"That hurt."
Kakine Teitoku directed his gaze from Uiharu Kazari to Accelerator.
"That was irritating. No wonder you're the #1, you're the most irritating person I've ever met. I was right to come and kill you first."
"You sure talk big for a lil' chicken that's afraid of fighting me head on and has to take a hostage. The difference in our strength was obvious from the instant you went after the brat."
"Are you stupid? She's just a little insurance. Who would fight a bastard like you fairly? That's too troublesome, and you're not worth that."
These were Academy City's #1 and #2.
Accelerator and Kakine Teitoku. Neither one of them was holding any information back.
Naturally, someone would take care of cleaning up the aftermath later.
"For a pig like you, you should go be a stuffed pig on a food platter where you belong."
"It's laughable, you lapdog. Do you really think that by protecting some weaklings you can become a 'good guy'?"
"Ha, so you still don't understand."
Accelerator threw his modern cane to one side and said slowly, "Fine, now is a good time to teach you something: even villains have standards!"
Boom! A loud explosion rang out.
Accelerator and Kakine Teitoku clashed head on! A shock wave exploded outwards, flattening everything, knocking down bystanders, and breaking glass windows. Even in the midst of this mess, however, each's eyes were only on their opponent.
The result for this round was clear.
Kakine Teitoku, who had taken the attack head-on, was blown backwards and smashed into a café with a loud crash. But Accelerator merely felt displeasure, since the other side seemed to have avoided a head on confrontation.
"So you're the esper that can control any vectors."
Came a voice out of the café that looked like it had been hit by a bomb.
"Then, what if you were to smash into a large mass that can't be moved regardless of all the vectors you can gather? Guess that wouldn't work. As long as my vectors aren't being controlled, it's meaningless."
Completely unhurt.
Kakine Teitoku walked out of the shop with some kind of cocoon around him. No, they were wings! Six wings like that of an angel's slowly spread behind him.
Accelerator furrowed his brow.
"Mimicking myths doesn't suit you, you unoriginal idiot."
"You don't have to worry about that, I already know."
Before their voices finished echoing, they clashed once more.
Against Accelerator who controlled the vectors beneath his feet and charged, Kakine Teitoku spread his wings and flew almost twenty meters to the center of the road.
Accelerator swept his arm in front of him and slashed through the air, totally taking control of the airflow vectors. Boom! A hurricane with wind speeds of a 120 meters per second blasted towards Kakine like a cannon shot.
"?!"
Waving his dexterous wings, Kakine tried to avoid the attack, but a *click* sound reached his ears. Looking down, he found that Accelerator had already closed the distance between them. Before Kakine could even figure that out, Accelerator thrust his right hand towards Kakine's chest.
"Did you know, that everything in this world is made of elementary particles?"
While saying that, Kakine retracted his wings to protect himself. When Accelerator made contact with the wings, they immediately disintegrated into countless white feathers and stopped the attack.
"Elementary particles are things even tinier than molecules and atoms. We know that there exist gauge bosons, leptons, and quarks. There are also hadrons which are made when antiparticles or quarks gather, but, well, they're all divided into a few general categories. These elementary particles make up the world."
"However," said Kakine in a soft voice, "That kind of common knowledge does not apply to my Dark Matter!"
Boom! Accompanying gale winds, the six wings behind Kakine instantly recovered their forms.
"The Dark Matter I create is matter that does not exist in this world. It's not matter that hasn't yet been discovered, nor matter that theoretically exists, but rather matter which undeniably does not exist."
A material made by an esper ability that could not be classified by science.
Faced by these white wings that seemed to have come from a different world and defy the laws of physics, Accelerator's will was not shaken.
Who cares what they are? They will all be shattered by the ability to manipulate vectors.
"OK, then I'll blast you apart along with your 'Dark Matter'."
With one more step forward, Accelerator could tear apart Kakine Teitoku's heart.
However...
"You still don't understand."
As Kakine finished his sentence, his white wings let out a 'swoosh' and projected a brilliant white light.
"?!"
A burning pain forced Accelerator to back away from Kakine involuntarily. At the same time, he noticed the change in the situation.
Accelerator who could reflect all vectors was actually hurt by an outside attack.
"That was diffraction. Light or electromagnetic waves change direction when passing through narrow gaps; this is common knowledge even in high school textbooks. Using multiple gaps at the same time will make the waves interfere with each other."
Simply put it was by diffracting light through the countless unseen gaps on the wings to change the nature of sunlight and use it to attack Accelerator. It was not that the white wings gave off light, but that the light itself was changed by diffracting through them.
"Ah, the value of things depends on how you use them. So, how does it feel to be burned to death by sunlight?"
However...
"… Go back and study up on physics, you idiot. No matter how you diffract sunlight it doesn't change the nature of it into something like a beam of light that kills."
