Chapter 24: The Will of the Dolls

"――――Ahhh."

The man sitting on the sofa in the darkness let out a bored murmur. Perhaps it was simply a way to stave off the dullness, voicing something that served no purpose.

Wearing mechanical goggles that covered the upper half of his face, the man stared blankly toward the ceiling, gazing into the distant void as he muttered,

"And yet, Aleister sends out the weirdest damn orders, doesn't he? Tells me to mess with that brat's toy or whatever... Well, if I get to see something this entertaining, I don't mind giving up my day off for some unpaid overtime at a black company."

The only visible part of his face, his mouth, was twisted in amusement.

Chapter 2: Not Bothered by Failure – Crazy_Princess.
Episode 20: The Will of the Dolls – “Sisters”.

"――――The hell... is this?"

The first to grasp the situation and speak was neither Mikoto, nor Kamijou, and certainly not Reicia—but Accelerator, who should have been their enemy.

"Hah! The hell is this, seriously. Hey, do you idiots even get what you’re doing!? That dumbass is picking a fight with me, the strongest, just to save you goddamn dolls! And you’re just gonna let that slide!? Gya-ha-ha! Damn, this is too good—are you seriously trying to eliminate the ‘foreign element’ that’s screwing up your experiment!?"

Accelerator was laughing.

Even he didn’t know what he found so funny. Maybe it was the ridiculous heroes about to get themselves killed trying to save someone. Maybe it was the emotionless dolls trying to shatter the hand that had reached out to them. Or maybe it was this world itself, which allowed such tragedies to play out.

He continued, still cackling, preparing to deliver the finishing blow to these pitiful knights.

"This is a goddamn masterpiece! So the hero comes to save the day, and the so-called heroine goes and kills him!? What the hell is this!? What the hell kind of world are we living in!? Ahaha, get it now, you damn clowns? These girls—these clones—would throw away their limbs, their guts, even their lives for the sake of the experiment, without hesitation! They're hopeless, soulless dolls!"

"――――You just want to believe that, don’t you?"

Cutting through his laughter was a young lady, wearing a fearless smile as she fired back.

In truth, Reicia didn’t harbor the same deep attachment to the Sisters that Kamijou or Mikoto did.

Of course, she wanted to save them too—but in the end, from a human perspective, the Sisters were an extremely unnatural existence. They barely expressed emotions, openly admitted to being test subjects, and showed no resistance to the idea of death. Reicia didn’t really feel much of a desire to save them as human beings.

What truly drove her wasn’t sentiment. It was the fact that these girls—who were never even given a chance to be human—were being killed off like it was nothing. That, she felt, was simply unfair.

Their warped nature had been designed that way through experimentation. To justify killing them with, “They don’t hate dying, so it’s not wrong,” was nothing short of unfair—that was Reicia’s belief.

Conversely, it also meant that Reicia’s desire to save the Sisters, outside of aiding Kamijou and Mikoto or removing threats to herself, was only ever driven by that level of reasoning. At least, for now.

Especially considering that one of the Sisters had already knocked her out cold without warning, such caution was to be expected.

But now—she was angry. Calmly, but deeply angry.

She was the one person here who knew everything.

The Sisters might have little reason to live. Even Misaka Imouto, one of them, was only showing the will to live because Kamijou and Mikoto wished for it. And yet, at their core, the Sisters were incredibly kind people. They rescued kittens, teased Kamijou and Mikoto for fun, and could think about others. They weren’t the kind of beings who could ever repay someone’s help with bullets.

Even if it was just by cheating, Reicia had come to know that.

"Don’t you find it strange? That this is the true will—the genuine consensus—of the Sisters? If that were the case, why isn’t Misaka Imouto-san here—Unit 10032—attacking us right now? Even injured, she should be more than capable of knocking out someone like Kamijou or myself, right?"

Which is why she could now present a deduction based on conclusion.

And overturn this sick joke with ease.

"Brainwashing. That is the answer."

And that’s why she was trembling with fury.

"This experiment was always about having Accelerator defeat twenty thousand Sisters who had each grown through twenty thousand battles, accumulating combat experience through the network. In other words, the Sisters’ brains are tightly connected via the network, allowing interference—even with their decision-making abilities."

"...So what?"

"……Misaka Imouto-san was by Accelerator’s side throughout the experiment, and now she’s with Mikoto-san, an Electromaster with immense power. That’s why she fell out of sync with the network and avoided the effects of the brainwashing. Doesn’t that explain why she alone is no longer acting under the collective will of the Sisters and is instead helping us?"

Reicia did think that calling them dolls was understandable, to an extent. Even if that logic was ethically insane, the researchers weren’t necessarily acting out of malice. If someone said, “If clones and humans are both life, then guinea pigs and clones are too. Why’s that okay, then?”—well, Reicia might be at a loss for words. Kamijou would probably fire back immediately, though.

But this was different. To deliberately twist their will whenever it became inconvenient, and make them act exactly how you want—that went beyond mad scientists. That was plain villainy.

Yes. No matter the justification, bending someone’s heart for your own convenience is, by definition, evil.

"And if they’re resorting to brainwashing—then there must be a reason they have to."

Piercing. Digging. Gouging.

Reicia stared Accelerator straight in the eye and declared:

"For example."

