III

Chapter 13: Savior's Hand, Killer's Blade

Paralel_Lines

Part 1

"Dammit… that's just too much..."

Beneath the scorching heat of the summer sunlight, Kamijou Touma was dragging himself through the streets of the District 7. More than an hour has passed after the trains and buses stopped running due to an accident, and yet, there was no saying when the transport system was going to go back to normal. That implied two things:

First, there were significantly less people on the streets, even though it was the middle of the summer vacation.

And second, Kamijou had no other option but to walk the same path home a second time, since he was somehow brought back to the restaurant by the street magician. How did he even do that anyway? Teleportation? Ahhh… no use. I'm too tired to think.

Seeing that he wasn't doing much progress, he thought it was for the best to rest a little in a nearby shop. "Even though I should hurry… pathetic, Kamijou Touma. Index is probably worried. At least she's not hungry anymore and she has that friend of hers, so I don't think she's going to get mad at me… hopefully."

The minutes flew by as he let his body cool down while watching the scenery. Every now and then, a car would pass by on the street. A few birds could be seen on the tree nearby. A black cat ran from one brush for another. And Anti-Skill squad marched quickly on the crossroads-

"?" It may have been because the street was devoid of all people, but that scene in particular picked his attention. They were running in formation carrying heavy looking guns and riot shields. Upon closer inspection, their uniforms and shields were lacking the so familiar Anti-Skill emblem. And judging from their size, aren't they too young to be part of Anti-Skill? Why am I having a bad feeling about this?

...

Not much far away from where Touma was, a short black haired girl wearing a black tank top and blue miniskirt slowly climbed up the stairs leading to the exit of District 7 underground mall while talking to someone over the phone. "Your theory sounded reasonable, but I just confirmed that the underground mall is clean. It's also possible that they had seen me coming and ran away before I got there, since there is no crowd for me to blend in. How it went on your end, Kai?"

She was Hinata Sazuko, the mysterious former member of New Pointer. Thanks to the lack of transport (which wasn't a problem for her), it was easier to investigate areas that would be full of people otherwise, and she was taking full advantage of that.

"That's possible. They may be careless, but they aren't outright dumb. Then again, ever since that time, they had been recruiting a large amount of people, so their groups shouldn't be hard to find." On the other side of the line was Kai, also a former member of New Pointer. Supposedly, none of them should be involved with the dark side of the city anymore, but both still had their own reasons to be digging beyond the safety line even after they had officially retired. "I had no luck here on District 22 either, so I guess it was just a massive waste of time. Sorry for dragging you into this."

"I see… don't worry, doing this is not a bother. Besides, my own goals are related to this somehow, so I just can't ignore this chance-"

*Flap flap flap flap*

Faintly, but surely, she could hear several footsteps coming her way. This sound pattern… there are at least 50 people coming down this street from north, and their steps match at a regular interval. "Sorry Kai. They found me. I'll call again once I lose the pursuers."

She turned off her phone and faced the direction where they were coming from. She didn't try to pass as innocent. She didn't tried to intimidate her foes. She displayed no fear. With the exactly same face she used to talk casually on the phone, she prepared to face those who were after her life.

Just as Hinata suspected, several people wearing what looked like Anti-Skill uniforms surrounded her while she just stood still, waiting for them to complete their formation.

One of them took a step forward and announced. "You are under arrest for murder of an official and invasion of private property!"

"Ah. I see… so that's the excuse you are going for." Hinata recalled the incident where she killed a member of LIZARD to rescue Hishiro. "You are not fooling me though. You're not from Anti-Skill. And even if you were, I have no intention of following the rules if they get in my way."

The man dropped the role play and grabbed a knife from his pocket. He had no intention to kill her there in the open. All he wanted was to scare her so they could take her to the headquarters. But he didn't even had a chance to give a final warning. As soon he took another step… Hinata vanished from his view. "Wh-"

Everyone gasped in terror and surprise. The scene that suddenly unfolded right before their eyes was unbelievable. In an instant, the man's head had been cut off cleanly. The girl was apparently unarmed, so one might think that she had used the man's own knife to do it, but that wasn't the case. The knife was still clean on the hand of the lifeless body as it fell flat on the ground. Hinata, which had somehow appeared right behind where he was standing, held the head by the hair in her left hand. Her right hand was open, her fingers were stretched and tightly pressed against each other, as if to imitate the shape of a blade. But more importantly, her fingertips were stained in blood.

