Chapter 183: A Blended Future

Aleister’s triumphant declaration.
The stolen power of the Number One.
And now—before the stunned group—the next target chosen by the Director-General was Misaka Mikoto.

"────!!"

"Next is the Railgun. Let’s take you—and call it checkmate."

Aleister slowly pointed toward Mikoto, who stood at the back of the group.
There wasn’t even a second to think.
At that very instant, Kamijou Touma was already sprinting forward, throwing himself between Mikoto and Aleister.

"Fall… from… grace."

"Let me make it in time!!"

CRACK!

A sharp, shattering sound split the air—just as Aleister uttered the final word of his spell.
And yet, the black-and-white Misaka Mikoto did not appear.
Even though Aleister had activated his ritual.

"…Magic isn’t some kind of unexplainable force that just appears out of nowhere," Kamijou said quietly, his right hand having just erased something.

He had no idea what Aleister’s “Fallen Ritual” truly was.
He couldn’t possibly have predicted a countermeasure.
But he did understand one thing—what magic really was, after everything he’d faced on his journey.

"There’s always a magician behind it—and from them, the spell is born. If that basic rule doesn’t apply, then you need a replacement. Like rune cards, massive temples, or something that connects the ritual… yeah, like that. Without that kind of foundation, it can’t function."

Then what about Aleister?
What about that black-and-white figure that seemed to appear from nowhere?

"…You already said the answer yourself, didn’t you?"

"……"

"That invisible field emitted by espers! Your ritual uses it as a medium to interfere directly with an esper’s ‘Personal Reality,’ sending their power out of control—like tearing off a piece from a giant sheet of paper!!"

Kamijou didn’t realize it, but the AIM-tracking system “AIM Stalker” could detect AIM Diffusion Fields even at the far edge of the galaxy.
In other words, AIM Diffusion Fields spread extremely far.
If Aleister’s ritual used those fields as its foundation, then yes—it would seem as if his magic appeared out of nowhere.

But what if that continuity could be severed?

The AIM Diffusion Field, faint as it was, was still a supernatural force.
And Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker had been unconsciously erasing it all along.
That meant if he stood between an esper and Aleister, the medium for the “Fallen Ritual” would vanish entirely.

"So, you’re not inexperienced when it comes to fighting magicians," Aleister said, his tone a mix of irritation and amusement. "No—perhaps it’s more accurate to say that your experience with both science and magic, the two worlds I once divided, has granted you insight into the shared laws of the supernatural."

He smiled thinly, though his voice carried a dangerous edge.

"However, that only prevents the ‘Fallen Ritual’ before activation. To borrow your own metaphor—once a piece has already been torn from the paper, it can only be destroyed through direct contact. And if you keep standing in front of Railgun or Mental Out to protect them, the risk of friendly fire rises considerably, doesn’t it?"

"……!"

Stopping one attack wasn’t enough to turn the tide.
But Kamijou Touma wasn’t the only one fighting on this battlefield.

"Give me five minutes!!"

The voice came from Kihara Nayuta.

"…A power that drives abilities out of control. That’s similar to my own AIM Violator ability. If we combine both ‘Kiharas’—the grimoire bearing the Fallen function, and the esper who governs AIM overdrive—we can create a breakthrough, even without Onee-chan, the Index!"

"You think I’ll just stand here and let that happen?"

"Was that… an intent to harm?"

Slide.

In a smooth, almost elegant motion, Reicia spoke up, turning Aleister’s words back at him.
For just a moment, Aleister’s voice faltered.

Even now, bursts of angelic energy—Telesma—continued to erupt sporadically around them.
Amid that chaos, the “Result Twister” couldn’t function properly; its interference would more likely hinder allies than help them.
That meant its actual effect was minimal.
And yet, Aleister hesitated.

(…I knew it. Aleister Crowley is deeply wary of my right hand.)

It wasn’t about raw power.
Everything Aleister had done—sending Reicia to fight Shiren, diverting attention toward Kihara’s book, avoiding direct confrontation—revealed one thing: he had been avoiding the Result Twister entirely.
Even more carefully than he avoided the Imagine Breaker itself.

(To Aleister, this right hand is an unknown. The Divine Contract—Near Death Promise—was planned long ago, but this right hand only appeared today. He doesn’t know how to factor it into his plan, so he’s being overly cautious.)

Part of that paranoia came from Aleister’s very nature—his lifelong mistrust and obsession with “failure.”
But Shiren’s deduction was, for the most part, correct.
Unlike the Near Death Promise, the Result Twister’s true nature remained unseen.

