Academy City.
School District 7, Underground Shelter No. 172.
After World War III began, contrary to the tense atmosphere outsiders imagined would accompany Academy City's full state of military readiness, life had not changed all that much for the students who had moved underground. Aside from the noticeably smaller number of people on the streets compared with ordinary days, the main differences were denser coursework and more militarized management of their living quarters.
Level 4 Shirai Kuroko was striding along on patrol while talking with the girl beside her.
The girl with a mass of flowers growing atop her head was none other than Judgment member Uiharu Kazari.
"Shirai...have Misaka-senpai and the other Level 5 espers all been transferred to the front by the Board of Directors?"
"It can't be helped. Every Level 5 esper receives far greater subsidies and privileges than other ability users. This is Onee-sama's responsibility as one of Academy City's trump cards. Even Selene-senpai wouldn't show favoritism to anyone."
"In a conflict this deep between the principles and ideologies of Academy City and the Roman Catholic Church's respective camps, there is no other possible outcome until one side falls."
Shirai Kuroko walked slowly along the passageway, moving aside to avoid squads of Powered Suits and Anti-Skill officers marching past. She raised her head toward the enormous screen mounted on the wall ahead, a trace of solemnity flashing through her brown eyes.
She was worried about Onee-sama's current situation.
No matter how much she trusted Onee-sama's strength, the Strait of Malacca was clearly a strategic point the Roman Catholic coalition was determined to seize. A massive offensive was inevitable.
On land, in the air, beneath the sea...even as a member of Judgment, she could tell how desperate the Battle of the Strait of Malacca had become. Military supplies were being shipped there by the ton, and the number of armed robot legions sent as reinforcements alone had probably already exceeded two hundred thousand units.
"If the front gets desperate enough, I heard teams of Level 4 ability users have already begun being conscripted and organized. I might be transferred too. Uiharu, I've already submitted a volunteer application."
The Roman Catholic Church had magical combat units. Naturally, aside from conventional troop deployments, the Board of Directors had also dispatched a force uniquely characteristic of Academy City—ability-user units.
Apart from the Level 5s dragged onto the main battlefront to hold the line, many Dark Side organizations had also been transferred to secondary fronts. Assassinations, intelligence gathering, sabotage behind enemy lines...in short, they were told to pick whatever they were best at.
For example, even though their leader Mugino Shizuri was absent, her Dark Side organization ITEM was among the very best at sabotage behind enemy lines.
Uiharu Kazari opened her mouth, but she did not shout anything like I want to go too or Don't go. Having seen so much while staying at Selene's side, she had matured considerably.
She was only Level 1. Even if Academy City began conscripting Level 3s, it still would not be her turn. Besides, computers, communications, and intelligence were where her technical expertise truly belonged.
After turning the matter over in their minds, the atmosphere between the two girls became much more serious. Before they knew it, they had reached the unified shelter area for A Certain High School, Sakugawa Middle School...and several other schools along one side of the corridor.
The two exchanged a glance, then entered after facial recognition cleared them.
After turning the corner, they immediately spotted a black-haired girl wearing a five-petaled white plum blossom hair ornament, crouching in the corner with her backside sticking out...watching a show?
"Saten..."
"Shh! Shhh!" Hearing footsteps behind her and realizing it was the two of them, Saten Ruiko hurriedly shushed them under Shirai Kuroko's twitching gaze.
"Saten-san, secretly watching other people's affairs for entertainment isn't right..."
Uiharu Kazari grumbled as Saten Ruiko half-forcibly dragged her down into a crouch.
"Mother, why are you here? The Board of Directors meeting in School District 1..."
At that moment, a burst of voices reached their ears.
Down the corridor, surrounded by several bodyguards in suits, a female teacher wearing a women's business suit, a tight skirt, and light-brown thigh-high stockings stared at the elderly woman before her in confusion. Her shoulder-length black hair was as stiff as needles, and she wore inverted-triangle glasses that looked like some very expensive brand. It was Oyafune Suama.