This was enough to make some of the fake officers panic. "What happened? What's her ability?"

"None." Answered Hinata with a cold tone. "I am a Level 0."

"D-...Don't mess with me!" Saying that, a man in the front line rose his gun and hammered the trigger.

One of his companions desperately tried to stop him. "Wait, don't shoot! You're gonna hit our men!" But he payed no heed. Hinata vanished from sight once again, and on the next moment, the gunshots stopped.

The gun was forcefully taken away from the man. No, the correct way to describe it is that the arm holding the gun wasn't where it was supposed to be anymore. "Wha- WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!? MY ARM!"

Just like before, Hinata appeared right beside the man, holding the limp limb. "You don't need to worry about it. You will be dead soon."

"Y-you little...! Attack her!" Obeying the command, the remaining members of the frontline charged at the girl at once. Hinata lowered her center of gravity and nimbly moved past the slash of their knives, in a way that they accidentally hit each other.

The second wave came right after. Instead of charging blindly, the group spread into three. The ones with melee weapons took the lead, but left enough openings for those with high precision machine guns to safely fire at her.

The result was the same though. She vanished from sight by running low at high speed and slashed all of them. Most died instantly from the single strike.

After the slaughter was over, a strong gust of wind threw her off balance. It came from the third group, composed by way younger boys and girls holding a riot shield in their hands. Hinata threw a single glance at them, her facial expression still unchanged. "Espers, huh? I thought LIZARD wouldn't recur to them." In an instant, Hinata was flanked by a barrage of bullets from one side and psychic powers from the other.

Her eyes quickly moved quickly, trying to measure where each projectile would go by capturing where all of them were she took off, running even faster than before. Instead of attacking directly, she went for the riot shields, trying to take them from the espers. At the speed of the action, no grip was strong enough to overpower her. Losing their only protection, several espers were struck by the bullets coming from the opposite direction.

The remaining ones got aware of Hinata's actions and changed their formation to stay away from the range of the guns. Without slowing down, she used the opening given by their movements to get behind them and attack from their back. That was all she needed to wipe them out in a matter of seconds.

From there, she took one of the riot shields and charged for the gunners. They didn't even had the chance to scream in terror as the girl passed by all of them, one by one, hitting a single vital part of their bodies and knocking them lifeless at a devastating speed.

In the end, she was the only one standing. Blood and mutilated limbs were splattered all over the place, while the girl breathing heavily with only her fingertips dirty of blood. "*pant* *pant* I should - *pant* - probably hide for a while..."

She was about to run away from the scene when even more of them arrived, surrounding her again. This time, there were no gunners, only kids about her age using weird tools that probably had to do with their abilities.

They started attacking almost immediately, forcing Hinata to use her insane dashes again. Like before, She was able to easily tore through the flesh of her new enemies, but...

ZOOOMMM

"Gasp!"

A circular saw past right next to her cheek, taking away a small portion of her hair. She flinched for half a second and that earned her something as heavy as a bowling ball hitting her back. She was sent rolling on the ground and used the momentum to get up to her stance again. I'm slowing down... if this keeps up, my chances of survival will drop below 80%. Time for a change of tactics.

From somewhere inside her clothes, she took six small bluish balls that looked like marbles and threw them in the air. "HAA!" They exploded in sequence, filling the air with a thick whitish smoke.

"She's trying to run away! After h- h...huh? My body... feels..."

"Don't breathe that smoke! It's poisonous!" The boy was smart to notice that, but also too late. Many of them were already losing consciousness and falling on the ground.

In amidst the confusion, Hinata dashed through the poison and ran away, followed by a fourth of the original attacking force that managed to escape the deadly gas.

Part 2

After walking for a minute or so, Index and Hishiro found a bench beneath a tree's shade where they finally managed to rest. Both of them were quiet for a while, not knowing how to strike the unavoidable conversation that was about to come. That is, until Asuka broke the silence with complaints. "This is so frustrating! If I could access either Orihime or Hikoboshi, I could get an answer instantly!"

Hishiro found it amusing to see her so pissed for once. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"Something between twenty minutes to half an hour, I guess… thankfully there aren't many people on the streets right now, so it's easier for the software to recognize him on the cameras."

"That's actually pretty fast, given how big Academy City is… just how high are your standards, Asuka?" She didn't answer and kept typing like crazy on the other side of the line. Not wanting the silence to fall again, Hishiro used the momentum to talk to Index.

"So… is it okay if I ask a few questions?"