“Causing malice to fail” was only a simplified description.
Its true mechanism—distorting and smoothing the timeline—might interact unpredictably with Aleister’s “inherent failure trait.”

Would it neutralize that trait entirely?
Or would “failure” still emerge after the timeline was corrected?
Not even Aleister knew for sure.

That uncertainty was why he had kept Shiren at a distance.
But now, with his options exhausted, Aleister had no choice but to confront him directly.
In other words—he was far more cornered than Shiren realized.

"Then, perhaps I should start with you instead."

With that muttered thought—WHOOOSH!—a violent wind roared through the air.
The blast unleashed by the monochrome boy modeled after Accelerator swelled in power, then gradually subsided, leaving behind only a sharp, piercing whine.

At first glance, it seemed like nothing but a flashy bluff.
But both Shiren and Reicia—experienced in atmospheric manipulation—understood immediately.

"This is…!"

"…We’ve been played. He’s using the Number One’s ability to manipulate sound waves."

"If the Fourth can do it, of course the First can as well."

They quickly realized Aleister had combined thunderous blasts with ultrasonic waves to completely silence any sound that could serve as a medium for the Result Twister.

And with that—

"You really think you can shut me down that easily? How naïve."

WHOOSH!!!

Ignoring every restriction up to that point—

A pair of immense white-and-black wings erupted from Shiren’s back.

"…Huh!?"

The one most shocked by the sudden manifestation—the so-called “Crack” in full power—was none other than Shiren herself.

Of course. Shiren and Reicia were two halves of a single Level 5 esper. Since Reicia was outside Shiren’s body, the personality-synchronization technique, Make Up, shouldn’t have been possible. Under normal circumstances, they could never reach their full specs.

"Ah, splendid. Well, it is my body, after all, so I suppose that’s only natural…"

Reicia placed her hands gently on Shiren’s shoulders, remarkably composed despite the situation.

"The source that generates our ability is still me. So long as I’m in contact with your body, the personality activation from Make Up allows ability usage through you. It seems I was right."

"E-Eh!? Reicia-chan, what’s happening behind me right now!?"

"The usual ‘Crack,’ of course. Oh, though I must note—some stray shots appear to have sliced open my side, but don’t worry about that."

"I will worry about that!!"

Regardless, it was indeed the Crack. Its greatest strength lay in its precision control of airflow—fine enough to manipulate even ultrasonic vibrations.
With that, they could bypass Aleister’s interference and restore the Result Twister’s function.

"However, that airflow control depends on the delicate release of your ‘Crack.’ In that case, all I need to do is destroy it with overwhelming power before it can stabilize."

But Aleister’s arsenal wasn’t limited to the Fallen Angel Ritual.
If he detonated the angelic energy—Telesma—directly against the Crack, the attack, originating from an entirely different phase, would likely shatter even the white-and-black serrated Jagged Edge.

And then—

"—Even if not, I’ve just thought of another way to neutralize that right hand of yours."

Sparks flared behind Aleister, forming glowing numerical symbols as a mechanical mantis appeared—an unmanned weapon with scythe-like gun arms.
The FIVE OVER Modelcase “RAILGUN”, a towering machine, took aim at Shiren’s right hand.

"Unlike Kamijou Touma, Reicia Blackguard’s right hand doesn’t contain the same ‘depths.’ So all I need to do is blow that right hand away."

Aleister’s true goal was Near Death Promise, the Divine Contract.
The crystallized power in that right hand was ultimately expendable.
If Result Twister dispersed and vanished—perfect.
Even if it didn’t, destroying the limb would at least silence its sound-based effect.

And so—

Without hesitation, a storm of gunfire tore toward Shiren’s right hand.

—or it should have.

"…?"

Aleister frowned in confusion.

The Spiritual Sweep had clearly activated. Shiren’s right arm—up to the elbow—should have been obliterated by the Five Over’s storm of bullets.
Yet her right hand remained completely intact.

"I was starting to think something was off."

A gentle, almost absentminded voice spoke up.
The speaker was a girl with honey-colored hair—the queen of mental manipulation—Shokuhou Misaki. With a confident smile, she continued:

"Despite all those flashy attacks, when you look closely, none of the damage ever lands anywhere except on us. Isn’t that strange? Trying to protect Academy City, perhaps? If that’s the case, the explosions you’ve caused don’t exactly fit that logic, do they?"

