To Aru Majutsu no Index part 2

Epilogue: The Victory Prize for Those Who Survived. Nano_Size_Data.

When he came to, Accelerator was in an ambulance.

However, the equipment inside was different from that of a real ambulance. Most likely, this ambulance was not headed for the hospital. It was taking him somewhere else.

He couldn't see who was in the driver's seat from his position. No one else was on-board. On the floor next to him was a cell phone. It started ringing the second he noticed it as if he were being watched.

Accelerator picked it up and a voice that was familiar to him in a certain way reached his ear.

"You went a bit too far this time"

"...You again. I'm not going to sit here and be lectured by you people who watch from above without doing a damn thing. The people with the right to act arrogantly are the ones who actually risked their lives trying to stop me."

"You understand, don't you?"

"Tch," Accelerator clicked his tongue in irritation at the person on the phone who wasn't listening to him. "Yes, I understand."

"Well, I was the one that gave you the information on Kakine Teitoku, so I won't be too hard on you. I just wish you had put my information to better use."

"What's my penalty?"

"Hmm, good question. Merely increasing your debt won't really seem like anything to you and you're too important to dispose of. What am I to do with you?"

The tone to those words pissed Accelerator off, but the person on the phone suddenly asked an unexpected question.

"By the way, are you really intending on coming back?"

"Ah?"

"I'm simply curious. After falling that far and announcing that you will stand at the very top of the darkness, you still haven't given up on that warmth?"

"Of course not."

"I see."

"Aren't you going to stop me?"

"I'll give you the right to struggle. Although I can't guarantee you that I have the right to grant you that."

"Perfect," Accelerator said and hung up.

He stared at the screen for a bit, but he finally put the phone in his pocket, opened curtain covering the window, and looked outside.

(...Ah.)

The warmth of that small girl still remained inside his arm.

He thought to himself as he clenched his fist as if trying to shake off the sensation.

(I will outwit them. I'll outwit Academy City, the fucking higher ups, and everyone else.)

He had the USB drive with the blueprint to the choker-style electrode on it in his pocket.

He had checked it between battles, but the design wasn't a simple one. To create Part 1, he needed Material 2 and Equipment 3 and, to make them, he needed Devices 4 and 5. Not to mention that it was all done using the frog-faced doctor's original technology. It felt like he was looking at one of Princess Kaguya's impossible tasks. It looked like it was going to take quite some time to analyze the electrode, remove all the unnecessary parts, and create a copy.

Even so Accelerator swore that he would do it.

He finally had a small hint hidden away in his pocket.

♦

Unabara Mitsuki left through the hospital's main entrance.

Xochitl who had come as the organization's assassin would resent how it had all ended. She hadn't been able to carry out her objective, she hadn't been given the ending known as death, and her ultimate weapon, the original grimoire, had been taken from her. Her life now would surely be nothing but pain.