Part 9
(November 10 – Oahu – New Honolulu International Airport Central Lobby – From surveillance camera footage.)
Low sounds like the beating of a drum intermittently reached Kamijou's ears.
Shots were being fired at approximately five to ten second intervals.
The noises were coming from Hamazura and the others, who were around the corner of a passageway. They were firing an improvised gas gun at Cendrillon. To create the gas gun, they had tied four large fire extinguishers together in a bundle and attached a steel pipe to the end of the four hoses. Inside the pipe, they put corks with nails sticking through them. Those projectiles were sent slicing through the air at 230 kph, so a direct hit could drive the end of the nail into an arm or leg bone and shatter the bone like glass. They were using the weapon like a disposable bazooka.
And yet…
"I thank you, old lady."
Cendrillon's pure singing voice continued on.
Not a single shot hit her.
"I thank you for this lovely dance with the prince. I thank you for the glittering dress and glass slippers. These lovely clothes have turned this timid girl into an elegant and perfect princess for a night."
The sound of her high heels on the floor was like a sewing machine.
Her eyes met Kamijou's.
However, that was not all she was doing. Cendrillon was approaching Kamijou in great flowing motions as she avoided the projectiles.
The situation had changed.
During the discussion, the situation had become one where he could no longer attempt to buy time.
"Kh!!"
He immediately held up his right fist, but he simply did not have enough time.
Her slender arms wrapped around Kamijou's right arm and she stuck one high heel between his legs. Kamijou reflexively moved in order to avoid great pain. His body spun around as if he were the lead in a ballroom dance.
In so doing, he moved himself in between Cendrillon and Hamazura.
"Old lady of the pumpkin carriage."
Cendrillon thrust one arm under Kamijou's arm and held her open palm out toward Hamazura who had frozen in shock.
"Please send the carriage quickly. Send it before I wake… before I wake from this one-night dream. Please send the pumpkin carriage."
A shockwave roared across the room.
It was as if an invisible vehicle had driven through. Sensing danger from the line of destruction that ran across the floor, Hamazura and the others frantically headed back around the corner. The instant they did, the wall next to the corner was smashed to pieces.
"Why you…!!"
From her position near Cendrillon, sparks flew from Mikoto's bangs.
However, Cendrillon tightened her grip on Kamijou's arm, swung him around, and used him as a shield once more. Mikoto's natural ability was sealed by that shield.
"Old lady of the pumpkin carriage."
She swept Kamijou's legs out from under him and he fell to the ground, taking Mikoto with him.
Cendrillon's lovely singing voice was the only thing left resounding through the central lobby as she leaned over.
She was preparing her foot-crushing attack.
She was going to create a new explosion using magic.
"Please give me the glass slippers. The distance is five hundred. The number of people is unlimited. Please give me the strict and cruel test of the glass slippers that leaves all the dishonest liars hanging their heads."
"That same spell…!?"
As Kamijou lay on his back, he saw Accelerator holding onto a metal framework near the ceiling.
"(…She's noticed he's hiding there!! That's why she set it to such a wide range…!)"
There was no guarantee that Accelerator's reflection would work against her.
It was an unknown number.
And Kamijou's own situation was hopeless as he had no obvious defense other than his right hand.
They had been naïve.
Kamijou and his group had not been the only ones trying to draw out the enemy. Cendrillon had noticed the trap and had charged straight into it in order to eliminate all of the dangerous elements at once.
That seemed to be how it would end, but…
"You're still in the central lobby, right?" asked Birdway's voice.
Kamijou looked around for the source of the voice and spotted his cell phone lying on the ground nearby.
"Stay away! You need to fall back and wait for another opportunity to-!!"
"That's all I need to know," she said, cutting him off.
Immediately afterwards, the window covering one wall shattered.
The window was over three stories tall and over three hundred meters across, but the entire area of reinforced glass shattered all at once.
The cause was clear.
