Chapter 149: In the End, the Same Old Disaster

"Reicia-chan!?!?!?"

October 9th, morning.

A young girl’s scream rang through the external dormitories of Tokiwadai Middle School. 6:20 AM. Even for Tokiwadai, a school infamous for its strict control over sleep and wake-up times, that was early enough to be unreasonable. The unnatural cry, so unlike the normally composed resident of the neighboring room, jolted Misaka Mikoto awake.

"W-What!? What happened!?"

When she glanced at her roommate, Shirai Kuroko, it was clear she too had been caught off guard. Just like Mikoto, her eyes snapped open wide.

But as expected of a member of Judgment, Kuroko was quick to act. She immediately sprang to her feet.

"Blackguard-san!! What has happened!?"

Without hesitation, she teleported straight into the neighboring room.

Mikoto, too, could tell from that scream that something was seriously wrong. Still in her pajamas, she rushed out of her room and used her magnetism to fluidly unlock the neighboring door.

Reicia Blackguard.

A Level 5 esper like Mikoto, unofficially ranked Fourth, just below her. Because her ranking was unofficial, she was often nicknamed the “Another Four.” Her ability, Black-and-White Saw Blade – Jagged Edge, manipulated “fractures” that could not be blocked by any known material, making it an incredibly destructive power.

She was also the leader of one of Tokiwadai’s major factions. Always calm, always composed, with a figure that often made Mikoto wonder if they were really the same age.

And yet—this girl…

"Reicia-chan… Reicia-chan…"

Dressed in her usual monochrome pajamas, she had collapsed onto the floor.

"…She’s… gone… completely gone…"

Huge tears rolled down her cheeks as she sat there, helpless and lost.

"──And what do you plan to do about this? By now, that poor girl must be crying just like this."

Same day, morning.

In a back alley of the brick-built cityscape, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young lady in a black-and-white nightdress—Reicia Blackguard—muttered irritably.

Her tense, blue gaze was locked on a single "human."

That figure could look male or female, child or adult, saint or prisoner. Dressed in surgical garb, they only shrugged, showing not the faintest hint of remorse.

"What, this much is nothing more than a minor margin of error."

Silver hair so long it nearly brushed the ground. Emerald eyes that gave no clue what they were fixed on.

We know this.

We know—this man should not, at this time, in this place, exist.

Like the Demon Lord appearing in the starting town of an RPG. The very situation itself was proof of the most blatant abnormality possible.

And yet, that "human" stood there undeniably. Not as some statistical anomaly or logical excuse—but in solid, physical reality.

It meant a decisive collapse of history itself.

────The General Superintendent of Academy City.

────Aleister Crowley.

The source of all evil stood calmly before them.

With each movement of his hand, history shifted. The mastermind hidden at the core of every plan and incident. And before a single word from him, Reicia—just an ordinary esper—

"How can you say that!! Which part of our pitiful escape, running around in disgrace like this, counts as a minor margin of error!?!?"

…She snapped, plain and simple.

"And the Windowless Building is in that state! Why did you wait until things got this bad!? Are you stupid!?"

Even knowing she was up against a top-tier figure—possibly still on the "final boss" path—Reicia let her frustration spill out at the silver-haired man. Their relationship had grown close enough that such outbursts were now almost tolerated.

"Calm down, Another Four. I get wanting to tear this bastard a new one, but arguing here isn’t going to fix anything."

The one who soothed the furious Reicia wasn’t the General Superintendent, but a brown-haired boy. He looked like he straddled the line between the underworld and ordinary life—half rookie host, half gangster-in-training.

──Academy City’s Number Two, Kakine Teitoku.

Leader of the dark side organization "School," he too, by some twist of fate, was now working alongside Reicia and the others.

"Thanks for stepping in, Dark Matter. And really, don’t worry so much. Getting things back to the proper parameters isn’t that hard. This kind of unforeseen event isn’t unusual."

