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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter2

2022-09-20T08:09:33Z

2409:4066:190:4D74:0:0:14A5:38AC: /* Part 4 */

==Chapter 2: Which of Them was Caught? – the_Consulate.==

===Part 1===

The holiday didn’t mean Accelerator could take the entire day off.

The statistics were clear: trouble and accidents tended to happen precisely on the days people least wanted them to happen on.

“A consulate in District 12?”

“Let’s see…it’s technically called the Bridge Builders Cabal Academy City Consulate.”

“…”

“Yes, sorry, I know that’s weird! I wasn’t checking thoroughly enough on the diplomatic side of things.”

The response came from Qliphah Puzzle 545 who floated near the ceiling. That artificial demon was acting as the eyes and ears of the board chairman now that he could no longer leave his cell.

A consulate was an extraterritorial area in which Academy City had no real authority.

What is the difference between an embassy and a consulate, you ask?

The biggest difference is that a consulate lacks the authority to represent its country in negotiations with the resident country’s government. A consulate is only meant to provide a link between its home country and that country’s citizens living in the resident country, while an embassy is tasked with battling the resident country at the negotiating table.

That might make a consulate sound like less of a threat than if a country suddenly built an embassy in your country.

But that was inaccurate.

To have a country’s consulate in your country meant it was normal to have that country’s people in your country. That meant Alice’s cabal had gained more than just the consulate’s territory. ''They had created circumstances where magicians could walk freely throughout Academy City.

Something quietly struck the wall.

The walls and ceiling were covered with printed documents. They were all attached directly to the wall with colorful pins and those pins were connected with a spiderweb of colorful strings.

Alice, Academy City’s dark side, the Bridge Builders Cabal, the Shibuya riot outside the city.

Whether or not these things were actually connected was a matter to consider at a later stage.

He only needed to lay out all the information first and visualize all the connections with strings later.

His only information on Alice came from Qliphah Puzzle 545’s reports, but that only made the girl more concerning because it meant someone was strutting through Academy City without any of the city’s security capturing her.

Anna Sprengel had bloodily destroyed the dark side on December 25 and Alice Anotherbible had suddenly appeared on the 29th.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Y-yes!?”

“How did you get tangled up in the string? To be blunt, you’re in the way.”

“Heh heh heh heh. Th-the more I try to avoid them, the more tangled I get. You can think of me like the bookish girl who’s terrible at dodgeball.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was somewhat tied up in a corner of the ceiling that was quickly becoming her standard spot.

“Umm, I didn’t mind so much when it was just my wings and legs tied up so tight, but now it’s getting to my crotch, which is a lot more- ohh!?”

She seemed to like attention of any sort, so she looked kind of happy about this. Which was why Accelerator chose to ignore the demon who had to be devastatingly bad at jump rope.

Yes.

Accelerator was currently lying on a bed much too nice for a prison cell. There could only be one reason he was back here.

The meeting with his guests had been called off.

Because Alice Anotherbible’s cabal had been detected inside Academy City.

Last Order had not looked disappointed on the other side of the thick glass when he had had to call it off. She had smiled as she watched the board chairman go.

He needed to keep in mind that he was the one who had made her force that smile.

“U-u-umm?”

“What now?”
“Well, you see. Eh heh heh. If you happen to be angry, I would actually find it something of a relief if you would hit me a few times. Just go all out with it.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

He knew that wouldn’t solve anything. The artificial demon tangled up in colorful string had only relayed the necessary information to him. He much preferred that to her being too afraid to pass on some important information.

Alice was here.

And several more of those monsters known as Transcendents were with her.

(If only we had a solid definition of this Transcendent term everyone’s started using like it didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Was it in Shibuya on the 31st when that third-rate got himself tangled up in this mess?)

With several of those mysterious Transcendents detected in Academy City, there was a risk of the people living their ordinary lives here encountering them. It could happen to Last Order, to Yomikawa, to Yoshikawa, or to anyone else.

Accelerator wasn’t sitting around doing nothing. He had a few tricks up his sleeve beyond the standard Anti-Skill and Judgment. For example, he had direct fighters like Qliphah Puzzle 545, Fuse Kazakiri, and Misaka Worst.

But not even all that was a guarantee.

The #1 knew all too well that there was no such thing as an absolute assurance of safety.

He couldn’t stop whatever happened outside.

Outside and inside this cell were two different worlds.

And once something happened, he could not protect Last Order. If he wanted to protect her from harm, he had to act before anything happened.

A disturbing mass throbbed at the center of his chest.

He felt like he had a giant egg there in place of a heart.

“…”

There was a reason to act.

But if he left the prison for that reason, he would be causing everything to collapse.

He might feel good about it at first, but the monstrous whispers of reality told him he would only be drowning the world in an ocean of blood if he took that path.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Y-yes!? D-d-d-do you need something!?”

Accelerator sighed on the bed while the demon responded more nervously than necessary up in the corner of the ceiling.

“I’m not mad, so lend me a hand. Show me those newspapers you’re wearing.”

“Oh, you mean my dress? Hmm, but I’m not sure what article could tell you more than all these documents covering the walls.”

“It’s not for that,” he replied, feeling annoyed.

For one thing, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s dress was not a collection of actual newspaper articles. It transformed depending on who was reading it, creating articles that pointed out that person’s sins and shames.

In other words…

“Show me my darkness.”

“Um, okay!!”

The demon forced her tangled body to move, placing her hands behind her head.

She showed off her body.

The pattern on her dress writhed. The shocking headlines of those English-language newspapers tore into Accelerator’s old wounds.

Each individual article didn’t matter much.

But altogether, they felt like a great monster.

Yes, there was a monster here.

Everyone had a monster inside them.

It was a fearsome thing that would drag you down the path to death and ruin if you let it, but it could provide great power if you learned to control it.

Accelerator knew that violence came in many different forms.

And he knew there were also nonviolent ways of solving problems.

(Don’t let it take over.)

He felt impatience, tension, anger…and the fear of losing someone close to him.

He took a deep breath and faced his monster.

(I created this monster myself, so I must be able to control it myself.)

If he could start by looking to the destination he needed to reach, then he would reach that goal no matter how much he strayed on the way. He focused on his own immaturity while moving his fingers faster than anyone.

(I don’t know who these people are, but they’ve set up a backdoor into Academy City. The question is what they hope to use it for. A backdoor is a means to an end, not the end itself.)

He lay on the bed, moving various things with his fingers without even glancing in their direction.

The bedside printer spat out paper, he cut those apart with scissors, he tossed the cutouts with his fingers, and he threw a pin to skewer the floating paper. And if necessary, he would swing weightless string like a whip to send it slicing through the air so it could add more color to the display.

He continued organizing his information in a fashion that would be more gruesome than execution by firing squad if someone happened to be standing by the wall.

“You said it was a consulate, right? Then it must belong to some country or another.”

“Yes. Th-they apparently bought a Central American country smaller than a soccer field to gain the qualifications and rights of a country. Eh heh heh. That’s what let them officially use the position of a diplomat or consulate to create an enclave in Academy City.”

“Who the hell gave them permission to do that?”

“Eek!! Diplomacy is handled more by the Japanese government than Academy City, so it was probably one of their bureaucrats. The cabal took advantage of a blind spot we created by focusing so much on what was happening inside the city!!”

A new red pin thwacked into the wall.

It pierced through a point on a map of District 12 floating in the air.

“Still, it bothers me that something so extreme managed to slip by us.”

“No, no!! I assure you this wasn’t anyone’s fault!”

The demon girl frantically shook her head.

She seemed to think she would be left behind if she let the #1’s thoughts turn too far inward. She was in a puppy mode where she craved attention, even if it came in the form of a light slap.

“Things have gotten a lot more complicated after the Crowley’s Hazards because a bunch of artificial islands and ship-towed floats were set up as bases for reconstruction efforts, but now some of them have started declaring independence. Countries are joining together and splitting apart as much as a girl who seems to have a new boyfriend every week, so it can be hard to notice when a country’s system or true ruler has been swapped out. And this is the same area where R&C Occultics tried to set up a massive server center to abuse a legal loophole to gather personal information on people around the globe.”

“R&C…”

“I imagine that connection is how Alice’s group learned about it in the first place.”

A consulate.

Needless to say, that was a special site protected by international law. The laws of the consulate’s country were prioritized over the ordinary laws, so in the most extreme example, a murder case that happened on a consulate’s grounds could be tried in a foreign country’s courts.

And now a magic side consulate had been built inside science’s headquarters.

Nothing could be more dangerous.

They had an enclave.

Or worse, they had a foothold for an invasion. It may have been more like an airfield or bridgehead. The word “consulate” might sound peaceful, but the threat here was closer to the Cuban Missile Crisis when the former Soviet Union attempted to deploy nuclear missiles right at Washington’s throat. Except this time, the deployment had already happened instead of being discovered in advance.

“…”

Accelerator rested back in the large bed and stared up at the ceiling in thought.

He had built a bizarre boxy planetarium made of articles and colorful string. What big picture could he find here?

Could he not see the enemy’s goal because he lacked sufficient information?

Or was he misreading the inciting factor for the attack, such as personal interest, love or hate, sheer coincidence, or simple enjoyment?

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a consulate. That never would have been allowed if they had been honest on their paperwork. Alice and her cabal’s Transcendents must have used some clever trick to gain approval for the consulate. And that approval had come from Japan, not Academy City.

That deception was meant to obtain something here in Academy City.

This was enough to conclude they had some kind of attack planned. Accelerator had already confirmed Anna and Alice were the external factor that had agitated Academy City’s dark side. And as the board chairman, Academy City’s #1 could send the city’s official defenses against them without needing to break out of prison himself. However…

“''I wouldn’t do that if I were you.''”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

That wasn’t Qliphah Puzzle 545. She remained tangled up in a corner of the ceiling, cowering like a puppy in the rain.

The voice came from the large TV in the wall.

These days, it was unusual for a TV to not be connected to the internet. Of course, it was even more unusual for a prison cell to have a TV at all.

The TV displayed short red hair and white skin.

The strong-willed girl was wearing a fluffy white miniskirt dress.

She was Magician Dion Fortune. Except she technically wasn’t human since she was a magical device created based on that magician who belonged to the Golden cabal. And now she led the Anglican Church as their new Archbishop to fill the vacancy there.

She smiled as a black box twirled with its corner balanced upon her extended finger.

Since she wasn’t human, her thoughts lacked the uncertainty of wishing things would turn out one way or hoping they wouldn’t turn out another way. She cut so directly and accurately to the truth it could seem cruel.

Accelerator didn’t get up from the bed as he flicked two pins into the wall.

He added articles for the Anglican Church and Dion Fortune. Where the string would connect those articles would be determined by the coming conversation.

The magic side leader grinned as she got to it.

“I don’t care what sort of monster you were to begin with. But the Accelerator I’m talking to now is also the board chairman who controls Academy City as a whole, correct? Then don’t lose your cool so easily. You’re only allowed to do that when you’re wielding personal power. The leader of an organization served by lots of people doesn’t have that luxury.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

Dion Fortune looked pleased at earning that reaction. She ignored Qliphah Puzzle 545’s flustered stammering near the ceiling and kept going.

“It won’t do you any good to single out and deport the individual Transcendents when you don’t know their names or nationalities. But you should also assume you can’t just shut down the consulate itself,” she said to drive that point home. “You ''could'' do that, but as soon as you did, the 190+ other countries and territories out there would see Academy City as an ''untrustworthy and uncontrollable group'' that shuts down consulates and embassies authorized by the Japanese government the instant they become inconvenient. And once no one trusts any of your promises, diplomacy becomes all but impossible. You might be the headquarters of the science side, but you aren’t designed to survive in complete isolation.”

“…”

“It’s called the Condroniard Republic. The Central American country smaller than a soccer field is very real. As sketchy as it sounds, Alice really did buy an entire country that belongs to the UN and can make use of international law. So if your approach to this consulate doesn’t conform to the relevant laws and treaties, Academy City will be seen as ''a children’s playground'' that doesn’t know the first thing about diplomacy. Once that happens, the war between magic and science will be the least of your worries. Those of us on the magic side will be able to sit back and watch as the science side disintegrates all on its own.”

“Isn’t that exactly what outsiders like you want?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Dion Fortune made no attempt to hide her interests here.

And with that said…

“But that result alone isn’t good enough. It matters a lot ''who is responsible'' for magic’s victory over science. The Anglican Church doesn’t want Alice’s cabal to be the ones responsible for destroying the science side while leaving the magic side untouched. That would lead to a new magic side that throws out the current main powers of the Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Russian Orthodox and places the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal at the top.”

Accelerator could see hints of that being the goal here.

But he threw out that obvious line of reasoning.

“I saw bits of pieces of what Alice did on December 29.”

“Oh? Picking up a new interest in spying to complete your role as faceless dictator? You’re sounding more and more like that pervert Aleister all the time.”

“And based on those observations, this Alice Anotherbible doesn’t seem like the type to jump at bait as simple as the conflict between the science and magic sides or on ruling the magic side herself. What do you say?”

“I haven’t seen her myself, so I wouldn’t know.” Dion Fortune shrugged on the TV. “But Necessarius’s horoscope profile says she’s true to her desires and utterly devoid of patience. Based on that, my guess is she would take anything she can get her hands on, but she wouldn’t be working on multiple tasks at once. To her, a piece of candy and a million yen are the same. So whether or not she would be interested in those goals, it definitely doesn’t sound like her to set a plan in motion and wait for it to bear fruit.”

“…”

“On the other hand, this consulate belongs to the cabal as a whole. Tyrant Alice may be their leader, but it’s still an organization, not just one person.”

“Are you suggesting Alice’s intentions as an individual and the cabal’s objective as a whole are different?”

“It’s probably more accurate to say the rest of the cabal is trying to pull something off without Alice noticing. Think of it like the US president and the lawless CIA, an international corporation’s CEO and a sports team trying to hide how deep in the red it is, or the Russian Orthodox’s pure Patriarch and their perverted torture-loving monster. Really, I expect most organizations have a similar dynamic going on. It’s unusual for the intentions at the very top to work their way down to the very bottom.”

Academy City and the dark side was another example.

The new board chairman had taken action to put a stop to that, but he couldn’t say the process had been bloodless.

“So be careful and watch how this plays out. Attempting a careless confrontation or expulsion will only widen the wound for Academy City.”

The Anglicans had their own interests in all this.

Very few people would reach out a helping hand for nothing at all in return.

And some piece of those interests could be gleaned from the following statement.

“Alice is indeed an extraordinary tyrant, but you will be caught unawares if you focus on her alone. They tend to be overshadowed by Alice’s presence, but keep in mind that ''each and every one of the Transcendents waiting in the wings is an infuriatingly brilliant magician.''”

===Part 2===

It was freezing out.

Kamijou Touma held himself and shivered on the way back to his District 7 dorm room.

It really was midwinter. It was still only around 6 PM, which should have only been evening time, but it was already dark out.

Unusually, there were a few paper postcards in the door’s newspaper slot. Those were New Year’s cards. Specifically, from his parents and a girl who was apparently his cousin. But most people seemed to use their phones these days. He had a whole list of messages from his classmates (probably meant to double as a test message to his new number). And most of those probably weren’t sent to him personally. It would be a lot easier to just send them out en masse. He appreciated the thought, but he knew neglecting to read them all would probably make things extremely awkward once the new term began. Smartphones came with their own annoyances.

“There, Aradia’s all wrapped up in waterproof duct tape.”

“…”

“Index, Othinus. We’re having a hotpot tonight. You’re in luck because I happen to know a secret: make sukiyaki with chicken and you have a dinner that’s both cheap and luxurious!”

“Yay, we get sukiyaki tonight!!”

“Sigh. What’s this about, human? Trying to take revenge on those cooking shows you kept glaring at when you didn’t have any money? Let your feelings dictate your purchases and you won’t notice how much you’re spending.”

“Shut up, Othinus! I don’t need any ominous warnings first thing in the year. I’ll be fine. I set the TV to record all the New Year’s cooking specials they were running, so I have a treasure trove of recipes to try out! I swear I’ll work through them all by the end of winter break. I’m through feeling poor!!!”

“Wait, wait, wait!! I am not letting you forget about me with all this household talk! You have someone lying on your floor in a duct tape cocoon and I am not letting you accept that as normal!!”

The victory prize he wasn’t sure what to do with started thrashing about on the floor.

Alice Anotherbible was back in Academy City. She had said goodbye during the clash with the dark side, but here she was already. Ignoring her verbal promise like that could be seen as the innocence of a child, but he sensed something more concerning there.

Alice’s sudden appearance seemed to link together some unnatural fragments of issues he had noticed.

Kamijou thought back to the bizarre scene at the District 12 shrine where he had run into Misaka Mikoto, Shirai Kuroko, that ringlets girl, and ''someone else.'' He recalled all those emas wishing for personal ruin instead of success. And the ringlets girl who had abandoned all intention to pass her entrance exams even though it was January of her last year in middle school.

The social phenomenon had been dubbed kotatsu syndrome and it was apparently connected to the Winter Cleaning at the end of the year.

Students didn’t want to study and adults wanted to goof off instead of working.

(Could it be?)

Kamijou Touma recalled something else.

Transcendents had directly clashed in Shibuya on December 31. Their spells had been a threat, but something else had carried just as much danger: their powerful charisma as an individual and the crowd manipulated by it.

Aradia had used the witch’s Sabbat and the Bologna Succubus had used the witch hunt.

(Should I assume this kotatsu syndrome comes from one of the Transcendents using something similar?)

Alice, for example.

Hadn’t the Winter Cleaning occurred the exact same day as her first visit to Academy City?

(No, there isn’t any real evidence of a connection there.)

The Transcendents had the dangerous ability to manipulate large groups, but he didn’t know if it was something they consciously used or something that happened on its own. And it was possible there was another self-indulgent Transcendent in the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Could he really point at the obvious suspect and insist she had to be the culprit?

He felt like he was falling into that trap.

“…”

At the same time, could he safely return Aradia to the Bridge Builders Cabal after defeating her once already?

How much could he trust Alice if she accepted Aradia back with a smile and insisted he had nothing to worry about?

He couldn’t handle Aradia on his own, but he was honestly ''afraid'' to return her to Alice and the others.

He asked himself why he felt so much fear and unease about Alice Anotherbible.

Hadn’t she saved him when they first met?

On the way back, they had stopped at a supermarket and bought plenty of ingredients, so now he transferred them from their foam packs to metal or plastic trays and put them away in the different compartments in the fridge. Othinus spoke from his shoulder in the middle of the work.

“You couldn’t do a thing about Alice and her ilk back there.”

“Victory for me means fighting without causing any collateral damage, which wasn’t possible there.”

Of course, something had happened when he ran into Alice without warning. Especially since he was escorting around Aradia after defeating her. Anyone who wanted to prevent Aradia from leaking any cabal secrets would see her as a target.

Kamijou had put his old folk’s smartphone in his pocket. He had no choice but to give up on the GPS tracker.

Alice hadn’t been alone.

She had been flanked by a pair of Transcendents. One was Good, Old Mary who he had seen in Shibuya on the 31st. The other was someone new to him. The magician was a black-haired young man wearing a tailcoat and holding a black cane, making him look like a butler.

Kamijou’s side hadn’t been entirely powerless. They included Grimoire Library Index, the Sisters, and several Tokiwadai elites: the #3 Railgun, the Judgment girl who could teleport, the ringlets 3rd year, and ''someone else.'' Kamijou himself was a Level 0, but those girls belonged to a prestigious esper development school, so they would be able to resolve most any trouble without his help.

But how much did that matter in this case?

He couldn’t stop having a very bad feeling about what could have happened if a battle had broken out there. If the Transcendents flanking Alice hadn’t deterred everyone with ''killer intent so thick it was stifling'' or if that hadn’t been enough to stop the Tokiwadai girls, what might Alice have done on a whim?

Could Kamijou’s hand have stopped that?

In Shibuya, the Bologna Succubus had said he was the only person capable of controlling Alice, but ''was that really true''?

''“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

That line stuck with him.

The gloomy young butler’s words would not leave Kamijou’s mind.

Strangely, he had trouble remembering ''who'' the young man had been speaking to.

Alice herself had looked confused. He was pretty sure she had spread her arms to welcome them.

However…

''“Peeking inside this girl’s mind will only trap you in a psychedelic world. Alice’s world is like a bottomless pit that can bring only tragedy to those who experience it.”

If the young butler hadn’t casually grabbed Alice’s collar and stopped her, she might have run over to Kamijou.

Alice’s group hadn’t forced Kamijou to do anything.

They hadn’t even demanded he hand over the witch goddess.

That was another way of saying they felt confident they could take her back by force if necessary. Kamijou wasn’t even worthy of a seat at the negotiating table with them.

Most likely, only Alice’s group and any others worthy of the Transcendent title would find a seat there.

What did someone need to do to earn that title?

Kamijou hadn’t a clue, so he doubted he was anywhere close.

“…”

“Touma, where’s the meat?”

“Hold on. Using a knife to remove the small clumps of blood from the jaw is the secret to making good chicken.”

He switched his focus and pulled an earthenware pot and a frying pan from the shelf. For sukiyaki, you couldn’t just place it on the stove. Some ingredients needed to be seasoned first and some needed to be pre-cooked to ensure they weren’t undercooked.

With expensive, thin-cut beef, it was apparently best to cook it in a frying pan, but they were using chicken (which was pretty dangerous if undercooked). That tasted best if you submerged it at the bottom of the pot.

“Alice said something about a consulate, didn’t she?”

“She doesn’t seem like anything more than a kid, so I doubt she came up with that idea on her own. My guess is visiting Academy City every time she wants to play sounded like a pain, so she innocently asked for a secret base here. Then those Transcendents made it a reality. Sweating all the while at the thought of disappointing her.”

Most likely, no one knew how many bases the Bridge Builders Cabal had around the world. To them, this may have only felt like adding one more to the list.

(Come to think of it, Aradia and the Bologna Succubus must have a home country somewhere out there. That’s really hard to imagine.)

“A consulate. Hey, Othinus, how bad is that?”

“A consulate built without mutual trust between the two countries is even more dangerous than a blackhole. Listen, human. No one can investigate inside a consulate. Even if someone steals something from an Academy City museum or steals some kind of information, they’re untouchable if they hide in the consulate until they find a way to escape outside the city. The Transcendents can take whatever they want from the city, load it into their car with a diplomatic license plate, and carry it to the consulate and then stop worrying. Because no one can investigate further.”