A giant tanker truck filled with fifty tons of airplane fuel had smashed through the window and into the central lobby at full speed.
Birdway was aboard it.
However, she was not in the driver's seat. She was standing on its roof in a daunting pose.
Birdway must have been using some kind of spell because not a single shard of the glass she had shattered touched her.
"Hah…?"
Still sitting atop Kamijou and Mikoto, Cendrillon cocked her head to the side and stiffened.
Birdway ignored her and spoke into her cell phone.
"Hold down her legs."
Kamijou stretched out his arm like a drowning man reaching for something to grab onto.
In doing so, he managed to slow Cendrillon's movements by a few seconds.
That was more than enough to decide things.
It was a direct hit.
A great roar soared right past Kamijou's face as he lay on his back. The ground clearance for large American vehicles like that was quite high, so Kamijou and Mikoto managed to remain below the vehicle while Cendrillon who was sitting atop them was hit by the front of the truck.
"Gh-gh-gah…!?"
Cendrillon tried to shout something, but the tanker truck moving at nearly 200 kph did not give her the opportunity.
The truck continued on and slammed into the wall of the central lobby.
The record for the loudest noise in the battle was broken again and again. This new sound deafened Kamijou's ears. A large crack ran through the wall, fragments flew through the air, and something like dust billowed up. The driver's compartment of the tanker truck was crushed in like an empty can.
Given the state of the truck, Birdway should not have gotten off lightly from her position on its roof, but for some reason she was perfectly fine. She landed lightly on the floor of the central lobby.
"There," said the young girl as she played with her hair. "Honestly, I can't believe all of you let yourselves collapse all over the place so easily. It was a little tricky working the wheels through the gaps between you."
"Y-you monster…" said Kamijou in a trembling voice as he sat up.
Cendrillon's spell must have been forcibly dispelled because the men ceased groaning and shouting.
"I thought we needed that Cendrillon girl to find Gremlin's hideout and learn about their plan!? Wasn't that a little much!? This is well beyond needing to call an ambulance!"
"Not necessarily," said Birdway as she lightly waved her right hand. At some point a wand had appeared there. "See? It looks like we can't deal with Gremlin using ordinary means."
"?"
Kamijou was about to let out a puzzled voice, but then he heard a creaking noise.
It sounded like a metal sheet being bent. The noise was joined by other similar noises and they grew slowly but surely louder and more frequent.
Between the tanker truck's smashed driver's compartment and the smashed wall, something was moving and breaking the metal panels in a way that made them seem weaker than paper.
It was a finger.
A slender, feminine finger was sticking out.
The sight was similar to someone sticking their hand in the closing door of a train or elevator and forcing it back open.
"Cen… drillon…!?"
"Of course. Cinderella was a flawless princess in front of the prince. A mistake would be unthinkable. All the external factors are readjusted so that it remains that way. I guess that convenient 'winner's aura' is the ball. It seems something that is nothing more than a large mass will not be enough to put an end to her aspirations."
A clear gap appeared between the tanker truck and the wall.
Eyes covered in blood peered from within.
"However," said Birdway as she spun her wand around in front of her. "Cinderella's dress has a limit to its functionality. Specifically, a time limit of midnight. The changing of the date has meaning, but if you take it to refer to the ending of a one-night dream, there is a simpler symbol that can be used. Namely…"
As Birdway spoke, she stopped spinning her wand around.
It was pointing toward the tanker truck.
At some point, a gold pocket watch with a narrow chain had been coiled around the wand.
Where its hands pointed does not need to be said.
However, it further reinforced the symbol and role she was using.
"Dawn."
Immediately afterwards, the fifty tons of airplane fuel ignited and intense heat and light filled the central lobby.
While it was better than having it sprayed into the air and vaporized, airplane fuel still had very different characteristics to gasoline.
Kamijou immediately grabbed Mikoto and hid behind the nearby pillar.
