At that point, his thoughts were cut off.
They were cut off by a black van slamming into his body at full speed.
It came from behind.
He was standing on the sidewalk clearly distinguished from the road.
A thick guardrail separated the sidewalk and the road.
But…
The jet black van easily tore through the guardrail and onto the sidewalk Accelerator was on. It showed no sign of using its brakes. Fragments of the van’s lights, bumper, and other parts scattered throughout the area and the windshield made a noise like azuki beans were hitting it as it shattered to pieces. Torn pieces of the metal guardrail flew through the air and struck the shutters of the multi-tenant building facing the sidewalk. Each roar of destruction seemed to bring about yet another roar of destruction.
It was as if a bomb had gone off.
And amid it all…
Accelerator calmly stood in the exact same spot and pose as he had three seconds before.
His hand was held against the side of his neck.
He audibly cracked his neck.
His slender finger was pressed up against the control switch for his choker-shaped electrode.
He had activated his reflection.
The person who stood there was now Academy City’s strongest Level 5 who could escape a direct hit from a nuclear weapon unscathed.
(What was that?)
Accelerator turned around.
He stared at the black van that had slammed into him.
A crater had been created in the middle of the metal on the front and center of the van as if a shell had hit it. The rest had crumbled up around that central crater. The destruction was to the point where it was unclear whether it should be called a van or simply called wreckage.
The sun had already set, but the headlights were off. This was not simply due to the lights breaking in the crash. They had been off from the beginning.
(It’s like they were trying to approach from behind without me noticing.)
In addition to the headlights being off, there were signs that the license plate had been forcibly changed, the airbag showed no sign of deploying despite the impact being strong enough to smash the windshield, and the keyhole on the door showed signs of having been forced open, suggesting the black van was stolen.
(I guess that clinches it.)
On top of it all, a man dressed all in black was groaning in the crushed driver’s seat.
He wore the armored outfit of some sort of special forces and had a mask that covered his entire head. To finish it off, he had thick goggles like those of a skier covering his eyes.
(They must either have some grudge against me or belong to some research institution that’s desperate to use me.)
A smile split horizontally across Accelerator’s face.
That look of joy grew and grew as he saw a military handgun grip on the man’s chest.
(They’re here. I knew these idiots would be coming. These pieces of shit want to bring me back. These pieces of trash can’t read the air, the atmosphere, the mood, or the rules.)
Accelerator raised his head.
He looked up at the man in the driver’s seat whose face was just a bit higher than his own. And he grinned.
“…You’re dead.”
A roar reverberated through the dark street.
It only took an instant.
Accelerator reached his arm in through the opening the windshield had previously been in. His slender arm headed straight for the face of that man in black as if it was being sucked in. More specifically, it headed for his mouth. He jammed the four fingers minus the thumb of that hand into the man’s mouth. His white hand broke straight through the black knife-proof mask and went straight to the back of the man’s throat. The thumb reached around below the man’s chin.
He then pulled his arm back.
With a cracking noise, the man’s jaw was dislocated.
“Ah ha ha gyah ha ah ha ha ha hee hee hee gyah ha ha ah ha ah ha ah ha ha ha ha!!”
With an explosive laugh, Accelerator pulled the man’s body out of the driver’s seat like he was catching a giant tuna with a single fishing pole. He then threw the man behind him. The man in black flew straight over the sidewalk and slammed into the shutter of the multi-tenant building.
This created a great noise like the crash of lightning.
Accelerator heard a frightened gasp from the backseat of the black van.
There was more.
Accelerator’s red eyes crawled back over.
“Hmm? This is great. Ah ha ha. Holy shit. This is fucking amazing!!”
He charged into the van through the broken windshield like a wild beast.
He ripped out the passenger seat like it was a weed and headed to the backseat. The entire van shook eerily. It was as if the metal and interior were moving out of Accelerator’s way on their own. Due to the twisted frame, the sound of bolts bursting loose and windows breaking could be heard again and again. It sounded like a steel balloon being forcibly inflated.
Another man sat in the backseat.
