とある反抗の死

Toaru Hankō no Shi

A Certain Defiance of Death

November 21st, 6:27PM

Tokiwadai Exterior Dormitories.

Misaka opened her eyes. The sight of her still empty room the only thing that greeted her. She glanced at the clock and felt a deep, stabbing pain at the sight of the date.

One week. It had been one week since that day, the day Kuroko had died...

Misaka shook her head violently at that thought, burrowing her face into Kuroko's pillow which was still damp from last nights tears. Kuroko wasn't dead, she couldn't be dead. She had promised that she would be back.

The image of the younger girl with a large hole in her chest, bleeding profusely entered her mind for an instant and more tears slipped out at the brief flash.

She promised...

There was a ringing of a phone and immediately Misaka's hands shot towards the small device, grabbing it and checking the caller ID, hoping against hope that it was the person she longed for.

"Touma" it read.

Misaka's hope was instantly and painfully shattered as she let out another choked sob into the pillow that had been her only companion for this past week.

She hung up and looked briefly at the screen.

There were over 100 missed calls and unanswered texts. Most of them from Uiharu or Saten, several from Touma and even a couple from MISAKA10032. only one text message was opened and read, one from her parents telling her that they would be coming to the city soon, both of them. Normally that would fill Misaka with joy but this time it was all she could do to go through with it at all.

She looked at the date and remembered that it was tomorrow that they would be arriving.

Misaka sighed and looked at the things scattered around her bed. Presents from Kuroko and the few photos that Misaka could find with the teleporter in them.

"You promised.." she said out loud, voice coarse from all the crying, one final time before getting up and putting the pillow on the bed. It was late in the afternoon and Misaka became briefly aware that she needed a shower before she could face anyone, let alone her parents. These past few days she had not been taking very good care of herself. Her hygiene level was not befitting someone of her status, her stomach was left neglectfully empty, and she had been crying herself to short very fitful bouts of sleep every few hours.

She came out of the shower several minutes later with one of those problems fixed. The loud noise which came from her stomach the next moment told her which problem to fix next. She looked in the fridge but what little food there was had gone off. She would need to go out...

She looked at the door, or at least what was visible of it through the numerous metal items that barred the entrance. She vaguely remembered doing that the first time someone, namely Touma, had come to her dorm to see if she was ok.

Looking at it now she might have gone a little overboard in her despair, but she didn't have enough energy or willpower right now to remove the items. So she walked over to her window which was barred to a lesser degree and removed the offending objects with a quick movement. Then she opened the window and sat on the ledge before pushing herself off of it, sending her tumbling to the ground where a burst of electromagnetism cushioned her fall.

She began walking. Where she was walking too she didn't know or care about. It wasn't like she could run or hide. She had tried that and it didn't work. Now all she could do was stumble along on the path and hope that it delivered her somewhere that she wouldn't feel this pain.

But all that the path led to was a vending machine that did nothing but eat money. She walked up to it and placed her hand on it as the memories of this place ran through her.

For a brief instant something other than despair and hopelessness coursed through her. For the first time in a week she felt angry, so angry at life, angry at everything, even angry at Kuroko, for leaving her even though she had promised to be back.

Instinctively her postured shifted as she drew back and unleashed a powerful kick, screaming "Chaser!" as her foot collided painfully with the machine, sending two sodas tumbling out.

She looked at the dispensing tray, then her eyes shut tight and her hands clenched in fists.

"Honestly, you still have those shorts on? How many times have I told you that a lady shouldn't be wearing such things Onee-sama."

Misaka's eyes suddenly flew wide open as she turned towards the familiar voice and saw a short little girl with her auburn hair in twin pigtails held up by white ribbons and wearing the same uniform as hers, glancing up at her with a big smile on her face.

"I'm back," the familiar voice added quietly.

November 14th, 6:27PM

Aleister stood in the large, white walled room looking down at it's occupant with an unreadable face. 'It seems my knight has finally fallen. She did so well but even she could not face a level three awakened Touma... I honestly thought she'd flee rather than fight. I wonder if she was worried about the creature killing me, or perhaps of it escaping and hurting everyone else... if only she had run then perhaps she wouldn't have died.' He shook his head and turned away, 'I suppose the least I can do is transport your remains to the moon you so longed to go to.'

Suddenly Aleister heard a choked sob from the girl before she began to speak, "I don't want to die..."

Aleister's eyes widened as he heard the words issuing from the broken, bleeding girl's lips. Like the incantation to a powerful spell the words summoned a far off memory.

