User:Silverhunter

[[===Part 3===

The barefoot girl wore raincoats directly over her bare, swimsuit tan-lined skin and had her long silver hair wrapped like disks or demon horns on either side of her head.

She was Mass Murderer Salome.

Her treasure was the list left by Sunny and Rain. She could achieve her current goal simply by continuing to attack the people on it.

The list may have been a symbol of tragedy, but its presence was a good thing for Academy City as a whole.

Without it, her targets would not have been so limited.

She would have randomly chosen Academy City residents and indiscriminately attacked them in a way that directed negative emotions toward Kamijou Touma and rejected him from society.

“Here we go.”

Salome muttered to herself while sitting on a bus station bench. Now that the morning student rush hour was over, that bench had become a rest area with zero customer traffic, so she had used it to lie in wait for someone.

She honestly had nothing against her opponent.

It just had to be someone on the list.

“Accelerator-chan☆ …Your real name is surprisingly cute.”

“…”

Her target had white hair and red eyes. One hand held a cane with a modern design and the other held a plastic bag from a drug store. He reminded Salome of white asparagus. No one could end up like that without being thrown into a uniquely arranged environment.

“Academy City’s #1. Since you’re famous, you’ve gotta be used to things like this. I’m here to kill you real quick.”

“…”

“Oh? You’re not onboard with that? Maybe you need some more motivation. Are you gonna say something like ‘I will never kill again (sparkle☆)’? Heh heh heh. Ah ha ha ha!! After everything you did, do you really think you can rid yourself of allllll that bad stuff you did and become a nice clean good person? Hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah!!”

“…”

“And you can’t just rid yourself of killings, don’tcha think?”

The raincoat girl’s smile vanished and an odd emptiness filled her eyes.

“We’re different. Then again, a proper human being might laugh if they heard that since it’s like a rapist insisting he isn’t as bad as a cannibal. Still, we’re different. If anyone wanted to put us in the same category, that would be more than enough reason to kill them, don’tcha think? But even if we’re different, I can still tell. You can’t get rid of your killing. Not even if we were the only people left in the world and I raised my hands and said I’d grown out of killing.”

“…”

“How about a little test?”

She laughed.

With the waterproof hood over her head, Salome held out her index finger.

She pointed at Accelerator.

No, at the plastic bag in his hand.

“I can understand the milk and chocolate. The rubber ducky and shampoo hat might just be your idea of a fun bath time. …But there’s just no way your feet would fit in those tiny shoes, don’tcha think? In that case, might their owner be somewhere nearb-…”

Before she could finish speaking, Salome’s pointer finger and the arm attached to it were gone.

He had not done anything special.

He had simply approached her, simply grabbed her arm, and simply torn it off.

The series of actions merely had some vector manipulation involved to provide superhuman speed.

“Hyah.”

But…

“Hyah hyah hyah hyah!! Oh, wow. I’ve gotta have struck the jackpot here!!”

No pain or fear filled Mass Murderer Salome’s mind.

In fact, she showed the relief and excitement of someone who had finally run across another eccentric that could discuss an old movie that had long since stopped playing.

She took a step back and the bottom of her double raincoat floated out like a jellyfish or clione. She bent forward and held her stomach with her remaining arm while not even trying to hide her continued laughter.

Then she used that remaining hand to grab the toy pocket watch hanging from her neck and kissed it.

“My External Offering can absorb any weapon or armor that I can destroy barehanded and build it into my own power. And after that snowball rolls down the hill far enough, no one can stop the chain, don’tcha think? So that’s the thing. I’m not a good match for people who don’t rely on civilized tools such as weapons and shields. There isn’t much I can do when they’re stupider than a chimpanzee and just use their own two arms.”

“You…”

“Spare me any hackneyed lines like ‘What did you do to your body? (sparkle☆)’. Heh heh. At the very least, it isn’t as strange as that brain of yours.”

There was a sound like the straining of a wet roll of thread.

No blood came from the torn raincoat and severed arm.

It also felt odd.

The surface of her brown suntanned arm was smooth, but it contained the inhuman eeriness of a mannequin.