"Hm, that is indeed the case with the normal physics of this world."
Kakine's six wings curled up and gathered strength.
"But! My Dark Matter is matter that does not exist in this world! It completely disobeys the laws of physics of this world. Sunlight that gets diffracted by the Dark Matter will also have its own set of laws! Foreign bodies are like this: by just mixing in a little bit, the world will completely change!"
Fwoom! The six wings blew up a gale wind towards Accelerator. Accelerator used his reflection to subdue the wind while trying to figure out his opponent's aim. Looking closely, he found Kakine smiling.
"Reverse calculations, complete."
"!?"
When Accelerator heard that he tried to dodge, but the six wings had already begun to strike. However, unlike before the six wings were used solely as blunt weapons for hitting.
A series of *gacha gacha* sounds exploded out from Accelerator's body.
Accelerator, who could reflect all vectors, was blown over 10m away, hitting one of the trees on the sidewalk. The thick trunk of the tree got snapped by that one blow.
"Oof…!?"
(So the sunlight and wind from before was all for…!!)
"Accelerator, you said before you can reflect everything, but that's actually incorrect."
Kakine's wings spread soundlessly.
Accelerator flew up to a rooftop, but the over twenty-meter long wings aimed at him like giant swords to strike him down.
"If you reflect sound then you can't hear anything, and if you reflect physical objects you cannot hold anything. You subconsciously establish a filter that sees everything as harmful or not, and use your reflect to push away anything that could harm you."
Accelerator spit out the blood in his mouth, blew apart the water cylinder on top of the building with one stomp and jumped aside using the rebound.
The white wings that struck down crashed into the building, and split the building vertically in two. Large dust clouds swelled outwards from there.
"The sunlight and wind affected by the Dark Matter are infused with 25,000 different kinds of energy. Then by observing your reflection and using a filtering system that judges which energies are deemed 'harmful' or not, I can use the energies that are subconsciously accepted as not harmful to attack you."
Even if Accelerator changed the rules which his reflect was based on, Kakine Teitoku would immediately use his Dark Matter to inspect the change. The repeated attack and defense this way would only make Accelerator's wounds get worse and worse.
"Such is Dark Matter."
Kakine Teitoku smiled and spread his wings.
"This space which has been affected by foreign bodies is no longer the world that you know!"
Faced with this taunting, Accelerator controlled the air flow and made four tornadoes behind him.
Clash!
Accelerator's tornadoes swept away Kakine's wings, and Kakine's wings blew apart Accelerator's tornadoes. The buildings which were made of steel beams and cement were trembling from the blast waves and shook continuously. Suddenly, the two were no longer where they had been. The two of them continuously attacked each other, moving in parallel down the main road at an extreme speed. Occasionally they flew towards a windmill electricity generator, and other times they kicked streetlights away, flying down the road at a frightening speed.
"Even though I've finally snatched the Tweezers, studied the Underline, and planned many other things, none of them worked. Guess killing you, the #1, is the fastest and most efficient method."
Kakine said while waving his wings that spanned several tens of meters long.
"What? You maggot, you're still on about rankings at a time like this?"
"This has nothing to do with rankings! I only want the right to directly speak with Aleister!"
Accelerator ignored Kakine's words and stomped on the gravel road, and then kicked the rocks that were sent flying up using a karate kick.
Boom! A loud explosion rang out.
The vectors of the pebbles were changed and fired off faster than a Railgun, but vanished after a few millimeters. However, the pressure waves did not vanish, and the attack felt as if it would tear the very air apart. But, Kakine also put strength into his wings and scattered the attack. The waves of attacks between the two clashes against one another, sent a 'tsunami' of air throughout their surroundings and blew streetlights and advertisement signs into the air.
"That bastard Aleister has many plans in place at the same time. Even if it's the most promising plan for him, once he finds it doesn't work he'll immediately switch to another plan. Then when the time is right, he'll go back to the original plan. Just like a spider web, no matter which path you choose sooner or later you will end up back on the same path."
Accelerator and Kakine who were flying parallel down the road suddenly changed paths and chose the shortest route to smash into each other. A four-lane crossroad was blocked completely due to the clash between those two. Nobody complained, and nobody dared to complain. Everyone here had the instinct that if they dared to speak up they would die.
The silhouettes of the two swept past each other.
A few seconds later, the air exploded and a shock-wave rang out.
"If that's the case then there is only one efficient path to take. Destroy all other plans that are prepared, so that Aleister has no other path to take. Then, as long as I'm not the spare plan, as long as I am the center of the plan, then Aleister can no longer ignore me! I don't want to destroy this city, it is still useful. That's why I'll start from devouring the core, and in the end take control of it!"
Accelerator's and Kakine's blood flew around the air.
