Deciding Victory with Firepower

Unprecedentedly intense emotions surged endlessly from within his heart. It was boundless fear. Facing the man before him, whose eyes brimmed with mockery, Accelerator's mind gradually ground to a halt, unable to think.

His breathing became incomparably heavy, and his throat was filled with the taste of blood. How long had it been? Or perhaps he had never experienced such pain since the moment his esper powers awakened.

Overwhelmed by fear, Accelerator's lips instead curled upward, and he let out a shrill, piercing laugh.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

The bewildered fear in his eyes turned increasingly blood-red and crazed. Fear, rage, resentment, and killing intent—countless negative emotions wildly poured from his heart.

A storm once again swirled around Accelerator. The raging winds utterly demolished the already dilapidated building, revealing the two figures.

Rod found it increasingly amusing. He casually tossed Accelerator aside, lightly pushed off with his feet, and leaped backward to open up the distance between them, waiting for Accelerator's next move.

"Isn't the thing that can kill this bastard right here?" Accelerator muttered. His brain calculated at high speed as Vector Manipulation operated at its limit. Under such terrifying pressure, his computational ability rapidly grew.

He controlled the air, compressing it without pause, guiding all the "wind" flowing throughout the city to converge at a single point—one hundred meters above his head. The instant all the storms gathered together, they produced a dazzling white light like the tip of a welding torch.

Plasma. When air was compressed, it generated heat energy. Internal combustion engines such as diesel engines operated on this principle.

And when the air of Academy City was compressed at an ultra-high compression ratio, it became a sphere of searing heat exceeding ten thousand degrees Celsius, forcibly splitting the "atoms" in the surrounding air into "positive ions" and "electrons," thus forming what was known as plasma.

What had initially been only a tiny point of light instantly sucked in the surrounding air and expanded to a diameter of twenty meters.

"There's nothing left in this world that can stop me. The world is in my hands." His trembling palm clenched tight as Accelerator glared viciously at Rod, expecting him to reveal the discomposure—or even fear—that he wanted to see.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all. There was still that proud, unruly smile, that contempt which had persisted from the very beginning of the battle until now.

"Don't look at me like that! You bastard!" His fierce pride tormented Accelerator's heart. Only by making the man before him die a miserable death could that stabbing pain be erased!

"Not bad, not bad. Then let's settle this with firepower." Rod's lips curled up again. As if mocking him, yet also reminding him once more, his low voice lingered beside Accelerator's ears like a nightmare.

"Take your stance. Steel your nerves." Flames appeared in Rod's palm. The fire obeyed Rod's control like a toy that could be molded at will, but the high temperature radiating from it gradually melted the surrounding concrete ground. Its blazing glow was dazzling and brilliant.

"Open." Rod extended his left hand, spreading his index and middle fingers like a bow. His right index and middle fingers pressed together, and like drawing a bow and nocking an arrow, he pulled forth a flaming arrow trailing a long tail of fire.

"DIE, AAAAAAHHHH!!!" Completely consumed by madness, Accelerator controlled the plasma above and smashed it down toward Rod.

Rod slowly released the flaming arrow.

Everything in the world seemed to slow at that instant.

The flaming arrow, containing extreme heat and explosive power akin to a nuclear bomb, collided with the plasma sphere, a searing mass exceeding ten thousand degrees Celsius.

At the moment of collision, it was as if two nuclear weapons had detonated at once. Extreme light and heat instantly engulfed the entire district—an ultimate violence few would ever witness.

That ultimate light and heat instantly tore through the nighttime city. Not only Academy City, but even mainland Japan tens of thousands of kilometers away could witness the magnificent spectacle, as though two suns had risen into the night sky.

The terrifying pressure wave swept over the entire district. Even Misaka Mikoto, the Misaka Sisters, and the four members of ITEM, who had already fled, were nearly blown off their feet by it.

"My eyes! My eyes!?" Frenda, who had still been watching the battle through binoculars shortly before, failed to avoid that extreme flash. Her eyes were instantly overwhelmed by the light, and she lay on the ground, clutching them as she rolled around wildly.

Yet Frenda's absurd display failed to draw the other three girls' attention.

The three girls stared in horror at the center of the explosion, their delicate bodies trembling uncontrollably. The moment they thought of how they might have been instantly vaporized by the surging aftermath and erased from the world had they not withdrawn from that area, the fear would not fade.

Misaka Mikoto blankly stared at the place where the two "suns" had risen. Rod's figure surfaced in her mind, and tears fell without end.

The girl dropped to her knees, pain written across her face.

"It's all my fault. If there hadn't been the Railgun Cloning Project, none of this would have happened, and that old man wouldn't have been dragged into it."

The girl's kindness became the sharpest blade, stabbing into her heart. Guilt filled her completely. They had only met once, yet that old man had given his life to stop the Level 6 Shift Project. (Misaka Mikoto's own imagination filled in the rest.)

The Misaka Sister, who had yet to have an emotional program implanted by Nunotaba Shinobu, could not understand Misaka Mikoto's feelings at that moment. She could only stand blankly beside her and keep her company.

Several minutes passed before the explosion's aftermath finally dissipated, revealing District 17, which had become a scorched wasteland. At the center of that vast charred ground stood two figures.

Accelerator, covered in blood and crawling on the ground like a zombie with rolled-back white eyes, and Rod, who slowly walked toward him.

Listening to Rod's approaching footsteps, Accelerator was already near death. His brain no longer performed any calculations. Instead, his life began to flash before his eyes.

"I originally had a name just like everyone else. My surname had two characters, and my given name had three."

"It was an utterly ordinary name."

"How boring. One day, this power will become the enemy of the world." Looking at the countless heavily armored tanks charging toward him, the young Accelerator spoke indifferently.

To avoid "destruction," he locked his "emotions" inside his heart and showed them to no one. Deep down, he rejected becoming close to others. The way not to hurt anyone was to become someone who remained unmoved no matter how others treated him. The slightest irritation in his heart could cost someone their life, so he could not allow any emotional fluctuations. Only by becoming a person like ice could he prevent his power from losing control and endangering others.

"The strongest" was different from "invincible." With "invincible," victory and defeat were decided before the fight even began, while with "the strongest," one had to actually fight before knowing who was "the strongest." In other words, Accelerator being the strongest merely meant people would still want to challenge him. Therefore, in order not to harm others, he aimed to surpass "the strongest" and become "invincible." He joined the Level 6 Shift Project experiment, during which he killed nearly ten thousand Misaka Sisters.

Countless bloody remains. The faces of the Misaka Sisters surfaced so clearly in his mind. Fear of death, confusion over his past slaughter, anger at his own naive childhood thoughts—every emotion intertwined and converged. That black-haired figure, with his arrogant face looking down on him, became ever clearer.

"Forget it. I don't want to care about anything anymore!" Abandoning every stance and conviction, Accelerator wanted only one thing at this moment: to kill the opponent before him.

His pale eyes turned utterly crimson, even the whites of his eyes turning red. The killing intent spilling from his chest gushed out like a tidal wave.

Accelerator barely forced himself upright, his eyes completely turning scarlet.

Despair beyond the realm of humanity intertwined and gathered, erupting from behind him as two jet-black wings, as though all despair had been condensed into tangible form.

"Alright, the Black Wings are out. In that case, I suppose I'll have to spare your life." Rod's voice came from behind Accelerator. He stood back-to-back with him.

A cold bead of sweat slid down Accelerator's temple, even though he should have been completely lost in madness and ready to destroy everything without regard for anything else.