any more than this.”

Having come to a noncommittal conclusion, she waited there for Anti-Skill to arrive. They were taking a while, though the road conditions were not very good. Shirai wouldn’t complain, though—they didn’t have any abilities, so they couldn’t help it.

Then, her cell phone suddenly rang.

She looked at the tiny screen and saw the words
Mikoto Misaka
written on it. She quickly turned back toward the men. They were still out cold, but she wanted to avoid carelessly letting them overhear her conversation and trying to start trouble. Leaving the scene for a personal matter would be an issue, though. Though feeling a slight resistance to doing so, she brought her hand to her mouth as if telling someone a secret and pushed the talk button on her cell phone.

“Hey, Kuroko?…I’m not getting very good reception. Where are you, anyway?”

“Um, err, well…I sort of can’t say where I am.”

“Huh? Oh, okay, I got it. Still on the job…Sorry for bothering you!”

“No, not at all. What did you need?”

“No, if you’re working, then don’t worry about it. The underclassmen are saying we should definitely be on the lookout for a surprise R.A. inspection, so I wanted you to hide your things if you could.”

“??? Big Sister, are you not currently at the dormitory?”

“Um. Well, no. I can ask someone else. Do you mind them cleaning up your things?”

“Wha, what? What did you say…?! B-Big Sister, are you asking some other girl for a favor…? Please, wait, Big Sister! I will come back to the dorm as soon as possible, therefore, please, give to me the privilege of you saying what a good girl I am and giving me a hug!!”

“…Why would I hug you for something like this? Besides, you’re working, aren’t you? They’re saying the rain should start around midnight, so if you don’t want that, then hurry up and get your assignment done so you can go home. Bye!”

She hung up on her.

Shirai stared at the cell phone for a few moments as though she’d been left behind. A low ring of disappointment sounded in her mind—

Ka-thunk.

She heard soft footsteps.

Whoops. I was so absorbed in fighting that I never put up any off-limits tape
, she thought vaguely, still sitting on the luggage.

Then, a moment later.

The sensation of her weight being supported by it disappeared. It just slipped away. She stuck out her hand, but it wasn’t there. The luggage she had just been sitting on was no longer even within arm’s reach.

It was like it had suddenly disappeared.

Almost like it had been teleported.

Tele…portation…

Shirai’s mind was still somewhat blank after the unexpected event. She knew something was happening around her right now, but her thoughts couldn’t catch up to it. Just when she managed to grasp that she was in danger…

Thud!

Something cut into her right shoulder as she lay there on the ground faceup.

“Gah…!”

There was a searing pain. She felt something inside her tearing apart. Not with her ears—the sharp noise was coming directly through her body.

She glanced and saw a pointed piece of metal stuck through the fabric of her short-sleeve blouse and into her skin. Its tip was like a thick wire and was twisted like a spring, and the handle was made of a white material that resembled porcelain.

A wine corkscrew?!

Kuroko Shirai forced her mind to be calm—the pain had almost taken over—and teleported. She only shifted a few centimeters, turning her fallen body up ninety degrees. As a result, she stood up instantly.

Drip, drop.
The heavy sound of liquid splashing on the ground.

A pair of eyes watched in amusement.

Kuroko Shirai looked at the entrance to the alley again.

There was a girl there.

She was a little taller than her, and her hair was tied up into two long strands in the back. She was wearing a school uniform, but it was a winter one. She didn’t have her arms through the sleeves of her long-sleeve blue blazer, instead wearing it over her shoulders, none of its buttons done. She wasn’t wearing a blouse underneath it. Her torso was naked, with only some sort of light pink–colored bandage-like innerwear wrapped around her chest. She wore a belt at her waist, too. It wasn’t there to hold up her skirt; it was just for decoration. It was made of metal plates linked together rather than leather. On it was a key ring that had a black, metal cylinder hanging from it, about forty centimeters long and three in diameter. It looked like a military-grade flashlight you might see on police officers.

Shirai somehow expected her to be in high school. She couldn’t rely on her outward appearance to tell her age, but high school kids just looked older to middle school students. Something about her didn’t give Shirai the impression that they were alike.

The girl had the white luggage next to her.

The one that Shirai had just been sitting on a moment ago.

