An intense pressure struck Accelerator’s chest.
His breathing stopped.
Obeying some kind of logic beyond his comprehension, the entire night sky tore wide open, and from it, an immense golden light poured forth. Due to the relationship between sunlight and the atmosphere’s refractive index, colors that should have been absolutely impossible on the earth blotted out the skies, driving away all darkness from the world. Unlike before, when it was dyed the color of darkness, the dignity of the fortress occupying the skies flew into his field of vision more clearly than before.
Even the night sky prior to now had been abnormal enough, considering the actual time of day.
It had been eerie, as though human hands had pasted it there, and thinking astronomically, the positions of the stars had probably also been utterly impossible.
However.
This gold was in a different class. The only impression it gave was that just talking about it within an astronomical framework was a mistake to begin with, that scientists all over the world would throw in the towel, saying it wasn’t possible from a commonsense point of view—and yet it was still there, so they had to give up.
Everything had gone crazy.
The scene, in which science’s fundamental rules didn’t apply, was of course already mad—but the situation itself, too, where not a single person was trying to hide a phenomenon of that scale, spread across the skies all around the world.
In Academy City’s darkness, Accelerator had witnessed every incident under the sun and the espers behind them and seen the bleeding-edge technology covering it all up. From his point of view, the scene was absurd.
Maybe in this one second, in this one moment…
Maybe at this very instant, the world itself had undergone a drastic metamorphosis.
But.
…Like I care.
With just a few words, Accelerator ignored the monumental transformation.
His breath was ragged as he brought a slender hand up to grab a spot around his chest.
Last Order’s life was still in danger, even now.
In such danger that unless he removed the source as quickly as he could, he would never be able to take it back.
He figured it was selfish.
But even so.
What did he care about something vague like the “world” changing? If there was anyone who declared him a self-centered evil, Academy City’s most powerful monster was prepared to take them all on. No matter what he had to fight, no matter how much he had to lose, there was something he needed to do, no matter the cost.
Rescue the girl named Last Order from everything in this unfair world.
Accelerator confirmed his reason for living, here and now.
“Misaka Worst. Did you get the data on the song that got rid of Amata Kihara’s virus?”
“Turns out it was pretty easy to find in the Misaka network. It looks like the single, large will in network form sensed something wrong about this song, too. Bet the Sisters were reorganizing their calculation capacity into a parallel system, regularly trying to analyze it over and over. Thanks to that, Misaka got the latest data without having to worm too far in.”
After saying the download was complete and putting her index finger to her temple, Misaka Worst gave an evil-looking grin.
Accelerator, without thanking her, said, “The data.”
“Just hear Misaka out for a sec. Useless trivia is a reward for headwork, you know. Like a mug of beer after working overtime.” She sighed as though disgusted, then took out a portable device from her pure-white combat uniform’s pocket. “Misaka got her hands on the song, but her spec isn’t right for expressing it. It’s not simply a matter of using the throat—judging by the breath usage and the way the sound reverberates inside you, this song isn’t normal. In this case, it would be faster to convert it to electrical signals and output it using a speaker. You want the score, the quasi-sound data, or an amplitude graph?”
“Give me all of them. Holding back is for third-rates. Chumps like that would get a pat on the back if they just did it right. Instead, they try to act cool, fuck it up, and then all their achievements are meaningless.”
“Gee, you’re a wonderful person. Misaka would be more comfortable doing it that way, but whatever.”
Bzz. A sound like white noise began. Immediately, a change occurred on the device’s screen. Several files had been added to it.
Accelerator took the device, then put his fingertips to the screen. Misaka, peering at the small monitor from next to him, said, “But this song isn’t gonna be enough, will it? You’ve gotta replace the exclusive parameters or something. What will you do about that?”
Swinging the device at her to make her move—the back of her head was in the way—Accelerator answered, “I’ll manage.”
He took something out—a sheaf of parchment.
Written on the sheets, in sticky-looking black ink, were creepy spells and magic circles and what have you from who knew where. The descriptions and contents were indecipherable and utterly disconnected with Last Order, a crystallization of Academy City’s cutting-edge technology. Looking at them, even Misaka Worst had to frown.