"So, only by killing off me, the true center, you can take over the plans."
The two of them stood facing each other, slowly gauging their opponent.
If Kakine could say such rhetoric then he must be confident of the truth in the fact that Aleister had many plans.
And for Kakine to have done what he did, naturally he had his own reasons. As for what they were, Accelerator didn't try to figure them out. In the darkness of Academy City, there was more tragedy than stars in the night sky. Chances were one of them was what had twisted Kakine's personality. Just like how Accelerator had killed 10,000 Sisters for the experiment. Just like how Accelerator was willing to give up his life to save one person.
"Bullshit."
Accelerator continued, while on that train of thought.
"Maybe you think what you're saying is nothing less than the absolute moral truth, but everything that's coming out of your stinking mouth is complete bullshit."
"Ha. Even though you have the right to directly communicate with Aleister, you have no idea the value of that right! People like you have no right to say that about me."
"At the moment you spoke those words, you became one of those common filth that pass themselves off as great villains."
"That doesn't sound convincing."
Kakine Teitoku said uninterestedly.
"I don't want to lay hands on normal people either. If I'm in a good mood I'll even let bad guys off. Having said that, I don't really care if those people live or die. Aren't you the same? In our battle just then, how many spectators and bystanders have got hurt? Cement and asphalt were traveling over the speed of sound, and shock-waves wiped out everything. That's the kind of battle between us."
"… …"
"Including the brat that shielded Last Order, they are all the same. You don't have to right to lecture me, murderer. In order to battle with me, the you that kills off bystanders has no right to lecture me. Don't tell me you truly believe you are exempt from your own ideals."
"Ha, 'battling with you and killing off bystanders in the process', is it?"
Even when accused of this, Accelerator smiled leisurely.
"What a scumbag. It's because you have no aesthetics that you can say bullshit like that."
"Huh?"
"In the end, do you understand why you're #2 and I'm #1?"
As he laughed he spreads his arms out wide.
"Between me and you, there is an impassable wall."
Kakine was fuming at his comments, but he also noticed it.
Their surroundings.
True, the battle between Accelerator and Dark Matter had destroyed the road. The glass from the buildings had shattered, traffic lights had been blasted off, and trees had been blown away and were sticking out of the cement buildings.
But, something was missing.
Tragedies.
Glass shards had rained down from above, but there was no-one hurt. A sweeping gale had twisted the path of those shards into falling elsewhere. The advertisement signs had miraculously protected those that were to slow to run away. The others were the same, with not a single person hurt. Though it was uncertain, in their fighting to this point, probably not a single bystander had been hurt.
(I-impossible!)
Kakine felt his throat go dry.
"Are you saying… that you protected them all?"
Thinking back, the first sneak attack could have been much more powerful. But if that was the case, Last Order's companion at that time would also have been hurt.
This was his way of doing things.
Even in a death match between the #1 and #2 Level 5s, even on a battlefield where a slight mistake could get you killed, Accelerator protected the normal people who he had never met before.
"Don't joke around! Are you saying everything was under your control from the beginning?!"
Accelerator showed impatience, as if saying 'of course', and taunted Kakine for his incompetence that he could not do the same.
"Are you angry, you lowlife?"
Towards Kakine who was shocked, Accelerator impatiently said, "Now this is what should be called a villain."
If after doing this much, if one was still called a villain, then just what did a hero in Accelerator's mind have to do?!
"Stop spouting nonsense, Accelerator!!"
Kakine Teitoku roared out and increased the power in his six wings. Changing the lengths, the structure, the white wings spread out and transformed into six lethal weapons that aimed at six of Accelerator's vital points.
Facing these, Accelerator only smiled.
"Bring it on."
"These are more than enough to bring you down, since I've already figured your filtering system. That sham of a defense cannot stop this!"
"Indeed, you can control matter that doesn't exist in this world."
Accelerator only wagged his index finger and made a 'feel free to do your worst' expression.
"The laws written in school textbooks don't work on them, and light and electromagnetic waves that come in contact with the Dark Matter get twisted into energy that can't possibly exist. So using energy calculation algorithms based on rules of this world will definitely have flaws."
The killing intent between the two had risen dramatically.
This crossroad was now fully saturated with the breath of death.
"Then all I have to do is include them in my calculations. To change the laws of this world into a new world that includes your Dark Matter and create a new algorithm, then it's checkmate."
"Using your vector transformation… to control my Dark Matter…?"
"Don't you think I can do it?"
"Ha, do you think you can gauge the entirety of the depths of my ability just by doing that?"
"Your depth is actually quite shallow."
"…!?"
"Shallow to the point I don't even need to try and gauge it!"
A sound of explosions ripped through the sky.
It only took an instant for the two to clash.
The victor in the match between the #1 and #2 had been decided.