“So it
was
teleportation?! But…” She hadn’t touched the luggage. Or maybe she’d immediately teleported behind her and then went back with it. Even then…

If this is just teleportation, then something’s wrong
, she thought, alarmed.

Shirai, buried in thought, snapped out of it when she heard the girl laugh. “Oh, you figured it out already? I should have known an esper with a similar ability would be quick on the uptake. I’m a little different from your type, though.”

Shirai frowned. A similar ability. A little different.

“My power—it’s called Move Point. Unlike your shabby ability, my movement doesn’t need me to touch the object. Amazing, ain’t it?” That dispassionate voice…The girl looked down at the suit-wearing men on the ground behind Shirai. “These people were useless. That’s why I assigned them this random job to grab the luggage. I didn’t expect them to be so useless they couldn’t even do
that
, though.”

Useless
.
People
.
Grab
.
Random job
.
Assigned
.
Those words all clued Shirai in to the fact that she was somehow related to these men. She raised her voice and cautioned her. “You would commit violence against me despite knowing who I am?” The armband displaying her position was already bloodstained from the wound in her shoulder and turning black.

“Yes. That is exactly why I could be so calm with this, Miss Kuroko Shirai of Judgment. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have revealed my hand so easily.”

Shirai didn’t know what was in the luggage. And she didn’t know what this person was after, either. But she still understood; this girl, looking at her wounded state and laughing, wasn’t about to let her go home quietly.

An enemy.

Yes, this was not a girl standing before her, but an enemy.

“Gah!!”

Shirai spread her feet wide. The recoil caused her short skirt to flutter. Her exposed thighs revealed leather belts around them, with dozens of metal darts inserted in each one—just like bullets in a gunman’s belt in a western film. They were her trump card. Deadly darts that she could instantly warp to a target with teleportation and send into an enemy.

But the girl moved before Shirai was able to.

Her slender hand inside the blazer hanging from her shoulders went to the military-grade flashlight packed on her metallic belt and pulled it out in one breath. She spun it around in her hand like a baton, then waggled it just a tiny bit above Shirai, as though beckoning.

A change occurred.

The men Shirai had brought down and arrested vanished and warped in front of the girl. She held the ten unconscious people out in the air as a shield.

However…

“That won’t help!!”

Shirai fired the metal darts at her thighs anyway. The numerous darts crossed space soundlessly, ignoring the linear distance in between them and the target—in other words, passing right through the men—and reappeared directly where the girl was standing. She was aiming for her shoulders and legs, firing carefully so she wouldn’t hit her joints.

Her teleportation ability didn’t move things in a straight line but rather from one position to another. There could be as many hostages in between them as she wanted; it didn’t pose a problem. And when the darts all appeared out of nowhere inside the girl’s body, they would tear through her tender flesh from the inside out. The attack didn’t depend on the type of object. For teleportation, the object being moved would appear overlapping the object she sent it to.

So it would have been odd if her attack didn’t pierce the girl’s body.

And yet…

“Uh,” she grunted without meaning to.

After the men in the air succumbed to gravity and crumpled all over the place…

The girl wasn’t there, where she’d expected.

She had taken a few steps back and was now sitting on the luggage, legs crossed elegantly. She had kicked it backward while sitting down so it skidded across the ground like a wheel.

All the darts Shirai fired hung in empty space for a moment, then they all clattered to the ground—just like the unconscious men had.

Teleportation was movement between points. If she designated the coordinates a little bit wrong, her attack wouldn’t hit. The men hadn’t been used as armor to block it but as a screen to throw off Shirai’s perception.

The girl, legs still crossed, moved the flashlight in her hand. She pointed to one of the fallen darts with it, then flung it upward like a fishing rod.

One of the darts then vanished—and reappeared in the girl’s empty hand.

Here it co—!!

The girl sidearmed the metal dart toward Shirai, busy preparing herself. She hadn’t used teleportation (or Move Point, like she said). It was traversing a linear, three-dimensional route. It was, however, aimed precisely at the middle of Shirai’s body.

She couldn’t dodge it to the side given the width of the alley.