"…That sounds an awful lot like you’re admitting Academy City faces crises of this scale all the time, which is not reassuring in the slightest…?"

With a sigh, Reicia lifted her gaze to the narrow slice of sky between the rooftops. Far off, thick, black smoke was rising to the heavens. By now, surely all of Academy City was broadcasting the destruction as breaking news.

She forced herself not to bury her head in her hands…

"…You’re right. When you put it that way, it makes sense."

"This old man is way worse than I thought, isn’t he!?"

She could only fume at how shamelessly the General Superintendent brushed everything off.

Aleister, meanwhile, ignored her outrage and pressed on.

"Besides, you two are here as well."

"You don’t even intend to handle this yourself!? You’re still the General Superintendent, aren’t you!? You’re the root of all evil, aren’t you!? Can’t you at least… do something!? We can’t just accept a straight-up loss like this, can we!?"

"Sad though it may be, this is what 'I' am."

Reicia’s accusations slid off him like water. Aleister even half-ignored her to turn toward Kakine.

"Ah, yes. Our next move. They’ll detect my magical signature and launch an assault. If we don’t move quickly, the Garden of Learning will be caught in the crossfire of Christianity’s top-level forces."

"You shameless excuse for a final bosssssss!!!!"

Reicia clutched her head. Aleister continued to flaunt his sheer incompetence without a trace of shame.

Watching the whole exchange, Kakine Teitoku let out a reluctant grin before sinking into exasperation.

"…This is what I wanted direct negotiating rights with all this time…?"

The General Superintendent only gave a vague, meaningless smile.

──Now then.

Let’s set the comedy aside for a moment and take stock of the questions at hand.

Question One: Why did Reicia Blackguard’s two personalities split apart?

Question Two: Why are Reicia, Aleister Crowley, and Kakine Teitoku working together?

Question Three: Why has Aleister Crowley been driven into such a corner?

The answers to all of these lie in unraveling the events of the morning of October 9th, Academy City’s Independence Day.

The clock’s hands rewind, back to that early morning────

Final Chapter: I Don’t Care About Predetermined Harmony - Theory_"was"_Broken.
Episode 123: In the End, the Same Old Disaster - Crowley’s_Hazard.

【Illustration Display: https://img.syosetu.org/img/user/4180/93901.png】

Aleister＝Crowley
"Sad though it may be, this is what 'I' am"
── General Superintendent of Academy City
── Mastermind of the failed Divine Contract Near Death Promise Project

Reicia＝Blackguard
"Which mouth are you saying that with, you hopeless final bosssssss!!!!"
── Former villainess noble lady, fallen and reborn
── Level 5 esper, Hidden Fourth Another Four
── Ability: 『Black-and-White Jagged Edge』

Kakine＝Teitoku
"…Was this really the kind of person I had been wishing for the right to negotiate with directly…?"
── Leader of the dark side organization School
── Level 5 esper ranked Second
── Ability: 『Dark Matter』

──That day, Reicia Blackguard’s awakening came with a strange feeling.

When she opened her eyes, it wasn’t the familiar ceiling of her room she saw, but a sky full of stars. What is this──? she thought, only to realize it wasn’t a “starry sky” at all, but countless monitors glowing in the darkness.

And then, it hit her.

──Shiren was gone from within her.

(What…!? Was I the only one sent away!?)

The only reason she managed to suppress her rising panic was thanks to the trauma of her recent battle with Kihara Souji. The shock of being without her other half—her partner in body and soul—was real. But she forced herself to think: would something so trivial truly be enough to rattle Reicia Blackguard? That quick correction of thought was within her ability now.

“…I see. So that’s how it is.”

Normally, her next step would have been to examine her surroundings. Even without knowing where she was, she had to grasp the situation first. Without Shiren, gathering information was worth the risk.

But the instant she heard that voice, every nerve went taut.

Because the speaker was standing right nearby, bathed in the glow of the monitors.

A silver-haired man.

She instantly leapt back, hiding behind a pile of machinery. And that was when she noticed something else.