Before he could frantically draw his gun, Accelerator grabbed his head and slammed it straight down. With a silly-sounding noise, the backseat split open and the man’s head sank into the cotton.
Only the sound of the scratchy breath coming from Accelerator’s own throat could be heard.
“Ha ha ha. …Ugh, I’m sick of this. I’ve lost interest. I’m not a complete monster.” Accelerator laughed. “Dammit. I won’t kill you. It’s too much of a pain in the ass. I’ll let you off easy and give you a discount: 50% off.”
“Ah…Ueh…”
The man’s voice was unintelligible, probably due to the cotton of the seat getting in his mouth.
Even so, the man in black desperately worked to get his words out.
“…Gh. 50%...off? M-money…?”
“No.” Accelerator gently shook his head. “I’ll only peel 50% of your skin off. If you survive that, I’ll let you go.”
“Ghee!!” screamed the man, sounding like some kind of insect.
Accelerator smiled.
His expression was amused, joyous, happy, and entertained. It was the expression of someone licking ice cream on the first day after their diet.
Accelerator heard the sound of something scraping across the road surface and found three other black vans coming to quick stops around him. He stared out through the broken windows at them. Were they stolen as well? He sighed inwardly while thinking about how much trouble they had gone to search out so many of the same model.
“This is getting boring.”
He cancelled his special 50% off service.
He instead grabbed the insect-like man’s head between his five fingers like it was a basketball.
A sound similar to a metal bat being swung was heard. He had casually tossed the man in black out through a broken window.
The loser slid to the side across the asphalt. Without even taking time to check on the man’s laughable state, the back doors of the three vehicles surrounding the destroyed one slid open.
But no one came out.
Instead, countless gun barrels poked out.
When he saw that, Accelerator sighed. At the same time, he swung his fist straight down as if to vent his anger. That vector-controlling strike applied fatal damage to the already twisted frame of the van, cracks ran through the various pipes, and sparks flew about.
Explosive blasts and waves of heat scattered in every direction, swallowing up the entire area.
Repeated muffled screams came from the three vans. Even though they were inside the vans and had masks covering their faces, they had still been struck by a blast of high temperature wind at close range. A few whose throats had been burned writhed around and even fell out of the sliding door they themselves had opened and onto the road.
“Thanks for the nice production work. …You should thank me for blowing you away in such a spectacular fashion.”
A voice came from the flames.
Accelerator leisurely walked through the wreckage and the flames that spread out in a pomegranate red. He could only use his reflection for 15 minutes, but that did not seem to be a problem. In fact, he could finish everything in 10 seconds after causing disarray within the enemy to such an extent.
And then…
“This is exactly what I warned you about,” said a male voice coming from one of the vans surrounding Accelerator. “This isn’t enough to crush that brat. Don’t go soft on him just because he’s a kid. This is why I told you I should deal with him from the beginning.”
A man in black was kicked out of the back sliding door of the van that was still sitting open. Afterwards, a tall man wearing a lab coat sluggishly appeared from within. His expression showed no sign of damage. Despite being a researcher, he had a tattoo on his face. He wore mechanical gloves with a detailed form on both hands. They were known by the ridiculously long name of “micromanipulators”. As the name suggested, they were delicate pieces of technology that allowed the wearer to perform sensitive work on the scale of one-millionth of a meter.
“…”
Accelerator frowned slightly.
He recognized the researcher.
“Bh.” And the instant he saw him, he burst out laughing. “Gya ha ha ha ha!! Kihara-kun, the hell kind of pretentious entrance was that!? I wouldn’t think you were the same little intellectual who’d get scared and look away when trying to look me in the eye!!”
Kihara Amata.
He was a man who had once worked on developing the powers of Academy City’s strongest Level 5.
That meant he was one of the most skilled powers development researchers even in Academy City.
“Yeah, I really didn’t want to see you again. But it was an order from the higher ups, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Something about it being an emergency situation so they have to use every available option. Sorry, but…how bout you just let me kick your ass here?”
The man in the lab coat made a bluff, but Accelerator just ignored it.