There was always the option of teleporting across a wall and into a building to flee, but she couldn’t use it carelessly—she didn’t know what the inside looked like. If she accidentally sent herself into coordinates overlapping with another person, it would be a terrible tragedy.

But there was no point in retreating backward. The dart was heading straight for her.

Therefore, she chose to teleport forward. She warped right in front of the girl, ending up on the other side of the dart. She balled a hand into a fist. It would be a counterattack—delivered right after evading an incoming attack, it would send her enemy flying. But before she could…

Smack.

A metal dart struck her in the flank from behind.

“…Ah…?!”

Shirai felt something like a tremble bubbling up from the core of her body. Quickly losing the ability to endure it, she felt all of her strength drain from her. Her legs buckled and she fell to the ground.

And oddly enough, it now looked like she was groveling at the girl’s feet as she sat on the luggage.

“I already told you,” she said with a smile, re-crossing her legs. “My Move Point doesn’t need me to touch the object like yours does.”

Kuroko Shirai heard her scornful tones—but couldn’t get herself to lift her head up.

It was simple logic.

First, the girl had thrown a metal dart with her hand. Then, at the same time Shirai dodged it, she used Move Point on the flying arrow. To make it appear inside Shirai’s back.

The metal dart had been skillfully flipped one-eighty degrees without it losing its momentum and had stuck farther into Shirai, toward her stomach, then finally stopped. A terrible scraping resounded from deep within her.

Shoom, shoom!
The sound of air parting occurred in succession.

The next thing she knew, the girl’s empty hand now held every single one of the metal darts Shirai dropped.

“How unfortunate for you. You’re from Tokiwadai Middle School, yeah? Mikoto Misaka might be at her wits’ end right now, but I didn’t peg her as the type to get her subordinates and juniors wrapped up in her personal affairs. Well, I guess she didn’t stop that experiment by herself, either, so maybe she doesn’t care anymore.”

Those words sent a jolt through Kuroko Shirai’s body.

It wasn’t a shudder of pain that went through her near-senseless body but a different kind of tremor. “What…was that?” She strained her neck. She lifted her head up. She gritted her teeth, rallied all her strength, and looked up as if beseeching the heavens from the ground below. “Why…would you mention…Big Sister’s name?”

The girl decided to humor her and answer—as though to scorn her as no longer requiring caution, as her wounded state presented no threat. She seemed to enjoy watching how frustrated Shirai was, seeking pointless amusement at the expense of discarding the most logical course of action. “Oh?” Still cross-legged, the girl put a hand to her mouth as though this were a joke. “You didn’t know? Well, it doesn’t
seem
like you’re being used without knowing it…Tokiwadai’s Railgun doesn’t have that kind of character.”

She hadn’t answered her.

Shirai had asked that question with the last of her strength, and all she got was a self-satisfied soliloquy.

“Didn’t you think things were a little
too
convenient? Like how the useless person who stole this practically aimed to get wrapped up in a traffic jam? You couldn’t guess the reason behind the electricity failure on the traffic lights? There’s no possible way you wouldn’t know what kind of powers Tokiwadai’s ace has.”

Kuroko Shirai glared, though she couldn’t look above her.

She glared at the unidentified piece of luggage and the enemy reigning supreme atop it.

“What…have you…” Her dry lips clung together; she moved them anyway, coughing the words out as though blood would come out with them. The lip balm she’d borrowed from Mikoto sent a strangely sticky feeling back to her. “…been talking…about…?”

“The remnant—well, you wouldn’t know just from my saying that. And ‘silicon-corundum’ would be difficult, too, I suppose,” answered the girl, pleased, clanking the metal darts in her hand together. “Let’s see. Perhaps if I mentioned the remnant of the Tree Diagram, you’d understand. It was broken, it was forgotten—and yet enormous possibility still remained within the supercomputer’s silicon-corundum central calculation unit.”

Kuroko Shirai was shocked. “That’s…impossible. Isn’t it…up in satellite orbit…as we speak…?”

It was so absurd she didn’t have a sense if it was real. The Tree Diagram, the world’s finest simulation machine and the pride of Academy City, was being kept safely in space on board a satellite. Even if you wanted to do something to it, you would never be able to touch it so long as you were connected to the ground. Besides, if there had been an accident (or it had been destroyed), it would have had a pretty extensive round on the news.