“…Are you making fun of Misaka?”
“Glad to see you can express so many emotions. Still, guess I wouldn’t want the other puppets to learn from you.”
“Oh, quit talking like you’re our dad or something. That demon-summoning text reeks of the occult. You’re telling Misaka the required parameters are hidden inside this thing? Hah! You gonna take a shady twenty-minutes-once-a-day-self-learning course to become an expert spiritualist, then get an angry goat-headed freak to pop out of a pentagram and grant whatever wish you want?”
“No.”
“And besides!” interrupted Misaka Worst without listening to him, malice clear in her words. “Last Order’s issue has to do with stuff inside Academy City, right? And you think the answer booklet is way out here in some other place? What’s that about? Also, you just happened to go to Russia, and you just happened to run into the appropriate solution? It’s basically a video game at this point. They’ve got hints laid out across the whole path. Now you just need a gun to fight zombies, the hero’s sword to defeat the demon king, and a note from a researcher or sage or something, and you’ll be fully decked out. You really think the harsh real world is gonna be that convenient for you?”
“…I already said that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Yes! Misaka has to wonder about your parenting certification with you pointing a gun at her forehead, no questions asked. I’d appreciate it if you treated her as equal to the other Misakas.”
Accelerator had tucked the portable device and sheaf of parchment under the pit of the arm on the crutch and had a lump of metal rattling just under the center of Misaka Worst’s forehead as she groaned. But the very fact that she’d bothered him so much and he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet would have been impossible the way he’d been before. Academy City’s monster really had been through a lot and gotten a little bit softer.
“Advanced security encryption for computers, encryption for drawings during da Vinci’s time—both are worlds fundamentally built on numbers. At their roots, they’re the same; it’s just that they have a slightly different number of digits. Even the encryption guaranteeing privacy on a cell phone can be decrypted by repeating simple calculations over and over. We only think it’s safe because there are so many digits that it would take too long to decode. It’s not like encryption methods themselves are insanely complicated.”
“Yeah, and?”
“So I dealt with it using mathematics. I broke all the information down into zeroes and ones and put together the puzzle in my head. Thinking normally, that should have been enough to unravel it. At the very least, I should have gotten a clue to what encryption method was used…Leaving aside how many digits there actually were and how many centuries it would take.”
“Should have? Misaka smells the kind of bad luck and frustration she really likes.”
“I couldn’t solve the puzzle,” answered Accelerator plainly. “Numbers by themselves aren’t giving me enough pieces to figure it out. I can manage up to a point, but something important is different. Like how if you want to calculate pi, no matter how many times you do it, you’ll get a deviation on the hundredth digit. Some other rule set is mixed in with this. If I can’t fill in for the missing pieces, I can’t fix the deviation. The more calculations I do, the more the deviation gets out of control, until I can’t make out anything at all.”
“You mean it doesn’t matter what the parchment actually says—you can’t get the necessary parameters?”
“I can’t manage with just mathematics. But I need to do something to solve it. So I put every last iota of the knowledge inside me to full use. I may look like this, but I am the number one brain in Academy City. Can’t brag about it, but I’ve got all sorts of things stuffed in here. And I did a self-search, from one corner of my mind to the other, pulling out every last bit of knowledge, then more, then more, then more, then more.”
His words alone continued.
Misaka Worst would have known what he meant. His calculation abilities and language faculties were being supplemented by the excess calculation power of some ten thousand Sisters. Meaning his actual intellectual abilities were absolutely massive.
“And then I realized something.”
“What?”
“Something I couldn’t understand was already inside me.”
“…”
“I realized it during that battle between the angel of water and the angel of science before. But that’s not exactly right. I should have physically known it before that—way before that.”
Accelerator spoke as if remembering something.
“Yeah.”
Just talking about his past defeats was something he’d have never done before.
But his priorities were different now.
If he could protect one small life by throwing away a part of his pride, he’d do it without hesitation.
“I couldn’t actually reflect it. An unknown attack made it right through and cut me in half. I couldn’t think of a single way to counter it. I was completely broken back then.”
Now, he even had the leeway to give a grin.
He gave himself a push to walk one more step, to walk forward without fail.