“…”

“At the same time, Academy City can no longer refuse to keep people or items from being transported from outside the city and into the consulate. Magicians used to have to nervously sneak over the city walls, but no longer. Now those dangerous magicians can strut on in.”

There was a process for deporting people like that, but that was all there was. Demanding they leave wasn’t the same as trying them for a crime and deportation had to be issued by name. According to Othinus, the entire process was meaningless against Alice’s Transcendents since no one knew their real names and nationalities.

That meant they couldn’t catch these mystery people red-handed and boot them out.

Diplomacy always required paperwork, even when that meant ignoring the reality before your eyes.

So even if Academy City’s leadership said “Alice must leave”, the consulate could point to a part-timer they hired, say “that’s Alice”, and give her some pittance to make up for being deported. All while the real Alice Anotherbible walked freely around Academy City. Everyone would know it wasn’t right, but that was how it went with paperwork. It was powerless against people whose appearance and name weren’t found in any database.

Who was this Transcendent named Alice?

Was that her real name or one of many pseudonyms? Was she human, or was she something else?

Did anyone have a clear answer to these questions?

Anyone at all?

It was nice having something to keep busy with. Without the familiar meal preparations, Kamijou may have been crushed by his worries.

“Hey, Index! The pot is ready to go, so clear off the kotatsu and place down a pot stand.”

“But my job is to eat, eat, sleep, and eat!”

“Just help out some, you freeloader!”

In the Kamijou household, they used an induction cooker instead of a gas-powered portable stove. Why was obvious. With the kind of misfortune Kamijou was accustomed to, he just knew having a portable gas cartridge around could only lead to misfortune.

“Not that the induction cooker is perfectly safe. Use it too horribly wrong and the power cable could start a fire.”

“Could you not, Othinus!? I don’t need any ominous trivia to start off my year!”

Since it was New Year’s, he gave the calico kitty his usual cat food plus a liquid pet treat known as Muru.

Even this sukiyaki was just another variation on his usual cheap cooking. And sukiyaki stock was one of the three great cheap seasonings, right alongside eel sauce and matsutake soup.

“Here are bowls for everyone, here’s an egg, and use these chopsticks for searching through the pot. I’m not making any zosui to finish it off. I have rice and udon separated out, so create your own universe in your bowl, while building up to whatever you want to eat last. Okay, let’s get started!”

“Yay, it’s all you can eat!!”

“No, it’s a hotpot, Index! Don’t go reaching for the rice cooker right away!! How high were planning to pile up your plate!?”

At 15cm, Othinus was shorter than the earthenware pot and reaching inside would mean rock climbing up a hot cliff, so she decided to just steal things from Kamijou’s bowl. He wished she would stop balancing her stomach on the edge of the bowl to lean inside.

But there was still one person unaccounted for.

“…”

Aradia remained a duct tape mummy with her arms bound behind her back and she was glaring hatefully over from the floor. She could sit up on her own using her abs, but she couldn’t do anything about the hands behind her back.

She may have been hungry.

“So, Othinus, what do we do about Aradia?”

“Why ask me? Isn’t solving magical problems that British grimoire library’s job?”

“She’s too busy chowing down on nothing but meat and rice to be any help. Index!! Chicken breasts are admittedly cheaper than pork or beef, but it’s still meat. That’s a luxury item, so make sure you chew thoroughly and actually savor it! How are you swallowing it down so fast!? Chicken isn’t a drink!!!”

The TV was on, but no one was really watching as a comedian made a fool of himself in nothing but briefs. It was a traditional New Year’s act. The popular middle-aged man was being held back by some younger men when he took a hot piece of shabu-shabu meat to the forehead and writhed around on the floor. Apparently that didn’t set Kamijou off because of the note that the staff would eat it later.

But that aside…

“Say ‘ah’, Aradia.”

“!?”

Aradia’s shoulders noticeably jumped and her face grew red, either from anger or something else.

“Y-you must be joking. I am Transcendent Aradia. I will not accept your condescending charity even if I did lose to you.”

“(Hey, you’re free to refuse, but if you keep shaking your head, a miracle could occur and that hot chicken will end up somewhere other than your mouth. Just like with that briefs guy’s expert comedy act on the TV there.)”

“O-okay, fine!!”

Othinus’s whispered voice switched on Aradia’s desperation mode. She shut her eyes in frustration and opened her trembling lips.

Kamijou wanted to know why this mystery woman looked somewhat embarrassed about nothing more than being fed some meat.

He tilted his head as he resumed feeding her the chicken sukiyaki.

She ate it.

She was suddenly much more obedient. It was cute.

She looked like a mysterious beauty, but he was feeding her like a small child, creating an odd dissonance.

After watching her chew a few times and swallow, he grabbed the next bite with the chopsticks.

“Oh, right. Is there anything you can’t or won’t eat? Any allergies?”

“That would’ve been a great thing to ask ''before'' force-feeding me. But no, nothing like that. Besides, witches get their power from searching the forest for anything with medicinal qualities. You can’t do that if you’re picky about what you eat. Munch, munch, gulp. What was that I just ate? Some kind of gelatin?”

“It was shirataki, a type of konjac.”

“Konjac? I’m not sure what that is either. And what is this white rectangular thing? Please tell me it isn’t a hunk of egg white or butter.”

“It’s tofu. It’s made from soybeans, but I would recommend not looking at what the word literally means. A European who doesn’t know how it’s made would probably react badly to that.”

“Tofu???”

That must have been a difficult word to translate into English and other languages. Her common tones didn’t know what to do with it. There was probably a word for it in other Asian languages, but apparently not in the mother tongue of this goddess of witches who flew brooms through a night sky filled with five-pointed stars.

“Munch, munch. Napa cabbage, tofu, and wheat gluten – if it’s soaked up some flavor – are all so good! Yum!”

Kamijou must have assumed it would all be fine since Index devoured it all without issue. But you couldn’t trust that demon lord of gluttony’s tastes because, when she was hungry, she would chew up and eat unpopped popcorn. (Warning: This is a good way to chip your teeth☆)

Aradia had a curious look as she chewed on the food given to her by the chopsticks. Feeding a beautiful young woman a mystery food was one hell of a situation when he actually thought about it. Take that in a cruel direction and it could be foreshadowing for the shocking ending of a SF movie or a psychological horror novel.

She may have trusted him enough to know he wasn’t the type to engage in that sort of deception, even if they had been enemies to begin with.

“Now this I know. It’s an onion.”

“What do you call these long ones in English? I know you just use ‘onion’ for the round ones.”

“I think the closest term is scallion.”

“Why does that sound like the codename for a new surface-to-air missile?”

That may have been one sort of cultural difference.

Like how the English word “carrot” sounded weirdly cute to him.

“Witches use onions a lot. Along with garlic and ginger, they’re one of the standard medicinal plants used as a starting point for a variety of medicines.”

Was she pointing out that real witches didn’t just use plants that had legs and screamed when you pulled them from the ground?

“Onions are medicinal?”

“You can use them for just about anything. For example, you can use onions and tomatoes to create a rare medicine that foolish royals and nobles are willing to buy with a hunk of gold 10 times its size.”

“(You’re talking about a witch’s aphrodisiac, aren’t you? You clearly don’t know how dense this human is if you think that sort of subtle sexual harassment is going to get a reaction.)”

“?”

Kamijou was confused.

He couldn’t keep up with this discussion between a Magic God and a Transcendent.

Aradia fidgeted while still tied up. The pointy-haired boy figured that meant she wanted more food, so he grabbed some more onion from his own bowl instead of the large pot and carried the chopsticks to her mouth.

“Onions as medicine, huh? Weird how you can find these connections anywhere.”

“Onion and ginger is one of the standard medicines for minor things like colds.”

“Ah ha ha. Oh, you mean that thing about sticking a green onion up your ass when you have a cold?”

The instant he mentioned that Japanese tradition, Cocoon Aradia hit him with a drop kick.

She must not have appreciated that particular idea while she was trying to eat.

===Part 3===

It was time to face the biggest problem: bath time.

“So, um, I’m not sure why you think you even need to discuss this?” said Aradia, feeling a headache coming on. “The answer is simple: remove all this duct tape and let me take a bath.”

Kamijou, Index, and Othinus exchanged a glance.

“Yeah, but we all know you’re running away the instant we remove the duct tape from your hands and feet.”

“You might try to fight back.”

“You’re a Transcendent. If we screw this up, you might destroy an entire city or country in retaliation.”

For some reason, Othinus’s comment was a lot more sadistic than the others.

They only had to look at it realistically.

First of all, Aradia was the Transcendent who had caused such a major panic in Shibuya. Removing the duct tape from the hands behind her back and from around her ankles could mean returning her power to her.

“Yet here you are coming up with excuses to get that duct tape off.”

“It’s not an excuse. Am I the only one who thinks this is a perfectly reasonable request?”

“If we do remove them, then I’ll have to suppress your power with Imagine Breaker. Which means you would have to take your bath with me holding your hand throughout.”

“You expect me to share that tiny bathroom with a stranger?”

Othinus was grinning her face off for some reason.

“Close the shower curtain to hide the tub and you’ll be fine. Barring any freak accidents with lewd results, of course.”

“Don’t you dare jinx me like that! Oh, no! I can just imagine the horrific fate that awaits me 10 minutes from now!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

Apparently not letting her take a bath today was simply not an option. She was a young woman after all. Index’s snapping jaws had a hair trigger, but not even she protested that one.

Which meant…

“I guess you’ll have to take a bath with the duct tape still on your hands and feet. It’s the only safe way.”

“Throw me in the tub like that and you’ll have a nasty drowned corpse on your hands!”

“Let me finish.” Kamijou grabbed a random towel. “You stay tied up and someone else washes you off with a wet towel.”

Aradia quaked at that suggestion.

Her face really did pale.

“Don’t tell me you’re volunteering for that job! There is only so far you can push this unintentional sexual harassment bit and make it believable! Please listen to me!”

“We’re only still having this conversation because you nixed the idea of me being in the bath with you, so calm down that overactive imagination, you pervert witch.”

His rational rebuttal led the goddess to start thrashing about on the floor. It wasn’t very frightening when she was in duct tape cocoon, but who knows what she would do if he let his guard down and she broke free of her restraints. He would be dead for sure.

Kamijou handed the towel to someone else: a confused Index.

“Look, she’ll be doing it. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Aradia reluctantly grumbled.

Now, was she aware that when presented with two negative options and asked to choose the lesser of two evils, it was common to make sure one of those options was a non-starter? Was she aware it was a negotiating tactic to present someone with something they would never, ever choose and then present them with a less-objectionable option you actually wanted them to accept?

Yes, Aradia lost sight of something important when she focused only on the fact that this option was better than having to bathe with a boy like Kamijou.

It didn’t occur to her that she had just agreed to have someone rub all over her body while she was tied up and unable to do anything about it.

This was the result.

“Ah hya hya hya hya!? Wait! Wait a second! Don’t stick your hand there! Hee, hee hee! Please can’t you be a little gentler!?”

“Shut up and sit still.”

Half an hour later, Aradia languidly crawled out of the bathroom with her skin squeaky clean and the full length of her silver hair washed.

“K-kill me,” said the bound Transcendent between gasping breaths. “Someone please kill me.”

“Hey, Othinus. Why did Aradia take so much damage from this?”

“About the last thing a witch wants is to be helpless in the hands of servant of their nemesis – the Christian Church. It made for a very amusing show, though.”

It was past 10 at night.

The TV remained on and it was shifting to the late night programming. In this case, that still meant a New Year’s comedy special, but one for lesser-known comedians who started out on the stage or online videos. Kamijou had basically been awake since the 31st, so he was already sleepy.

Index didn’t need a bath since she had just taken one with Aradia, but…

“I think I’ll only take a shower. I’m too tired for a full bath. What about you, Othinus?”

“I will not be deprived. Fill a washbasin with bathwater so I can relax.”

“Sure, sure. Yawn. Afterwards, we can drink this and then get to sleep.”

Index and Othinus gave him puzzled looks.

“It’s amazake,” he said, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “This is about the only time you get to drink it.”

Now.

Witch Goddess Aradia, the embodiment of Wicca, was a magician who extracted the medicinal properties of all the plants, animals, and minerals found in the forest and converted them into her spells. If she was resistant to medicines, it would reduce the efficacy of her spells. Being highly sensitive to any form of drug was useful both for using your own medicines sand for revealing the methods used by enemy witches.

The problem was that Kamijou only learned this fact once it was too late.

A cup of amazake made without sake lees was perfectly fine for a high schooler to drink, but it had a disastrous result for Aradia.

“Hic. Wuhhh?”

“Wait, are you kidding me!? Aradia’s face is bright red!!!” screamed Kamijou when he saw Aradia’s shoulders shaking with each “hic”.

This made no sense. It wasn’t even an issue of a small amount of alcohol having an exaggerated effect on her. This kind was completely nonalcoholic, so why in the world was Aradia losing control of herself!?

Othinus sighed from her spot atop the kotatsu.

“This isn’t about anything real – it’s the placebo effect. In other words, assumptions are more powerful than any of you humans. Although if she could consciously control this, it would be an excellent weapon for a potion-making witch.”

“Looks to me more like Tipsy Aradia-san is the one being controlled!”

“Hence the ‘if she could consciously control this’ part, human. Harnessing assumptions rarely ever works because it’s a lot like tricking yourself into thinking you’ve become a vessel for a god and then losing yourself in it. Be careful here. Her self-hypnosis is strong enough to physically intoxicate her with a nonalcoholic drink, so a false pregnancy is well within her abilities.”

Aradia herself seemed oblivious to their whispered conversation. She remained limply seated on the wooden flooring – with her legs turned to one side in what some call mermaid mode – staring off into empty space and swaying side to side.

“Nya. Nya, nya, nya, nyaaa♪”

“Now she’s singing.”

“Hey, you. If you’re gonna tie me up, at least have the decency to look after me. I’m the goddess of all witches, so you’re supposed to be serving me, dammit. Hic.”

“And now she’s leaning against me!? Gwahhh!!”

“Trying the begging for attention plan, huh?”

“This happened with Alice and the Bologna Succubus too. Is every Transcendent such a free spirit? Now I know for sure Aradia is too dangerous to free from that duct tape!!”

She was causing this much trouble with her hands tied behind her back. All it took was swaying to the side for her to more or less tackle Kamijou onto his back and fall asleep while the two of them drew out a cross on the floor. Body Press Witch Aradia was apparently the kind to gain a lot of energy when she drank but use it all up almost immediately. In other words, she was the most annoying type of person who would cause all sorts of trouble and then have someone else clean up afterwards.

As a nun, Index was having trouble deciding if she should give into her reflexive urge to bite.

“Grr. Touma, where should we let her sleep?”

“Dammit, this is such a royal pain,” groaned Kamijou on his back.

The usual arrangement was Index in the living room and Kamijou in the bathroom, but where was drunk Aradia supposed to go? In her current state, he didn’t want to leave her anywhere.

After crawling out from under her, Kamijou grabbed her under the arms and dragged her along the wooden flooring.

“People are so heavy. Hmm, I’m thinking the closet.”

“I know you want to close her up in a space with walls and a door cutting her off from everyone else, human, but tying a woman up with duct tape and stuffing her in your closet sounds a lot like robbing her of what this world calls human rights.”

As drunk as she was, Aradia didn’t put up any kind of resistance. In her current state, she probably wouldn’t complain if she was placed aboard a slave ship, so he had no trouble shoving her inside the small closet.

“Sigh. Now I can rest easy.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he heard a heavy thud from the closed closet. Followed by the drunk woman groaning.

“Ugh.”

“This is safe, isn’t it? Her mysterious Transcendent magic isn’t going to run wild and squash the entire dorm building while we sleep, is it? Y’know, like mille-feuille when you use your fork wrong.”

“Touma, don’t talk about food before bed. You’ll make me hungry.”

“This is a boy’s dorm, but you have three girls here – including me – plus a cat when pets aren’t allowed. Scary that you can get away with this at a school dorm. What are Academy City’s adults even doing?”

===Part 4===

It had been one hell of a day, so Kamijou had trouble getting to sleep after closing himself in the bathroom. He was tired, but couldn’t sleep. Or to put it another way, his body was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t settle down. That drowsy state would mean any sleep he did get was shallow and it could lead to the amusing sleep phenomena of weird dreams and sleep paralysis.

He thought he saw Aradia in his dream.

He couldn’t be certain since he didn’t remember the dream. It was possible he had seen someone else who his mind had decided was similar to Aradia. Then he started wondering if that qualified as his first dream of the year.

At any rate, the next thing he knew, his phone’s alarm was ringing to tell him morning had arrived to his windowless bathroom.

Before he realized he could have switched off the alarm since it was winter break, he noticed a strangely soft and smooth sensation. And it came from below the blanket.

“Um!?”

Index or Othinus would never do this. And with the bathroom locked from the inside, the nocturnal calico cat couldn’t have stopped by to play. Besides, Sphinx was the fluffy type.

That left only one possible suspect.

“Aradi-”

“Nope. You’re wrong, teacher☆”

He really did jump.

His entire body trembled a few times and the small girl below the blanket laughed excitedly like she had found a new piece of playground equipment at the park.

This was Alice Anotherbible.

The blonde girl of around 12 looked like she had stepped right out of a children’s book.

What was she doing here!? How had she gotten in!? The front door and the bathroom’s door were both locked! Sure, their first meeting had been similar, but he couldn’t accept something so absurd just because there was a precedent!!!

On January 2, his morning began with a Transcendent who could determine what happened to his life and the fate of the world.

“Eh? What in the world is going on here?”

“Boo. The girl worked hard to get up early to visit you, teacher.”

“Visit me why?”

“For New Year’s money!!

“Noooooo!!!” shouted Kamijou. He shouldn’t have asked. He felt like he had just opened Pandora’s box, but he couldn’t say no when Alice was actually small enough to be the right age to be begging like this. And she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed foreigner(?), so he couldn’t send her away without letting her experience Japanese culture first.

“Ugh, dammit. Here, Alice. Happy New Year’s. I hope you don’t mind I don’t have a bag to put it in.”

“Yay! This was the girl’s first time!!”

An extremely disconcerting phrase was transmitted from a boy’s dorm bathroom first thing in the morning. And Kamijou was really starting to wonder why a high school boy kept having to give out New Year’s money. Wasn’t he still the age to be receiving it?

The girl wore an apron over a blue dress.

She stuck her head out from the blanket and smiled at him inside the bathtub.

“Everyone was too busy yesterday, but things have settled down enough to invite you over today. Come visit the girl’s secret base!!”

“…”

He wasn’t sure how to react.

The Bridge Builders Cabal Academy City Consulate probably did seem like a fun secret base for Alice who stood at the center of it all, but was going there really safe? According to Othinus, Academy City’s rules didn’t apply inside the consulate – even if a crime was committed.

But he couldn’t let the conversation die here either.

Nothing would get any better if he always chose the safest option.

Kumokawa Seria’s GPS tracker was no longer useful now that Alice had come to Academy City. And she had done so on a whim. If she suddenly got bored and decided to leave, there would be no tracking her down a second time.

Whatever her reasons, it was a miracle to even have Alice with him.

He was also worried about what would happen to Aradia. What would Alice’s cabal do with a defeated Transcendent? The answer to that question would greatly affect how he felt about Alice.

After some thought, Kamijou made a decision.

“Fine. Show me to your secret base.”

“''Boo.''”

Alice’s voice suddenly dropped in tone.

That may have been a dangerous sign.

He hadn’t said anything wrong, but he belatedly realized she hadn’t liked the short pause – less than a second – before he answered. Small children could be sensitive to those subtle clues.

“But whatever.”

“Alice, um, have you had breakfast?”

“The girl has eaten.”

Alice finally crawled out from Kamijou’s blanket.

He left the bathroom with her and checked in the closet. Aradia was still tied up and stuffed in the cramped space and her eyelids fluttered open.

“Ugh? What am I doing in here? Wait, where am I?”

She appeared to still be half asleep. It was probably best not to tell her what had happened last night.

Meanwhile…

“?”

Kamijou looked down at Alice and she tilted her head.

If she were here to silence Aradia, she could have done so at her leisure before entering Kamijou’s bathroom, but she hadn’t. Could he take that as a good sign?

Index and Othinus were waking up now, so he had to fix breakfast for them.

“Touma, are we having bread or rice today?”

“Another one appeared overnight!? Human, explain yourself!”

Unlike last night’s hotpot, their breakfast of toast, fried eggs, and salad didn’t match the New Year’s mood in the slightest, but the next thing he knew, Alice had joined them. She had supposedly already eaten, but there she was spreading chocolate paste on a piece of toast. Like Index, she would eat any food put in front of her.

“The District 2 Firearm Museum has opened a historical weapons exhibit to help us learn from the past,” said the TV. “This is a valuable opportunity to directly touch a real Acht-Acht or PIAT under the supervision of museum personnel.”

“Ooh, wow.”

“Alice, stop leaning toward the TV and look what you’re doing. You’re spreading that chocolate paste all over the kotatsu!”

Unfortunately, this meant Kamijou had to look after someone else too.

“Aradia, do you want butter on your toast? Or would you prefer strawberry jam?”

“…”

“Get ready cause we’re doing this again. Say, ‘ah’.”

“I feel like I’ve woken up to find I’m still living my nightmare…munch.”

While Kamijou took care of Aradia (whose hands were tied behind her back) like her caregiver, he felt a powerful gaze on him.

Alice was moving just her upper body in some warmup exercises while keeping the rest of her under one corner of the kotatsu.

“The girl wants to do that too. Hm, hm.”

“You mean…being duct taped up?”

“No☆”

She smiled and sent a tiny punch toward the clueless boy’s shoulder.

The physical blow hit Kamijou, but it was Aradia’s butt that lifted about 3cm off the floor when she saw it.

“The girl means the food! The girl wants you to feed her! Everything tastes better when you can have fun with it!!”

Kamijou wasn’t sure if she actually wanted this or just wanted to mimic what she saw the others doing, but he had no real reason to refuse her and he ended up feeding Alice her toast.

“Munch, munch. We can go after eating this.”