However.

The luggage the girl sat on was made to be used in extra-vehicular work in space.

And its tag had the day Academy City’s shuttle returned on it.

Agencies all over the world were currently competing for space advancement.

Shirai’s thoughts wavered. The girl took a photograph out of her skirt pocket and flicked it toward her, spinning like a Frisbee. It fell in front of her. “An appendix to Academy City’s report on its destruction. Rare, huh?”

The photograph showed the giant Earth against the deep-black background of space. In the foreground of the blue planet’s gentle curves floated the scattered wreckage of a satellite. A satellite whose silhouette she had seen before on the news and in pamphlets.

“That…that’s…”

As she stared in mute amazement, the photograph vanished, warping to between the girl’s index and middle fingers. She’d used Move Point or whatever it was to get it. “The Tree Diagram was destroyed quite a while back. That’s why everyone wants to get their hands on the remnants of the broken satellite floating around up there.” She seemed to see something in Shirai’s expression. “Mikoto Misaka sure has it rough. Someone blew up the Tree Diagram for her, so her nightmare ended—but now they’re saying they’re going to repair it. If that happens, they’ll redo the experiment. So, well, I suppose I can sort of relate to her feeling she needs to struggle desperately against that.”

At the mention of that one name from the girl’s mouth, Shirai’s abdominal muscles clenched.

Mikoto Misaka.

Why does she keep bringing her up?
she thought. She had no way of knowing. She couldn’t digest even a small piece of this situation. The girl turned a much stronger glare on her then. It was enough of an issue that such a dangerous person had so much as mentioned her anyway.

“Heh-heh. My, my! Seems you’ve been left out of the loop. By the looks of it, you don’t even know anything about the experiment. But you’ve caught a glimpse of fragments of it. For example…yes, do you remember a couple weeks ago when there was that terrible explosion at the train switchyard? It held up every train in the city for a while. Huge mess. I recall being quite impressed by the skill with which you all got the train schedules back to normal in under a
week
.”

The girl spoke pleasantly; Shirai couldn’t answer. There was a sizzling impatience in her head, but she still didn’t understand what this girl was saying.

“Still don’t get it? I’ve said so much already. August twenty-first. Anything particularly odd happen around you that day?”

The girl could ask, but it was just a vague date. Shirai couldn’t clearly picture it. Besides, the 21st of last month hadn’t been a special day or anything.
What has she been saying…? Was I foolish to think I could even have a conversation with her?
Dubious though she was, the girl’s words did seem to have some kind of regularity to them.

“I see. You made it so far that I would have gladly been your friend, you know,” she said.

Shirai didn’t have the strength to answer. Her lips were dry and slightly torn, the taste of blood dripping into her mouth.

She did understand two things, though.

First, that she needed to stop this girl right here and right now.

Second, that she couldn’t allow the contents of the luggage to be given to anyone.

With one hand, she removed the scant few darts she had left on the belt on her thigh up her skirt. There were only two. She grasped them so tightly she almost crushed them, and then, as if to inspire herself, looked up to the sky and uttered a meaningless cry.

The girl never got up from her luggage. Legs still elegantly folded in front of her, toying with all the clinking darts in her hand, she flipped the switch on her military-grade flashlight—which could have also been used like a police baton—and spun it around, tracing a ring of light in the air. Then she looked down at the weakling groveling and struggling and writhing at her feet with tenderhearted ridicule.

There was a moment of silence.

The sound of a car engine ran by from outside the alley’s exit, on the main road.

Both girls took that as their cue to act.

Not even a second was needed to decide the outcome.

Tons of metal needles flew through the air, scattering clear, fresh maiden blood. There was a scream.

With a wet
thump
of filthy clothes falling, Kuroko Shirai dropped to the ground.

The wind blew. There was no follow-up attack. The other girl left the alley, leaving the Judgment officer there.

She trotted along with light steps as though pleased, not bothering to use Move Point.

With the luggage.

B-Big…Sister…

In her frustration, she gritted her teeth and apologized in her mind. She couldn’t possibly muster the strength to say it out loud.

She’d known what she had to do—her goals.

And yet the inexperienced Kuroko Shirai couldn’t accomplish a single one.