The woman before her was somewhere in her fifties or sixties. She was very thin, with a folded brown coat draped over one bent arm and a scarf wrapped around her neck.
"That's Director Oyafune Monaka?" Shirai Kuroko recognized the director famous for her moderate views, anti-war stance, and opposition to weapons proliferation.
Unlike most directors, who could comfortably be called bastards, Oyafune Monaka was one of the rare genuinely kind people among them. She advocated granting every child in Academy City the right to vote and comparatively equal treatment, hoping that this would allow the children to live more equally within the city.
Then, unsurprisingly, the proposal had been rejected eleven votes to one.
"I'm no longer a member of the Board of Directors." The elderly, gentle woman smiled peacefully and shook her head as she spoke to her daughter, who worked as a teacher.
"How could that happen?"
"My actions differed from the ideology represented by Academy City's Board of Directors..." Oyafune Monaka looked deeply dispirited. "The Board believed I was too cowardly and possessed an excessively negative, pessimistic, defeatist mentality..."
"How could that happen?"
"They expect the war to intensify and hope to completely destroy the largest Magic Side organization operating in the name of religion, with the Roman Catholic Church at its center. They want to use this war...to annihilate the Roman Catholic Church once and for all."
"That decision was issued by Director Selene, the strongest esper. I tried to stop it, but I was dismissed."
At that moment, several of the large screens behind them simultaneously split into multiple feeds, carrying news reports on the state of the war.
"Rome and the Vatican have suffered a despicable indiscriminate attack by Academy City! They even shamelessly employed biological weapons! This is a crime against humanity. The Pope and the cardinals have all returned to the embrace of the Heavenly Father...Brothers and sisters of the Heavenly Father throughout the world, this is a desecration of the purity of all mankind and a trampling of the entire Christian faith!"
At precisely the right moment, the large screen broadcast the devastation of Rome and the Vatican across the world through communication signals. Images of dead Roman Catholic believers being corroded, mutated, and twisted by purplish-red patches until they resembled the living dead from a horror movie sent chills down countless spines.
"Nearly ten million people have been affected by this attack. Almost overnight, the people of Rome fled the homes they once knew, merely to escape the horrific threat Academy City has inflicted upon them. Sooner or later, they will face total catastrophe."
"Tens of thousands of people in Vatican City have vanished without even leaving bodies behind! We cannot even determine precisely what misfortune befell them, much less where their remains might be."
A heavy male voice choked with emotion spoke from the screen, interspersed with the anguished wails of victims and the cries of children.
"Faced with all of this, we cannot remain silent, because we have no choice! As long as we draw breath, we will resist to the very end."
Obviously, that was the position taken by media outlets in Western Europe.
"The symbol of the old order has been shattered. The greedy and evil Church has been destroyed in the City of Seven Hills. Those imprisoned by the shackles known as the Roman Catholic Church will finally embrace freedom and democracy."
That commentary came from the media of a certain self-proclaimed beacon nation in North America.
"Under the leadership of the Board of Directors, our Pan-Pacific Alliance has secured an obvious advantage. Our greedy northern neighbor has failed to advance even a single step, while the so-called holy crusade fleet of the Roman Catholic Church has already fallen on the brink of defeat."
"Vatican City, symbol of the Roman Catholic Church's decayed and backward ruling order, has been destroyed by Acting Board Chairman Selene von Habsburg."
"The North American coalition has landed in West and Central Africa. The colonial preserves disguised under the banner of national consciousness have been set ablaze. Having lost its most direct sources of energy, minerals, food, and manpower, and now facing a powerful coordinated offensive by the Commonwealth under Crown Princess Carissa, the Western European monster known as France is being forced onto the defensive..."