Mikoto blushed, but she still managed to hold out her right hand and used magnetism to create a wall of steel objects that protected the dumbfounded airport workers. The men in black suits knew much better than Kamijou and the others just what kind of person Birdway was, so they had already fled the area at full speed.
Kamijou did not have time to check what Accelerator and Hamazura Shiage did.
The fuel exploded and all his senses were blotted out.
Even as an intense flash of light filled the entire central lobby, Kamijou had no idea if he was doing all he could to protect himself.
His vision did not start returning until about thirty seconds later.
It took him another ten seconds before he realized that proved that he was still alive.
He saw flames.
He also saw a girl spinning a wand in one hand while standing amid a sea of unnatural flames that were more white than crimson.
She stuck her other hand into the remains of the tanker truck and pulled something out.
That something was Cendrillon's battered form. Birdway was holding her by her blonde hair. Parts of her dress had melted and she had burns on her skin, but it was still strange for her to be in one piece after being that close to an explosion like that.
Leivinia Birdway stood alone amid the flames, holding her target by the hair.
"That settles the opening battle," she said, sounding bored.
Part 10
(November 10 – Oahu – From an ATM security camera.)
As smoke rose from the airport, Hamazura Shiage caught his breath while leaning up against the pole of a road sign out front. He had fled from the airport. Luckily, the explosion had led to around twenty thousand passengers and workers evacuating outside, so no one found him suspicious. He may have been saved by the image people had of the Japanese being so peaceful that they did not know how to do deal with danger when they came across it.
The men in black suits he saw here and there must have been the subordinates of the girl who had caused the explosion.
They too were splitting up and escaping, but unlike Hamazura, they were unbelievably skilled at intentionally mixing in with the crowds even in a situation like that.
"Shit, shit!! I thought we were fighting terrorists here, not becoming them! Some people probably got caught up in that!! And the suitcase was blown up in it too, wasn't it!?"
"You certainly are quick to give your unofficial report of what happened. Anyway, I sense a darkness in that girl that's different from my own," said Kuroyoru Umidori as she turned back to face the airport. "How far do you intend to run?"
"Only as far as the cops won't find suspicious," said Hamazura as he breathed heavily. "We've only just made it past the first barrier. Gremlin hasn't even made their real move yet, and we certainly don't want any difficulties with the cops before we've stopped them. In fact, they're the ones that the cops should be after."
"I see you make excuses to yourself as excessively as you reward yourself."
Hamazura ignored Kuroyoru's scorn and wiped sweat from his face.
"Anyway, Birdway will call us once she gets some information out of that Cendrillon girl. It would be best if we hid somewhere until then."
"Oh, is that so? By the way…"
"What?"
"…I haven't seen Misaka Worst for a while now. If she got separated from us in the confusion, then this just got quite interesting, don't you think? Especially in regards to my glorious return."
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!"
Just after Hamazura let out that girly scream while in a Munch-esque pose, someone speaking Japanese chimed in from the side.
"…Why are you two messing around out here?"
It was the spiky-haired Kamijou Touma.
Part 11
(November 10 – Oahu – From a tourist's cell phone camera.)
"Why did things end up like this…?" muttered Misaka Mikoto as she brushed up her bangs.
Standing next to her was Misaka Worst, an ao dai-wearing girl who had almost the exact same face and build as Mikoto except for the mischievous look in her eyes (and her breast size).
They had both gotten separated from their groups in the confusion and had run into each other while trying to find the others.
"Misaka is fresh from the Third Season project, so she doesn't know very many people. When she's not with him, about ninety percent of her desire to fight disappears."
"Third…Season…?"
"Don't look at Misaka like that. The project was frozen anyway. All as a secret to you, Onee-tama."
"?"
"It basically comes down to the fact that there are a surprising number of heroes scattered around this world," muttered Misaka Worst. "Anyway, #3, are you sure you should be doing that during such an urgent time?"