“…”

“Go to the girl’s secret base – the consulate in District 12!!”

===Part 5===

They were both part of winter break, but January 1 and 2 felt subtly different.

The 2nd was something of an in-between time, where everything was calmer with the shrine visiting over. The 3rd and 4th may have been busier again with people starting to head back home, but that wasn’t here yet. Convenience stores and gyudon shops were open on New Year’s nowadays, but the beginning-of-the-year vacation mood still seemed crammed into January 2 more than any other day. Kamijou couldn’t be sure though, since he didn’t remember any of the previous years.

After making sure the windows were shut and the gas was off, Kamijou, Index (with cat on head), and Alice left the dorm room.

“What did you even eat after leaving last time?”

“Heh heh. Good, Old Mary made the girl the classic: turkey, fries, and a fluffy chiffon cake!!”

“Touma.”

“Stop. Please don’t store up a long list of requests in your perfect memory.”

When Index was given unnecessary ideas like this, she would start demanding he fix it for her. That wasn’t so bad with a cooking show that taught you how to make something an amateur could manage, but she reacted the same way when she watched a gourmet show that introduced some delicious brand-name dish from a fancy restaurant in a big city.

And he just knew the next two days of his relaxing break would be ruined by this.

“(Hey, human.)”

“(I’d like to say I know what you’re getting at, but I doubt I can assess the risk on the level of a war god.)”

To start with, he could not refuse Alice’s invitation. If he explained his reasons why, she might give up on the idea, but who knows what the Transcendents trying to keep her in a good mood would do afterwards.

They might kill someone, take a hostage, or even destroy half of Academy City.

If things got that serious and then every single Transcendent showed up asking him to play with Alice, he would be entirely out of his league.

At the same time, he could not carelessly leave Aradia behind.

Taking her to the Bridge Builders Cabal’s base was a bad idea, but they already knew where his dorm was. If he left her to hold down the fort (in her duct tape cocoon), there was a decent chance of another Transcendent attacking the dorm room.

Was this the right answer?

Had he really not overlooked anything?

Alice’s whims played as big a role as the cabal’s interests and plans, so he doubted any amount of thinking would be enough.

“It is so nice to get some fresh air,” sighed Aradia after they rode the run-down elevator to the ground floor. Then she glared hatefully down at her own left hand. Needless to say, it was still tightly held by Imagine Breaker. “Now I just need to do something about this.”

“Yeah, if only keeping you in your duct tape cocoon and carrying you around bandit style wouldn’t gather so much unwanted attention. I need to research an easier and less conspicuous method of carrying you around. Maybe one of those dollies delivery workers use for bigger packages?”

“You do realize there are better alternatives than carrying me around, don’t you!?”

Aradia bristled, but they must have looked like a couple teasing each other. An old lady walking her dog smiled at them and Kamijou ended up exchanging New Year’s greetings with a stranger.

But…

“Boo. Why does Aradia get all the fun?” said Alice on his other side.

Before he could say a thing, the small girl tackled into him from the side and grabbed at his left arm.

“Hee hee. This hand belongs to the girl!”

“Um, Alice?”

“?”

She looked up and smiled at him like she always did. She didn’t seem to notice Index wandering side to side, unsure where to go. The cat was struggling not to fall off her head.

“Alice…you are Alice, aren’t you?” hesitantly asked Kamijou.

“Eh heh heh☆”

She wiggled ticklishly for some reason. It may have been a bashful response to him saying her name so many times.

Based on that, this did seem to be the Alice he knew.

This was the mysterious but reliable girl who had used her power to protect everyone on December 29 when the dark side threatened to engulf everything. He hadn’t known if he would see her again when she left with Anna Sprengel. If nothing else had happened, he might have hugged her and wept with joy at this reunion.

But…

“…”

He felt a tremor.

It came from the other side than Alice. So from Aradia on his right. Transcendent Aradia had caused so much trouble in Shibuya on December 31, but she was trembling like a small child afraid to go home because she thought her parents would scold her.

It was so unusual and wrong that he couldn’t just ignore it.

Alice Anotherbible.

Even the kind Bologna Succubus had called Alice a tyrant, but what exactly did the girl carry inside her?

“Touma. Are we taking a train again?”

“I can hardly believe it, but yes. And to think I was broke at the end of last year. Hwa ha ha! I can afford normal expenses again!”

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a new headquarters.

The mysterious consulate was in District 12, so they only had to pay 200 yen at the subway to get there.

“Tah dah!! This is the place!” said Alice with a huge smile, hopping in excitement with no concern for her skirt.

The place would have stood out in any other district, but it fit right in among the giant pyramids, five-story pagodas, and other structures that made District 12 feel like an amusement park.

Past a grassy garden larger than a soccer field was a gate leading to a white marble building resembling an amusement park castle. But it wasn’t built according to a specific style like gothic or something-or-other garden. None of it felt real, so the entire space felt like part of an amusement park. If you had to describe it, it was a white mansion similar to the White House but with pointy towers added on without any sort of pattern. It wasn’t even symmetrical.

According to Alice, the white building in the center was called a tower despite not being all that tall. In a castle, that was where the lord’s living area and the administrative functions were concentrated. It was known as the keep, or in French, the donjon.

Were those roses in bloom? It sure looked like a red rose garden at first, but a closer inspection showed them to be white artificial flowers painted red. The place was still being prepared, so some areas had been left incomplete. On that note, castles and temples normally took more than a century to build just by stacking up the stones, so how did they get this built so quickly without anyone noticing?

Roses.

Painted from white to red.

Were the out-of-season honeybees the result of agricultural selective breeding? They were colored black and yellow.

Hadn’t he seen that coloration when fighting in deserted Los Angeles?

“…”

A relevant question came to mind, but Kamijou shook his head. He had directly clashed with R&C Occultics and Anna Sprengel a few times, but the worst thing to do when your life was on the line was assume you knew everything already. For magic expertise, he had Index and Othinus with him. And he had Alice and Aradia from the Bridge Builders Cabal with him too. Instead of making assumptions based on his imagination, he was far better off speaking with them and seeing what useful information they had.

And in fact, Othinus – a god of war, magic, and deception – had noticed something he hadn’t.

“(They call it a consulate, but it’s built like a fortress or like a castle built on the front lines. So did they openly build themselves a bridgehead inside enemy territory?)”

“Oh?”

A young man in the garden noticed them while pointing out where the delivery workers should set up the giant sculptures wrapped in packaging and cushioning.

He had black hair and wore a tailcoat. He even wore an old-fashioned black cloak.

He was still young(?), but he held a smooth, glossy black cane.

The young butler had a somehow gloomy air to him.

“I know you couldn’t exactly escape when Alice came for you personally, but I still can’t believe you showed up. And bringing our own Aradia with you? That I didn’t expect at all.”

“Who are you?”

“H. T. Trismegistus.” The young butler pulled a leather notebook from his pocket. “Come to think of it, I didn’t introduce myself yesterday, did I? As common sense would tell you, I am a Transcendent.”

He did not offer to shake hands. Whether or not that was due to the notebook was unclear.

He too was a member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. That meant he was one of the special magicians who held meetings with the other Transcendents to discuss how to change the world for the better. That meant he would be less than fond of Kamijou who – they believed – was capable of guiding Alice’s whims.

Index frowned and repeated something under her breath.

“''Trismegistus''?”

“Yes!! H. T. Trismegistus is amazing. He makes the best tea in the world. He also folds the girl’s clothes and puts her shoes away!”

“You should really be able to handle that much on your own, Alice.”

Even as he said that, the young butler kneeled and cleaned off some mud that got on Alice’s skirt as she hopped around. He wiped it off with a handkerchief, applied detergent, dried it with a dryer, and even ironed it.

But…wait?

Where did all of that stuff come from???

“(Don’t freak out yet, human. A stage magician could do that. He could have multiple storage cases hidden inside that cloak like a tackle box or a pop-up book.)”

“Um, are you Alice’s tutor?”

“Heavens no. I am no more than one of her servants. I wouldn’t dream of holding that much influence over my beloved master.”

H. T. Trismegistus answered the grimoire library’s gaze with no more than a meaningful smile.

There was one thing Kamijou had wanted to ask the next time he met a Transcendent. He hadn’t wanted to ask Alice because he got the feeling her answer would change based on what she thought he wanted to hear.

“Wh-where is the Bologna Succubus? Is she alright?”

“She is inside. But common sense says she should be allowed to rest for the time being.”

That was a relief…or was it?

Was this H. T. Trismegistus one of the Rescuers or one of the Killers?

The young butler welcomed back Alice while indicating the consulate with a sweep of his arm.

“Everyone is familiar with Alice and her tea party, but in the original story, it is held at a house in the woods. But outside the house, not inside it. But common sense says the real highlight of the setting arrives with the Queen of Hearts shouting to have everyone executed. There is nothing better than the queen’s castle or the courtroom.”

Kamijou felt like a dull, invisible object was slowly stabbing into his chest.

He ended up holding Aradia’s hand tight. She took it as some kind of sign and gave him a wordless, wide-eyed look, but he hadn’t meant it that way.

Executed.

And a courtroom.

What did the Bridge Builders Cabal intend to do with Aradia after her defeat? He still didn’t know why they had come to Academy City. If it was a whim of Alice’s, there might not be any real reason, but that didn’t mean they would ignore a potential information leak like Aradia.

Alice, being Alice, smiled like she wasn’t concerned about any of that.

“H. T. Trismegistus! The girl wants to show her teacher around her secret base! But just looking around would be boring!! Do you know a fun game we could play? You know, like a treasure hunt or something else where everyone can see the whole place while playing!!”

“Ah ha ha,” laughed the young butler as he pulled out several movie pamphlets and TRPG rulebooks. Those paper booklets had to be heavy with so many of them.

“Common sense says you only need to speak this magic phrase: ‘I will grant my whole inheritance to whosoever reveals every one of my secrets.’ ”

“Ohh, that sounds like fun. Then should the girl share her power with the winner? You’re the best, H. T. Trismegistus!”

“Not at all. It is merely my job to gently support my master by granting her every wish.”

“Then I’ll give them a whole half!!”

“Hold on,” interrupted a graceful woman’s voice.

Kamijou realized someone else was already standing next to Alice. The woman wore a maternity dress and a wide-brimmed hat that covered her eyes. That was Good, Old Mary, one of the Transcendents, and she was currently pinching and slightly stretching one of Alice’s small cheeks.

“Alice really would give someone half of the planet while in this sort of mood, so if you see her start on something like that, please stop her even if you have to physically restrain her.”

“Eh? Um, you mean me? You’re telling me to do that?” said Kamijou.

“''Mama is only asking an outsider because none of us can do it.''”

That sent a tension similar to static electricity through them all. The Transcendents, Index, and Othinus all carefully observed Kamijou and Alice.

“?”

Even the cat instinctually sensed something was amiss and put up his guard, but Alice herself tilted her head and then grabbed Kamijou’s arm again.

He was afraid to say anything.

He had temporarily captured Aradia, but he had been helpless against her on the 31st. He had been killed more than once and had only barely pulled off a victory thanks to two Transcendents providing assistance that felt like cheating.

What if he was thrown out onto the battlefield with no assistance this time?

Or what if several Transcendents attacked him at once?

Or what if Alice turned on him???

He had no idea when he would be killed or by whom, but he couldn’t predict what the other Transcendents would do if he turned down Alice’s invitation. He worked to organize what information he had while asking some questions.

“So is this consulate about that stuff the Bologna Succubus was telling me about? You know, about the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal being split between a group that wants to rescue me and one that wants to kill me?”

“Uh, oh,” gasped H. T. Trismegistus.

The young butler’s gaze lowered to young Alice.

She silently and emotionlessly tilted her head.

And she spoke.

“''What. Is. He. Talking. About?''”

“Gasp!?”

Kamijou opened his eyes.

He shook his head several times and stood up.

Only then did he realize he had been collapsed on the grass.

(What? Eh? Wait. What happened? What in the world just happened!?)

He checked his old folk’s smartphone to find time had skipped forward by about 10 minutes.

No.

''What had happened'' immediately after Alice Anotherbible spoke in such a low voice? Kamijou at least seemed to have lost consciousness at that point.

He took a look around.

H. T. Trismegistus had seemed so above it all, but he had fallen onto his rear with his cane a good distance away from him. Where it had come from was a mystery, but in his panic, he had produced an entirely useless life jacket which he clutched in his arms like a stuffed animal.

For some reason, Good, Old Mary was trying not to look in that direction.

After sensing a tremor shaking and a sweet aroma, Kamijou realized Aradia was holding onto him from the side. Just like a small child afraid to let go of her teddy bear after having a nightmare.

Index and Othinus had to be around there somewhere. Probably doing their best to hide in one of the large garden’s flower beds or shrubberies.

Alice alone remained on her feet.

Her head was still tilted and she spoke in her usual tone again.

“You were saying?”

“Yes! Yes!! We’re all good friends here!! Common sense says we would never be so rude to an important guest!!”

The young butler’s voice was cracking.

The Bologna Succubus had said only Kamijou could guide and control Tyrant Alice. He still didn’t understand what this was all about, but if this was how things worked, he could see why everyone was so afraid of her.

But anyway.

“T-to be clear, our objective is not Kamijou Touma,” said H. T. Trismegistus while trying to catch his breath. “Common sense says we made this direct visit to prevent an information leak. In other words, we are here for ''a fellow Transcendent''.”

“…”

“You heard a lot about us in Shibuya on the 31st, didn’t you? I believe a few Transcendents other than Aradia contacted you. But common sense says this decision cannot be overturned. The Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and even Alice herself have already agreed that the traitor who left our cabal must be punished accordingly. Because these are not false accusations placed upon an innocent’s head.”

“Punished?”

“Correct.”

Someone walked up next to the young butler.

She was a girl of about 15. She had long, wavy blonde hair, brown skin, and a skinny build decorated with thin belts and pure gold ornaments. She reminded Kamijou of Nephthys, but maybe it was his lack of knowledge that made him think of an Egyptian goddess or a dancer when he saw her.

Alice hopped around proudly.

“This is Mut Thebes! She’s a Transcendent just like the girl!!”

They had finally reached the point where he wasn’t even sure what kind of god they were talking about. He at least recognized names like Alice and Mary – ''whether or not the associations he made were accurate'' – but some of the other names like Aradia and Trismegistus meant nothing at all to him.

Since Alice sounded so proud, the young butler went ahead and introduced her.

“She is an Egyptian mythology Transcendent who specializes in punishment.”

The matter-of-fact way H. T. Trismegistus said it sent a chill down Kamijou’s spine.

Punishment.

He gave Aradia’s hand a squeeze.

“She carries the symbolism of the mother protecting her children – or of the queen protecting her people. She will do whatever it takes to protect what she had decided is her territory. And of course, that is currently defined as the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

That made her sound super powerful, but Kamijou wasn’t sure if it made her an enemy or an ally. He gave the brown girl a nervous look and, for some reason, she bowed. Now, should he feel glad that this assassin or hitman was impeccably polite? He wasn’t sure.

She was a Transcendent who specialized in punishment.

The brown girl stood next to…something not quite the same as a metal fence with spikes jutting out in a giant X. Several sharp spears were contained in the same binder, creating something that looked a bit like a barricade. The spearheads were made of glass and a strange fluorescent pink liquid sloshed around inside. At about 150cm long, they didn’t seem to have much reach for spears. Hold the shaft near the center and they wouldn’t reach much further than a sword.

That meant they were probably javelins.

Notably, they each had the same phrase written on the shaft: Drink Me.

“(Th-this is related to Alice in Wonderland,)” whispered Aradia, unable to hide her trembling.

“…”

Kamijou remained silent.

“I used the word punishment because I have a graceful heart and common sense told me to avoid stating it so directly, but perhaps it would have been simpler to say ‘execution’ instead.”

The young butler’s voice was calm as could be.

Although he was nervously tapping his cane against the ground.

“Transcendents can be killed. Especially when you have an expert in executing them,” he said quite plainly.

The next thing Kamijou knew, there was a long, narrow coffin there. Was it another stage magician tool? It was about the right size to hold an adult woman and it had strange slits all over it, so it may have been a prop for stabbing swords into.

“You should already understand this on some level after what you saw during all that ugly fighting in Shibuya on the 31st. One specific method is to weaken the Transcendent by taking away their power. The spiritual item called the Shrink Drink does just that. In the story, it was a drink that causes the imbiber to physically shrink, but- oh, you should already be familiar with the general idea since one of your companions is a weakened god.”

They had traded one problem for another.

(At least it looks like I don’t have to worry about all the Transcendents attacking me at once. Still, this is bad. I’m not thrilled about their target being Aradia either.)

Kamijou turned to look at someone.

Not Alice who was kind but capricious. He looked to Good, Old Mary who had selflessly helped save him and the Bologna Succubus on the 31st.

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus had both had something they wanted to protect, so Good, Old Mary – who could return a corpse to its state when the heart had stopped – must have had her own reasons for wanting to become a magician.

But she did not return Kamijou’s gaze.

In fact, her large hat shook as she turned her head away from him, but that may have been to avoid Aradia’s eyes more than his.

(Are we out of options?)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He was wrapped in an extreme tension that told him he had to avoid letting them notice even that.

(Then what do I do? What good is Imagine Breaker alone against an entire group of Transcendents!?)

But while all this was going on in his head…

“Oh, I think you have the wrong idea,” continued H. T. Trismegistus, to correct the puny boy’s misunderstanding. “It is true Aradia neglected to return to us after her defeat at your hands and the possibility of her revealing critical information does put our cabal at risk, but she already understands and shares in the cabal’s ideology and – more importantly – she understands in her very bones ''what it would mean to make herself an enemy of Alice''. Common sense says no amount of cajolery or torture would get her to talk. That sturdy vault door can be dealt with later. It is the flimsy back door we must deal with first.”

“Back door?”

“Indeed.” The young butler nodded and explained. “Our top priority assassination target is none other than the newest Transcendent, the international information expert who created R&C Occultics, and the traitor who shows insufficient respect for Alice and who got you involved in all this in the first place. I am, of course, referring to ''Anna Sprengel''.”

===Part 6===

Meanwhile, Yomikawa Aiho had business beyond giving a New Year’s greeting to her former roommate. And that business required visiting the same location two days in a row.

It could be confusing since Board Chairman Accelerator had adopted it as his new base, but the place was originally a District 10 prison for adult criminals.

Working for Anti-Skill naturally led to knowing a fair number of convicts, but this particular one was a special case.

Because…

“Hi, Ultimate Evil Demon King Tessou Tsuzuri who’s awoken to the thrill of the dark voltage. Care to share some of your genius inspiration that us ordinary and peaceful Anti-Skill officers could never hope to think up?”

“Eeek!! P-please stop this, Senpai!! Why are you harassing me like this!? You’re teasing me on purpose, aren’t you!? Oh, god, it’s so embarrassing!!!”

Trembling on the other side of the visiting room’s thick bulletproof glass was a timid teacher with glasses and curly black hair. She had wounds all over. It was kind of scary that the AI-supported speed trial had her thrown in prison so fast her teaching license hadn’t even officially revoked yet.

(Well, that government paperwork is going to be slow during the holiday anyway.)

In that sense, Yomikawa was a little impressed that the prison was working so fast at the end of the year.

What had happened to the version of Tessou who had strutted through Academy City’s darkness as an Anti-Skill Negotiator? The usual tearful glasses woman was back like she had woken from a dream.

Tessou lay her head on the desk and placed her hands on top of her head.

“Why? Whyyyyy did I do that? I wasn’t wrong to want to protect the children, but why would I choose to do it like that? Am I secretly a sadistic jerk deep down? If I just wanted to feel fear, I should have gone to an amusement park haunted house, but I got fixated on doing everything with violence and I feel like that’s kind of your fault really.”

“(Wow. It’s hard to imagine, but what if Accelerator is like this deep down and he’s just better at hiding it from us?)”

“Umm, Yomikawa-senpai?”

Tessou Tsuzuri tilted her head in confusion.

It at least sounded like she had never stopped wanting to protect the students, but she should have come asked her colleague for advice before doing all that. Yomikawa sighed.

“Whatever. The point is I need to pick your brains, Tessou. It was temporary, but you managed to synchronize with – or even outdo – the dark side, so I want some help thinking like they do.”

“I-I won’t do it. I decided I wasn’t touching that dangerous dark side ever again. I will pay my debt to society, but don’t make me get involved with that again. I don’t even work for you anymore, so you can’t make me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Um, you’re scaring me. Scaring me a lot. Why do I sense an obsession behind that ‘oh, really’? It feels every bit as strong as someone’s unrequited love!!”

“So, Tessou? Care to remind me who it was that put my arm in this sling? Ow, ow, ow, ow. Man the winter chill sure does a number on a broken arm.”

“Kh!? Y-your guilt trip won’t work on me!!”

“Suit yourself. Now, the solitary confinement area is split up by gender, age, and occupation, isn’t it? That means you’re in the teacher section. And if my memory serves, isn’t your cell neighbor named Therestina?”

“Bff!? Why do you know the layout of the cells? And what are you suggesting!? I really don’t like where this is headed! Do you know how creepy it is that she spends all her time cackling in her solitary cell!? She doesn’t even need to snort any white powder!! The brain chemicals produced by her own love, courage, and derangement have completely broken her brain!!!”

“Did you know, Tessou, that this prison can reward model prisoners by transferring them from a solitary cell to a shared cell? Lucky for you, your good friend has your back. Your lonely days will soon be over and you can share a cell with another lewd glasses teacher with a screw loose.”

“You’ve made your point, so please give me a job to do!! What was it you wanted to ask me, you lowly scum!?”

There. Tessou’s cooperation acquired.

Yomikawa Aiho lazily rested her head in her hand and organized her thoughts.

She had more than one thing she wanted to ask.

Fortunately, she knew which one she wanted to get out of the way first.

“''Kumokawa Seria.''”

“…”

“On December 31, the Board’s brain was sighted outside the city in Shibuya. She was focused on, but ultimately never visited, the Miyashita Ark. It’s basically an enormous mall, but I doubt she was there to go shopping. Any ideas?”

“What were you thinking?”

“That girl is the type to pursue something that has already happened, not start something herself. That would mean something was already underway at the Miyashita Ark and she was there to put a stop to-”

“I think you’re wrong.”