The Spiritual Sweep was a form of sorcery triggered by influencing an opponent’s perception—it relied on belief as its switch.
That meant the first stage of the effect, the one that altered perception, wasn’t sorcery at all. It was merely technique.

"The phenomenon you’re using activates through your targets’ perception. So what happens if I rewrite that perception itself?"

And when it came to controlling the mind through natural brain functions—this was Mental Out’s domain.

"In other words… your little ‘phenomenon’ doesn’t work anymore!"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!
Explosions thundered in rapid succession.

"If what he did worked against runaway abilities, then it should work against that so-called Telesma too, right?"

Perched atop a thundercloud like it was a sofa, Misaka Mikoto continued her assault—launching physicalized AIM matter at Aleister.

"If I strike the space between you and that Telesma thing, it should sever your connection. Then your bombarding angel trick won’t even function properly."

Check. And checkmate.

The words echoed in Aleister’s mind as his two main tools—Telesma explosions and the Spiritual Sweep—were neutralized.
Even the Fallen Angel Ritual was being blocked by Kamijou, who stood firmly in the line of fire to protect the other two espers.
The only card left in Aleister’s hand… was the white-and-black Accelerator.

"You’ve blundered, Aleister Crowley! Refusing to target Shiren with the Fallen Angel Ritual just because she couldn’t use her powers—that was a grave mistake! Your defeat lies in underestimating the compatibility between Shiren’s right hand and my ability!"

Seizing the perfect opening, the spear of wind unleashed from the Crack pierced the ultrasonic barrier.

After all, it had already been proven in past incidents that when it came to airflow manipulation, even a perfect Accelerator was inferior to the Jagged Edge, which handled its calculations externally.
If forcibly unbound and born from instability, the Jagged Edge would surpass him even more easily.

"I see… so that combination really is troublesome."

That would have been true—if things stayed as they were.

"Then, from this point onward… I’ll be the one using it."

──Beside Aleister stood a young lady clad in black and white.

"The 'Fallen Angel Ritual' has the property of driving an esper’s power into a state of rampage based on their current strength level. Well, you can probably judge just how extreme that is by the scale of Accelerator’s rampage right now—considering he relies on external calculation support."

From behind the black-and-white young lady, streaks of black-and-white rifts spread outward.
Aleister continued, watching intently:

"The reason I never targeted you two with the 'Fallen Angel Ritual' wasn’t because I underestimated you. Quite the opposite. I was more wary than anyone of the synergistic effect of your abilities."

The sound that forces malice itself to fail… and the power that manipulates airflow to control sound.
Combined, those two could make any form of malice collapse before it could even reach them.
Of course Aleister would be wary—he was, after all, the human closest to the essence of “failure” itself.

"That’s why I prepared to activate the Fallen Angel Ritual the very moment you two triggered your powers. To ensure that I could drive the Black-and-White Jagged Edge into a fall from grace."

Everything—all of it—was within his grasp.
This was the true form of the General Superintendent: Academy City’s supreme ruler, the worst magician and greatest scientist in existence—Aleister Crowley.

A multitude of rifts spread across the sky, filling it completely.
Just as the right hand that perfectly nullified malice was sealed, the black-and-white Accelerator stamped the ground, intending to blow Shiren away with vector control from below—

POP!!

Both the Black-and-White Accelerator and the Black-and-White Jagged Edge burst apart like popped balloons.

The one responsible spoke with a refreshingly satisfied tone, as if finishing a day’s work.

"…Sorry to keep you waiting. Looks like we made it in time."

"Tch, what a waste. Would’ve loved to capture that thing for study."

Two Kiharas stood side by side.
──Five minutes had already passed.

Indeed, just as Aleister had said, he’d taken maximum precautions against Shiren and Reicia’s synchronization.
His scheme had succeeded perfectly, leading to the seizure of the Black-and-White Jagged Edge.

But precisely because of that… a brief opening appeared for their blades to slip through.

Runaway power.
The lineage of the Fallen.
Armed with both essences, the Kiharas shattered Aleister’s prized spell—the ace of the world’s worst magician.

In other words—

"──Ah. Indeed, it seems… we did make it in time."

A metallic storm roared across the battlefield with a deafening CLANG-CRASH-BANG-GRIND!!!

Nayuta and Kihara’s Grimoire were spared only because Accelerator had just barely regained control of his powers.
If not for that, all three of them would have been shredded—nothing but a mist of blood by now.

Even the Number One esper trembled at the thought.

『Yo. Kept you waiting, huh, Aleister?』

"No, you’re right on time, my friend."