"Strait of Malacca, Banda Aceh Bridgehead Fortress. Rank 2 Accelerator, Rank 3 Dark Matter, Rank 4 Railgun, Rank 5 Meltdowner, Rank 6 Mental Out, and Rank 8 Psychokinetic Projectile are jointly resisting the enemy, keeping them thousands of miles beyond our maritime borders..."
This one was even more obvious. It was an internal Academy City broadcast.
After a stretch of silence, even through layer upon layer of protective walls and soundproofing, the people standing around the corner near the entrance could hear the students inside the classroom cheering loudly enough to nearly blow the roof off.
Most of the teachers did not stop them either.
To many outsiders, the more they learned about Academy City, the more they discovered the strange and frightening centripetal force with which the city assimilated its residents.
No matter what happened, even if several buildings were kicked around like balls or entire streets were blown into the sky, once the incident ended, daily life would return to normal in no more than a few days, as if everyone had simply forgotten. People ate when it was time to eat and drank when it was time to drink.
Academy City was the safest city in the world. At least, in the eyes of most residents living inside it, there was no doubt whatsoever about that.
Even with a world war raging, these students were only slightly worried, and even then their concern amounted to little more than, 'Can we win?' Whether that should be called broad-mindedness or something else was hard to say.
In any case, Selene could pat her chest and swear that she had not been randomly messing around. Something abnormal? Hmm, Aleister did it. It had nothing to do with her. At most, she had merely guided some of her subordinates a little.
The contrast between the rhetoric of different factions was naturally extremely persuasive. Oyafune Monaka closed her eyes heavily, lowered her head, and slowly said, "Escalating and expanding the war...what foolishness."
Pain mixed into her words. "Why? War has always been the worst and stupidest possible method."
Yet there was no denying that it was also the most efficient and profitable method.
Shirai Kuroko silently recited those words in her mind.
Naturally, they were not her own. She had once overheard them from Selene during a discussion with Misaka Mikoto over whether one should finish off an enemy after defeating them.
It was a line perfectly suited to Selene's aggressive and forceful personality.
Misaka Mikoto naturally believed defeating an enemy was enough. Selene, on the other hand, would at minimum leave them badly injured and spending eighty or a hundred days recovering in the ICU. If she happened to be in a bad mood, the person might simply cease to exist.
There was even a ready-made example. Accelerator had ended up brain-damaged precisely because he had failed to finish off his opponent. In that debate, Selene had won by a narrow margin.
Withdrawing her gaze, Saten Ruiko slowly stood and sighed. "War really is dangerous. It's already reshuffling the forces at the top...I wonder if Selene-senpai and Misaka-senpai are all right..."
...
Elsewhere, Banda Aceh Base.
I, Kamijou Touma, attend school in Academy City, supposedly the leading power of the Science Side—or at least that's what everyone says. I'm a completely powerless Level 0. That's how things are supposed to be...
But the truth about my life is—!
Either I get bitten by a little nun dressed in white, attacked by a magician who only knows how to throw fire around, dragged into a dangerous battlefield between a Tokiwadai young lady who bears the title of strongest and an older woman who loves swinging a sword at people, forced to fight some psycho with Vector Manipulation, harassed by an electric girl who loves firing electricity everywhere, or surrounded by a whole bunch of girls who look exactly like that electric girl...
The Daihasei Festival had finally given me a few peaceful days. Everyone reunited with their families and enjoyed some warm, happy time together. I thought I'd finally escaped the intersection of science and magic, and then World War III broke out!
In the end, I was also sent into battle as a representative of Academy City's side, and just as I had wished, I got deployed to the Banda Aceh front...
"Hey! You! What are you spacing out for?! I get the feeling you're thinking about something really irritating!"
"Huh? Oh!"
Jolted awake from his muttered complaints, Kamijou Touma hurriedly waved his hands and searched for cover.
The next moment, BOOM!
Up in the sky, there was a transparent anchor.
The solid mass, twenty or thirty meters across, struck Sogiita Gunha directly as he flew chaotically through the sky like a rainbow, sending him hurtling several kilometers backward.