Yomikawa’s idea was swiftly shot down.

Tessou Tsuzuri giggled at the way Yomikawa’s eyes widened. Her situation had greatly changed, but it was still amusing to see that look on her former superior’s face.

''Or maybe she had switched modes.

The (supposedly) timid teacher held a hand over her mouth as she laughed and then explained her reasoning.

“You said Kumokawa Seria never actually went there, didn’t you? If she was there to stop something, I would expect her to pay a visit even if she screwed it up. No matter how risky it would be. If the person who called for Anti-Skill is attacked by a criminal before you can get there, you can’t just turn around and head back even if you know it’s too late for them, right?”

There was always a miniscule chance you could save them. Getting the injured caller medical care could at least save their life. And even if they were already dead, you had to search for evidence that could lead to the culprit. A defender would change their objective but still act if they learned it was too late. You could not work law enforcement if you would stop just because the best case scenario was no longer an option.

Which meant…

“So you’re saying Kumokawa ''wasn’t'' going to the Miyashita Ark to stop something?”

“On the other hand, I would feel bad if I used that reasoning to conclude she was the one who set it all up.”

“…Hm.”

“But I could see her wanting to interfere with something already underway ''in order to steer it where she wants it''. So just imagine what would have happened if there had been no accident and she had arrived at the Miyashita Ark as planned. Maybe she couldn’t have done anything herself, but ''someone with her'' may have accomplished something if she had guided them there.”

“But what for?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe she wanted to eliminate something she was afraid that new board chairman couldn’t handle on his own. Academy City has been on a losing streak of late, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find some people are doubting that new board chairman’s abilities. ''I know I am''.”

“…”

“That said, she isn’t as impatient as me, so she wouldn’t gather the people she needs using blackmail material. I bet she would lay out the rails to guide some great power where she wants it, all while staying just barely within the bounds of legality. Maybe she sees the world differently. If you rely ''solely'' on science, I don’t think you would place your hopes in anything outside of Academy City.”

But then who was it?

The new board chairman was Academy City’s strongest Level 5.

What game piece could be so powerful even he paled in comparison?

===Part 7===

She didn’t go for the cigar or the kiseru.

“Yes, I will be taking that lighter. It will be much simpler if I take your 🔥 instead of all your many 🚬 products.”

“Woof, woof, woof!!”

“Suddenly trying to act like a cute 🐕 is ❌ going to change my 🧠. Using the kiseru helps 😷 how much you’re smoking, but you are matching the pace of a ⛓️ smoker right now. Smoking is bad for your health and there is ❌ possible way you can 🗣️ otherwise.”

The golden retriever lunged at the person forcing her own preferences onto him. Having her face licked by a tongue that reeked of nicotine made Lady Kingsford shriek and fall onto her rear. Was all this really about her not liking the smell?

“Oh, dear. My glasses. Where are my glasses?”

“I have found your weak point now, you gentle teacher. What are you, a living cliché?”

Losing her glasses made that founder of founders get down in a doggy pose. Crybaby Anna Kingsford crawled around feeling about for her glasses until Kihara Noukan sighed and used one of his mechanical arms to hand the glasses to her.

The interaction received a sidelong glance from a woman in a beige habit and blonde hair roughly cut to shoulder length. No, that was actually Magician Aleister who had hijacked a great demon’s body.

He clicked his tongue while walking toward Academy City.

“They’re going to notice this time,” said the golden retriever’s artificial voice. “Our group has gotten too large and we haven’t prepared well enough to sneak in safely.”

“I know that. I did build this city from the ground up, after all.”

For one thing, Anna Kingsford – who was tearfully putting back on her glasses – was not a camouflaged model finetuned for infiltration missions. If they took her with them, Accelerator’s side would notice immediately.

Aleister wasn’t happy about the situation either. He had already handed Academy City over to the next board chairman, so he didn’t want to be making frequent visits.

But things had changed. In a big way.

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a consulate.

They had created a bridgehead enclave inside the headquarters of science.

That secret base would make it impossible to track anything that was stolen and impossible to prevent anyone from getting inside.

(Why would that boy choose to enter their base where they can legally disappear him?)

Of course, this human’s objective was not to solve a riddle. Everything would be for naught if Kamijou Touma wasn’t rescued from the threat of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

He would save that boy even if it meant breaking his word. In a way, it was a very Aleister thing to do since fate never seemed to let him follow his own rules anyway.

So they crossed the outer wall and entered Academy City.

“Your pareo.”

“Hee hee. Thank you very much. Such a gentlemanly 🐕 to hold it down with your 🦾.”

There was no time for getting weirdly emotional or succumbing to self-loathing. The beige habit woman spoke up while they walked through that familiar city.

“H. T. Trismegistus.”

There was a note of annoyance in Aleister’s voice.

He then restated it as if confirming it for himself.

“Hermes ''Thoth'' Trismegistus. That Egyptian secretary god has a strong connection to Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass. And both Hermes and Thoth correspond to each other in Liber 777, an occult dictionary I wrote. That means Alice isn’t the only one. Yet another hint of the Magick system I worked on so long ago. Ugh, why do I always do this!? If only I could go back in time and punch my past self.”

Witch Goddess Aradia was another obvious example.

In fact, the entire framework of Wicca was created by Gerald Gardner, who had interacted with Aleister. Aleister’s influence could be seen in the portion of Gardner’s witchcraft where the practitioners gained power through sex.

Looking relieved now that she had her glasses back, Anna Kingsford whispered in obvious enjoyment.

“Hee hee. By that logic, would the Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary be 🔗ed as well?”

“…”

“My, my. I 💭 which Magickal supernatural being they could be. Perhaps the sky goddess from 🇪🇬 mythology? Or maybe the lady in 🟥 spoken of in the 📕 of Revelation?”

Anyone could tell from the teasing tone of voice that Kingsford was only eliminating impossible options. Although she smiled and swiped a portable ashtray from Kihara Noukan while doing so.

There was no point in trying to find a connection in all of them.

It was dreadfully easy to find mistaken interpretations when using Magick. It was a labyrinth of one’s own making that beginners often found themselves trapped inside.

Magic was so complicated because it operated under an orderly set of rules, but questions didn’t necessarily have just the one answer. If you weren’t willing to accept contradictions like two distinct but equally correct answers, then you could never reach the truth. That was a conclusion Crowley himself had reached at a certain temple.

So putting off a question on hold was far more important than you might think.

(I shouldn’t assume the Crowley system ''alone'' is enough to explain all of this.)

Alice Anotherbible, Aradia, H. T. Trismegistus.

Then there was the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and the rest.

For the time being, he decided to operate under the assumption that the cabal contained some with Magickal origins and some without. But it didn’t look as simple as the ones who followed the Crowley system being Rescuers and the others being Killers.

“Some come from Crowley and some do not.”

“And some have decided Kamijou Touma should live and others have chosen he should ☠️.”

They had already found a mixture of four different categories within the single cabal. That was unusual since cabals usually followed a unified ideology with their magic.

Furthermore, there was another unique case beyond those four types.

“Why are you staring at me?” asked the face plastered to the film canister he held.

Anna Sprengel.

“Wasn’t she invited to join that Bridge Builders Cabal?” asked Kihara Noukan.

“That suggests the Transcendents aren’t some legendary group with, for example, only 12 spots available. If someone meets certain requirements, they can add new members.”

“Which leads to an obvious ❓☆”

Anna Kingsford’s tone was light.

Was this how she had once spoken with Westcott and Mathers?

“''What conditions did Miss Sprengel meet''? What expectations did they have of her and how did she end up betraying them?”

“I don’t know anything about magic,” said Noukan, “but for someone to betray your organization, you must have placed your trust in them at least temporarily.”

Some followed the Crowley system, others didn’t. Some were Rescuers, others were Killers. Which of those groups had Anna Sprengel joined?

“That line of reasoning doesn’t fit the timeline,” said Miss Sprengel.

“…”

She laughed when Aleister fell into silent thought.

“The split based on what to do with Kamijou Touma only came to be after I betrayed the cabal and messed with Alice. Those groups did not exist originally.”

That left only two groups: Crowley and non-Crowley.

Time to think through it again. When comparing their magic, was there anything linking Aleister and Miss Sprengel?

Eventually, the beige habit woman muttered under her breath.

It didn’t matter if part of the process was flawed as long as you found your way to the correct answer in the end.

“''So that’s it.''”

“Have you grasped the big picture now?” asked Miss Sprengel.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal’s Transcendents seemed awfully confident with their boasting about individually rivalling the entire magic side, but I see where they were coming from now.”

In that sense, Anna Sprengel did indeed qualify.

Aleister brought a hand to his borrowed chin.

“It also explains why Alice’s group did not choose Anna Kingsford when her magic is so much more powerful.”

“Yes. And it means an immature Aleister Crowley might have been accepted as a Transcendent if things had gone differently.”

Not that Aleister Crowley ever would have chosen to obey someone else in that way.

Funnily enough, this meant it was impossible for both Aleister and Miss Sprengel to join the Bridge Builders Cabal at the same time.

Only one or the other could join.

“Every man and every woman is a star,” sang the girl’s voice.

That was a theory Aleister himself had once proposed.

“All people can create a monster and become a god. Of course, doing so would change the very definition of the word ‘god’. With one 2000-year period ended, the world has already entered that age. Isn’t that the Aeon of Horus you proposed? That is the foundation of their strategy. That is what the Transcendents have created by gathering together and what they are attempting to control all on their own.”

Miss Sprengel continued to sing from the surface of the film canister.

“But I am ''not'' talking about Alice here.”

===Between the Lines 2===

The girl was known as a witch.

There was nothing she couldn’t do.

With her newfound power, she could bend anything to her will with a wave of her finger. She scattered stars across the night sky, sent blessed rain falling from that sky, created a potion for the sick, and gave a beautiful dress to a poor woman.

The girl was praised by so many.

The girl was thanked by so many.

The girl became a goal for so many.

She swam through her dreams. There was nothing left that could bring her pain. How could there be when she had the power to remove all sources of pain from her sight and to support and guide those who worshiped her?

There was a smile on every face.

Everyone looked happy.

So the girl was confident she had done the right thing. So the girl did not question any of her actions. It was the right thing to do, after all. Why hold back when her every action was a wonderful thing that would make everyone happy?

She lived in a world void of stress.

From the moment she got up in the morning to the moment she fell asleep at night, her every day shined bright.

But isn’t it strange?

Why, then, was that girl known as ''a witch''?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter2

2022-09-20T08:01:39Z

2409:4066:190:4D74:0:0:14A5:38AC: /* Part 3 */

==Chapter 2: Which of Them was Caught? – the_Consulate.==

===Part 1===

The holiday didn’t mean Accelerator could take the entire day off.

The statistics were clear: trouble and accidents tended to happen precisely on the days people least wanted them to happen on.

“A consulate in District 12?”

“Let’s see…it’s technically called the Bridge Builders Cabal Academy City Consulate.”

“…”

“Yes, sorry, I know that’s weird! I wasn’t checking thoroughly enough on the diplomatic side of things.”

The response came from Qliphah Puzzle 545 who floated near the ceiling. That artificial demon was acting as the eyes and ears of the board chairman now that he could no longer leave his cell.

A consulate was an extraterritorial area in which Academy City had no real authority.

What is the difference between an embassy and a consulate, you ask?

The biggest difference is that a consulate lacks the authority to represent its country in negotiations with the resident country’s government. A consulate is only meant to provide a link between its home country and that country’s citizens living in the resident country, while an embassy is tasked with battling the resident country at the negotiating table.

That might make a consulate sound like less of a threat than if a country suddenly built an embassy in your country.

But that was inaccurate.

To have a country’s consulate in your country meant it was normal to have that country’s people in your country. That meant Alice’s cabal had gained more than just the consulate’s territory. ''They had created circumstances where magicians could walk freely throughout Academy City.

Something quietly struck the wall.

The walls and ceiling were covered with printed documents. They were all attached directly to the wall with colorful pins and those pins were connected with a spiderweb of colorful strings.

Alice, Academy City’s dark side, the Bridge Builders Cabal, the Shibuya riot outside the city.

Whether or not these things were actually connected was a matter to consider at a later stage.

He only needed to lay out all the information first and visualize all the connections with strings later.

His only information on Alice came from Qliphah Puzzle 545’s reports, but that only made the girl more concerning because it meant someone was strutting through Academy City without any of the city’s security capturing her.

Anna Sprengel had bloodily destroyed the dark side on December 25 and Alice Anotherbible had suddenly appeared on the 29th.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Y-yes!?”

“How did you get tangled up in the string? To be blunt, you’re in the way.”

“Heh heh heh heh. Th-the more I try to avoid them, the more tangled I get. You can think of me like the bookish girl who’s terrible at dodgeball.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was somewhat tied up in a corner of the ceiling that was quickly becoming her standard spot.

“Umm, I didn’t mind so much when it was just my wings and legs tied up so tight, but now it’s getting to my crotch, which is a lot more- ohh!?”

She seemed to like attention of any sort, so she looked kind of happy about this. Which was why Accelerator chose to ignore the demon who had to be devastatingly bad at jump rope.

Yes.

Accelerator was currently lying on a bed much too nice for a prison cell. There could only be one reason he was back here.

The meeting with his guests had been called off.

Because Alice Anotherbible’s cabal had been detected inside Academy City.

Last Order had not looked disappointed on the other side of the thick glass when he had had to call it off. She had smiled as she watched the board chairman go.

He needed to keep in mind that he was the one who had made her force that smile.

“U-u-umm?”

“What now?”
“Well, you see. Eh heh heh. If you happen to be angry, I would actually find it something of a relief if you would hit me a few times. Just go all out with it.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

He knew that wouldn’t solve anything. The artificial demon tangled up in colorful string had only relayed the necessary information to him. He much preferred that to her being too afraid to pass on some important information.

Alice was here.

And several more of those monsters known as Transcendents were with her.

(If only we had a solid definition of this Transcendent term everyone’s started using like it didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Was it in Shibuya on the 31st when that third-rate got himself tangled up in this mess?)

With several of those mysterious Transcendents detected in Academy City, there was a risk of the people living their ordinary lives here encountering them. It could happen to Last Order, to Yomikawa, to Yoshikawa, or to anyone else.

Accelerator wasn’t sitting around doing nothing. He had a few tricks up his sleeve beyond the standard Anti-Skill and Judgment. For example, he had direct fighters like Qliphah Puzzle 545, Fuse Kazakiri, and Misaka Worst.

But not even all that was a guarantee.

The #1 knew all too well that there was no such thing as an absolute assurance of safety.

He couldn’t stop whatever happened outside.

Outside and inside this cell were two different worlds.

And once something happened, he could not protect Last Order. If he wanted to protect her from harm, he had to act before anything happened.

A disturbing mass throbbed at the center of his chest.

He felt like he had a giant egg there in place of a heart.

“…”

There was a reason to act.

But if he left the prison for that reason, he would be causing everything to collapse.

He might feel good about it at first, but the monstrous whispers of reality told him he would only be drowning the world in an ocean of blood if he took that path.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Y-yes!? D-d-d-do you need something!?”

Accelerator sighed on the bed while the demon responded more nervously than necessary up in the corner of the ceiling.

“I’m not mad, so lend me a hand. Show me those newspapers you’re wearing.”

“Oh, you mean my dress? Hmm, but I’m not sure what article could tell you more than all these documents covering the walls.”

“It’s not for that,” he replied, feeling annoyed.

For one thing, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s dress was not a collection of actual newspaper articles. It transformed depending on who was reading it, creating articles that pointed out that person’s sins and shames.

In other words…

“Show me my darkness.”

“Um, okay!!”

The demon forced her tangled body to move, placing her hands behind her head.

She showed off her body.

The pattern on her dress writhed. The shocking headlines of those English-language newspapers tore into Accelerator’s old wounds.

Each individual article didn’t matter much.

But altogether, they felt like a great monster.

Yes, there was a monster here.

Everyone had a monster inside them.

It was a fearsome thing that would drag you down the path to death and ruin if you let it, but it could provide great power if you learned to control it.

Accelerator knew that violence came in many different forms.

And he knew there were also nonviolent ways of solving problems.

(Don’t let it take over.)

He felt impatience, tension, anger…and the fear of losing someone close to him.

He took a deep breath and faced his monster.

(I created this monster myself, so I must be able to control it myself.)

If he could start by looking to the destination he needed to reach, then he would reach that goal no matter how much he strayed on the way. He focused on his own immaturity while moving his fingers faster than anyone.

(I don’t know who these people are, but they’ve set up a backdoor into Academy City. The question is what they hope to use it for. A backdoor is a means to an end, not the end itself.)

He lay on the bed, moving various things with his fingers without even glancing in their direction.

The bedside printer spat out paper, he cut those apart with scissors, he tossed the cutouts with his fingers, and he threw a pin to skewer the floating paper. And if necessary, he would swing weightless string like a whip to send it slicing through the air so it could add more color to the display.

He continued organizing his information in a fashion that would be more gruesome than execution by firing squad if someone happened to be standing by the wall.

“You said it was a consulate, right? Then it must belong to some country or another.”

“Yes. Th-they apparently bought a Central American country smaller than a soccer field to gain the qualifications and rights of a country. Eh heh heh. That’s what let them officially use the position of a diplomat or consulate to create an enclave in Academy City.”

“Who the hell gave them permission to do that?”

“Eek!! Diplomacy is handled more by the Japanese government than Academy City, so it was probably one of their bureaucrats. The cabal took advantage of a blind spot we created by focusing so much on what was happening inside the city!!”

A new red pin thwacked into the wall.

It pierced through a point on a map of District 12 floating in the air.

“Still, it bothers me that something so extreme managed to slip by us.”

“No, no!! I assure you this wasn’t anyone’s fault!”

The demon girl frantically shook her head.

She seemed to think she would be left behind if she let the #1’s thoughts turn too far inward. She was in a puppy mode where she craved attention, even if it came in the form of a light slap.

“Things have gotten a lot more complicated after the Crowley’s Hazards because a bunch of artificial islands and ship-towed floats were set up as bases for reconstruction efforts, but now some of them have started declaring independence. Countries are joining together and splitting apart as much as a girl who seems to have a new boyfriend every week, so it can be hard to notice when a country’s system or true ruler has been swapped out. And this is the same area where R&C Occultics tried to set up a massive server center to abuse a legal loophole to gather personal information on people around the globe.”

“R&C…”

“I imagine that connection is how Alice’s group learned about it in the first place.”

A consulate.

Needless to say, that was a special site protected by international law. The laws of the consulate’s country were prioritized over the ordinary laws, so in the most extreme example, a murder case that happened on a consulate’s grounds could be tried in a foreign country’s courts.

And now a magic side consulate had been built inside science’s headquarters.

Nothing could be more dangerous.

They had an enclave.

Or worse, they had a foothold for an invasion. It may have been more like an airfield or bridgehead. The word “consulate” might sound peaceful, but the threat here was closer to the Cuban Missile Crisis when the former Soviet Union attempted to deploy nuclear missiles right at Washington’s throat. Except this time, the deployment had already happened instead of being discovered in advance.

“…”

Accelerator rested back in the large bed and stared up at the ceiling in thought.

He had built a bizarre boxy planetarium made of articles and colorful string. What big picture could he find here?

Could he not see the enemy’s goal because he lacked sufficient information?

Or was he misreading the inciting factor for the attack, such as personal interest, love or hate, sheer coincidence, or simple enjoyment?

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a consulate. That never would have been allowed if they had been honest on their paperwork. Alice and her cabal’s Transcendents must have used some clever trick to gain approval for the consulate. And that approval had come from Japan, not Academy City.

That deception was meant to obtain something here in Academy City.

This was enough to conclude they had some kind of attack planned. Accelerator had already confirmed Anna and Alice were the external factor that had agitated Academy City’s dark side. And as the board chairman, Academy City’s #1 could send the city’s official defenses against them without needing to break out of prison himself. However…

“''I wouldn’t do that if I were you.''”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

That wasn’t Qliphah Puzzle 545. She remained tangled up in a corner of the ceiling, cowering like a puppy in the rain.

The voice came from the large TV in the wall.

These days, it was unusual for a TV to not be connected to the internet. Of course, it was even more unusual for a prison cell to have a TV at all.

The TV displayed short red hair and white skin.

The strong-willed girl was wearing a fluffy white miniskirt dress.

She was Magician Dion Fortune. Except she technically wasn’t human since she was a magical device created based on that magician who belonged to the Golden cabal. And now she led the Anglican Church as their new Archbishop to fill the vacancy there.

She smiled as a black box twirled with its corner balanced upon her extended finger.

Since she wasn’t human, her thoughts lacked the uncertainty of wishing things would turn out one way or hoping they wouldn’t turn out another way. She cut so directly and accurately to the truth it could seem cruel.

Accelerator didn’t get up from the bed as he flicked two pins into the wall.

He added articles for the Anglican Church and Dion Fortune. Where the string would connect those articles would be determined by the coming conversation.

The magic side leader grinned as she got to it.

“I don’t care what sort of monster you were to begin with. But the Accelerator I’m talking to now is also the board chairman who controls Academy City as a whole, correct? Then don’t lose your cool so easily. You’re only allowed to do that when you’re wielding personal power. The leader of an organization served by lots of people doesn’t have that luxury.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

Dion Fortune looked pleased at earning that reaction. She ignored Qliphah Puzzle 545’s flustered stammering near the ceiling and kept going.

“It won’t do you any good to single out and deport the individual Transcendents when you don’t know their names or nationalities. But you should also assume you can’t just shut down the consulate itself,” she said to drive that point home. “You ''could'' do that, but as soon as you did, the 190+ other countries and territories out there would see Academy City as an ''untrustworthy and uncontrollable group'' that shuts down consulates and embassies authorized by the Japanese government the instant they become inconvenient. And once no one trusts any of your promises, diplomacy becomes all but impossible. You might be the headquarters of the science side, but you aren’t designed to survive in complete isolation.”

“…”

“It’s called the Condroniard Republic. The Central American country smaller than a soccer field is very real. As sketchy as it sounds, Alice really did buy an entire country that belongs to the UN and can make use of international law. So if your approach to this consulate doesn’t conform to the relevant laws and treaties, Academy City will be seen as ''a children’s playground'' that doesn’t know the first thing about diplomacy. Once that happens, the war between magic and science will be the least of your worries. Those of us on the magic side will be able to sit back and watch as the science side disintegrates all on its own.”