Every single person who had taken part in researching Accelerator had been afraid of his extreme ability. To put it simply, he had never stayed in a single research facility for 2 full months. No matter how great an ambition the researcher held, they all ended up trembling in a corner of the room as soon as they saw someone whose nature vastly surpassed that.
Kihara Amata had been nothing but one of those researchers.
In fact, Accelerator knew of no other type of researcher.
With the sole exception of Yoshikawa Kikyou.
Kihara lightly shrugged the shoulders covered by his lab coat.
“Don’t say that. Who do you think it was that brought about your power?”
“Ah? What? Was that a line filled with duty and sympathy? Don’t tell me you think I’m the type of person who would return a favor. That’s just stupid. And, y’know…” Accelerator brought his left index finger to his temple and twirled it in a circle. “If you’re gonna act crazy, go do it on your own. I don’t have enough fingers to count how many researchers fucked with my body. Do you think I had any reason to remember you specifically, Passerby A? I never gave you a second thought, so get lost.”
“You really are an annoying little shit, you know that?”
Kihara wrapped his arms around his shoulders as if he was feeling cold.
A smile appeared on his face.
“I wanna kill you. I wanna kill you so damn bad. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to smash in that face of yours so bad I could barely stand it. But you were my research specimen and, more importantly, you were a kid. A terrible little brat, but a kid nonetheless. That just barely allowed me to hold back. But I shouldn’t have. I really should’ve killed you back then. Ahh…I fucked up. Ah ha ha. What was I thinking?”
As if he was inviting back a lover, Kihara opened wide the arms that wore the gloves for super delicate work that were reinforced with small motors and electrically contracting artificial muscles.
In the same pose, Kihara Amata approached Accelerator.
He approached defenselessly.
The edges of researcher’s lips twisted up.
And he said, “So I’ll just have to kill you now, you damn brat.”
The fist wearing the detailed metal glove flew towards Accelerator’s face.
Yet Accelerator’s smile did not crumble.
“What is this idiot thinking?” he muttered.
Without even thinking of defending, Accelerator opened his arms to welcome in Kihara Amata’s fist. And just as he was thinking of utterly breaking that idiot’s arm and tying it in a knot…
The mechanical fist tore Accelerator’s skin and shook his skull.
“Gah…h…!?”
The unexpectedness of the strike caused even more of a shock to his brain.
The switch on his choker-shaped electrode was on.
His reflection was active.
In that state, he should have been left unscathed even if he detonated a nuclear bomb he was currently carrying.
And yet…
For some reason, the vector reflection had not worked at all.
“Y’know…”
As his consciousness wavered, Accelerator could hear Kihara Amata’s voice.
It was the disappointed voice of someone looking down on another human being.
“I never gave you a second thought either, brat. Don’t act so damn spoiled just because you have a bit of power. Let me say it again: Who do you think it was that gave you that power? Well, do you remember now?”
“Ah…”
Before Accelerator could say anything, Kihara’s fist flew once more.
An odd noise came from the glove.
It was a strike coming down from above like he was swinging a hammer. Once again, the reflection was meaningless. When the powerful strike hit his head, Accelerator collapsed onto the wet road. His modern cane slipped from his grasp. The plastic bag from the drugstore fell to the ground and its contents scattered about.
“I’m just gonna crush you now. You’re not the real reason I’m here, so I don’t have time to play around with the likes of you.”
Kihara crushed the box of bandages underfoot.
Accelerator had bought those children’s bandages for Last Order.
The cutesy package grew dirty with rainwater and mud.
“That doesn’t suit you.” Kihara grinned while lightly stroking the mechanical glove as if to check on how his arm was doing. “Well, we’ll be retrieving that anyway, so don’t worry. You can just become a stain on the wall after I crush you. That suits you a lot better, don’t you think?”
“…!!”
Anger suddenly filled Accelerator’s mind.
Kihara had said Accelerator was not his true objective. And now he said he was going to retrieve “that” which was always with Accelerator.
His objective was her.
He was saying the person he had referred to as “that” would be dragged into the bloody world Accelerator and Kihara Amata were from.
“Don’t you…”
Accelerator began speaking while crawling on the ground.
From his position on the ground, he glared up at Kihara and the men in black who were looking down at him after defenselessly getting that close to him.
