User blog:Auric Drake/Theory about Aleister

In short, my theory is this: Aleister doesn't know about the events of NT Volume 9. He doesn't know about Othinus gaining her full power, destroying the world, repeatedly torturing and killing Touma, and finally being convinced to restore the world. It sounds impossible, but there are several reasons for this:

One of the characteristics of this series is that there isn't a simple hierarchy of "X beats Y, Z beats X, so Z can also beat Y". A simple example of this is Touma being able to beat magicians and espers, but losing to normal humans with combat training, who in turn to lose to magicians and espers. This doesn't just apply to power, but also to knowledge. Aleister has been shown to be far from omniscient, starting from when he failed to predict Shiage (a true Level 0) managing to defeat a Level 5 back in OT Volume 15. Hence, even though he was able to outsmart the Magic Gods (breaking into their hidden world, weakening them and killing two), that doesn't mean he knows everything they do and more. It is therefore possible that he doesn't know the very important information - that the world was destroyed and remade countless times - that the Magic Gods know.

Aleister has many sources of information, but that doesn't make him omniscient. In Academy City, he has UNDER LINE, but there are multiple gaps in this. The Freshmen had multiple bases that weren't monitored, Yuiitsu created the UL Exploder to temporarily destroy nanomachines in a given area, and Acqua of the Back's attack caused the entire system to collapse for a few hours. The last of these is the most important, as it's mentioned that the UNDER LINE nanomachines can be destroyed by large impacts or storms, and interference in one area can cause the entire system to crash. It's therefore possible for Aleister to not be aware of everything even within Academy City. Outside the city, he has satellites, but (in real life at least) satellites are limited by their orbital paths and can have their view obstructed by bad weather.

In the epilogue of NT10, Aleister says, "Letting Othinus run free would have been a problem, but I left that to the strength of the world. The world was temporarily led to destruction as a result..." If he knew what happened in NT9, it would make more sense for him to say he left Othinus to "Kamijou Touma" or "The One Who Purifies Gods and Slays Demons", or perhaps "The Will of the Misaka Network". Saying "the strength of the world" suggests that he's only aware of what happened in NT10. The next sentence seems to show that Aleister knows about the world being destroyed, but not necessarily. It would be clear if he had said "the world was temporarily destroyed", but he specifically says that it was led to destruction. This could be interpreted as him referring to the chaos caused by Gremlin's actions in NT8. In that volume, Touma explicitly compared it to the atmosphere of World War III. I should give a disclaimer that I'm only working off the English translation, so I don't know what the meaning of the original Japanese was.

In-universe, the events of NT9 are absolutely incredible. It looks plausible to us, the readers, who have access to the thoughts and actions of both Touma and Othinus. But when Touma tries giving Agnese and Mikoto a simplified explanation about what happened, neither of them really believe it (and Mikoto is later shown to still have no idea of what happened). Index and Leivinia figure out that the world was destroyed, but not that it was destroyed countless times. Thor knows about the multiple instances of destruction, but can't imagine how Touma managed to get Othinus to restore the world. The Magic Gods do know everything that happened, but they (used to) have power on Othinus' level and were able to hide themselves from her perception, so this only makes sense. But as far as I know, Aleister has not been explicitly confirmed to know about this.

Finally, there's Aleister's own personality. His goal is to prevent others from being harmed by magic, including by the Magic Gods. Would he really allow the entire world to be repeatedly altered and destroyed by a Magic God? Even for someone who doesn't care about failure and treats individual people in a manner ironically like the Magic Gods, that seems implausible. Moreover, he also doesn't trust other people. Would he really trust Touma to be able to win over Othinus to his side? Even if he knows about Touma's ability to understand gods, it makes no sense for someone whose goal is to kill them all to rely on such a thing.

These are my thoughts. What do you think?