“Isn’t that exactly what outsiders like you want?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Dion Fortune made no attempt to hide her interests here.

And with that said…

“But that result alone isn’t good enough. It matters a lot ''who is responsible'' for magic’s victory over science. The Anglican Church doesn’t want Alice’s cabal to be the ones responsible for destroying the science side while leaving the magic side untouched. That would lead to a new magic side that throws out the current main powers of the Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Russian Orthodox and places the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal at the top.”

Accelerator could see hints of that being the goal here.

But he threw out that obvious line of reasoning.

“I saw bits of pieces of what Alice did on December 29.”

“Oh? Picking up a new interest in spying to complete your role as faceless dictator? You’re sounding more and more like that pervert Aleister all the time.”

“And based on those observations, this Alice Anotherbible doesn’t seem like the type to jump at bait as simple as the conflict between the science and magic sides or on ruling the magic side herself. What do you say?”

“I haven’t seen her myself, so I wouldn’t know.” Dion Fortune shrugged on the TV. “But Necessarius’s horoscope profile says she’s true to her desires and utterly devoid of patience. Based on that, my guess is she would take anything she can get her hands on, but she wouldn’t be working on multiple tasks at once. To her, a piece of candy and a million yen are the same. So whether or not she would be interested in those goals, it definitely doesn’t sound like her to set a plan in motion and wait for it to bear fruit.”

“…”

“On the other hand, this consulate belongs to the cabal as a whole. Tyrant Alice may be their leader, but it’s still an organization, not just one person.”

“Are you suggesting Alice’s intentions as an individual and the cabal’s objective as a whole are different?”

“It’s probably more accurate to say the rest of the cabal is trying to pull something off without Alice noticing. Think of it like the US president and the lawless CIA, an international corporation’s CEO and a sports team trying to hide how deep in the red it is, or the Russian Orthodox’s pure Patriarch and their perverted torture-loving monster. Really, I expect most organizations have a similar dynamic going on. It’s unusual for the intentions at the very top to work their way down to the very bottom.”

Academy City and the dark side was another example.

The new board chairman had taken action to put a stop to that, but he couldn’t say the process had been bloodless.

“So be careful and watch how this plays out. Attempting a careless confrontation or expulsion will only widen the wound for Academy City.”

The Anglicans had their own interests in all this.

Very few people would reach out a helping hand for nothing at all in return.

And some piece of those interests could be gleaned from the following statement.

“Alice is indeed an extraordinary tyrant, but you will be caught unawares if you focus on her alone. They tend to be overshadowed by Alice’s presence, but keep in mind that ''each and every one of the Transcendents waiting in the wings is an infuriatingly brilliant magician.''”

===Part 2===

It was freezing out.

Kamijou Touma held himself and shivered on the way back to his District 7 dorm room.

It really was midwinter. It was still only around 6 PM, which should have only been evening time, but it was already dark out.

Unusually, there were a few paper postcards in the door’s newspaper slot. Those were New Year’s cards. Specifically, from his parents and a girl who was apparently his cousin. But most people seemed to use their phones these days. He had a whole list of messages from his classmates (probably meant to double as a test message to his new number). And most of those probably weren’t sent to him personally. It would be a lot easier to just send them out en masse. He appreciated the thought, but he knew neglecting to read them all would probably make things extremely awkward once the new term began. Smartphones came with their own annoyances.

“There, Aradia’s all wrapped up in waterproof duct tape.”

“…”

“Index, Othinus. We’re having a hotpot tonight. You’re in luck because I happen to know a secret: make sukiyaki with chicken and you have a dinner that’s both cheap and luxurious!”

“Yay, we get sukiyaki tonight!!”

“Sigh. What’s this about, human? Trying to take revenge on those cooking shows you kept glaring at when you didn’t have any money? Let your feelings dictate your purchases and you won’t notice how much you’re spending.”

“Shut up, Othinus! I don’t need any ominous warnings first thing in the year. I’ll be fine. I set the TV to record all the New Year’s cooking specials they were running, so I have a treasure trove of recipes to try out! I swear I’ll work through them all by the end of winter break. I’m through feeling poor!!!”

“Wait, wait, wait!! I am not letting you forget about me with all this household talk! You have someone lying on your floor in a duct tape cocoon and I am not letting you accept that as normal!!”

The victory prize he wasn’t sure what to do with started thrashing about on the floor.

Alice Anotherbible was back in Academy City. She had said goodbye during the clash with the dark side, but here she was already. Ignoring her verbal promise like that could be seen as the innocence of a child, but he sensed something more concerning there.

Alice’s sudden appearance seemed to link together some unnatural fragments of issues he had noticed.

Kamijou thought back to the bizarre scene at the District 12 shrine where he had run into Misaka Mikoto, Shirai Kuroko, that ringlets girl, and ''someone else.'' He recalled all those emas wishing for personal ruin instead of success. And the ringlets girl who had abandoned all intention to pass her entrance exams even though it was January of her last year in middle school.

The social phenomenon had been dubbed kotatsu syndrome and it was apparently connected to the Winter Cleaning at the end of the year.

Students didn’t want to study and adults wanted to goof off instead of working.

(Could it be?)

Kamijou Touma recalled something else.

Transcendents had directly clashed in Shibuya on December 31. Their spells had been a threat, but something else had carried just as much danger: their powerful charisma as an individual and the crowd manipulated by it.

Aradia had used the witch’s Sabbat and the Bologna Succubus had used the witch hunt.

(Should I assume this kotatsu syndrome comes from one of the Transcendents using something similar?)

Alice, for example.

Hadn’t the Winter Cleaning occurred the exact same day as her first visit to Academy City?

(No, there isn’t any real evidence of a connection there.)

The Transcendents had the dangerous ability to manipulate large groups, but he didn’t know if it was something they consciously used or something that happened on its own. And it was possible there was another self-indulgent Transcendent in the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Could he really point at the obvious suspect and insist she had to be the culprit?

He felt like he was falling into that trap.

“…”

At the same time, could he safely return Aradia to the Bridge Builders Cabal after defeating her once already?

How much could he trust Alice if she accepted Aradia back with a smile and insisted he had nothing to worry about?

He couldn’t handle Aradia on his own, but he was honestly ''afraid'' to return her to Alice and the others.

He asked himself why he felt so much fear and unease about Alice Anotherbible.

Hadn’t she saved him when they first met?

On the way back, they had stopped at a supermarket and bought plenty of ingredients, so now he transferred them from their foam packs to metal or plastic trays and put them away in the different compartments in the fridge. Othinus spoke from his shoulder in the middle of the work.

“You couldn’t do a thing about Alice and her ilk back there.”

“Victory for me means fighting without causing any collateral damage, which wasn’t possible there.”

Of course, something had happened when he ran into Alice without warning. Especially since he was escorting around Aradia after defeating her. Anyone who wanted to prevent Aradia from leaking any cabal secrets would see her as a target.

Kamijou had put his old folk’s smartphone in his pocket. He had no choice but to give up on the GPS tracker.

Alice hadn’t been alone.

She had been flanked by a pair of Transcendents. One was Good, Old Mary who he had seen in Shibuya on the 31st. The other was someone new to him. The magician was a black-haired young man wearing a tailcoat and holding a black cane, making him look like a butler.

Kamijou’s side hadn’t been entirely powerless. They included Grimoire Library Index, the Sisters, and several Tokiwadai elites: the #3 Railgun, the Judgment girl who could teleport, the ringlets 3rd year, and ''someone else.'' Kamijou himself was a Level 0, but those girls belonged to a prestigious esper development school, so they would be able to resolve most any trouble without his help.

But how much did that matter in this case?

He couldn’t stop having a very bad feeling about what could have happened if a battle had broken out there. If the Transcendents flanking Alice hadn’t deterred everyone with ''killer intent so thick it was stifling'' or if that hadn’t been enough to stop the Tokiwadai girls, what might Alice have done on a whim?

Could Kamijou’s hand have stopped that?

In Shibuya, the Bologna Succubus had said he was the only person capable of controlling Alice, but ''was that really true''?

''“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

That line stuck with him.

The gloomy young butler’s words would not leave Kamijou’s mind.

Strangely, he had trouble remembering ''who'' the young man had been speaking to.

Alice herself had looked confused. He was pretty sure she had spread her arms to welcome them.

However…

''“Peeking inside this girl’s mind will only trap you in a psychedelic world. Alice’s world is like a bottomless pit that can bring only tragedy to those who experience it.”

If the young butler hadn’t casually grabbed Alice’s collar and stopped her, she might have run over to Kamijou.

Alice’s group hadn’t forced Kamijou to do anything.

They hadn’t even demanded he hand over the witch goddess.

That was another way of saying they felt confident they could take her back by force if necessary. Kamijou wasn’t even worthy of a seat at the negotiating table with them.

Most likely, only Alice’s group and any others worthy of the Transcendent title would find a seat there.

What did someone need to do to earn that title?

Kamijou hadn’t a clue, so he doubted he was anywhere close.

“…”

“Touma, where’s the meat?”

“Hold on. Using a knife to remove the small clumps of blood from the jaw is the secret to making good chicken.”

He switched his focus and pulled an earthenware pot and a frying pan from the shelf. For sukiyaki, you couldn’t just place it on the stove. Some ingredients needed to be seasoned first and some needed to be pre-cooked to ensure they weren’t undercooked.

With expensive, thin-cut beef, it was apparently best to cook it in a frying pan, but they were using chicken (which was pretty dangerous if undercooked). That tasted best if you submerged it at the bottom of the pot.

“Alice said something about a consulate, didn’t she?”

“She doesn’t seem like anything more than a kid, so I doubt she came up with that idea on her own. My guess is visiting Academy City every time she wants to play sounded like a pain, so she innocently asked for a secret base here. Then those Transcendents made it a reality. Sweating all the while at the thought of disappointing her.”

Most likely, no one knew how many bases the Bridge Builders Cabal had around the world. To them, this may have only felt like adding one more to the list.

(Come to think of it, Aradia and the Bologna Succubus must have a home country somewhere out there. That’s really hard to imagine.)

“A consulate. Hey, Othinus, how bad is that?”

“A consulate built without mutual trust between the two countries is even more dangerous than a blackhole. Listen, human. No one can investigate inside a consulate. Even if someone steals something from an Academy City museum or steals some kind of information, they’re untouchable if they hide in the consulate until they find a way to escape outside the city. The Transcendents can take whatever they want from the city, load it into their car with a diplomatic license plate, and carry it to the consulate and then stop worrying. Because no one can investigate further.”

“…”

“At the same time, Academy City can no longer refuse to keep people or items from being transported from outside the city and into the consulate. Magicians used to have to nervously sneak over the city walls, but no longer. Now those dangerous magicians can strut on in.”

There was a process for deporting people like that, but that was all there was. Demanding they leave wasn’t the same as trying them for a crime and deportation had to be issued by name. According to Othinus, the entire process was meaningless against Alice’s Transcendents since no one knew their real names and nationalities.

That meant they couldn’t catch these mystery people red-handed and boot them out.

Diplomacy always required paperwork, even when that meant ignoring the reality before your eyes.

So even if Academy City’s leadership said “Alice must leave”, the consulate could point to a part-timer they hired, say “that’s Alice”, and give her some pittance to make up for being deported. All while the real Alice Anotherbible walked freely around Academy City. Everyone would know it wasn’t right, but that was how it went with paperwork. It was powerless against people whose appearance and name weren’t found in any database.

Who was this Transcendent named Alice?

Was that her real name or one of many pseudonyms? Was she human, or was she something else?

Did anyone have a clear answer to these questions?

Anyone at all?

It was nice having something to keep busy with. Without the familiar meal preparations, Kamijou may have been crushed by his worries.

“Hey, Index! The pot is ready to go, so clear off the kotatsu and place down a pot stand.”

“But my job is to eat, eat, sleep, and eat!”

“Just help out some, you freeloader!”

In the Kamijou household, they used an induction cooker instead of a gas-powered portable stove. Why was obvious. With the kind of misfortune Kamijou was accustomed to, he just knew having a portable gas cartridge around could only lead to misfortune.

“Not that the induction cooker is perfectly safe. Use it too horribly wrong and the power cable could start a fire.”

“Could you not, Othinus!? I don’t need any ominous trivia to start off my year!”

Since it was New Year’s, he gave the calico kitty his usual cat food plus a liquid pet treat known as Muru.

Even this sukiyaki was just another variation on his usual cheap cooking. And sukiyaki stock was one of the three great cheap seasonings, right alongside eel sauce and matsutake soup.

“Here are bowls for everyone, here’s an egg, and use these chopsticks for searching through the pot. I’m not making any zosui to finish it off. I have rice and udon separated out, so create your own universe in your bowl, while building up to whatever you want to eat last. Okay, let’s get started!”

“Yay, it’s all you can eat!!”

“No, it’s a hotpot, Index! Don’t go reaching for the rice cooker right away!! How high were planning to pile up your plate!?”

At 15cm, Othinus was shorter than the earthenware pot and reaching inside would mean rock climbing up a hot cliff, so she decided to just steal things from Kamijou’s bowl. He wished she would stop balancing her stomach on the edge of the bowl to lean inside.

But there was still one person unaccounted for.

“…”

Aradia remained a duct tape mummy with her arms bound behind her back and she was glaring hatefully over from the floor. She could sit up on her own using her abs, but she couldn’t do anything about the hands behind her back.

She may have been hungry.

“So, Othinus, what do we do about Aradia?”

“Why ask me? Isn’t solving magical problems that British grimoire library’s job?”

“She’s too busy chowing down on nothing but meat and rice to be any help. Index!! Chicken breasts are admittedly cheaper than pork or beef, but it’s still meat. That’s a luxury item, so make sure you chew thoroughly and actually savor it! How are you swallowing it down so fast!? Chicken isn’t a drink!!!”

The TV was on, but no one was really watching as a comedian made a fool of himself in nothing but briefs. It was a traditional New Year’s act. The popular middle-aged man was being held back by some younger men when he took a hot piece of shabu-shabu meat to the forehead and writhed around on the floor. Apparently that didn’t set Kamijou off because of the note that the staff would eat it later.

But that aside…

“Say ‘ah’, Aradia.”

“!?”

Aradia’s shoulders noticeably jumped and her face grew red, either from anger or something else.

“Y-you must be joking. I am Transcendent Aradia. I will not accept your condescending charity even if I did lose to you.”

“(Hey, you’re free to refuse, but if you keep shaking your head, a miracle could occur and that hot chicken will end up somewhere other than your mouth. Just like with that briefs guy’s expert comedy act on the TV there.)”

“O-okay, fine!!”

Othinus’s whispered voice switched on Aradia’s desperation mode. She shut her eyes in frustration and opened her trembling lips.

Kamijou wanted to know why this mystery woman looked somewhat embarrassed about nothing more than being fed some meat.

He tilted his head as he resumed feeding her the chicken sukiyaki.

She ate it.

She was suddenly much more obedient. It was cute.

She looked like a mysterious beauty, but he was feeding her like a small child, creating an odd dissonance.

After watching her chew a few times and swallow, he grabbed the next bite with the chopsticks.

“Oh, right. Is there anything you can’t or won’t eat? Any allergies?”

“That would’ve been a great thing to ask ''before'' force-feeding me. But no, nothing like that. Besides, witches get their power from searching the forest for anything with medicinal qualities. You can’t do that if you’re picky about what you eat. Munch, munch, gulp. What was that I just ate? Some kind of gelatin?”

“It was shirataki, a type of konjac.”

“Konjac? I’m not sure what that is either. And what is this white rectangular thing? Please tell me it isn’t a hunk of egg white or butter.”

“It’s tofu. It’s made from soybeans, but I would recommend not looking at what the word literally means. A European who doesn’t know how it’s made would probably react badly to that.”

“Tofu???”

That must have been a difficult word to translate into English and other languages. Her common tones didn’t know what to do with it. There was probably a word for it in other Asian languages, but apparently not in the mother tongue of this goddess of witches who flew brooms through a night sky filled with five-pointed stars.

“Munch, munch. Napa cabbage, tofu, and wheat gluten – if it’s soaked up some flavor – are all so good! Yum!”

Kamijou must have assumed it would all be fine since Index devoured it all without issue. But you couldn’t trust that demon lord of gluttony’s tastes because, when she was hungry, she would chew up and eat unpopped popcorn. (Warning: This is a good way to chip your teeth☆)

Aradia had a curious look as she chewed on the food given to her by the chopsticks. Feeding a beautiful young woman a mystery food was one hell of a situation when he actually thought about it. Take that in a cruel direction and it could be foreshadowing for the shocking ending of a SF movie or a psychological horror novel.

She may have trusted him enough to know he wasn’t the type to engage in that sort of deception, even if they had been enemies to begin with.

“Now this I know. It’s an onion.”

“What do you call these long ones in English? I know you just use ‘onion’ for the round ones.”

“I think the closest term is scallion.”

“Why does that sound like the codename for a new surface-to-air missile?”

That may have been one sort of cultural difference.

Like how the English word “carrot” sounded weirdly cute to him.

“Witches use onions a lot. Along with garlic and ginger, they’re one of the standard medicinal plants used as a starting point for a variety of medicines.”

Was she pointing out that real witches didn’t just use plants that had legs and screamed when you pulled them from the ground?

“Onions are medicinal?”

“You can use them for just about anything. For example, you can use onions and tomatoes to create a rare medicine that foolish royals and nobles are willing to buy with a hunk of gold 10 times its size.”

“(You’re talking about a witch’s aphrodisiac, aren’t you? You clearly don’t know how dense this human is if you think that sort of subtle sexual harassment is going to get a reaction.)”

“?”

Kamijou was confused.

He couldn’t keep up with this discussion between a Magic God and a Transcendent.

Aradia fidgeted while still tied up. The pointy-haired boy figured that meant she wanted more food, so he grabbed some more onion from his own bowl instead of the large pot and carried the chopsticks to her mouth.

“Onions as medicine, huh? Weird how you can find these connections anywhere.”

“Onion and ginger is one of the standard medicines for minor things like colds.”

“Ah ha ha. Oh, you mean that thing about sticking a green onion up your ass when you have a cold?”

The instant he mentioned that Japanese tradition, Cocoon Aradia hit him with a drop kick.

She must not have appreciated that particular idea while she was trying to eat.

===Part 3===

It was time to face the biggest problem: bath time.

“So, um, I’m not sure why you think you even need to discuss this?” said Aradia, feeling a headache coming on. “The answer is simple: remove all this duct tape and let me take a bath.”

Kamijou, Index, and Othinus exchanged a glance.

“Yeah, but we all know you’re running away the instant we remove the duct tape from your hands and feet.”

“You might try to fight back.”

“You’re a Transcendent. If we screw this up, you might destroy an entire city or country in retaliation.”

For some reason, Othinus’s comment was a lot more sadistic than the others.

They only had to look at it realistically.

First of all, Aradia was the Transcendent who had caused such a major panic in Shibuya. Removing the duct tape from the hands behind her back and from around her ankles could mean returning her power to her.

“Yet here you are coming up with excuses to get that duct tape off.”

“It’s not an excuse. Am I the only one who thinks this is a perfectly reasonable request?”

“If we do remove them, then I’ll have to suppress your power with Imagine Breaker. Which means you would have to take your bath with me holding your hand throughout.”

“You expect me to share that tiny bathroom with a stranger?”

Othinus was grinning her face off for some reason.

“Close the shower curtain to hide the tub and you’ll be fine. Barring any freak accidents with lewd results, of course.”

“Don’t you dare jinx me like that! Oh, no! I can just imagine the horrific fate that awaits me 10 minutes from now!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

Apparently not letting her take a bath today was simply not an option. She was a young woman after all. Index’s snapping jaws had a hair trigger, but not even she protested that one.

Which meant…

“I guess you’ll have to take a bath with the duct tape still on your hands and feet. It’s the only safe way.”

“Throw me in the tub like that and you’ll have a nasty drowned corpse on your hands!”

“Let me finish.” Kamijou grabbed a random towel. “You stay tied up and someone else washes you off with a wet towel.”

Aradia quaked at that suggestion.

Her face really did pale.

“Don’t tell me you’re volunteering for that job! There is only so far you can push this unintentional sexual harassment bit and make it believable! Please listen to me!”

“We’re only still having this conversation because you nixed the idea of me being in the bath with you, so calm down that overactive imagination, you pervert witch.”

His rational rebuttal led the goddess to start thrashing about on the floor. It wasn’t very frightening when she was in duct tape cocoon, but who knows what she would do if he let his guard down and she broke free of her restraints. He would be dead for sure.

Kamijou handed the towel to someone else: a confused Index.

“Look, she’ll be doing it. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Aradia reluctantly grumbled.

Now, was she aware that when presented with two negative options and asked to choose the lesser of two evils, it was common to make sure one of those options was a non-starter? Was she aware it was a negotiating tactic to present someone with something they would never, ever choose and then present them with a less-objectionable option you actually wanted them to accept?

Yes, Aradia lost sight of something important when she focused only on the fact that this option was better than having to bathe with a boy like Kamijou.

It didn’t occur to her that she had just agreed to have someone rub all over her body while she was tied up and unable to do anything about it.

This was the result.

“Ah hya hya hya hya!? Wait! Wait a second! Don’t stick your hand there! Hee, hee hee! Please can’t you be a little gentler!?”

“Shut up and sit still.”

Half an hour later, Aradia languidly crawled out of the bathroom with her skin squeaky clean and the full length of her silver hair washed.

“K-kill me,” said the bound Transcendent between gasping breaths. “Someone please kill me.”

“Hey, Othinus. Why did Aradia take so much damage from this?”

“About the last thing a witch wants is to be helpless in the hands of servant of their nemesis – the Christian Church. It made for a very amusing show, though.”

It was past 10 at night.

The TV remained on and it was shifting to the late night programming. In this case, that still meant a New Year’s comedy special, but one for lesser-known comedians who started out on the stage or online videos. Kamijou had basically been awake since the 31st, so he was already sleepy.

Index didn’t need a bath since she had just taken one with Aradia, but…

“I think I’ll only take a shower. I’m too tired for a full bath. What about you, Othinus?”

“I will not be deprived. Fill a washbasin with bathwater so I can relax.”

