21[edit]
(November 10th – Oahu – Coral Street Shopping Mall – In front of a coin locker – From security camera footage)
An armed group of five stepped out of the black smoke and in front of Accelerator.
They were covered in special all-silver military uniforms from the top of their heads to bottom of their feet. The surface of the uniforms glittered like a CD. Their faces could not be seen, but Accelerator could just barely tell from their body shapes that three were men and two were women. They were all armed with special bullpup-style assault rifles. In addition, the men had recoilless guns hanging from their shoulders and the women had intelligence-gathering tools such as high-fidelity microphones and fiberscopes hanging from their waists.
“(…Tch. Are they from Gremlin? Those uniforms look more like electronic camouflage for fooling sensors than something to be used against people.)”
They did not utter a single word.
One of the men held up his rifle and unhesitatingly fired.
However, Accelerator had his reflection.
The man was struck by the bullet he himself had fired and was knocked to the ground, but the other four showed no sign of worry or confusion.
They all took separate actions.
“(…Was he testing to see if I could do it?)”
He had ignored the damage he would take on a personal level and made a calculated sacrifice to control the damage to the group as a whole.
It pissed the #1 off, but it did not change what he had to do.
He manipulated the vectors of the force of his legs to explosively charge forward. The hunt had begun. No matter what the enemy thought or how they moved, Accelerator’s reflection was overwhelmingly effective when it came to bullets and explosives. The attackers could do nothing to oppose the #1 as he wiped them out.
But…
There was one left.
Just as he stretched his fingers out before her, bright red blood suddenly burst from Accelerator’s right arm.
“…Ah?”
A bullet had not made it past his wall of reflection.
Accelerator could not be harmed even by invisible threats such as gas or a biological weapon.
This had been caused by a non-external threat.
That is, his body was being destroyed from the inside.
The last remaining attacker jumped to the side and Accelerator was unable to correct his motion. He slammed into the wall. Blood was splattered on the wall and it did not quite seem real to him that it was his own.
Still leaning against the wall, Accelerator said, “It…can’t be…”
“One fact remains the same for every esper,” said the woman as she held up her bullpup-style rifle. “When a scientifically-created esper uses a magical spell, they are assaulted by a certain side effect.”
“…You’re…a magician…!?”
He tried to shout out but instead coughed up a clump of blood from deep in his throat.
The attackers’ movements. The way they had fled. The timing with which they had been taken out.
It had all been calculated out to make Accelerator take certain actions—to make him pull the trigger known as magic.
The specifics of the magic he was made to use did not matter.
It could be something relatively useless like sending a pale light from his fingertips or even something so trivial it could not be seen. What mattered was that they were making an esper use magic.
Accelerator managed to figure that much out, but he could also tell his consciousness was growing muddy.
He had used something like magic in the past, but making careful adjustments while checking on one’s limits was very different from charging in unaware.
And a scientific esper’s powers were created purely from the brain.
The muddying of his consciousness lowered his calculation ability which in turn had an effect on his control on the macro physical world he could see.
Simply put…he lost his reflection ability.
The woman whose face he could not see held her finger to her rifle’s trigger.
“The name Gremlin refers to an occult fairy that causes malfunctions in scientific machines. Had you not given any thought to what that meant?”
Immediately afterwards, a gunshot rang out.
Blood flew through the air. The dull sound of a human body falling to the ground was heard. Dark red blood leaked from the body as it lay on the ground.
However, it was not Accelerator’s body.
It was the woman’s body after she had been suddenly shot from the side.
Even as she lay on the ground, she held the bullpup-style assault rifle in one hand. She blindly fired in the direction she had been shot from.
But…
“