A very different, in both appearance and outlook, Aleister Crowley sat on a rickety wooden chair which was set up next to a bed in a small room in a small house in England. The bedroom was humble and dark with only a single small lamp that sat on the bedside table next to a hand-made doll illuminating the darkness.

In the room were Aleister and one other person, a little girl who laid on the bed, tears in her eyes.

The girl was perhaps 8 years old with a small, cute face, pink eyes, and shoulder length auburn hair tied in pigtails with two white ribbons.

A choked sob escaped the girl's lips and echoed in Aleister's ears as the teleporter's words echoed his memory almost exactly, "I don't want to die daddy," the girl said "you finally came back again Daddy. So why do I have to die now? I don't want to leave you just as you got back. i want to be with you. I've had to deal with all this pain for so long so why does death only come when I finally have something to be strong for. Why now that I'm finally not alone am I being taken by Heaven..."

"No..." he whispered, in both past and present as he felt tears, remembered and real, sting his eyes, "You won't be taken by Heaven Lilith, I promise I'll do everything I can to ensure you feel better. I won't let you die Lilith, I promise. Please don't die on me."

In his memory he saw the girl on the bed smile up at him, "ok... I trust you daddy... you'll... save... me..." her smile slowly fell as her eyelid drooped until, on the last word, they finally closed. The pulse going through the hand that Aleister so tightly held stopped as his little girl, his precious daughter, died.

He promised he would help her, but he just hadn't had enough power to keep that promise. He had let the one person in the world who he held dear slip away from him.

He looked at the teleporter, conviction shining behind the tears staining his eyes. He would not let the same thing happen again, no matter the cost. He would not lose Lilith again.

"Hello Crowley. I did not think I would be seeing you again. You don't seem to be in the best of shape," Heaven Canceller said, referencing Aleister's missing arm and gaunt, aged appearance, as if his body had suddenly realized just how old he was.

"Such is the power of Set against a mere son of Horus," the old magician said calmly, his words tinged with the same aged dullness as his face, "I am fine and the arm will grow back in time."

"You have always been resilient. But then again so has she," he said pointing towards Kuroko's body, lying frozen in time on the operating table, "and she's not exactly in the best shape either."

"Can you do anything Heaven Canceler," Aleister asked. For once the insulting nickname that he had created for the man who had saved him was not spoken with bitterness, but rather with a sort of expectation that, had it come from anyone else, could be called hope. It was a question with echoes to the past as well. Back in 1947, when he had been hunted down by the side of Magic for his attempted conversion to science, he had been severely injured, practically killed. He was rescued by Heaven Canceler. The moment he woke up he had felt the immense power coming from the man. When he had learned about his ability to save anyone no matter how far gone they seemed he had immediately confronted him about bringing Lilith back. Despite the fact that he had had other children by other mothers, that was the goal he had worked towards since her death, unable to handle the loss of his first born child. Magic had done nothing to help bring her back, so he decided to switch to science, hoping that would be more effective, and that had, like fate, landed him here, with the one person who might just be able to save her.

His hope and heart shattered the next instant when Heaven Canceler, known at the time as Harold Moody, a skilled English physician, told him that there was nothing he could do for the girl. "Only God could hope to restore someone from death," the doctor had told him.

He had lashed out angrily, throwing a spell of destruction at the very doctor who had just saved his life. The spell was blocked easily by a shield and he was held in place the next moment with a mere thought from the doctor.

"So you rob me of the Heaven of reuniting with my daughter in Heaven but you are unable to rob her from that very place? Perhaps you think you have saved my life but all you've done is canceled my Heaven."

"A Heaven Canceler I may be, but if that means that I can keep people alive on earth then I'm fine with that. Earth is a more pleasant place anyway, on Earth you can do things, you can make a difference, you can feel and think. In heaven a reunion, even if it happened, would be pointless." The doctor had said.

Aleister calmed down slowly but surely. By the time he spoke again his voice was level and calm, but it held a strange sort of tone that would make a normal person shudder, "You said that God could help her recover?"

"There would be a great cost to such an action, but nothing is truly impossible for a nigh-omnipotent being," the doctor told the man, curious as to why he was asking.

"Then all I need to do is kill God Himself and take His power for my own," the magician said with complete conviction and certainty. As if he was talking about killing any ordinary person off of the streets rather than a "nigh-omnipotent being".

And for the second time in 4000 years Heaven Canceler, as he was now called by Aleister every time they spoke, was involved in a loss-induced-grief-driven attempt at deicide. Perhaps it was out of sympathy or understanding that he decided to help, perhaps it was out of the duty he felt as a doctor, or perhaps it was a supervisory role that he had sought to assume, hoping to drive Aleister away from an action that had, in the other incident, cause only pain and problems for the world.