“Sure, sure. Yawn. Afterwards, we can drink this and then get to sleep.”

Index and Othinus gave him puzzled looks.

“It’s amazake,” he said, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “This is about the only time you get to drink it.”

Now.

Witch Goddess Aradia, the embodiment of Wicca, was a magician who extracted the medicinal properties of all the plants, animals, and minerals found in the forest and converted them into her spells. If she was resistant to medicines, it would reduce the efficacy of her spells. Being highly sensitive to any form of drug was useful both for using your own medicines sand for revealing the methods used by enemy witches.

The problem was that Kamijou only learned this fact once it was too late.

A cup of amazake made without sake lees was perfectly fine for a high schooler to drink, but it had a disastrous result for Aradia.

“Hic. Wuhhh?”

“Wait, are you kidding me!? Aradia’s face is bright red!!!” screamed Kamijou when he saw Aradia’s shoulders shaking with each “hic”.

This made no sense. It wasn’t even an issue of a small amount of alcohol having an exaggerated effect on her. This kind was completely nonalcoholic, so why in the world was Aradia losing control of herself!?

Othinus sighed from her spot atop the kotatsu.

“This isn’t about anything real – it’s the placebo effect. In other words, assumptions are more powerful than any of you humans. Although if she could consciously control this, it would be an excellent weapon for a potion-making witch.”

“Looks to me more like Tipsy Aradia-san is the one being controlled!”

“Hence the ‘if she could consciously control this’ part, human. Harnessing assumptions rarely ever works because it’s a lot like tricking yourself into thinking you’ve become a vessel for a god and then losing yourself in it. Be careful here. Her self-hypnosis is strong enough to physically intoxicate her with a nonalcoholic drink, so a false pregnancy is well within her abilities.”

Aradia herself seemed oblivious to their whispered conversation. She remained limply seated on the wooden flooring – with her legs turned to one side in what some call mermaid mode – staring off into empty space and swaying side to side.

“Nya. Nya, nya, nya, nyaaa♪”

“Now she’s singing.”

“Hey, you. If you’re gonna tie me up, at least have the decency to look after me. I’m the goddess of all witches, so you’re supposed to be serving me, dammit. Hic.”

“And now she’s leaning against me!? Gwahhh!!”

“Trying the begging for attention plan, huh?”

“This happened with Alice and the Bologna Succubus too. Is every Transcendent such a free spirit? Now I know for sure Aradia is too dangerous to free from that duct tape!!”

She was causing this much trouble with her hands tied behind her back. All it took was swaying to the side for her to more or less tackle Kamijou onto his back and fall asleep while the two of them drew out a cross on the floor. Body Press Witch Aradia was apparently the kind to gain a lot of energy when she drank but use it all up almost immediately. In other words, she was the most annoying type of person who would cause all sorts of trouble and then have someone else clean up afterwards.

As a nun, Index was having trouble deciding if she should give into her reflexive urge to bite.

“Grr. Touma, where should we let her sleep?”

“Dammit, this is such a royal pain,” groaned Kamijou on his back.

The usual arrangement was Index in the living room and Kamijou in the bathroom, but where was drunk Aradia supposed to go? In her current state, he didn’t want to leave her anywhere.

After crawling out from under her, Kamijou grabbed her under the arms and dragged her along the wooden flooring.

“People are so heavy. Hmm, I’m thinking the closet.”

“I know you want to close her up in a space with walls and a door cutting her off from everyone else, human, but tying a woman up with duct tape and stuffing her in your closet sounds a lot like robbing her of what this world calls human rights.”

As drunk as she was, Aradia didn’t put up any kind of resistance. In her current state, she probably wouldn’t complain if she was placed aboard a slave ship, so he had no trouble shoving her inside the small closet.

“Sigh. Now I can rest easy.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he heard a heavy thud from the closed closet. Followed by the drunk woman groaning.

“Ugh.”

“This is safe, isn’t it? Her mysterious Transcendent magic isn’t going to run wild and squash the entire dorm building while we sleep, is it? Y’know, like mille-feuille when you use your fork wrong.”

“Touma, don’t talk about food before bed. You’ll make me hungry.”

“This is a boy’s dorm, but you have three girls here – including me – plus a cat when pets aren’t allowed. Scary that you can get away with this at a school dorm. What are Academy City’s adults even doing?”

===Part 4===

It had been one hell of a day, so Kamijou had trouble getting to sleep after closing himself in the bathroom. He was tired, but couldn’t sleep. Or to put it another way, his body was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t settle down. That drowsy state would mean any sleep he did get was shallow and it could lead to the amusing sleep phenomena of weird dreams and sleep paralysis.

He thought he saw Aradia in his dream.

He couldn’t be certain since he didn’t remember the dream. It was possible he had seen someone else who his mind had decided was similar to Aradia. Then he started wondering if that qualified as his first dream of the year.

At any rate, the next thing he knew, his phone’s alarm was ringing to tell him morning had arrived to his windowless bathroom.

Before he realized he could have switched off the alarm since it was winter break, he noticed a strangely soft and smooth sensation. And it came from below the blanket.

“Um!?”

Index or Othinus would never do this. And with the bathroom locked from the inside, the nocturnal calico cat couldn’t have stopped by to play. Besides, Sphinx was the fluffy type.

That left only one possible suspect.

“Aradi-”

“Nope. You’re wrong, teacher☆”

He really did jump.

His entire body trembled a few times and the small girl below the blanket laughed excitedly like she had found a new piece of playground equipment at the park.

This was Alice Anotherbible.

The blonde girl of around 12 looked like she had stepped right out of a children’s book.

What was she doing here!? How had she gotten in!? The front door and the bathroom’s door were both locked! Sure, their first meeting had been similar, but he couldn’t accept something so absurd just because there was a precedent!!!

On January 2, his morning began with a Transcendent who could determine what happened to his life and the fate of the world.

“Eh? What in the world is going on here?”

“Boo. The girl worked hard to get up early to visit you, teacher.”

“Visit me why?”

“For New Year’s money!!

“Noooooo!!!” shouted Kamijou. He shouldn’t have asked. He felt like he had just opened Pandora’s box, but he couldn’t say no when Alice was actually small enough to be the right age to be begging like this. And she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed foreigner(?), so he couldn’t send her away without letting her experience Japanese culture first.

“Ugh, dammit. Here, Alice. Happy New Year’s. I hope you don’t mind I don’t have a bag to put it in.”

“Yay! This was the girl’s first time!!”

An extremely disconcerting phrase was transmitted from a boy’s dorm bathroom first thing in the morning. And Kamijou was really starting to wonder why a high school boy kept having to give out New Year’s money. Wasn’t he still the age to be receiving it?

The girl wore an apron over a blue dress.

She stuck her head out from the blanket and smiled at him inside the bathtub.

“Everyone was too busy yesterday, but things have settled down enough to invite you over today. Come visit the girl’s secret base!!”

“…”

He wasn’t sure how to react.

The Bridge Builders Cabal Academy City Consulate probably did seem like a fun secret base for Alice who stood at the center of it all, but was going there really safe? According to Othinus, Academy City’s rules didn’t apply inside the consulate – even if a crime was committed.

But he couldn’t let the conversation die here either.

Nothing would get any better if he always chose the safest option.

Kumokawa Seria’s GPS tracker was no longer useful now that Alice had come to Academy City. And she had done so on a whim. If she suddenly got bored and decided to leave, there would be no tracking her down a second time.

Whatever her reasons, it was a miracle to even have Alice with him.

He was also worried about what would happen to Aradia. What would Alice’s cabal do with a defeated Transcendent? The answer to that question would greatly affect how he felt about Alice.

After some though, Kamijou made a decision.

“Fine. Show me to your secret base.”

“''Boo.''”

Alice’s voice suddenly dropped in tone.

That may have been a dangerous sign.

He hadn’t said anything wrong, but he belatedly realized she hadn’t liked the short pause – less than a second – before he answered. Small children could be sensitive to those subtle clues.

“But whatever.”

“Alice, um, have you had breakfast?”

“The girl has eaten.”

Alice finally crawled out from Kamijou’s blanket.

He left the bathroom with her and checked in the closet. Aradia was still tied up and stuffed in the cramped space and her eyelids fluttered open.

“Ugh? What am I doing in here? Wait, where am I?”

She appeared to still be half asleep. It was probably best not to tell her what had happened last night.

Meanwhile…

“?”

Kamijou looked down at Alice and she tilted her head.

If she were here to silence Aradia, she could have done so at her leisure before entering Kamijou’s bathroom, but she hadn’t. Could he take that as a good sign?

Index and Othinus were waking up now, so he had to fix breakfast for them.

“Touma, are we having bread or rice today?”

“Another one appeared overnight!? Human, explain yourself!”

Unlike last night’s hotpot, their breakfast of toast, fried eggs, and salad didn’t match the New Year’s mood in the slightest, but the next thing he knew, Alice had joined them. She had supposedly already eaten, but there she was spreading chocolate paste on a piece of toast. Like Index, she would eat any food put in front of her.

“The District 2 Firearm Museum has opened a historical weapons exhibit to help us learn from the past,” said the TV. “This is a valuable opportunity to directly touch a real Acht-Acht or PIAT under the supervision of museum personnel.”

“Ooh, wow.”

“Alice, stop leaning toward the TV and look what you’re doing. You’re spreading that chocolate paste all over the kotatsu!”

Unfortunately, this meant Kamijou had to look after someone else too.

“Aradia, do you want butter on your toast? Or would you prefer strawberry jam?”

“…”

“Get ready cause we’re doing this again. Say, ‘ah’.”

“I feel like I’ve woken up to find I’m still living my nightmare…munch.”

While Kamijou took care of Aradia (whose hands were tied behind her back) like her caregiver, he felt a powerful gaze on him.

Alice was moving just her upper body in some warmup exercises while keeping the rest of her under one corner of the kotatsu.

“The girl wants to do that too. Hm, hm.”

“You mean…being duct taped up?”

“No☆”

She smiled and sent a tiny punch toward the clueless boy’s shoulder.

The physical blow hit Kamijou, but it was Aradia’s butt that lifted about 3cm off the floor when she saw it.

“The girl means the food! The girl wants you to feed her! Everything tastes better when you can have fun with it!!”

Kamijou wasn’t sure if she actually wanted this or just wanted to mimic what she saw the others doing, but he had no real reason to refuse her and he ended up feeding Alice her toast.

“Munch, munch. We can go after eating this.”

“…”

“Go to the girl’s secret base – the consulate in District 12!!”

===Part 5===

They were both part of winter break, but January 1 and 2 felt subtly different.

The 2nd was something of an in-between time, where everything was calmer with the shrine visiting over. The 3rd and 4th may have been busier again with people starting to head back home, but that wasn’t here yet. Convenience stores and gyudon shops were open on New Year’s nowadays, but the beginning-of-the-year vacation mood still seemed crammed into January 2 more than any other day. Kamijou couldn’t be sure though, since he didn’t remember any of the previous years.

After making sure the windows were shut and the gas was off, Kamijou, Index (with cat on head), and Alice left the dorm room.

“What did you even eat after leaving last time?”

“Heh heh. Good, Old Mary made the girl the classic: turkey, fries, and a fluffy chiffon cake!!”

“Touma.”

“Stop. Please don’t store up a long list of requests in your perfect memory.”

When Index was given unnecessary ideas like this, she would start demanding he fix it for her. That wasn’t so bad with a cooking show that taught you how to make something an amateur could manage, but she reacted the same way when she watched a gourmet show that introduced some delicious brand-name dish from a fancy restaurant in a big city.

And he just knew the next two days of his relaxing break would be ruined by this.

“(Hey, human.)”

“(I’d like to say I know what you’re getting at, but I doubt I can assess the risk on the level of a war god.)”

To start with, he could not refuse Alice’s invitation. If he explained his reasons why, she might give up on the idea, but who knows what the Transcendents trying to keep her in a good mood would do afterwards.

They might kill someone, take a hostage, or even destroy half of Academy City.

If things got that serious and then every single Transcendent showed up asking him to play with Alice, he would be entirely out of his league.

At the same time, he could not carelessly leave Aradia behind.

Taking her to the Bridge Builders Cabal’s base was a bad idea, but they already knew where his dorm was. If he left her to hold down the fort (in her duct tape cocoon), there was a decent chance of another Transcendent attacking the dorm room.

Was this the right answer?

Had he really not overlooked anything?

Alice’s whims played as big a role as the cabal’s interests and plans, so he doubted any amount of thinking would be enough.

“It is so nice to get some fresh air,” sighed Aradia after they rode the run-down elevator to the ground floor. Then she glared hatefully down at her own left hand. Needless to say, it was still tightly held by Imagine Breaker. “Now I just need to do something about this.”

“Yeah, if only keeping you in your duct tape cocoon and carrying you around bandit style wouldn’t gather so much unwanted attention. I need to research an easier and less conspicuous method of carrying you around. Maybe one of those dollies delivery workers use for bigger packages?”

“You do realize there are better alternatives than carrying me around, don’t you!?”

Aradia bristled, but they must have looked like a couple teasing each other. An old lady walking her dog smiled at them and Kamijou ended up exchanging New Year’s greetings with a stranger.

But…

“Boo. Why does Aradia get all the fun?” said Alice on his other side.

Before he could say a thing, the small girl tackled into him from the side and grabbed at his left arm.

“Hee hee. This hand belongs to the girl!”

“Um, Alice?”

“?”

She looked up and smiled at him like she always did. She didn’t seem to notice Index wandering side to side, unsure where to go. The cat was struggling not to fall off her head.

“Alice…you are Alice, aren’t you?” hesitantly asked Kamijou.

“Eh heh heh☆”

She wiggled ticklishly for some reason. It may have been a bashful response to him saying her name so many times.

Based on that, this did seem to be the Alice he knew.

This was the mysterious but reliable girl who had used her power to protect everyone on December 29 when the dark side threatened to engulf everything. He hadn’t known if he would see her again when she left with Anna Sprengel. If nothing else had happened, he might have hugged her and wept with joy at this reunion.

But…

“…”

He felt a tremor.

It came from the other side than Alice. So from Aradia on his right. Transcendent Aradia had caused so much trouble in Shibuya on December 31, but she was trembling like a small child afraid to go home because she thought her parents would scold her.

It was so unusual and wrong that he couldn’t just ignore it.

Alice Anotherbible.

Even the kind Bologna Succubus had called Alice a tyrant, but what exactly did the girl carry inside her?

“Touma. Are we taking a train again?”

“I can hardly believe it, but yes. And to think I was broke at the end of last year. Hwa ha ha! I can afford normal expenses again!”

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a new headquarters.

The mysterious consulate was in District 12, so they only had to pay 200 yen at the subway to get there.

“Tah dah!! This is the place!” said Alice with a huge smile, hopping in excitement with no concern for her skirt.

The place would have stood out in any other district, but it fit right in among the giant pyramids, five-story pagodas, and other structures that made District 12 feel like an amusement park.

Past a grassy garden larger than a soccer field was a gate leading to a white marble building resembling an amusement park castle. But it wasn’t built according to a specific style like gothic or something-or-other garden. None of it felt real, so the entire space felt like part of an amusement park. If you had to describe it, it was a white mansion similar to the White House but with pointy towers added on without any sort of pattern. It wasn’t even symmetrical.

According to Alice, the white building in the center was called a tower despite not being all that tall. In a castle, that was where the lord’s living area and the administrative functions were concentrated. It was known as the keep, or in French, the donjon.

Were those roses in bloom? It sure looked like a red rose garden at first, but a closer inspection showed them to be white artificial flowers painted red. The place was still being prepared, so some areas had been left incomplete. On that note, castles and temples normally took more than a century to build just by stacking up the stones, so how did they get this built so quickly without anyone noticing?

Roses.

Painted from white to red.

Were the out-of-season honeybees the result of agricultural selective breeding? They were colored black and yellow.

Hadn’t he seen that coloration when fighting in deserted Los Angeles?

“…”

A relevant question came to mind, but Kamijou shook his head. He had directly clashed with R&C Occultics and Anna Sprengel a few times, but the worst thing to do when your life was on the line was assume you knew everything already. For magic expertise, he had Index and Othinus with him. And he had Alice and Aradia from the Bridge Builders Cabal with him too. Instead of making assumptions based on his imagination, he was far better off speaking with them and seeing what useful information they had.

And in fact, Othinus – a god of war, magic, and deception – had noticed something he hadn’t.

“(They call it a consulate, but it’s built like a fortress or like a castle built on the front lines. So did they openly build themselves a bridgehead inside enemy territory?)”

“Oh?”

A young man in the garden noticed them while pointing out where the delivery workers should set up the giant sculptures wrapped in packaging and cushioning.

He had black hair and wore a tailcoat. He even wore an old-fashioned black cloak.

He was still young(?), but he held a smooth, glossy black cane.

The young butler had a somehow gloomy air to him.

“I know you couldn’t exactly escape when Alice came for you personally, but I still can’t believe you showed up. And bringing our own Aradia with you? That I didn’t expect at all.”

“Who are you?”

“H. T. Trismegistus.” The young butler pulled a leather notebook from his pocket. “Come to think of it, I didn’t introduce myself yesterday, did I? As common sense would tell you, I am a Transcendent.”

He did not offer to shake hands. Whether or not that was due to the notebook was unclear.

He too was a member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. That meant he was one of the special magicians who held meetings with the other Transcendents to discuss how to change the world for the better. That meant he would be less than fond of Kamijou who – they believed – was capable of guiding Alice’s whims.

Index frowned and repeated something under her breath.

“''Trismegistus''?”

“Yes!! H. T. Trismegistus is amazing. He makes the best tea in the world. He also folds the girl’s clothes and puts her shoes away!”

“You should really be able to handle that much on your own, Alice.”

Even as he said that, the young butler kneeled and cleaned off some mud that got on Alice’s skirt as she hopped around. He wiped it off with a handkerchief, applied detergent, dried it with a dryer, and even ironed it.

But…wait?

Where did all of that stuff come from???

“(Don’t freak out yet, human. A stage magician could do that. He could have multiple storage cases hidden inside that cloak like a tackle box or a pop-up book.)”

“Um, are you Alice’s tutor?”

“Heavens no. I am no more than one of her servants. I wouldn’t dream of holding that much influence over my beloved master.”

H. T. Trismegistus answered the grimoire library’s gaze with no more than a meaningful smile.

There was one thing Kamijou had wanted to ask the next time he met a Transcendent. He hadn’t wanted to ask Alice because he got the feeling her answer would change based on what she thought he wanted to hear.

“Wh-where is the Bologna Succubus? Is she alright?”

“She is inside. But common sense says she should be allowed to rest for the time being.”

That was a relief…or was it?

Was this H. T. Trismegistus one of the Rescuers or one of the Killers?

The young butler welcomed back Alice while indicating the consulate with a sweep of his arm.

“Everyone is familiar with Alice and her tea party, but in the original story, it is held at a house in the woods. But outside the house, not inside it. But common sense says the real highlight of the setting arrives with the Queen of Hearts shouting to have everyone executed. There is nothing better than the queen’s castle or the courtroom.”

Kamijou felt like a dull, invisible object was slowly stabbing into his chest.

He ended up holding Aradia’s hand tight. She took it as some kind of sign and gave him a wordless, wide-eyed look, but he hadn’t meant it that way.

Executed.

And a courtroom.

What did the Bridge Builders Cabal intend to do with Aradia after her defeat? He still didn’t know why they had come to Academy City. If it was a whim of Alice’s, there might not be any real reason, but that didn’t mean they would ignore a potential information leak like Aradia.

Alice, being Alice, smiled like she wasn’t concerned about any of that.

“H. T. Trismegistus! The girl wants to show her teacher around her secret base! But just looking around would be boring!! Do you know a fun game we could play? You know, like a treasure hunt or something else where everyone can see the whole place while playing!!”

“Ah ha ha,” laughed the young butler as he pulled out several movie pamphlets and TRPG rulebooks. Those paper booklets had to be heavy with so many of them.

“Common sense says you only need to speak this magic phrase: ‘I will grant my whole inheritance to whosoever reveals every one of my secrets.’ ”

“Ohh, that sounds like fun. Then should the girl share her power with the winner? You’re the best, H. T. Trismegistus!”

“Not at all. It is merely my job to gently support my master by granting her every wish.”

“Then I’ll give them a whole half!!”

“Hold on,” interrupted a graceful woman’s voice.

Kamijou realized someone else was already standing next to Alice. The woman wore a maternity dress and a wide-brimmed hat that covered her eyes. That was Good, Old Mary, one of the Transcendents, and she was currently pinching and slightly stretching one of Alice’s small cheeks.

“Alice really would give someone half of the planet while in this sort of mood, so if you see her start on something like that, please stop her even if you have to physically restrain her.”

“Eh? Um, you mean me? You’re telling me to do that?” said Kamijou.

“''Mama is only asking an outsider because none of us can do it.''”

That sent a tension similar to static electricity through them all. The Transcendents, Index, and Othinus all carefully observed Kamijou and Alice.

“?”

Even the cat instinctually sensed something was amiss and put up his guard, but Alice herself tilted her head and then grabbed Kamijou’s arm again.

He was afraid to say anything.

He had temporarily captured Aradia, but he had been helpless against her on the 31st. He had been killed more than once and had only barely pulled off a victory thanks to two Transcendents providing assistance that felt like cheating.

What if he was thrown out onto the battlefield with no assistance this time?

Or what if several Transcendents attacked him at once?

Or what if Alice turned on him???

He had no idea when he would be killed or by whom, but he couldn’t predict what the other Transcendents would do if he turned down Alice’s invitation. He worked to organize what information he had while asking some questions.

“So is this consulate about that stuff the Bologna Succubus was telling me about? You know, about the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal being split between a group that wants to rescue me and one that wants to kill me?”

“Uh, oh,” gasped H. T. Trismegistus.

The young butler’s gaze lowered to young Alice.

She silently and emotionlessly tilted her head.

And she spoke.

“''What. Is. He. Talking. About?''”

“Gasp!?”

Kamijou opened his eyes.

He shook his head several times and stood up.

Only then did he realize he had been collapsed on the grass.

(What? Eh? Wait. What happened? What in the world just happened!?)

He checked his old folk’s smartphone to find time had skipped forward by about 10 minutes.

No.