She hesitated for a moment before answering. "It would be for the best if you just forget everything that happened and went back to your normal life. Do you still want to know?" She turned her face towards him and stared deep into his eyes. "Even though it might put your lives in danger, do you really want to know?"

He was taken aback by the contrast between the beauty of her green eyes and the danger hidden in the meaning of her words, but it wasn't enough for him to back off. "Maybe you didn't realised it yet, but our lives are far from normal. I could be sniped right here and now for a hundred thousand of reasons even if I say no."

"It almost sounds like you're proud of that, Shiro."

"I'm just used to it by now..."

Index was still a little worried, but started talking anyway. "Then… should I begin explaining what magic is?"

"Sure."

She then told them everything. About the power given to those born with no special talents. How it worked based on religious and mythological symbols. The dangers and temptations of the forbidden original grimoires. And how she was targeted for being the one chosen to carry the burden of having all these 103,000 books inside her mind. After a ten minutes monologue, the silence fell on them once again. Index became inquiet and asked forcefully. "You don't believe it?"

Hishiro took a deep breath before answering. "It sounds surreal… that something like this is being hidden from the general public during all this time. Then again, our little group knows our chunk of hidden secrets as well, so I can at least say it's not completely impossible." He rubbed his temples once more while trying to organize his thoughts. "I remember you saying that none of us could use magic. I assume it's because me and Asuka are both espers, but what about you? Didn't you manage to control that guy's attacks and turn them against him?"

"I'm a special case." She answered briefly, as if not wanting to go into details. "But even without the power of using magic, If I understand all the rules behind a spell, I can interfere with it up to some point. However, for some reason, I can't understand completely what composes Rüdiger's spells..."

"But aren't you supposed to hold all the magical knowledge in the world?"

"I know he used Egyptian magic as one of his bases, but he was going out of his way to hide most his symbols. This created several weak spots on his methods, but in return, I couldn't do as much as I should against him."

Asuka finally joined the conversation after all this time. "In other words, he was specifically prepared to fight against you… is that what you're trying to say?"

Index could simply hang her head in return. "Sorry..."

"How can you apologize? You're the victim here." Hishiro said smiling to her, but his mind was already elsewhere. Something's off. If Academy City deliberately let her and her pursuers, that means the higher ups had the means to stop them from doing so, even if magic was involved. Yet, Rüdiger also got inside and attacked her, someone that is supposed to be considered a guest, according to the Grim Reaper… What's going on here?

Before he could reach any conclusion, Asuka raised her voice with a clear tone of distress. "What? How could it… Index-chan, is it possible to revive someone using magic?"

The nun was taken by surprise by the sudden question, but answered with ease. "It is in theory, but the methods are vague and complicated. In all history, just a few claimed successfully do it, and there is little to no proof that it actually happened."

"Well, we have our proof now! The cameras picked Rüdiger's body getting up and walking away!"

Part 3

Kamijou Touma didn't had the intention to get involved into anything this time.

All he wanted was to see what was going on. So even though he had a bad feeling, he was going to just glance at where those uniformed people were going (mostly out of curiosity) and then resume his long walk.

But Touma's misfortune wouldn't allow him to escape the darkness after getting so close to it.

And like a super magnet mercilessly pulling iron sand towards itself at an insane speed, the incarnation of this darkness and his misfortune crashed headfirst into him.

More precisely, Hinata tackled the poor boy's chest, sending the two of them rolling down the street until they finally came to a stop countless meters away. It all happened so fast that neither had the chance to scream or groan in pain.

When his vision finally stopped spinning, Touma blinked a few times and tried to understand the situation. He was lying on top of a girl that looked to be around 11 or 12 years old while her mini skirt was flipped over and the straps of her tank top were falling from her shoulders revealing enough skin to tell that she wasn't wearing any bra. Once he realized all of that, he quickly rolled away from her. "I-I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! I didn't mean to!" He said all that while panicking, hanging between checking if she was hurt or looking away. In the end he just knelled and bowed all the way down until his forehead touched the hot asphalt.

Hinata was a little dizzy but managed to sit up on her own, making her top tank fall even further and displaying a few parts that were supposed to be hidden. She payed no heed to that and just calculated the distance between her current position to her pursuers, then confirmed that the person she had ran into was just a civilian. Only then she stood up and fixed her clothes. It was hard to tell if she didn't care about the shameful display of her body or if she was more worried about being caught by the enemy, as her facial expression was still the same. Finally, she talked to the boy who hadn't seen anything because he was still bowing to her. "If you value your life, then run and hide. I can't guarantee that they won't do anything to you." And so she resumed her escape.