She wasn’t in pajamas.

That might sound trivial, but to Reicia it was not. At Shiren’s insistence, once every three nights she would wear thin pajamas instead of the translucent monochrome negligee he preferred. Last night she had gone to bed in those pajamas. Yet now she was dressed entirely differently.

The white-and-black dress gloves were familiar enough. But the off-shoulder nightdress—like lace curtains of black and white—paired with her long blonde hair tied back with a black ribbon, made her look like a noblewoman attending a ball. On her feet, black ankle-strap heels over white-and-black tights should have been impractical, yet she felt no discomfort moving in them.

She had no memory of dressing like this, nor had she ever worn such clothes before. The outfit wasn’t a direct threat, but that only made it more unsettling.

“What in the world is this situation!?”

And yet the biggest source of confusion wasn’t her clothes—it was the man on the other side of the machinery.

A “human.”

A man, a woman, an adult, a child, a saint, a prisoner—his features held the possibility of all of these. A visage so layered with potential that the only word for him was human.

Wearing surgical robes, the “human” Aleister Crowley gave a small gesture, as if swinging a staff, and murmured:

“This is… quite bad.”

Then it happened.

BOOOOOOM!!! A thunderous blast erupted, shaking the air itself as if the atmosphere had ruptured. The entire world seemed to tremble.

Reicia instinctively crouched down, bracing herself.

“What—what is this!? What in the world is happening!?”

“No need to worry. This attack was expected. If anything, it’s overdue. …Though your sudden appearance here was not part of the plan.”

Aleister raised his right hand. It should have been nothing more than a simple motion, yet to Reicia it looked as though a silver staff had materialized in his grasp.

“Reicia Blackguard. I’m afraid this place—the Windowless Building—is about to fall into enemy hands.”

“…Excuse me!? What nonsense are you spouting!? Have you gone senile already!?”

“It’s merely a backlog catching up with us. Likely the accumulated twists in the Threads of Time have all come crashing down at once. But this scale far exceeds what the city can handle. I’d rather not let its urban functions collapse entirely, so… I allowed ‘them’ to bypass normal security. I simply didn’t expect them to target this place directly.”

Aleister laughed, amused.

“And when I tried to activate the Divine Contract Near-Death Promise to resolve this, even that failed. I intended to summon Shiren, but instead, you appeared. That was most unexpected.”

“So it’s your fault I ended up here!?”

“Hah hah hah, indeed it is.”

“You bastard…!!”

The flood of bewildering revelations was enough to make her clutch her head, but she pieced together the essentials.

Right now, an overwhelming enemy force was attacking Academy City. Their strength was such that a direct clash would annihilate the city’s infrastructure. To avoid that, Aleister had let them slip past ordinary defenses—but they had gone straight for the Windowless Building.

As a countermeasure, Aleister had tried to draw on some power residing in Shiren, but failed, summoning Reicia instead. With his trump card gone, Aleister was cornered.

“Everything’s backfiring, isn’t it!? What do you plan to do now!?”

“Escape, of course.”

Spinning the silver staff in his hand, Aleister continued:

“That said, if I used the kind of magic needed to blast through these outer walls, I’d be caught in the blast and die as well. Truly troublesome.”

ZHHHHHHHH!!!

From the monitors, which had shone like stars in the dark, countless beams of laser fire rained down upon the Windowless Building’s walls.

"What…!?"

"I am, after all, the King of the City of Science. Whatever I lack as a magician, I can always compensate for as a scientist…"

…That said, the wall hadn’t been damaged in the slightest.

"But this is troublesome. This building is built far too sturdy. With the science I have on hand, I can’t destroy it."

"Your own defenses have turned into a prison keeping you trapped! Ugh, fine, I’ll do it myself! Calculation-type Impact Diffusion Composite Material, ‘Calculate=Fortress’ or whatever it’s called—if I just sever it along with the higher dimensions, it’ll all be the same, won’t it!?"