''What had happened'' immediately after Alice Anotherbible spoke in such a low voice? Kamijou at least seemed to have lost consciousness at that point.

He took a look around.

H. T. Trismegistus had seemed so above it all, but he had fallen onto his rear with his cane a good distance away from him. Where it had come from was a mystery, but in his panic, he had produced an entirely useless life jacket which he clutched in his arms like a stuffed animal.

For some reason, Good, Old Mary was trying not to look in that direction.

After sensing a tremor shaking and a sweet aroma, Kamijou realized Aradia was holding onto him from the side. Just like a small child afraid to let go of her teddy bear after having a nightmare.

Index and Othinus had to be around there somewhere. Probably doing their best to hide in one of the large garden’s flower beds or shrubberies.

Alice alone remained on her feet.

Her head was still tilted and she spoke in her usual tone again.

“You were saying?”

“Yes! Yes!! We’re all good friends here!! Common sense says we would never be so rude to an important guest!!”

The young butler’s voice was cracking.

The Bologna Succubus had said only Kamijou could guide and control Tyrant Alice. He still didn’t understand what this was all about, but if this was how things worked, he could see why everyone was so afraid of her.

But anyway.

“T-to be clear, our objective is not Kamijou Touma,” said H. T. Trismegistus while trying to catch his breath. “Common sense says we made this direct visit to prevent an information leak. In other words, we are here for ''a fellow Transcendent''.”

“…”

“You heard a lot about us in Shibuya on the 31st, didn’t you? I believe a few Transcendents other than Aradia contacted you. But common sense says this decision cannot be overturned. The Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and even Alice herself have already agreed that the traitor who left our cabal must be punished accordingly. Because these are not false accusations placed upon an innocent’s head.”

“Punished?”

“Correct.”

Someone walked up next to the young butler.

She was a girl of about 15. She had long, wavy blonde hair, brown skin, and a skinny build decorated with thin belts and pure gold ornaments. She reminded Kamijou of Nephthys, but maybe it was his lack of knowledge that made him think of an Egyptian goddess or a dancer when he saw her.

Alice hopped around proudly.

“This is Mut Thebes! She’s a Transcendent just like the girl!!”

They had finally reached the point where he wasn’t even sure what kind of god they were talking about. He at least recognized names like Alice and Mary – ''whether or not the associations he made were accurate'' – but some of the other names like Aradia and Trismegistus meant nothing at all to him.

Since Alice sounded so proud, the young butler went ahead and introduced her.

“She is an Egyptian mythology Transcendent who specializes in punishment.”

The matter-of-fact way H. T. Trismegistus said it sent a chill down Kamijou’s spine.

Punishment.

He gave Aradia’s hand a squeeze.

“She carries the symbolism of the mother protecting her children – or of the queen protecting her people. She will do whatever it takes to protect what she had decided is her territory. And of course, that is currently defined as the Bridge Builders Cabal.”

That made her sound super powerful, but Kamijou wasn’t sure if it made her an enemy or an ally. He gave the brown girl a nervous look and, for some reason, she bowed. Now, should he feel glad that this assassin or hitman was impeccably polite? He wasn’t sure.

She was a Transcendent who specialized in punishment.

The brown girl stood next to…something not quite the same as a metal fence with spikes jutting out in a giant X. Several sharp spears were contained in the same binder, creating something that looked a bit like a barricade. The spearheads were made of glass and a strange fluorescent pink liquid sloshed around inside. At about 150cm long, they didn’t seem to have much reach for spears. Hold the shaft near the center and they wouldn’t reach much further than a sword.

That meant they were probably javelins.

Notably, they each had the same phrase written on the shaft: Drink Me.

“(Th-this is related to Alice in Wonderland,)” whispered Aradia, unable to hide her trembling.

“…”

Kamijou remained silent.

“I used the word punishment because I have a graceful heart and common sense told me to avoid stating it so directly, but perhaps it would have been simpler to say ‘execution’ instead.”

The young butler’s voice was calm as could be.

Although he was nervously tapping his cane against the ground.

“Transcendents can be killed. Especially when you have an expert in executing them,” he said quite plainly.

The next thing Kamijou knew, there was a long, narrow coffin there. Was it another stage magician tool? It was about the right size to hold an adult woman and it had strange slits all over it, so it may have been a prop for stabbing swords into.

“You should already understand this on some level after what you saw during all that ugly fighting in Shibuya on the 31st. One specific method is to weaken the Transcendent by taking away their power. The spiritual item called the Shrink Drink does just that. In the story, it was a drink that causes the imbiber to physically shrink, but- oh, you should already be familiar with the general idea since one of your companions is a weakened god.”

They had traded one problem for another.

(At least it looks like I don’t have to worry about all the Transcendents attacking me at once. Still, this is bad. I’m not thrilled about their target being Aradia either.)

Kamijou turned to look at someone.

Not Alice who was kind but capricious. He looked to Good, Old Mary who had selflessly helped save him and the Bologna Succubus on the 31st.

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus had both had something they wanted to protect, so Good, Old Mary – who could return a corpse to its state when the heart had stopped – must have had her own reasons for wanting to become a magician.

But she did not return Kamijou’s gaze.

In fact, her large hat shook as she turned her head away from him, but that may have been to avoid Aradia’s eyes more than his.

(Are we out of options?)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He was wrapped in an extreme tension that told him he had to avoid letting them notice even that.

(Then what do I do? What good is Imagine Breaker alone against an entire group of Transcendents!?)

But while all this was going on in his head…

“Oh, I think you have the wrong idea,” continued H. T. Trismegistus, to correct the puny boy’s misunderstanding. “It is true Aradia neglected to return to us after her defeat at your hands and the possibility of her revealing critical information does put our cabal at risk, but she already understands and shares in the cabal’s ideology and – more importantly – she understands in her very bones ''what it would mean to make herself an enemy of Alice''. Common sense says no amount of cajolery or torture would get her to talk. That sturdy vault door can be dealt with later. It is the flimsy back door we must deal with first.”

“Back door?”

“Indeed.” The young butler nodded and explained. “Our top priority assassination target is none other than the newest Transcendent, the international information expert who created R&C Occultics, and the traitor who shows insufficient respect for Alice and who got you involved in all this in the first place. I am, of course, referring to ''Anna Sprengel''.”

===Part 6===

Meanwhile, Yomikawa Aiho had business beyond giving a New Year’s greeting to her former roommate. And that business required visiting the same location two days in a row.

It could be confusing since Board Chairman Accelerator had adopted it as his new base, but the place was originally a District 10 prison for adult criminals.

Working for Anti-Skill naturally led to knowing a fair number of convicts, but this particular one was a special case.

Because…

“Hi, Ultimate Evil Demon King Tessou Tsuzuri who’s awoken to the thrill of the dark voltage. Care to share some of your genius inspiration that us ordinary and peaceful Anti-Skill officers could never hope to think up?”

“Eeek!! P-please stop this, Senpai!! Why are you harassing me like this!? You’re teasing me on purpose, aren’t you!? Oh, god, it’s so embarrassing!!!”

Trembling on the other side of the visiting room’s thick bulletproof glass was a timid teacher with glasses and curly black hair. She had wounds all over. It was kind of scary that the AI-supported speed trial had her thrown in prison so fast her teaching license hadn’t even officially revoked yet.

(Well, that government paperwork is going to be slow during the holiday anyway.)

In that sense, Yomikawa was a little impressed that the prison was working so fast at the end of the year.

What had happened to the version of Tessou who had strutted through Academy City’s darkness as an Anti-Skill Negotiator? The usual tearful glasses woman was back like she had woken from a dream.

Tessou lay her head on the desk and placed her hands on top of her head.

“Why? Whyyyyy did I do that? I wasn’t wrong to want to protect the children, but why would I choose to do it like that? Am I secretly a sadistic jerk deep down? If I just wanted to feel fear, I should have gone to an amusement park haunted house, but I got fixated on doing everything with violence and I feel like that’s kind of your fault really.”

“(Wow. It’s hard to imagine, but what if Accelerator is like this deep down and he’s just better at hiding it from us?)”

“Umm, Yomikawa-senpai?”

Tessou Tsuzuri tilted her head in confusion.

It at least sounded like she had never stopped wanting to protect the students, but she should have come asked her colleague for advice before doing all that. Yomikawa sighed.

“Whatever. The point is I need to pick your brains, Tessou. It was temporary, but you managed to synchronize with – or even outdo – the dark side, so I want some help thinking like they do.”

“I-I won’t do it. I decided I wasn’t touching that dangerous dark side ever again. I will pay my debt to society, but don’t make me get involved with that again. I don’t even work for you anymore, so you can’t make me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Um, you’re scaring me. Scaring me a lot. Why do I sense an obsession behind that ‘oh, really’? It feels every bit as strong as someone’s unrequited love!!”

“So, Tessou? Care to remind me who it was that put my arm in this sling? Ow, ow, ow, ow. Man the winter chill sure does a number on a broken arm.”

“Kh!? Y-your guilt trip won’t work on me!!”

“Suit yourself. Now, the solitary confinement area is split up by gender, age, and occupation, isn’t it? That means you’re in the teacher section. And if my memory serves, isn’t your cell neighbor named Therestina?”

“Bff!? Why do you know the layout of the cells? And what are you suggesting!? I really don’t like where this is headed! Do you know how creepy it is that she spends all her time cackling in her solitary cell!? She doesn’t even need to snort any white powder!! The brain chemicals produced by her own love, courage, and derangement have completely broken her brain!!!”

“Did you know, Tessou, that this prison can reward model prisoners by transferring them from a solitary cell to a shared cell? Lucky for you, your good friend has your back. Your lonely days will soon be over and you can share a cell with another lewd glasses teacher with a screw loose.”

“You’ve made your point, so please give me a job to do!! What was it you wanted to ask me, you lowly scum!?”

There. Tessou’s cooperation acquired.

Yomikawa Aiho lazily rested her head in her hand and organized her thoughts.

She had more than one thing she wanted to ask.

Fortunately, she knew which one she wanted to get out of the way first.

“''Kumokawa Seria.''”

“…”

“On December 31, the Board’s brain was sighted outside the city in Shibuya. She was focused on, but ultimately never visited, the Miyashita Ark. It’s basically an enormous mall, but I doubt she was there to go shopping. Any ideas?”

“What were you thinking?”

“That girl is the type to pursue something that has already happened, not start something herself. That would mean something was already underway at the Miyashita Ark and she was there to put a stop to-”

“I think you’re wrong.”

Yomikawa’s idea was swiftly shot down.

Tessou Tsuzuri giggled at the way Yomikawa’s eyes widened. Her situation had greatly changed, but it was still amusing to see that look on her former superior’s face.

''Or maybe she had switched modes.

The (supposedly) timid teacher held a hand over her mouth as she laughed and then explained her reasoning.

“You said Kumokawa Seria never actually went there, didn’t you? If she was there to stop something, I would expect her to pay a visit even if she screwed it up. No matter how risky it would be. If the person who called for Anti-Skill is attacked by a criminal before you can get there, you can’t just turn around and head back even if you know it’s too late for them, right?”

There was always a miniscule chance you could save them. Getting the injured caller medical care could at least save their life. And even if they were already dead, you had to search for evidence that could lead to the culprit. A defender would change their objective but still act if they learned it was too late. You could not work law enforcement if you would stop just because the best case scenario was no longer an option.

Which meant…

“So you’re saying Kumokawa ''wasn’t'' going to the Miyashita Ark to stop something?”

“On the other hand, I would feel bad if I used that reasoning to conclude she was the one who set it all up.”

“…Hm.”

“But I could see her wanting to interfere with something already underway ''in order to steer it where she wants it''. So just imagine what would have happened if there had been no accident and she had arrived at the Miyashita Ark as planned. Maybe she couldn’t have done anything herself, but ''someone with her'' may have accomplished something if she had guided them there.”

“But what for?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe she wanted to eliminate something she was afraid that new board chairman couldn’t handle on his own. Academy City has been on a losing streak of late, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find some people are doubting that new board chairman’s abilities. ''I know I am''.”

“…”

“That said, she isn’t as impatient as me, so she wouldn’t gather the people she needs using blackmail material. I bet she would lay out the rails to guide some great power where she wants it, all while staying just barely within the bounds of legality. Maybe she sees the world differently. If you rely ''solely'' on science, I don’t think you would place your hopes in anything outside of Academy City.”

But then who was it?

The new board chairman was Academy City’s strongest Level 5.

What game piece could be so powerful even he paled in comparison?

===Part 7===

She didn’t go for the cigar or the kiseru.

“Yes, I will be taking that lighter. It will be much simpler if I take your 🔥 instead of all your many 🚬 products.”

“Woof, woof, woof!!”

“Suddenly trying to act like a cute 🐕 is ❌ going to change my 🧠. Using the kiseru helps 😷 how much you’re smoking, but you are matching the pace of a ⛓️ smoker right now. Smoking is bad for your health and there is ❌ possible way you can 🗣️ otherwise.”

The golden retriever lunged at the person forcing her own preferences onto him. Having her face licked by a tongue that reeked of nicotine made Lady Kingsford shriek and fall onto her rear. Was all this really about her not liking the smell?

“Oh, dear. My glasses. Where are my glasses?”

“I have found your weak point now, you gentle teacher. What are you, a living cliché?”

Losing her glasses made that founder of founders get down in a doggy pose. Crybaby Anna Kingsford crawled around feeling about for her glasses until Kihara Noukan sighed and used one of his mechanical arms to hand the glasses to her.

The interaction received a sidelong glance from a woman in a beige habit and blonde hair roughly cut to shoulder length. No, that was actually Magician Aleister who had hijacked a great demon’s body.

He clicked his tongue while walking toward Academy City.

“They’re going to notice this time,” said the golden retriever’s artificial voice. “Our group has gotten too large and we haven’t prepared well enough to sneak in safely.”

“I know that. I did build this city from the ground up, after all.”

For one thing, Anna Kingsford – who was tearfully putting back on her glasses – was not a camouflaged model finetuned for infiltration missions. If they took her with them, Accelerator’s side would notice immediately.

Aleister wasn’t happy about the situation either. He had already handed Academy City over to the next board chairman, so he didn’t want to be making frequent visits.

But things had changed. In a big way.

The Bridge Builders Cabal had a consulate.

They had created a bridgehead enclave inside the headquarters of science.

That secret base would make it impossible to track anything that was stolen and impossible to prevent anyone from getting inside.

(Why would that boy choose to enter their base where they can legally disappear him?)

Of course, this human’s objective was not to solve a riddle. Everything would be for naught if Kamijou Touma wasn’t rescued from the threat of the Bridge Builders Cabal.

He would save that boy even if it meant breaking his word. In a way, it was a very Aleister thing to do since fate never seemed to let him follow his own rules anyway.

So they crossed the outer wall and entered Academy City.

“Your pareo.”

“Hee hee. Thank you very much. Such a gentlemanly 🐕 to hold it down with your 🦾.”

There was no time for getting weirdly emotional or succumbing to self-loathing. The beige habit woman spoke up while they walked through that familiar city.

“H. T. Trismegistus.”

There was a note of annoyance in Aleister’s voice.

He then restated it as if confirming it for himself.

“Hermes ''Thoth'' Trismegistus. That Egyptian secretary god has a strong connection to Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass. And both Hermes and Thoth correspond to each other in Liber 777, an occult dictionary I wrote. That means Alice isn’t the only one. Yet another hint of the Magick system I worked on so long ago. Ugh, why do I always do this!? If only I could go back in time and punch my past self.”

Witch Goddess Aradia was another obvious example.

In fact, the entire framework of Wicca was created by Gerald Gardner, who had interacted with Aleister. Aleister’s influence could be seen in the portion of Gardner’s witchcraft where the practitioners gained power through sex.

Looking relieved now that she had her glasses back, Anna Kingsford whispered in obvious enjoyment.

“Hee hee. By that logic, would the Bologna Succubus and Good, Old Mary be 🔗ed as well?”

“…”

“My, my. I 💭 which Magickal supernatural being they could be. Perhaps the sky goddess from 🇪🇬 mythology? Or maybe the lady in 🟥 spoken of in the 📕 of Revelation?”

Anyone could tell from the teasing tone of voice that Kingsford was only eliminating impossible options. Although she smiled and swiped a portable ashtray from Kihara Noukan while doing so.

There was no point in trying to find a connection in all of them.

It was dreadfully easy to find mistaken interpretations when using Magick. It was a labyrinth of one’s own making that beginners often found themselves trapped inside.

Magic was so complicated because it operated under an orderly set of rules, but questions didn’t necessarily have just the one answer. If you weren’t willing to accept contradictions like two distinct but equally correct answers, then you could never reach the truth. That was a conclusion Crowley himself had reached at a certain temple.

So putting off a question on hold was far more important than you might think.

(I shouldn’t assume the Crowley system ''alone'' is enough to explain all of this.)

Alice Anotherbible, Aradia, H. T. Trismegistus.

Then there was the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and the rest.

For the time being, he decided to operate under the assumption that the cabal contained some with Magickal origins and some without. But it didn’t look as simple as the ones who followed the Crowley system being Rescuers and the others being Killers.

“Some come from Crowley and some do not.”

“And some have decided Kamijou Touma should live and others have chosen he should ☠️.”

They had already found a mixture of four different categories within the single cabal. That was unusual since cabals usually followed a unified ideology with their magic.

Furthermore, there was another unique case beyond those four types.

“Why are you staring at me?” asked the face plastered to the film canister he held.

Anna Sprengel.

“Wasn’t she invited to join that Bridge Builders Cabal?” asked Kihara Noukan.

“That suggests the Transcendents aren’t some legendary group with, for example, only 12 spots available. If someone meets certain requirements, they can add new members.”

“Which leads to an obvious ❓☆”

Anna Kingsford’s tone was light.

Was this how she had once spoken with Westcott and Mathers?

“''What conditions did Miss Sprengel meet''? What expectations did they have of her and how did she end up betraying them?”

“I don’t know anything about magic,” said Noukan, “but for someone to betray your organization, you must have placed your trust in them at least temporarily.”

Some followed the Crowley system, others didn’t. Some were Rescuers, others were Killers. Which of those groups had Anna Sprengel joined?

“That line of reasoning doesn’t fit the timeline,” said Miss Sprengel.

“…”

She laughed when Aleister fell into silent thought.

“The split based on what to do with Kamijou Touma only came to be after I betrayed the cabal and messed with Alice. Those groups did not exist originally.”

That left only two groups: Crowley and non-Crowley.

Time to think through it again. When comparing their magic, was there anything linking Aleister and Miss Sprengel?

Eventually, the beige habit woman muttered under her breath.

It didn’t matter if part of the process was flawed as long as you found your way to the correct answer in the end.

“''So that’s it.''”

“Have you grasped the big picture now?” asked Miss Sprengel.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal’s Transcendents seemed awfully confident with their boasting about individually rivalling the entire magic side, but I see where they were coming from now.”

In that sense, Anna Sprengel did indeed qualify.

Aleister brought a hand to his borrowed chin.

“It also explains why Alice’s group did not choose Anna Kingsford when her magic is so much more powerful.”

“Yes. And it means an immature Aleister Crowley might have been accepted as a Transcendent if things had gone differently.”

Not that Aleister Crowley ever would have chosen to obey someone else in that way.

Funnily enough, this meant it was impossible for both Aleister and Miss Sprengel to join the Bridge Builders Cabal at the same time.

Only one or the other could join.

“Every man and every woman is a star,” sang the girl’s voice.

That was a theory Aleister himself had once proposed.

“All people can create a monster and become a god. Of course, doing so would change the very definition of the word ‘god’. With one 2000-year period ended, the world has already entered that age. Isn’t that the Aeon of Horus you proposed? That is the foundation of their strategy. That is what the Transcendents have created by gathering together and what they are attempting to control all on their own.”

Miss Sprengel continued to sing from the surface of the film canister.

“But I am ''not'' talking about Alice here.”

===Between the Lines 2===

The girl was known as a witch.

There was nothing she couldn’t do.

With her newfound power, she could bend anything to her will with a wave of her finger. She scattered stars across the night sky, sent blessed rain falling from that sky, created a potion for the sick, and gave a beautiful dress to a poor woman.

The girl was praised by so many.

The girl was thanked by so many.

The girl became a goal for so many.

She swam through her dreams. There was nothing left that could bring her pain. How could there be when she had the power to remove all sources of pain from her sight and to support and guide those who worshiped her?

There was a smile on every face.

Everyone looked happy.

So the girl was confident she had done the right thing. So the girl did not question any of her actions. It was the right thing to do, after all. Why hold back when her every action was a wonderful thing that would make everyone happy?

She lived in a world void of stress.

From the moment she got up in the morning to the moment she fell asleep at night, her every day shined bright.

But isn’t it strange?

Why, then, was that girl known as ''a witch''?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter1

2022-09-20T07:09:33Z

2409:4066:190:4D74:0:0:14A5:38AC: /* Chapter 1: Happy New Hell, Another Year of Panic – KOTATU_Syndrome. */

==Chapter 1: Happy New Hell, Another Year of Panic – KOTATSU_Syndrome.==

===Part 1===

“Yes, I’m back! Huh, did my room always smell like this?”

“I don’t notice anything different. And my memory is perfect, so I know I’m right!”

Kamijou may have been feeling the same thing anyone did after returning from a trip.

Regardless, he set down the ''luggage'' he had been lugging around over his shoulder bandit style and then got into the kotatsu.

However…

“Why is it cold!? What, is someone using this kotatsu to store Hokkaido salmon!?”

“Yawn. Human, salmon is usually salted so it can be stored without refrigeration.”

15cm Othinus would be entirely buried by the blanket around the kotatsu, so she curled up on the table instead. When the heater was switched on, the table apparently felt like a heated floor. Which was why carelessly placing your laptop on the kotatsu could lead to it overheating.

“Index, plug that cable into the wall. Then I just have to flip this switch.”

“Ugh…”

“Don’t complain just because it’s a machine. You’re the closest to the outlet and we’ll never get warm unless someone does it.”

He wanted to take it easy on January 1.

When he had said he couldn’t bear doing a shrine visit right away after everything, Kumokawa Seria had wandered off somewhere. That upperclassman girl remained strong on New Year’s despite all the danger she had survived the day before.