It took just a few seconds for Touma to realize what she meant. He rose his head saw she was already quite ahead - and then felt a massive shockwave behind him. "Wha-what was that!? Oh, not good!" With a storm of psychic powers being fired towards his direction, he didn't even bother to question why they were attacking before following Hinata as fast as he could.

Most of the attacks flew past the boy and towards the girl ahead. Without looking back, she nimbly dodged most of them, but little by little scratches and other bruises were appearing on her skin, slightly slowing down her moves each time she got hit. When she was close to her limit, she failed to notice the sphere of purple light that was about to swallow her until it was too late to avoid it. She was already bracing herself for the impact when...

CRASH!

The sphere exploded into thousands of small pieces glittering in the air like shattered glass, right in front of the boy holding his right hand high. What happened? Her mind quickly jumped from this basic question to a more urgent matter. "What are you doing!? *pant* I told you to run away!"

"I am running!"

"They are after me! You won't escape if you run the same way as I, stupid!" Hinata expression finally changed as the situation grew dire by the second, but only for a few moments. Then it became even colder than before. She slowed down her pace to let Touma catch up to her, then she grabbed his wrist and pulled him along, turning left in the crossroad stopping there.

Confused, Touma asked. "What are you doing?"

"Quiet. They are coming."

When the pursuers finally made the turn, Hinata dashed ran at them (while dragging Touma who almost tripped due to the sudden acceleration) and slashed her way through the enemies, causing a rain of blood and confusion among them. Touma took several seconds to understand that she had actually attacked and injured them. "Y-you… What have you done?"

Hinata glanced at him with the corner of her eye. "We had no other option. They would've killed us otherwise."

"B-but… was it really necessary..." He couldn't finish the sentence. A massive fireball came flying their way. He broke free from Hinata's grasp and blocked it with his right hand, erasing it completely before starting running again.

Just as I thought. This person is… The girl reached a certain conclusion after witnessing the phenomenon a second time. "This way." She made a hard turn and headed for an iron bridge while Touma followed her and intercepted the attacks.

When they were about midway, more fake officers appeared from the other side of the bridge. It was too late to turn back and take another route. "Damn, we're trapped!" Touma looked from side to side, trying to find a way to escape. The only possibility that came to his mind was…

"... we're jumping off."

Hinata, who was prepared to face the enemy head on, tilted her head in puzzlement. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"It's our only chance to survive. C'mon!" He grabbed her hand and took off towards the edge. Hinata tried to resist at first, but made up her mind and decided to go along with it.

…

When cornered, a desperate prey will take unpredictable actions. She knew this behavior very well, and now she watched it happen in front of her eyes. Her target and an unknown boy had decided that it was better to jump off the bridge than to be captured by her unit. The uniformed boys and girls walked to the edge and the riverbed to try and find them. Though they could pretty much be dead already.

After a little while, one of them came to report to her. "Commander Yuna, They are nowhere to be seen. We managed to pinpoint where they fell, but from that point is quite difficult to track where they swan to. Or where the current dragged them to, if they are unconscious. However, we found this." He then handed over a dirty piece of blue cloth. "We believe that this belongs to the girl's clothes."

Yuna examined it for a moment end giggled sarcastically. "How cliched… cease your searches, they are not in the river."

The became flustered at her reaction. "What? But-"

"Can't you see? They left it behind on purpose to mislead us." She dropped it on the ground and stepped over it. "It's an insignificant attempt anyway. That bitch can't escape. Listen, I want a perimeter around the whole district. Units 3 and 7 will spread into five groups and patrol the area around this bridge. I'll call headquarters and try to get their exact coordinates, so you better be prepared to head out as soon as I get them. We have too many targets to deal with today, so I won't accept any delays. Got that?"

"U-understood!" The boy quickly left and passed down the orders to the others. Yuna sighed and picked her phone. Before making the call, she went to the picture gallery one more time, where photos of her sister were stored. Among them, there was a blurry picture of a brown haired boy. She tightened the grip on her phone and gritted her teeth, reminding herself of what she had to do no matter what.

…

"Stupid..."

"Can you stop it already? We need to figure out how to get out of here without being noticed."

Touma and Hinata had jumped of, but Hinata never intended to fall in the river. She held to the metal structure underneath the bridge and then used some kind of very thin wire to pick Touma who was falling for his death and pull him up. Now they were both sitting on a iron bar while facing each other. "I can't believe you were really planning to commit suicide."