As if to say: You already know this, don’t you?

"That maybe... the Sisters are starting to believe that, if possible, they want to live. That their lives actually have value."

She said it—decisively.

"SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!"

With that roar, a violent storm tore through the air.

No—it wasn’t actually a storm. It was Accelerator stomping the ground in a fit of rage. The vectors he released exploded, flinging stone and rubble everywhere like a storm of shrapnel.

"That’s just your damn delusion! Being controlled from the outside? Then it's simple—they never had a ‘self’ to begin with! They were just hollow dolls being manipulated! Of course that’s all they were, that’s the only explanation—otherwise—"

"――Then why?"

At that moment, Kamijou spoke.

He had shattered the jagged black-and-white shield—the Jagged Edge—that had been deployed to stop the exploding debris. Stepping forward toward the still-raging Accelerator, he pointed directly at the Sisters.

And said:

"…………Then why the hell are there tears falling from their eyes!?"

"………Huh?"

At the tip of his finger.

All of the Sisters—still wearing their usual expressionless faces—were shedding huge, unmistakable tears.

It might have been a physiological reaction. The sheer stress from being brainwashed could have triggered a rejection response. Or perhaps it was a reaction to the pain of having their brains hacked, nothing more than a bodily function.

But to him—those tears looked like the only cry for help that those emotion-suppressed girls could manage.

"…………………………Ha,"

In that instant—

A critical part of Accelerator cracked and gave way.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! AHAHAHA GYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!"

――And then.

"…………I’ll kill you."

The wind coiled into light.

If Reicia hadn’t been half a second quicker in deploying the black-and-white sawblade Jagged Edge, they all would have been swept away and killed by the storm. That’s how overwhelming, how violent the torrent of destruction was.

But even Reicia’s shield wasn’t invincible. The reason it could cut through any substance wasn’t because it had a force stronger than all things—it was because it could directly apply powerful macroscopic energy to the microscopic level, targeting molecular bonds.

In other words, in the world of macro-scale force—Jagged Edge wasn’t necessarily the strongest.

When faced with the First-Ranked’s storm combined with an unending onslaught of bullets, there was no way the barrier would hold for long.

Sweat beading on her forehead, Reicia shouted:

"I’ll search for a way to undo the Sisters’ brainwashing with Misaka-san! Kamijou-san, hold him off somehow in the meantime—"

"You go too. Go with that idiot and take on Accelerator. I can handle this side alone."

That was what Mikoto said as she stood up.

"But…"

"It’s fine. Just go."

Cutting off Reicia’s protest, Mikoto replied firmly.

Her face was hidden in the gloom of twilight—but still—

It must have been the outburst of her rage—BZZZZZT!!! A burst of violet lightning flared, and in that instant, her expression was illuminated. It was unmistakably the expression of――――an “older sister” protecting her little sister.

"...Huh?"

That was when Reicia suddenly realized something.

Until now, they'd been talking like it was the most natural thing in the world... but thinking about it more carefully, that didn’t make sense. The Sisters—the ten thousand younger sisters—had just moments ago been on the verge of attacking, as if to say we’re here to kill you now. Gunfire should have been roaring like a storm, drowning out any attempt at conversation.

But that hadn’t happened. Amid a calm silence like a flowing stream, the conversation had carried on undisturbed. There hadn’t been a single gunshot. If it had been Accelerator, with his arrogance born from overwhelming strength and childish immaturity, that would’ve been understandable. But for the Sisters—puppets of the dark side of Academy City—to act this way, something had to be off.

Yes. And if something was off, then there had to be an extraordinary cause behind it.

For example.

A certain girl standing beside Reicia, quietly trembling with rage.

『Leave them to me.』

Simply put—

All of the firearms possessed by the Sisters had ceased functioning.

Reicia couldn’t explain the mechanism. It was like something out of a fairy tale. Most likely, the girl had manipulated the iron components inside their guns with magnetism and twisted them out of shape—but doing that once would be impressive enough. She’d done it to nearly ten thousand guns. While they were being fired at her.

This girl had accomplished a feat like that.

Level 5 espers are said to have the power to take on an entire military division. That title is only granted when such power is confirmed.

She was the third ranked among them.

And this girl, bearing such a title, spoke without so much as a breath out of place.

"You too—go over there."

Misaka Mikoto. Tokiwadai’s Railgun. Admittedly, compared to the first-ranked Accelerator, she was incomparably weaker. Practically powerless in comparison.

But that didn’t diminish her true strength in the slightest.

Even in defeat, the brilliance of her spear did not fade.

She was one of the seven who reigned at the top of Academy City.

The strongest Electro-Master.

A power that governed all electrons, machines, the pinnacle of human civilization itself.

To her, a number like ten thousand was nothing・more・than・a・number.

"I’ve had it. Letting them do whatever they want with my “sisters”... I’m seriously pissed off now."

The lone "older sister" crackling with violet electricity glanced down at the fallen Misaka Sister beside her.

"Leave it all to me. This ridiculous farce—your big sister’s gonna smash it to pieces, without leaving a single scrap behind. ……I don’t think this’ll make up for anything. Not even close. But even so—this time for sure. I’ll save every last one of them――――with my own hands!!"