Huge amounts of dirt erupted along the way. The human troops commanding intelligent automated legions to drive the Roman Catholic magical combat units into the sea hurriedly covered their heads with both hands and ducked.
How should it be put? The battle between the Level 5s and Vento of the Front both did and did not fall into the category of a natural disaster. As long as you kept your distance, there was not too much of a problem.
But the fortress' outermost armor had been blasted open. If they wanted to continue holding the position, they could not allow large numbers of enemy magical combat units into the underground facilities. That was something they could not simply hide from. Beneath the calamities descending from the sky, sighs and screams filled the surroundings.
"Idiot! Whatever you do, don't die!"
As she shouted, Misaka Mikoto, not far away, once again condensed an enormous Railgun attack.
She had arrived early to hold the line and had been fighting every day.
The relentless high-intensity combat had rapidly forced Misaka Mikoto out of her hesitant mindset. Her mental state was entirely different from before.
Of course, it was not as though she had become like Selene. At most, it could be said that, like Mugino Shizuri and Kakine Teitoku, she had learned to harden her heart when necessary.
"We're almost there!"
Misaka Mikoto stared into the distance over the frozen ocean. Countless ice anchors were being fired from the ice warships as Vento of the Front fought three opponents at once.
Although she looked incredibly imposing, she was actually reaching her limit. Kakine Teitoku alone was enough to give her a hard time. More than half of the "Queen's Fleet's" ice frigates had already been destroyed, and the rate of repair could no longer keep up with the rate of destruction.
Now Accelerator had also gotten his feeling back, and the strength of the vectors he could output was steadily increasing.
Just look at that absurd hurricane. Compared with the thin tornadoes he produced after becoming brain-damaged, it was many times larger.
This one was in the bag. They had won.
"Looks like I won't need to take the risk of throwing you over there anymore." Misaka Mikoto looked toward Kamijou Touma, making no attempt to hide her delight at their impending victory. "Heh. You didn't make much of a useful contribution. Want me to share some of mine with you?"
Even Kamijou Touma had to be extremely careful on a chaotic battlefield like this, with projectiles flying everywhere. Sure, he could nullify magic and supernatural powers, but if a stray bullet hit him in the head, there was nothing he could do about that.
Sent back to Academy City for emergency treatment on his second day because he got hit by a stray shot?
Even if he might have come all this way for nothing, Kamijou Touma did not mind in the slightest. Rubbing his aching shoulder where he had bumped it earlier, he laughed awkwardly. "Haha, isn't this better? Victory belongs to everyone. This way, we can all go home ear—"
Bzzzzzz—!
"...lier."
Kamijou Touma stood frozen, mouth hanging open.
Unlucky unlucky unlucky unlucky unlucky!
My damned jinx of a mouth!
Because on the opposite side of the frozen ocean, an orange sword of light suddenly rose all the way into the heavens. The next moment—
"Danger!"
The enormous orange sword of light descending from the sky seemed to pierce straight through heaven and earth. The surviving ruins of the collapsed Banda Aceh urban area caved downward in an instant, and then...countless colossal icebergs erupted from underground. They were formed from groundwater frozen under the influence of the "Queen's Fleet's" freezing spell.
The island split apart. The falling ice even steamed under the intense heat, filling the surroundings with a vast expanse of white.
The hurricane knocked him off his feet. Kamijou Touma had no idea how far he rolled. The iceberg that landed not far from him—was it one kilometer long? Two kilometers? Whatever the case, the impact left his entire body dazed and disoriented.
"Biri-Biri, are you okay...?"
Calling out, Kamijou Touma looked toward the crimson glow descending from the sky.
"Ah, it's just too big, so aiming is still a little tricky...Still, this sight really is unbelievably satisfying...From way off in the distance, I could already see you people going bang, bang and setting off fireworks to welcome Yours Truly."
A man's flippant voice rang out.
He was a man whose entire appearance was dominated by red.