"I never said that!"

"Then this means you are even more stupid. Even if you somehow survived, they would shoot at you the moment you raise your head to breath."

Touma couldn't think of anything to refute that so he stayed quiet and tried to think of a way to escape. Meanwhile Hinata payed close attention to the conversation going on above. "This sounds bad..."

"What now?"

"I was already suspecting it, but it seems like they have some way to precisely track us down. Given how they cornered on the bridge I think it may be a precognition type esper. One of my traps was already figured out as well."

Touma frowned deeply. His memories were gone, but his knowledge was still there. Precognition espers were extremely rare and there were a lot of mysteries and variations about their abilities. But if there was someone that could see the future to track them down, that meant they had to be completely out of the enemy's grasp by the time he or she used their ability, otherwise they had no way to escape. "We need to get as far away from them as possible, and fast. Do you think we can use those iron bars to reach the opposite edge of the bridge?"

Hinata measured the distance between them and the end of the bridge. They weren't that far in it when they jumped, so what Touma was suggesting was almost to cross from one margin of the river to the other using the metal structure. Her face showed her dissatisfaction towards the idea, but it was their best option at the moment - or maybe the only one. She carefully stood up started walking while maintaining her balance, and said to Touma while pointing to her arm which had the wire still connected to Touma's. "Do not get far from me. If one of us fall, we can use this to pull the other up."

Won't we be pulled down instead if that happened? Touma swallowed his words and followed her, trying not to think of what would happen if it came to that.

Between the Lines

3:27 pm, Director's office at the highest floor of a certain building in District 7

The room looked like what one would expect of a CEO's office. Yet, the person that sat at the luxurious chair with his feet up on the table was a boy of 16 years old, messy clothes and spiky dark red hair. He talked over the expensive looking smartphone uninterestedly while paying attention at the many documents and pictures displaying on the three large monitors in front of him. "Yes, you were actually right, Tsuchimikado Motoharu. Two members of ITEM acted on their own that night, and while they were watching the events unfold, Frenda Seivelun stole the suitcase right under their noses. "

"Then everything he said was true… damn that false Kihara. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I guess I owe him one-nya." Said the other male on the call.

"But it seems that the contents were already swapped when that happened. According to the logs… eeh, where were they…" With no rush, he lazily browsed through the windows until he found what he was looking for almost a whole minute later "Ah, here! It says that on that same night, one of the mainframes was accessed with an account that was supposed to be put on hold. It seems it belonged to someone who had retired recently… anyway, the point is that the actions of the two subjects in question leads us to believe that the contents of the case led them into hacking the system- or something like that. That's all speculation of the intelligence department though."

"And if that's true, what were they after?"

"Some security recordings on a certain dorm… do you know the one who caught fire last month? So, for some reason, all data about it was classified and not even I have access, so that's all I can give you."

Silence. Tsuchimikado got completely quiet after the mention of that dorm, and his reaction made the boy chuckle a little. "Hey! Hello hello, are you still there Motoharu?"

"... Yes, I am." His voice was cold and there was no sign left of his carefree attitude. "Sorry, but I have to go now. I think I have an idea of where this is going. Thanks for your help."

"We're here at your serv- uh, he turned it off already? Oh well, whatever." Grinning in amusement, he opened back the windows displaying the pictures of a certain red haired person wearing a stage magician outfit. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Welcome back!

First of all, I want to congratulate the anonymous Guest that managed to figure out what I had planned... Yup, Touma is up against Lizard, and there's a girl involved! (was it so obvious or are you just a genius? XP I guess you get why I couldn't answer you last chapter...) This combination led to a serious Kamachi-level fanservice... or so I hope. I'm afraid I might have gone a little too far there, hehehe...

Index opened up the game to Hishiro and Asuka, and now that they are at the same page, they can face Rüdiger again with equal footing. I was going to give a heavy and detailed explanation of how magic works, but honestly, this had happened at least trice in the main series. Afraid of it being redundant, I ended up skipping it and going directly to the juicy part. I hope it didn't ended up being underwhelming because of that. In counterpart, this first explanation is far from enough to fill those two of everything that goes on in the magic side, so look forward for more revelations in the future.

Next chapter, the second Seed of Doubt will make an appearance and join the fight against Rüdiger. I wonder if you can figure out who it is exactly... Anyway, thanks for your support, please leave your reviews and see you guys next time!