Part 7[edit]
(November 10th – Oahu – New Honolulu International Airport – From a joke pen camera dropped by its owner in the process of evacuating.)
Accelerator was holding onto an area of metal framework near the ceiling in the central lobby.
He was inspecting the situation.
“(...Can she target everyone standing on the same floor as her? No, that Level 0 and the #3 hiding behind the pillar over there weren’t affected. It must simply be the distance from her.)”
If you displayed their locations on a two dimensional map of the floor, Accelerator was closer to Cendrillon than Kamijou and Mikoto, but the central lobby was tall. It reached up to a height of about three stories, so he was farther away from her in three dimensional space.
With just one piece of magic, Cendrillon had sent an attack out in every direction which had immediately turned the situation in her favor.
All of the men in black suits were holding their feet and writhing about.
Accelerator could not see what had actually happened to them, but Cendrillon herself opened her mouth and explained.
“Warning.”
She was speaking toward Kamijou, but the boy did not seem to understand her as she was speaking French.
“This spell allows only my foot size, 22.5 cm. If your feet are smaller, the areas between the bones are forcibly widened and if your feet are larger, your toes are severed.”
“…”
A vivid image of what had happened to the men entered Accelerator’s mind.
“However, that was only a warning. That one only dislocated the toes. The real thing is next. So what will you do? Will you leave Gremlin alone, or must I take some collateral that is a little more certain?”
Kamijou’s face finally paled once the #3 translated for him.
The “collateral” she referred to was likely the toes of everyone who opposed Gremlin.
“(…The main question is on what conditions the glass slippers activate.)”
Accelerator tried to come up with some means of fighting back.
“(If there’s something that moves along the floor and explosively spreads out, I just have to destroy that. But I’m up against a magician here. If it’s something like a cursed straw doll and it simply attacks anywhere there are feet while ignoring the concepts of distance and vectors, I could be in trouble.)”
Not too long before, he would have mocked that kind of thinking. But now, it was no laughing matter.
There was no guarantee that his vector transformation that altered definite values would work on that mysterious attack.
Part 8[edit]