“See, what matters for a sacrifice is how important it is to the person offering it. If you had such a great season that you have way more food than you could ever eat, then rice or fish isn’t gonna count as a sacrifice. And some stranger you abduct won’t work as a living sacrifice. Do you know anything about Voodoo rituals? When they sell their soul to the devil, once a year they have to offer up someone who it pains them to sacrifice: a family member, a lover, a beloved teacher, etc. But once they run out of people, they’ve gotta pay with their own life. This is the same. Only the External Offering just wasn’t quiiiiite enough for peace of mind as a mass murderer. I needed to offer up something even more precious…and that’s where the Internal Offering comes in. In other words, I gave my own body to my god.”

A living sacrifice.

The simplest form was to exchange one’s own life for having a wish granted.

But even if she surrendered her own heart, there was a way to survive.

She replaced herself and turned herself into a tool.

Misaka Mikoto should have noticed, but she had been distracted by the initial impact. The External Offering was a form of the occult that absorbed any weaponry that Salome destroyed with her own hands. But grabbing and breaking the Iron Sand Sword was beyond the limits of martial arts. A normal human could never do that.

“This is messed up.”

Accelerator glanced at the torn-off arm, tossed it aside, and spat out his comment.

But he was not interested in her occult explanation or that she had replaced her flesh and blood body for an artificial one.

“That’s not made in Academy City.”

“Ha ha ha! I guess you would notice. Yeah, I have no connection to this crazy city. So I had to gather together whatever I could find, open up my own gut, and exchange it all on my own. And all the while, I sold off each part of my maiden’s body to my god.”

She made it sound simple.

But if it was not made in Academy City, there was little guarantee it would work properly. If it was handmade, no one else could fix it in an emergency and odds were good it was not perfectly shielded against germs, chemicals, rust, electromagnetic waves, etc.

Even if you needed it to keep your heart beating, would anyone really use a pacemaker made using the chip taken from a toy gimmick light or alarm clock sold at a 100 yen shop?

Yet just such a reckless person stood before him.

For one thing, why was Salome wearing raincoats directly over her naked body?

Was she placing a frosted glass filter over her distorted artificial body to make it look real? Or had she needed to cover her entire body with thick plastic to keep water and dust out?

She was partners with death in more ways than one.

Rust or germs could reach her brain at any moment.

She was truly an insane mass murderer.

But her smile remained intact as if she were enjoying this tightrope walk as a form of entertainment.

“But you’ve gotta be more insane than me. You claim you don’t kill anymore, but you didn’t hesitate to rip off someone’s arm which has gotta knock people unconscious from traumatic shock. That’s the same as Mr. Elephant claiming to be friends with the humans while also throwing rocks at them, don’tcha think?”

“Then would you prefer I gave you a nice pat on the head?”

“With that hand? Don’t joke. Who knows how many times you’d shake up my brain.”

The raincoat girl smiled as she pulled something from her pocket. It was not a pen nor was it a stick of candy. It was a steel hook and it was probably meant to stab into a human’s back and lift them up. She spun that cruel execution tool in her fingers like a pen and then bent it between her fingers.

It looked like some kind of ritual.

It looked like someone lighting their glow stick at a concert.

“But just as my data said, your trigger is the one called Last Order. I’m not trying to provoke you this time. I’m completely serious. Isn’t it exhausting living like that? No matter who or what you protect, it won’t wipe your history clean. Hanging around good people, heroes, and holy women isn’t going to make you any of those things. You’ve gotta understand that. You think going to a concert makes you one with the idol? You think wearing a limited edition happi coat and waving fans around links your hearts together? Did you know the performer can’t even see the audience’s faces in the darkness created by the bright lights shining on the stage? That’s exactly the position you’re in, don’tcha think?”

“…I know that.”

“But if you’re happy clinging to the announcement of a new song and going to every last performance of the national tour, from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south, then I won’t stop you.”

“I know that, I know that, I know that, but it still pulls the trigger.”

“How long are you going to be some little kid’s attachment? The title of the strongest is weeping.”

Something dry burst between the two of them.

Two low voices acted as a signal.

“I’ll kill you.”

“Feeling motivated now?”

Plenty of blades, blunt weapons, and projectiles overflowed from the sports bag.

A clash between two who knew the taste of killing immediately followed. ]]