With some muddy rainwater on his lips, he continued speaking.
“…underestimate me, you lowly thuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggg!!”
The wind whipped up with a roar.
He had the power to manipulate vectors. He could control the directionality of anything that had even the slightest force. And the wind, the flow of the atmosphere around the earth, was no exception.
He created a local storm.
The 120 m/s blast of wind he controlled fell under the highest M7 class for hurricanes. The atmospheric violence was powerful enough to pick up a car or rip off a house’s roof, so it had surpassed the level of a standard missile.
“Die!” shouted Accelerator.
But…
“No, none of that.”
Just as Accelerator thought he heard an oddly dry beeping noise, the mass of raging wind he was controlling was blown away. The gathered wind scattered in all directions like the neck of a balloon had been opened.
“!?”
The attack he had thought was a sure thing was negated with ease.
Accelerator passed astonishment and was left in a complete daze.
“Like I said, you just need to die, okay?”
Kihara picked a metal pipe off the ground and beat Accelerator’s face with it.
An unpleasant creaking noise came from the surface of his face. He tried to cry out in pain, but the voice lacked a proper exit and came out with a muffled ring to it. When Kihara heard that, he casually tossed the pipe to the side.
“U…gh…”
Despite his hazy consciousness, Accelerator thought.
He had seen this phenomenon before.
With just a touch of his palm, that boy had easily negated the Level 5 powers Accelerator had thought were absolute. That boy had crushed his impenetrable reflection ability and sent heavy blow after heavy blow against his slender body.
Could it be…?
“Did you…develop powers in your own body…?”
“Gya ha ha! No, no, that’s not it at all. Why would I experiment on myself? That’s a job for the guinea pigs. This is nothing so amazing. It doesn’t take that much to crush you even without ridiculous powers. Why would I take such a risk just to crush a single idiot like you? Well?”
“…”
“But damn this feels good. Exterminating insects just puts me in such a good mood. And this is working great today, too.”
As Kihara spoke, he opened and closed the fingers of the micromanipulators.
Accelerator’s shoulders jumped.
It was not over yet.
He could not let himself be defeated so easily.
“Ohh!!”
Accelerator used his vector control to jump up from the ground like a spring. And at the same time he swung his arms with everything he had. The modern cane that had been affixed to his right arm fell away, but he did not care.
He reached his five fingers out toward Kihara Amata.
The first time failed.
But the second time, his fingernails touched Kihara. Accelerator poured in his power. He poured it into the gloves Kihara wore. He focused the vectors on a single point and the mechanical gloves shattered.
The fragments scattered every which way.
“!?”
Accelerator could see the surprised expression on Kihara’s face through the remnants flying through the air.
He jabbed his five fingers out toward that face.
(You’re dead now, you piece of shit!!)
That deadly hand broke through the film of mechanical fragments and shot toward Kihara Amata’s face
But…
“I see, I see. Did you think the secret to my power was in the gloves?”
His voice was perfectly calm.
Kihara easily avoided Accelerator’s strike simply by moving his head to the side.
And his usual smile appeared on his face.
“That’s not it at all! Gya ha ha! Sorry about getting your hopes up like that!!”
A fist stabbed into Accelerator’s side.
The desire to vomit exploded in his stomach, but he forced it back down.
Kihara’s laugh rang in his eardrums.
“Ha ha! How long are you going to act like you’re the strongest? You’re nothing but a pile of scrap!!”
Accelerator’s body was doubled over from the previous blow and another fist fell atop his head that was sticking forward a bit. His body collapsed to the ground like a toy.
“Your reflection isn’t an absolute barrier.”
Kihara slowly walked forward.
Accelerator could not move.
“It only reverses the vector of any force heading into it. That makes it simple to beat the shit out of you. I just have to pull back my fist the instant before hitting. You could say the trick is stopping at the last second.”
He sounded like he was enjoying himself.
His smile was that of someone explaining the trick to a piece of stage magic they had thought up.
“You end up reflecting the fist that is moving away from you. That means you actually punch yourself. Do you get it now, masochist boy!? Or is it too complex for a little kid to understand!?”