And now the man who started this all stood before the doctor once again, begging him to save the life of his child. He hoped the answer would be different this time.

"You know how it is. If you get someone to me alive I can cure them," he replied, turning to the table on which the girl lay, "The bad news is that she is dead, actually she is beyond dead, approximately 1 and a quarter dead by my reckoning. The good news is that she was 1 and a half alive to begin with. There is the barest spark still inside her and her souls have not gone so far as to be irretrievable. Anyone else in this state would probably be long gone. You're lucky. A few seconds later and she would have been gone as well. But now that she's here I have as much time as I want to work on her."

There was silence. Neither of them spoke or moved, just looking at each other. Until Heaven Canceller finally spoke, "is it still worth it?"

There was an instant of hesitation before he said, "yes. If I can bring Lilith back then it will all have been worth it. I will not break my promise no matter the cost."

Still that instant of hesitation made Heaven Canceller smile, "it has been a long time since I have seen such doubt from you."

Aleister lifted his hand and examined its contents, a long white ribbon that had fallen from Kuroko's hair during the fight. It was the ribbon that he had given her so long ago, and had given his daughter longer ago still. "She reminded me what I was fighting for and reminded me that it was my apathy and disregard for the people near me that caused my daughter's death in the first place. I have been so relentlessly pursuing my goal that I had lost sight of it and forgotten the lessons of the past. I will bring my child back to me, no matter the cost… but that does not mean that I don't care about the life of my knight. I…I would like it if she survived."

"It has been even longer since I have heard such humanity from you," the old doctor replied, "it seems you have grown considerably."

He looked the old doctor in the eyes and bowed his head, "I also wish to apologize for my treatment of you. It is not your fault you are unable to bring her back and my anger at you has always been unjust and undeserved. I am grateful for your help in getting me to where I am now."

"Your anger is born out of care. It is understandable," with that Heaven Canceller walked again to Kuroko and looked into her eyes, "it has been a while since I last saw this. I am surprised you parted with it."

"It's primary use has long since passed… besides it was the only way to save her, the energy I infused her with to halt the damage and keep her alive needs a massive power source, one which is compatible with both telesma and mana. Considering all the use she has been it is a fair exchange for her life."

"What do you plan to do once she is recovered? Do you plan to continue using her?"

"Yes. As it turns out His plan is far from complete, it was a false ending. There is still more todo before the time comes for me to take the power of God for myself and she is the greatest tool in my arsenal for facing the trials to come, not as powerful but far more reliable than any of the others. A storm is brewing and she will be needed to fight against it."

"What of the others?"

"I have harvested the essence of the fully awakened Accelerator, Kakine, and now Touma. With myself that makes the aspects of Horus, Osiris, Isis, and Set. All I have now is to wait for an awakened master of the Ma'at aspect and I will have gained enough power to bring Lilith back to life. But there has not been a fully empowered Ma'at since Jesus Christ himself. I attempted to create an artificial one with Kuroko but that seems to have failed. Even in the most dire moment and with extreme proximity to the master of Set it was, at most, a level 2 awakening, not the level three needed to gather the essence. Without the enchantments and seals on his arm as well as Touma's own willpower suppressing its power she would never have forced Set back, even with all of the Godly assistance she could manage to summon with her partial awakening. It seems you really do need to be half divine to truly become a master of Ma'at, much as Touma himself is half demonic. You can't artificially produce that so it seems I will need to wait until someone more suitable shows up. The plan tells me how and where but not when. So until then perhaps it would be better if I took a more hands on approach to our city."

"Try not to create too much chaos for me," Heaven Canceller said, chuckling at the irony in that that few people other than they knew existed. Then he left the room to get his supplies. "She will be healthy again in perhaps a little over one week," he said. He would be busy for a while it seemed.

Back in the room Aleister walked up to the table and placed the ribbon that he had long ago given his own daughter when she had been sick beside the body lying there. It was a good luck charm and had long ago had the words "get well soon" inscribed on it. That wish had faded along with Lilith's life.

4 years ago when he had seen the girl that he had planned to build up into his master of Ma'at he had been surprised how much like his own daughter she looked. He had thought that two generations and an entirely different mother would be enough to bury any genetic resemblance to himself or the daughter he had lost so long ago. Until he had first laid eyes on her she had been nothing but a name on a folder. But when he had seen her there in that hospital bed crying her eyes out despite her tears having long since run dry, looking so like his long dead Lilith, something had been stirred inside of him, something that had caused him to hand the ribbons he had kept for almost 100 years since her death to the sobbing child, that had caused him to tie her hair up in a style reminiscent of his daughter, to speak to her with an almost forgotten kindness, even to address her as "child" in order to perhaps feel just a little bit closer to the girl who had been taken from her.