"What are you trying to say?"
Mikoto had called up a map on her cell phone in order to think up a way to regroup with the other members, but…
"That sure is a lot of unrelated locations you have marked on your cell phone map there. What's this? You have the head store of Cupid Arrow marked?"
"Fwoh!?"
Mikoto turned her cell phone off as quickly as humanly possible, but Misaka Worst's grinning did not stop.
"Isn't that a store well known for its wedding rings? Although Misaka had heard they had recently started expanding the breadth of their operations because business was poor…"
"…For someone born so recently, you sure are knowledgeable about this."
"You can quickly find almost any information you want on the internet. But Misaka thought they had an external detective agency perform a background check on the customer before they would make an engagement ring or wedding ring for them. Misaka doesn't think they would accept an order from a middle school girl."
"Ugh…"
"Which means… heh heh… it must be that new service of theirs…ha ha… Those tag rings for lovers in a less serious relationship… hee hee…"
"Daahhhh!! Fine, you're right! When I heard we were going to Hawaii, I just thought I could stop by and buy Cupid Arrow tag rings when I had some time!! Is that so wrong!?"
"…Those rings are made of titanium. They're cheap but don't you think they're a little unrefined?"
"Titanium can be colored using electrolysis when it's in a solution. If two rings are manufactured with the same equipment, the pattern of the coloration comes out so the two rings connect. …It's unscientifically seen as a charm to prevent the other from cheating on you."
"So you were going to color them using a combination of the store's equipment and your own biri biri-ness? …Sorry, but that's the same as putting one of your own hairs in a guy's Valentine's chocolate. The girl's the only one who finds it romantic."
"Eh!?"
"Not to mention that the two of you aren't even going out yet. Do you have any idea how a guy must feel if the girl gives him a ring? He'd probably also want to know how you know his ring size."
Mikoto stiffened and Misaka Worst sighed.
The girl who was less than a year old felt sorry for Mikoto and decided to stop poking fun at her over that.
"Well, enough with the Cupid Arrow tag rings. More importantly, Misaka knew that you didn't look any different from the clones of the old project, but…"
"Wh-what?"
"What's the point of an original if she loses to the clone in so many ways?"
"…Are you talking about breast size…?"
Sparks flew from the fourteen-year-old's bangs as she cocked her head to the side slightly.
Paying the sparks no heed, Misaka Worst said, "Oh, Misaka never said that. Maybe she was talking about number of appearances."
"Now you've said it!!"
Part 12
(November 10 – Oahu – New Honolulu International Airport Terminal Three Storage Area – From security camera footage.)
"So you're the only one that didn't run away," Birdway said bluntly.
Accelerator clicked his tongue.
She gave a light jab with her foot to what was lying on the ground in front of her.
It was Cendrillon.
The semi-transparent dress that could be seen as her symbol had been taken from her. She was now in only her underwear. While that sounded erotic, in Cendrillon's case, it was the figure-correcting underwear that looked like a diving suit. The synthetic fiber covered her from her collarbones down to her knees, so she could likely have walked straight past a policeman without suspicion if she was holding a surfboard.
"Was that for revenge?" Accelerator asked.
"Stripping someone of the same sex is no fun," Birdway replied. "She created a single piece of magic by combining her own body and that dress. Instead of just holding a wand or something, she was using her own body as a portion of a spiritual item. In other words, she cannot use that spell once her clothes are removed. What I don't know is if she just wanted to be that soaked in magic or if she wanted an obvious safety feature out of fear of the latent potential of her own spell. Now then…"
Cendrillon already had a few injuries. They were not due to torture. They were burns she had received in the airplane fuel explosion.
Accelerator narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Do you think she'll talk?"
"Why else would I go through all the trouble of getting her to talk?" replied Birdway as she placed a number of charms made of parchment on Cendrillon's face.