“!!”
Accelerator tried to get up, but Kihara’s foot flew his way before he could.
The sole of Kihara’s shoe stomped down on him from above again and again. As the foot stomped on him in various places, his skin was torn and blood mixed in with the rainwater.
(What…?)
He knew Kihara claimed to be using his own power against him. But Accelerator had no idea what exactly it entailed or if it was even possible in reality. However, he did know his reflection was of no use.
“Gahhhh!!”
He tried to control the vectors of the air again, but the dry beeping noise sounded again and it was blown away.
“This is the same,” said Kihara. “Your power works by constructing equations for the vectors. That means I just have to throw those equations out of order. You can’t control the wind with me around. That kind of control requires a much more complex set of equations than just reflecting. It’s the same as program code. The more lines of code, the higher the possibility of a bug…and more room for intentional interference. Basically, I can jam all of your wind attacks by sending a small sound wave out into the air. It just has to have the proper wave and directionality to sneak into a blind spot in your equations. Get it?”
He had pulled out a cell phone…no, it was the strap attached to it. It was made of a soft material and it seemed that it produced a noise when pressed. That was all it took to seal Accelerator’s power.
“Damn…it.”
“So what’s it like being stomped into the mud? I know your characteristics, your equations, your Personal Reality…everything about you. I didn’t develop your power for nothing.”
Repeated dull sounds of impacts rang out.
A few drops of blood splattered onto Kihara’s face.
Kihara continued kicking until he was out of breath and then scraped his bloodstained shoe on the wet road. He treated the stains like the ugliest possible thing to find on his shoe.
“Hm? Some bugs sure are hard to kill. Hey, come bring that thing out of the van. You know what I mean. The thing shoved in the back. The one covered in dust.”
Kihara lightly stretched out an arm and one of the armored men headed to the back of one of the vans with pained movements. What he pulled out and handed to Kihara was a heavy toolbox filled with things like hammers and saws.
“The cruder and rougher weapons tend to work better. It’s like how a chainsaw meant for lumber gives much more gruesome results than a nonmetal assassin’s knife.”
Accelerator was not able to speak properly from where he lay collapsed on the ground.
He merely looked up at Kihara while the rain fell on him.
“Hey, Accelerator. Did you know the real reason behind her?”
Kihara smiled.
Accelerator could only image he was referring to that small girl.
“Even back at the stage of…what was it again? Oh, right. The Radio Noise development project that came before the Level 6 Shift project. It seemed suspicious from the moment they gave the go sign for those mass produced military models. After all, they should have just made clones of you, the #1, rather than Railgun, the #3.”
“…”
“So why didn’t they clone you? Why did they start with that #3? There has to be something there. Something you don’t know about.”
“Hah,” laughed Accelerator. He then muttered, “You piece of shit.”
Not only was his lip split but everywhere from the space between his teeth to the back of his neck was filled with the flavor of blood.
“Don’t get so worked up over some nonsense when you don’t know as much about that brat as I do.”
“Hm?”
Kihara grinned and grabbed the corners of the heavy toolbox with both hands to see how it felt.
Still smiling, he said, “How moving. I’m sure she’s delighted to hear it.”
Accelerator thought his heart was going to stop.
He did not move from his collapsed position.
But he still managed to turn his head just enough.
It was about 100 meters away.
There he saw…
A little girl with one arm held by a man in black and her remaining limbs dangling down.
“That completes the retrieval job.”
Accelerator could hear Kihara Amata’s voice growing more distant.
He could see three people before him while he lay collapsed on the ground. Two were men in black walking side by side. The other was Last Order who was being held like a piece of luggage by one of those men. He held her like she was a plastic bag with something heavy inside. The bottoms of her feet did not reach the ground. Her feet dangled down limply like hanging threads.
He could not see her expression from where he was.
Her head hung down and shook like a tree branch just like her arm and legs, but her bangs hid her expression. However, she did not move an inch despite being in what had to be a painful position. She was most likely unconscious. He had a feeling fresh wounds would be visible on her young body if he got closer.