Growing impatient, Reicia swept her black-and-white nightdress aside as she raised her hand.
White-Black Sawblade, Jagged Edge.

It was the ability known as “Crack,” a Level 5 power provisionally ranked fourth, capable of deploying a force that severs matter.

As she and her “selves” gained combat experience, its applications had expanded. By now, she could even input higher-dimensional parameters, slicing through ordinary matter without question.

Even the Calculate=Fortress—designed to cancel incoming impacts by striking them with perfectly calculated counterwaves—was no exception.

"…Wait. Why isn’t it working? ‘Crack’… it’s not coming out!?"

"Of course not. Didn’t you realize? I told you—I ‘summoned’ you."

Hearing Aleister speak as if stating the obvious, Reicia quickly examined herself.

She lowered her gaze to her hand. It appeared normal—neither transparent nor blurry. But—

"…Here."

To test it, she pinched her pinky and pulled. That’s when she noticed the anomaly.

"You really do that a lot," Aleister said, exasperated.

But his words barely registered. The fact she could rip flesh just by pinching it was disturbing enough—but the greatest irregularity was in the wound itself.

"…Wait, this is the same as Kazakiri’s, isn’t it!?"

With a loud smack!!, Reicia slammed the torn fragment of her pinky onto the ground.

The wound at her severed pinky was hollow, like the inside of an eggshell. Strange circuit-like patterns ran within it, patterns she recalled exactly from Kazakiri Hyouka’s wounds.

Strictly speaking, Reicia had never seen those wounds firsthand in this timeline. But she had heard the story from Kazakiri herself, who had once attended Shiren’s resurrection party. Thus, Reicia knew the truth.

In other words, the current Reicia was the same as Kazakiri—an AIM Thought Entity.

And as seen with the Sisters, with Kihara Byouri’s Little Grey, and with the resurrected Kakine Teitoku, esper powers were rooted in the flesh.

Now that she existed only as an AIM Thought Entity, Reicia could no longer use her White-Black Sawblade, Jagged Edge.

"What is this supposed to be!?"

"I already told you. It’s a ‘summoning.’"

Aleister spoke with casual detachment.

"It’s nothing special. You people never realized it, but when a foreign soul is affixed to someone’s body, there are countless ways to manipulate it spiritually. For example—living spirits. Japan has a wealth of legends about them. If you apply that principle in reverse, doesn’t it seem just as simple to forcibly extract a soul while the body still lives?"

"Th-That’s ridiculous…"

If such a thing were truly possible, Reicia and Shiren would be completely powerless against enemies from the magic side.

Even without overthinking, the only one capable of bending the rules that far would, of course, be this worst of all magicians.

"…The plan was to use that theory to harvest the trained Divine Contract – Near Death Promise and turn it into a trump card against them. But as you can see, this is how it turned out. Yet another spectacular failure."

"None of this is making any sense! What even is this Divine Contract – Near Death Promise thing!?"

"Well, since we’re here, I could explain it piece by piece—but it seems our time is up. They’re coming."

Aleister’s words jogged Reicia’s memory.

That’s right—this “Windowless Building” was under attack by an unidentified “enemy,” and it was only a matter of time before it fell.

And then—

BAGAAAN!!

Just as Aleister had said, the supposedly impregnable Windowless Building was torn apart.

And standing there was—

"What’s the matter~? Surrendering without even a proper defense? Even if you repent for your sins now, considering everything you’ve done, it’s already guaranteed you’ll be thrown into the depths of hell for the next one thousand years!!"

A green-clad priest, swinging a blade as white as snow.

Left-Side Terra.

"Oh, that’s right. I never did tell you about the ‘enemy’ attacking Academy City this time, did I?"

With genuine delight, Aleister turned to Reicia, the morning sun pouring in behind him as his fortress crumbled.

"Vento of the Front. Terra of the Left. Acqua of the Back… A special-value pack from God’s Right Seat. Now—do you understand the situation we’re in?"