Now again she was laid down on a hospital bed, but this time she, much like Lilith before her, was practically on her deathbed. Aleister leaned down and kissed the petrified girl's forehead speaking with a sadness that had not touched his voice in over sixty years, "you were never alone… but I was and I didn't see it until it was too late. I've buried too many people already. I don't want that to happen again. Don't you leave me alone as well." A tear dropped down onto the girl's cheek as the always stoic Aleister was overwhelmed by memories, and a loneliness he thought he had felt only once before, but now realized he had felt all along.

By the time Heaven Canceller came back he was gone. He walked up to the body of Kuroko and looked at the gaping hole in her chest where the bottom half of her heart should be. Instead all there was was a bright glow.

"He really is this desperate huh... well I guess she is the key to his plan..." His hand hovered over the glow for a moment then he drew away, "I will be right back," he said to the unresponsive, technically-dead girl, "I'm going to go do something that I'm sure you will thank me for."

He walked through the halls of the hospital until he reached another room, in which sat Aiwass and, on the bed, a nearly dead Oneeni. The angel looked up at him, "isn't it pointless to check up on her... your magic is keeping her in one state so she hasn't changed. she can't get worse and she can't recover... You said so yourself."

"I never said she couldn't recover. I said that I could do nothing for her, that only God Himself could hope to restore her."

"And so you come back to see if God has saved her? Is that not a pointless exercise? Are you honestly expecting her to spontaneously recover?"

"I wasn't expecting it at all, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. In fact that's exactly what she's about to do," Heaven Canceller told him, "I received a gift from some very annoying meddlers that should be able to fix this right up." he said as he walked over and deposited the gift within the wound on her head, "she should be back up and kicking within a day."

"What?" was all that the angel could manage to say.

"I must admit it was an amusing sight," Heaven Canceler smiled as he turned to Aiwass, "seeing an angel pray. Perhaps it was amusing enough for God to listen to you."

Aiwass looked away, back to the clone, who was now breathing normally, no longer frozen in time, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil..." He said as a rich melody floated in the background. He saw a slight smile tug at the sleeping girl's lips as the music reached her ears, and began talking again,"Most sentences sound terrible in angelic. Words themselves may be beautiful, but when strung together they usually sink into terrible disharmonies. There are certain pairs of words that sound good together, but the more words you add the less likely that is, and they rarely make sense. But the lord's prayer sounds beautiful in angelic. Against all odds a string of words that long somehow manage to blend together harmoniously. She always loved the way it sounded."

Heaven Canceler gave a warm smile and left the room, thinking to himself, 'this is why I became a doctor...'

Kuroko, being an atheist, didn't believe in heaven or any sort of afterlife. In her opinion people died and that was it. So it was with great surprise when, three days later, the teleporter found herself opening her eyes. As her gaze slowly focused she saw Oneeni standing in front of her, her eyes closed in slumber, but the wound on her head completely gone..

'So this is heaven,' she thought, resigning herself to the fact that she had been wrong all this time about Heaven. 'It certainly looks different than I thought it would... in fact...it looks a lot like on of the rooms in Heaven Canceler's hospital..'

It wasn't too long before she realized it was exactly like Heaven Canceler's hospital, in fact Oneeni was wearing a hospital gown rather than her usual tuxedo. She looked down to see the horrific injuries that she had suffered from the battle... the fatal injuries.

She was confused. She had been killed hadn't she? And people die when they are killed. She would have said something or tried to move but so many tubes and instruments were shoved in her body that any action was impossible, and she was hovering in a vat of some sort of liquid, making speech impossible as well.

A chill suddenly went down her spine, which would have made her shiver were it not for the aforementioned preventative measures. She saw as Heaven Canceler walked into the room, he glanced at her and smiled. "I see you're finally awake. I take it you're a bit confused... let me tell you what happened..."

Author's Note: The first chapter of book three (called The Magician, The Emperor, and Judgment) will be out on New Years day. In the meantime, beginning on the 27th, I will be uploading a new story called Addiction. It's a standalone KurokoXQueen story so devout fans of KuroMiko might not want to read it but if you have a little bit of wiggle room check it out. It's only 3 chapters long with a new chapter released every 2 days ending, finally, on New Years eve.