Standing there was a golden retriever, bearing weapons shaped like fighter jets across his back.
Kihara Noukan.

But that wasn’t all.

Under his command was a swarm—thousands upon thousands of mechanical units—filling the sky like a plague of locusts.

"I see. It appears the Fallen Angel Ritual has failed. I’ll admit it—your teamwork has surpassed my scheming, and my final hand has been destroyed."

Even stripped of his last resort, Aleister Crowley laughed—defiantly, fearlessly.
A smile that seemed to declare war on the entire world.

"But tell me, didn’t you consider the possibility? That from the very beginning, my true objective was nothing more than to buy time?"

After all, Reicia herself had said it.
Aleister Crowley avoids fighting directly. The next step is always preparation. That’s why they had to crush him before that preparation was complete.

"I’ll just take control of all those machines at once…!!"

"Don’t do it!!"

Shiren stopped Misaka before she could rush in.

"…There’s no way Aleister hasn’t accounted for your ability at this stage. If you try to hack them, he’ll parallel-cast a magic countermeasure, and the backlash will hit you directly. That’s exactly the kind of cruelty he would set up."

It was a deduction only Shiren could make—because she knew that, in “proper history,” the A.A.A. controlled by Noukan had been a magical construct.
Realizing the risk, Misaka halted the hacking process—for now.

"But then what do we do!? Against that many, sure, me and the Number One can probably handle it, but what about you and that idiot!?"

"Hey now, Misaka-san, how about sending some of that concern toward your potential MVP candidate here, huh?"

"As for that, I have something prepared. …By the way, Aleister."

At the same moment Shiren spoke—

FWOOOOOSH!!!

A beam of annihilating aurora shot up from the ground, erasing part of the airborne mechanical swarm.

"Oh-ho, looks like you’re having quite the party. I was getting bored myself—mind if we join in!?"

Level 5 Esper, Rank 4.
──Mugino Shizuri.

But it wasn’t just her. Centered around her—“ITEM” had arrived.

"And finally, we meet here. By the way, Aleister—you haven’t forgotten about the direct negotiation rights, have you? Well, not that it matters. I might just end up killing you right here anyway."

Kakine Teitoku’s “SCHOOL” had also joined the fray.

"Shiren-san, Reicia-saaan! Finally done with the grunt work—we made it back!"

"U-um… I-Isn’t this, like, a really bad time for someone like me to show up?"
"It’s too late for that, 'me.' We’re way past the point of jumping off the rails—so just brace yourself."

Kihara Noukan and Kihara’s Grimoire, along with Saiai Kinuhata, Ryoko Kuriba, and the Doppelgänger, had arrived as well.

"We made it in time!! Aleister Crowley is a magician of the 'Golden' tradition—so we can help too!!"

"…………………………………………………………………………,"

"Stiyl. Your face—your face, please."
"Mmm~ youth☆ It’s just irresistible!"

The magicians, led by Index, had arrived as well.

"The Queen herself is on the front lines. Naturally, we’ll be assisting too."

Amid the crackling thunder of Hokaze Junko, the members of the “Largest Faction” assembled.

"Alright, this is where the real battle begins. Ready, ladies?"
"Of course we are! Shiren-san, Reicia-san—leave all the computation handling to us!!"
"Don’t worry, Shiren, Reicia. We’ve already analyzed both sides’ hands. The odds say we can win this one."

Responding to the maid-uniformed Xochitl’s transmission came the voices of the “GMDW” members, alongside Baba’s encouragement.
In their shadows, the official “Member” personnel—Saraku and the “Doctor”—were already moving unseen.

All of this was the crystallization of everything the two-in-one girl had woven together up to this point.

In the “Canon,” some had been bound by killing and being killed. Others had died before they could ever meet face to face. Some could not be saved and would never have another chance to reunite.

Shiren hadn’t asked for any of this. Yet somehow, everyone who had once crossed paths with her had gathered here—of their own will—to fight by her side.

These were unstable forces—so unstable that without Shiren as their linchpin, they might turn on each other in the next second.
A chaotic mix of allies, each embodying the tangled paths they had walked.

And standing with all of them at her back, Shiren Blackguard smiled.

"Are your preparations for aid truly complete?"

Final Chapter – I Don’t Know What “Predestination” Is  -  Theory_"was"_Broken.
Episode 154: The Blended Future – Last_Battle_Started.

And then, in the very instant when both armies clashed—

—the final trial took form, manifesting into the world as a “fracture.”