Holding her by one arm must have been tiring because the man roughly shoved Last Order toward the other man. Even so, she just hung there limply without making the slightest reaction.
Kihara laughed and said, “Ahh, ahh. I guess she probably couldn’t hear you. Unlike with you, we were told to bring her back alive, but she hardly looks alive to me. I’d rather not have to make a written explanation of how she ended up dead.”
“Quit joking around,” muttered Accelerator under his breath.
She was still alive. There was no way she was dead. If Last Order did die, Accelerator would have noticed since he relied on the Sisters to help carry out his calculations…or so he hoped.
(Damn, I have no proof…)
Accelerator gritted his teeth while lying on the cold ground.
(I have no idea if I would be affected at all if that brat died! I’ve never even thought about the possibility, so of course I don’t know!!)
Paying no heed to Accelerator as he lay battered on the ground, the men holding Last Order’s limp form approached. They were probably heading for the vans.
Kihara had said Last Order was their objective.
Accelerator had no idea where they planned on taking her, but it would all be over once they shoved her into one of the vans.
That girl would once more be dragged down into a world of blood and darkness.
And…
The odds of her coming back again were probably zero.
(I won’t let you.)
Accelerator’s fingers crawled across the ground that was wet with rain.
He gathered up the last bit of power left in his battered body.
“Last Ordeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”
He raised his head and cried out her name.
He had a feeling he saw the girl’s shoulders give a slight twitch.
He swung up an arm while lying on the ground.
He could not defeat Kihara Amata with his vector transformation. Even if he created a raging burst of wind by controlling the air, it would immediately be jammed. He could not defeat that man in the lab coat using his normal attack methods. Also, defeating that man was not what he had to focus on now. His priority lay elsewhere.
And so…
“…!!” Accelerator clenched his teeth and slammed his hand against the wet asphalt.
A great sound of destruction rang out.
The tremendous power blasted the asphalt to pieces and the fragments flew in every direction, causing Kihara to move back slightly.
This gave Accelerator an opening of less than a second.
Accelerator used his hand to grasp the wind using that limited time.
A blast of wind surged up as he controlled its vectors.
“Tch!!”
Accelerator heard Kihara click his tongue. The spear of violent wind shot straight by Kihara and straight at Last Order who was being held by a man in black.
The wind speed was 120 m/s.
That wind burst was enough to lift a car or rip a roof off a house. He tore the girl’s small body from the thick arm of the man in black and launched her from the ground. Last Order flew over several buildings that were over 10 meters tall and disappeared into the background.
An odd coughing noise came from Accelerator’s throat.
Before he could even think of suppressing it, he coughed up a mass of blood and his face fell down to the wet road in front of him. Even though he had some battery time left, his consciousness was too faint to lend any focus to the reflection. The rainwater that was mixed with blood and mud flowed in through the corner of his lips and onto his tongue.
“Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh.” Kihara let out a carefree comment. “She’s not a golf ball, y’know? You’re not supposed to launch people distances that are measured in yards. That was some nice distance, but who’s gonna go get her? I’m not doing it.”
“What should we do?” quietly said one of the men wearing a black armored outfit.
Kihara scratched his head with his right hand that still had the remnants of the glove on it.
“Hmm… Split into three groups I guess. One group heads after the primary target. The other two stay with me. We’ve got a lot to do with retrieving the men who were crushed by him and all.”
“But our orders had capturing Last Order as our top priority, so shouldn’t the groups-…”
“Oh?” Kihara looked at his subordinate with a puzzled look and asked, “You’re the guy who was recently brought in to replenish this Hound Dog unit, right?”
“No, um…”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m not trying to pry into your identity. I don’t care about the fate of some sweaty guy. But let me fill you in since you don’t seem to understand the rules around here.” Kihara cleared his throat disinterestedly. “You people are a gathering of trash. You have no rights here. We can replace you with more trash at a moment’s notice. If you get in the way of a vitally important mission, I have no problem killing you. Do you get it now? You’ve already died once. Do you get that?”
The slimy feeling of the raindrops disappeared from the man in black’s body.
All discomfort disappeared from him.