Either due to the damage from the burns or due to having been turned back into "a mere girl" from losing her dress, Cendrillon was clearly unable to resist. She merely writhed weakly on the ground.
"Deny," Birdway said with a grin. "No matter what you try to deny, I can read it from here. So you only need to resist my questions with all your might."
If the girl responded truthfully, that was that and if she desperately tried to resist, that would act as a sign.
The only possible escape would have been complete apathy, but it was difficult to give absolutely no reaction while being questioned when the state of your mind mattered as well. And when violence was involved, it became all the more difficult. Reacting defensively to avoid pain was only natural and humans received much more information from others' words than they realize.
Cendrillon slowly shook her head.
Birdway ignored her and asked, "Where are your comrades?"
Cendrillon seemed to be trying to keep the muscles in her face from moving, but her cheek started twitching slightly.
"What is your goal?"
One of the charms started glowing.
Birdway had intentionally driven Cendrillon to resist and the location of that barrier over her heart could be used to expose the location of what she was trying to protect.
She had no way to resist it.
This was not a puzzle or video game that was made so that it could be won. The player's skill did not matter when she was trapped within a professional's net that had no escape.
"The calculations are going well. In another thirty seconds, I'll have some good news for you," said Birdway lightly.
"Oh, oh. Cendrillon-chan, you certainly were utterly and obviously defeated."
A new voice came from Cendrillon's own mouth.
"…"
Immediately afterwards, Birdway mercilessly jammed the end of her wand into Cendrillon's mouth. The unpleasant noise of her front teeth breaking could be heard and dark red blood spilled from her open lips. Despite this, Cendrillon was smiling….or rather, made to smile.
"There's no point in trying to subdue her. After all, I don't mind if you break all her limbs. I can control her like a marionette, so I can force her past her—ha ha—human limits."
The sound of something cracking could be heard.
It was the sound of Cendrillon biting through Birdway's spiritual item. However, her front teeth had already broken. Doing that with nothing more than the pure strength of one's jaw would be bad enough, but she was doing it with only partial fragments of her broken teeth remaining. The pain must have been unimaginable.
Accelerator flipped the switch on his choker and kicked rubble at her at blinding speed. She easily avoided the projectiles and jumped over five meters back. Only then did she speak to the one who was controlling her.
"…I was waiting for you."
"Yes, yes. From the lack of your dress, I take it your fairy tale spell was destroyed. I will be activating my spell through you, so it would be a lot of help if you would use the magical release key to temporarily give me complete control of your body."
"Tch!!" Birdway clicked her tongue and spun around the remains of her wand. At some point, it turned into a small cup.
However, Cendrillon chanted some kind of spell before Birdway could activate an attack spell.
"…Total control on Red 25…"
"There we go. The result is Black 11. Authorization complete."
A dry sound burst from within Cendrillon's body. The color of her eyes clearly changed. Traces of someone other than herself could be seen there.
And…
"Okay, Cendrillon-chan. Time to truly protect Gremlin's information."
Cendrillon grinned.
She then pulled a sharp piece of the wand from her mouth and forcefully stabbed the end into her own temple.
"Eh…?" said a voice.
The voice came from Cendrillon's mouth.
With a shocked look on her face, she collapsed to the side. Her reaction was simply too little. She did not brace herself at all as she landed. Her arms, legs, and hair were sprawled out and her red blood spread out in a pool.
That was all.
No more words came from her mouth. Not from Cendrillon and not from the person controlling her.
"Damn. I doubt that made it through her skull, but a fragment of bone must have stabbed into her brain. It must have caused a subarachnoid hemorrhage. I see. This will indeed make getting information more difficult."
"…"
"Don't look at me like that. I'm merciful enough to call an ambulance for her."
"What do we do now? I thought she was our last hope."
"Oh, we still caught a fish," said Birdway, sounding bored and looking around. "Gremlin contacted us to silence her. Now we just have to reel them in."