“I put the schedule together myself. I racked my brains for the sake of those fucking brats. It’s such nonsense. And are you going to make me rack my brains to deal with you too? Hm?”
A chilly feeling seemed to emanate from Kihara’s body.
When he saw the man silently take a step back, Kihara nodded.
“Okay, as long as you understand. But we do have some leeway here, so I’ll answer your question.”
“O-okay. We are supposed to take Last Order alive, but after what happened to her…”
“Oh, I’m sure that brat thought of something. He probably launched her into a river or something.”
“Since she was unconscious, she might have drowned if she landed in water…”
“Don’t be stupid. The shock of hitting the water would wake her up. And I think she had come to before that anyway. At any rate, check around the area for something that would function as a cushion. Even if she has some skill at running away, she still has the basic specs of a kid. If you still manage to lose sight of her, I’ll be holding my sides from laughter.”
“Understood,” replied a few different voices.
Using only eye and hand signals rather than discussing it, a single group split off and disappeared down a back alley.
Kihara looked down at where Accelerator lay in a puddle.
“Now then.”
“Are we going to take him with us too?”
“No, we’ll kill him. Seeing someone working hard for that kind of reason really pisses me off. And we have no reason to capture him. He’s a real pain in the ass. It’s safest to just kill this kind of gloomy and brooding self-satisfied bastard.”
From his tone of voice, one would think he was speaking about a caterpillar on a tree.
One of the armored men held out a handgun, but Kihara shook his head. The countermeasure for Accelerator’s reflection could only be accomplished with a subtle reversal of an arm or leg. It could not be replicated with a bullet.
And it was naturally only an attack method that was possible for that man who had directly developed Accelerator’s powers. Even if others heard the explanation, they could not pull off the split second timing needed.
Kihara crouched down and lifted up the toolbox.
It was a primitive blunt weapon much heavier than a hammer.
He aimed for Accelerator’s battered face like he was trying to crush an empty can sitting on the ground.
“Since you had me off guard for a second, you really should have killed me. I don’t know if you were hoping to turn things around with that, but she’ll be nice and captured again in 10 minutes.”
“…Shut up,” spat out Accelerator.
“Oh?”
Kihara’s eyes widened. He must not have thought Accelerator was actually still conscious.
“A piece of shit like you…will never understand.”
“Is that so? Well, I’ll be killing you now, so I hope you like those dying words. It’s time for you to become a nasty stain,” said Kihara with a sneer.
“Dammit,” muttered Accelerator silently.
As Kihara had said, Last Order would definitely be captured at this rate. She could flee some on her own, but she was overwhelmingly outmatched.
(What is Yomikawa doing? And where is Yoshikawa with that handgun of hers?)
But despite those thoughts, Accelerator knew the answer. They would of course not be coming. There was no way they would conveniently show up. If people showed up like puzzle pieces to complete a means of resolving the situation whenever you were faced with something you could not handle alone, no one would ever have any real problems. Some said humanity was one big family. They said everyone could laugh together and be happy. But that exceedingly kind illusion would never actually happen.
(…Someone.)
Even so, Accelerator continued to think.
(Give me a lucky illusion… I’ll give you all the credit. You can trample over me and make fun of me all you want.)
He looked horribly pathetic lying on the wet ground with his skull about to be smashed.
(Someone…anyone…save that brat…)
He knew his hopes would never reach anyone.
Kihara mercilessly swung down the toolbox hammer.
But just before it hit…
“What are you doing there?”
“Ah?” said Kihara as he stopped his arms.
The armored men turned toward the voice.
It had come from less than 20 meters away. The person must have suddenly come out of one of the narrow side paths. The figure stood in the pouring rain of the night without an umbrella. The light of the streetlights dimly reflected off of the figure.
The figure had silver hair long enough to reach her waist, pure white skin, and green eyes. She wore an extravagant white nun’s habit with gold embroideries that looked like a teacup. But the clothes were held together in places by safety pins, giving them a very imbalanced look. In her arms was a calico cat that looked completely out of place in that strained world.
Accelerator recalled something as he lay collapsed on the ground.
He recalled her.
He recalled her name.
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