Once inside the kotatsu up to his shoulders, Kamijou lay on the floor and grabbed the TV remote, but nothing happened no matter what he pressed. They had only just returned from a trip, so he hadn’t turned the main power back on. He grumbled about misfortune as he emerged from the kotatsu, hit the button, and returned.

The TV turned on to a program introducing Shinto shrines across Japan with pleasant music in the background. It was less meant for its content and more meant as background noise to help you drift off to sleep. It was perfect for the new year. Who needed some shocking footage putting a strain on your heart first thing New Year’s morning?

“Index, are you okay with doing the shrine visit after lunch?”

“I’m taking a nap, Touma. And I hope you understand how bad things are if I’m choosing to skip a meal for sleep.”

“Welcome to the 5-minute Short News. For our top story, the anti-elite Winter Cleaning unofficially held inside and outside of Academy City is continuing to spread under a new name.”

But someone else was not onboard with the “relaxing New Year’s morning” plan.

The luggage placed on the wood flooring groaned loudly and rolled side to side. That was in fact Transcendent Aradia tied up with duct tape.

The witch goddess apparently had something to say. Did she want inside the kotatsu? It was January and she was wearing a modified bikini that made her look like a dancer. She was like that one kid in every class who insisted on wearing shorts year round. You know, like Kanzaki.

Aradia was a Transcendent from the Bridge Builders Cabal.

She acted like she was the leader of this group called the Wiccans, but it wasn’t clear if that was really true. The Transcendents like the Bologna Succubus all had their origins in fictional stories or reports and Index had said the history of a goddess named Aradia stood on pretty shaky ground.

Was she a human magician who had wanted to use the fictional goddess’s reputation?

Or was she a being so powerful humans had failed to accurately record her existence?

(I need to get a straight answer about that later.)

That thought came to Kamijou’s mind while he enjoyed the kotatsu. Index was on another side of the square kotatsu, so she was sort of lying on top of him down where no one could see.

“Hey, Touma? Are you sure it was a good idea to put Aradia on the floor?”

“She mixes her witch’s ointment using her bare feet on the ground, right? Her legs are bound and her feet are wrapped in duct tape up to the ankles, so she can’t directly touch the floor. We’ll be fine…I hope.”

“Human, if this is going to be a problem, why not use that duct tape to hang her from the ceiling? You can tie her up all sexy like and trap her in essentially a giant spider web.”

Aradia raised a muffled protest. She bent her knees to try and protect her stomach while lying on her side, but she didn’t seem to realize that just emphasized her butt. It wasn’t much of a defense.

“Then why did you cover her mouth?” asked Index with a tilt of the head.

“Wait, why did I do that? It isn’t like she uses incantations.”

He tore the duct tape from the tied-up goddess’s mouth. After all her resistance earlier, she proved to be quite obedient when he was removing some of her restraints.

“Pwah.”

She started by sucking in as much oxygen as she could get.

“What do you people plan on doing with me!? How dare you treat the goddess of all witches this way! Don’t you know I am Transcendent Aradia of the Bridge Builders Cabal? I will never forget what you did to me today!!”

Her ankles and her hands behind her back were still bound by the duct tape, so as threatening as she tried to sound, she was still flopping around like a mermaid caught by a fisherman.

Kamijou turned back toward the kotatsu that Index still occupied.

“Hey, Index. I don’t think she’s going to tell us much.”

“Yawn. Well, she’s being loud, so why not tape her mouth up again?”

“Othinus?”

“Magic researcher who dares disturb my divine slumber, I hope the human ties you up with some sexy bondage and stuffs you in the closet or in the below-floor kitchen storage. All using that super-strong foreign tape he bought at a discount store.”

“W-w-w-wait!?”

Aradia began to panic. Index and Othinus were only interested in getting some sleep, so they didn’t seem too concerned with what might become of her.

Kamijou removed the cover from the below-floor storage and then noticed something.

“Huh? Oh, right. I forgot all about this.”

“Why are you actually opening the storage space!? Barbarian clinging to the trappings of civilization, you need to embody the grace of god!! Or at least consider my free will!!”

Aradia paled and bristled. She loathed Christianity, so mentioning the grace of god had to be a major compromise on her part, but the pointy-haired high school boy didn’t know enough about religion to notice her determination.

Kamijou Touma next opened the refrigerator’s giant door.

“I was right.”

“Eh? Uh, oh. You aren’t thinking of stuffing me in there, are you? And that white mist escaping tells me that door is to the freezer, not the crisper!”

Aradia was at a loss for words with clear drops forming in her eyes, but the pointy-haired boy was not interested in eating a homemade witch goddess sherbet made with brown sugar syrup and rice dumplings to fit the New Year’s season.

“This isn’t good. I managed to earn some money, but I didn’t go shopping. We’re still completely out of food and on the verge of starving to death!!”

“Settle down, human. Academy City is an urban area in Japan’s capital of Tokyo. They have stores open on New Year’s these days.”

“Maybe, but are you absolutely certain the local supermarket is open? I can just imagine walking around seeing nothing but closed shutters with signs saying they’re closed for the holiday. Starving to death with a wallet full of money is an absurd level of misfortune, but that’s exactly why I can see it happening to me!”

“Zzz… Don’t worry, Touma. We have Aradia if worse comes to worst…”

“Time out,” interrupted Aradia. “Where did this extreme survival situation come from? Why do I feel like every second brings me closer to being turned into an unwilling noble sacrifice!?”

Aradia’s throat was entirely dry now, but she still couldn’t move.

Wiccan spells were all about an ointment made by mixing a variety of chemicals with oil. That Transcendent was powerful enough to rival the entire magic side on her own when the conditions were right, but she was only a weak (and sexily dressed) young woman when the conditions were not right.

Index, Othinus, and the cat showed no sign of leaving the kotatsu.

After they fell asleep in the kotatsu, woke back up, and were overcome by enough hunger to forget their humanity, Magical Girl Aradia-chan would meet her end. The rules of the world would not apply in this small room where starving stomachs ruled all.

Goddess Aradia would be devoured by them all, and not in the sexy way☆

Whether they were wild spells people were forbidden from even mentioning or they were slanderous inventions of the Christian church, Aradia had detailed knowledge of ancient rituals from around the world. At times, being an avid learner had its drawbacks.

“W-w-w-wait, you there! Kamijou Touma!! Go grocery shopping right this instant! Isn’t that the obvious solution here!?”

“Yeah, but I need to recharge my motivation first. I might be used to misfortune, but not even I could bear to head out into the cold when I’m this sleepy and find nothing but closed shutters greeting me.”

“The more you refuse to challenge yourself, the lower my odds of survival!! Food isn’t going to magically appear if you stay here. Besides, can’t you check if the store is open on your phone!?”

Could you do that?

Kamijou was shoulder deep in the kotatsu again (much to the displeasure of Index who had briefly had the entire space to herself) and now he reached for his phone. But a smartphone beginner like him could only find their ordinary weekday and weekend hours. Stare as he might at the small screen, he couldn’t find anything about New Year’s in particular.

Lying on his stomach, he lowered his head, kissed the floor, and groaned.

The old folk’s smartphone slipped from his hand.

“I can’t do it. I’m too sleepy and hungry to think. I don’t even have the willpower to do a search.”

“There’s a popup for a New Year’s sale flashing on the screen right now, so they’re obviously open today!! Please don’t give up, Kamijou Touma!! You’re the only one left who can hear me and actually do something about it!!!”

===Part 2===

At the insistence of the sexy crybaby, they set off for some emergency grocery shopping. Mostly because sleeping in the kotatsu was impossible with her making such a racket.

Kamijou decided it would be a good idea to get the shrine visit done with while they were out. He was getting his new year off to a somewhat guilty start since he felt bad going so soon after telling Kumokawa he wouldn’t be.

“Ugh, I’m too tired to move.”

“And I don’t have it in me to cook. Hey, Index, how about we buy some ingredients and then grab something we can eat right away? It’s New Year’s, so they must have food stands set up near the shrine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Touma. Anything you can buy at a food stand counts as a snack. I demand three full meals!”

“You always ask for croquettes and yakisoba at the shopping district, so I think your definition of snack is too broad. A set of four takoyaki I would understand, but an entire okonomiyaki is a meal!”

Kamijou’s group sluggishly left the dorm room.

But one of them still wasn’t satisfied.

“…”

Transcendent Aradia scowled down at her left hand.

It was written clear on her face that she appreciated not having her hands duct taped behind her back anymore and she could live with the makeshift duct tape shoes covering her feet, but she did not like having Imagine Breaker tightly grasping her hand. A lot to fit on the beautiful goddess’s small face.

The Transcendent spoke with her voice pitched terrifyingly low.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What is this?”

“An Aradia countermeasure. What else?”

Her unimaginably icy voice only got a confused look from Kamijou.

Were Transcendents just too far removed from humans? This hot-blooded boy would get in the bath with the Bologna Succubus if necessary for a battle and he didn’t seem bothered by this either.

“The idea that you can’t use magic as long as you can’t make your ointment makes a lot of sense, but only duct taping your feet doesn’t feel like enough. I wanted a little more insurance.”

“Don’t I get a say!? And how about showing some tact regarding me being a woman? You’re even intertwining our fingers like we’re lovers!!”

“Ow, ow, ow!! How did you even twist your hand like that!? You’re bending all my fingers the wrong way!!!”

Aradia twirled like she was ballroom dancing to hit Kamijou with a Broken Heart Finger Smasher, but Kamijou couldn’t even let go, fell onto his butt, and writhed around on the same sidewalk he normally used to get to school. It looked a lot like the beautiful aikido moves that Anti-Skill used and even a graceful young woman could pull off.

Aradia hissed at him like a snake and Othinus sighed after managing to avoid falling from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“What a pain. Transcendent Aradia, you should have noticed something now that you’ve tried moving around.”

“…”

“You’re furious with him, but ''this is all you managed''. But the way things were yesterday, you would have torn through this human’s torso with your bare hand if he so much as irritated you.”

Aradia quietly clicked her tongue.

And her hand remained in his grasp. She could bend his hand using her finger joints, but she could not tear the hand from his wrist or break the arm from his shoulder.

Although this difference in the superhuman’s power was lost on Kamijou as he wept in pain on the ground.

“Hmph. So what is this about a shrine visit?”

“?”

“No matter how silly it is, it is worth my time to know your plans. So I can plan a counterattack or an escape.”

“Is she openly telling her enemy that because she’s some confusingly high-level form of tsundere?” Othinus whispered in his ear, but he had no way of judging that.

“D-District 12,” he replied. “Even Academy City has a district where all the mythology and religion research is done.”

Othinus had suggested they use more duct tape to wrap Aradia up like a mummy and toss her in the bathroom, but that idea had scared Kamijou. Even if she was somewhat neutralized at the moment, she was still a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal. If she managed to get the tape off her feet and made some ointment while they were away, things would get quite literally out of hand.

He honestly didn’t want to let her out of his sight. He knew firsthand she would not hesitate to kill if it would advance her goals.

He hesitantly looked over and the witch goddess responded in a sulky voice.

“What do you want?”

And so they set out.

The train schedule was different for the holiday. When they arrived at the station, they saw a kadomatsu decoration at the entrance. There was also a kagami mochi display in the employee waiting room next to the ticket gates. And even though it was early morning during winter break, one of the platforms was lightly crowded with students. That was of course the platform for the line leading to District 12. The crowd included a lot of brightly dressed girls.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy viewed his companions one at a time: Index, Othinus, Aradia, and Sphinx.

“(With a group like this, I should just throw out any hope of making any adolescent memories today. Ha ha ha.)”

“Human, what kind of hope did you just give up on?”

He ended up with the 15cm god tugging on his ear. But no matter what any of them said, a nun, a god, a witch, and a cat were not the appropriate party for a New Year’s quest. None of them would look at home wearing a furisode. If they had to choose one thing to bring with them to a desert island, they would seriously choose something like a musty old grimoire or a sketchy ointment, so a swimsuit vacation or a seasonal event was too much to ask of them.

The LCD ads covering the sides of the trains were in full New Year’s mode. They were playing ads for a New Year’s sale at a fancy department store or for an AR campaign to win New Year’s money by going to different parts of Academy City with your phone in hand. Interspersed among the ads were the occasional horoscope or a headline seemingly taken from the top online news stories.

“A social phenomenon some are calling an entrance exam boycott is showing signs of growing,” read one story. “Academy City has rejected the recommendation to adopt the less alarming name of kotatsu syndrome.”

“Ugh…”

“Index, stop trying to read the scrolling text if you aren’t used to it. Some people get motion sickness from it.”

“Why is it so hot and humid in here? It’s like this gross invisible haze is coming up from below us.”

He had thought Index was being unusually well-behaved, but apparently she had been hit by the mysterious heating effect of trains.

“…”

Meanwhile, Aradia was looking somewhat upwards while still holding his hand in the crowd. He thought maybe she was nervous around modern technology since she too was from the magic side, but he realized her focus was on the fluorescent light near the door.

Or more accurately, on the 2mm security camera hidden on the fluorescent light’s joint. Kamijou’s eyes widened too.

“Huh? When did they install those?”

“They must be to increase security on the trains. In other words, to catch pickpockets and molesters. …Interesting. This boy insists on holding my hand, which keeps his dominant hand hidden within the crowd. If I scream and say he’s molesting me when the door opens at a station, I might just have a chance to escape.)”

“Don’t you dare turn preserving my social standing into an impossible challenge!”

Academy City covered about 1/3 of Tokyo.

That was too much to cover on foot, but it didn’t take long to cover on a train.

The train soon arrived in District 12 and the view outside the window entirely changed.

“Impressive,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder.

Giant pyramids and Greek-style temples were lined up in between the skyscrapers made of thick concrete and glass. One temple had various color patterns applied to it with projection mapping, perhaps to research the theory that the Parthenon wasn’t originally white. There were plenty of enormous stone monuments and goddess statues. The colors washing down the river were not fallen leaves or flower petals – they were origami dolls designed to decompose naturally. A herd of deer wandered happily along an elevated street which was closed to traffic. More than a research institute for mythology and religion, the place felt like a theme park full of replicas of famous tourist locations from around the world.

Kamijou had rarely ever visited the district, but he knew the basics.

“It isn’t that they actually believe in any gods. The idea is to research why humans believe in gods and what is needed to keep people in the special psychological state known as ‘belief’ long term. Most of the research is in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and architecture.”

“Hmph.” “Hmph.”

Othinus and Aradia both sounded less than pleased. Unsurprising when they were both known as gods.

“(I probably shouldn’t tell them this is the headquarters of Academy City’s analysis of all things unscientific and supernatural and that it’s commonly known as the Occult Denial Society.)”

“We heard all of that.” “We heard all of that.”

The two divine ones were suddenly the best of friends as they responded in perfect unison, but that was when the train arrived in the District 12 station.

Kamijou’s group followed the crowd exiting onto the platform. The train actually tilted to one side so many people were leaving. Most of these people were here for their New Year’s shrine visit.

“Touma, where exactly are we going?”

“I’m not sure, but we should reach a popular shrine if we follow the crowd, right?”

The mythology focus showed through even in the station’s exit signs. They said things like “A9, Great Pyramid Area Exit” or “This way to Tree Worship, Megalith Culture, and Near Death Experience Labs”.

Kamijou was intensely curious what the pyramids of Egyptian mythology did on New Year’s, but today was the day for a Shinto shrine visit. He followed the crowd containing a lot of furisode girls through the ticket gate.

And…

“…”

They were still out in front of the station, but Aradia stared up at something in astonishment. A skyscraper covered on all sides with glass rose more than 50 stories.

“W-wait a second.”

“C’mon, Aradia. Let’s get to the shrine.”

“When you said shrine, I thought you meant your country’s unique religious structures! With torii, offering boxes, and komainu!! Why are all those kimono girls entering a high-tech skyscraper!?”

“Hurry up.”

The large entrance area contained a lot of people. There were more than 20 elevators to reach the higher floors, but there was still a line.

There was a building guide in the center of the floor, explaining what could be found on each floor.

Floors 1-5: General Information and Shopping Area. Floor 6: Christian – Latin Relief Cathedral. Floor 7: Museum. Floor 8: Egyptian Mythology – Nile Nome Temple. Floor 9: Buddhism – Great Red Lotus Temple. Floor 10: Shinto – Daybreak Shrine. Floor 11: Folk Belief, Folktale, and Multipurpose Fortunetelling. And so on.

Needless to say, the Shinto shrine and Christian cathedral found here had none of the things that mattered to the magic side. They were only shallow recreations made from the scientific perspective of Academy City. Their research wasn’t even asking why people believed in Shinto fortune slips. They asked what psychological conditions led people to pay money for fortune slips when the outcomes were determined by nothing more than random chance.

The witch goddess’s eyes widened in disbelief. How many times in history had that miracle occurred?

“This can’t be real.”

“If there’s one thing Academy City can’t spare, it’s land. They can’t have big shrines and temples sprawled out along the ground. That’s why each one is built in a huge garden on a floor of these buildings. It’s all indoors, but I’ve heard you can even meditate under a waterfall if you want. Since each floor has no interior walls, they have even more space than your average school campus.”

Index just about wandered off to where they were giving out grilled mochi for free, so Kamijou grabbed her by the back of the collar. Take one step from the elevator line and they would have to return to the very back of the line.

This one building was not a special case.

Most of the skyscrapers sticking up from District 12 like bamboo shoots were the same. Any one building did not contain just one type of religious or mythological facility, so the people (well, the university research team) that wanted a type of temple or cathedral just struck it where there was an opening like leasing a room in a multi-tenant building. In District 12, it wasn’t unusual for the ground floor to hold a discount store and the 2nd floor to contain a church.

“This is unusual, Touma. Why do you know so much about the occult here?”

The answer to that was a secret Kamijou had sworn to take to his grave. In truth, Aogami Pierce had once gone here on an ascetic journey to rid himself of all worldly thoughts, but instead found the shrine maiden so cute that professional warrior monks from the neighboring temple had to be called in as reinforcements and the boy was thrown out and banned from ever entering the district again. Then when the idiot had wanted to recover the contents of the hard drive he had wiped in his short-lived zeal, he had ended up writhing in pain in a back alley junk shop where a villainous professor had nearly digitized his brain and DNA. The story made Kamijou suspect that such heavily concentrated desire was like a dark crystal carrying a form of power all its own.

Eventually, it was Kamijou’s group’s turn.

They crammed themselves into the fairly large elevator and rode it up. The elevator was so crowded, they couldn’t even reach the buttons, but they knew they would still reach the floor containing a giant Shinto shrine.

The gentle acceleration suddenly stopped.

The doors slid open to reveal what lay beyond.

===Part 3===

She was running late.

That was Misaka Mikoto’s first impression.

The real problem was ending up in the hospital right at the end of the year. She had only been there for a few days to make sure nothing was wrong, but she hadn’t managed to rework her schedule during all the confusion and the new year had caught up to her before she was ready. All hope was lost. She had accomplished nothing and now the winter of her 14th year had ended without any real drama. Your second year of middle school only came once (not that she wanted a second chance from getting held back a year) and she had wasted it! How could she lie there in bed staring at her phone’s tiny screen!? All that noise outside was the fireworks for the countdown to midnight! Listen to them shout happy new year. That was how it was supposed to be. Wasn’t that kind of wild partying with no thought to the consequences what being a teenager was all about!?

The 14-year-old was seriously reconsidering her life.

So once midnight of January 1 arrived, Misaka Mikoto entered battle mode.

She of course broke several dorm rules by jumping right out the window.

“Pant, pant. O-Onee-sama, isn’t it about time we take a break?”

“It’s only been about 8 hours since midnight. New Year’s is all about endurance. Watching the sunrise, drinking amazake, paying hanetsuki, doing calligraphy, getting New Year’s money, eating the traditional food, pounding mochi, and visiting a shrine! I’m cramming as much of it into this one day as I can!!”

The twintails underclassman could teleport, but Mikoto was magnetically leaping from building to building with such speed even Shirai Kuroko was out of breath. In her brightly colored furisode, she looked like a neon shooting star.

And…

“Someone has far too much energy for first thing in the morning on New Year’s. Does Academy City’s Miss Thunder keep rumbling all year long?”

Mikoto’s eyebrows twitched when she heard a familiar voice.

The bottoms of her zori were drawn toward a balcony railing sticking out from the 10th floor of a skyscraper towering over 50 floors tall.

“And what are you doing here in that gaudy kimono? Let’s see, this floor is the Shinto shrine, isn’t it?”

The balcony contained a small café space. A bench covered in scarlet felt and a large tea ceremony umbrella were set up within a beautiful gravel garden (probably maintained by a cleaning robot with a special attachment resembling a giant comb). Shokuhou used both hands to hold a teacup with whitish contents – probably amazake. It must have met the queen’s strict standards for food and drink.

The balconies for the higher floors must have been on different sides of the building, so the view above was clear.

The girl who had gone to the trouble of visiting such a chilly location on New Year’s morning had it in her to wink for some reason.

“Your schedule might be wide open, Misaka-san, but those of us with lots of friends have plenty of events to attend during the holidays. Such as praying for my clique members to pass their entrance exams.”

“Really? You’re sure it isn’t that your plans to head home during the holiday weren’t ruined by spending time in the hospital with me?”

“Gh. My planning ability is not as poor as yours, so I did not wait until the last second to make my plans. I chose to remain in Academy City because my clique wanted me to.”

“(She’s like those apartment women who force their hobbies onto others without realizing no one else is enjoying it.)”

“You said that out loud on purpose, didn’t you?”

The Level 5s showed their support of the SDGs by producing sparks without any fuel even if it meant breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Meanwhile, the twintails underclassman and the ringlets upperclassman exchanged a polite New Year’s greeting. Come to think of it, the ringlets girl was in the third year, so she had entrance exams to worry about. Tokiwadai was said to spend three years creating people who could make it in the real world.

Mikoto heard a metallic noise and looked over.

Her eyes immediately widened.

The girl there had short brown hair, pale skin, a thick coat that stood out among all the colorful furisode, an assault rifle with grenade launcher attachment worn over the shoulder, and a face identical to Mikoto’s. And she wasn’t alone. Three or four of them were in the shrine area at the same time.

Those were the mass-produced military clones created from a DNA map of Academy City’s #3.

They were known as the Sisters.

“Wh-what are you doing here out in the open!?”

The identical girls tilted their heads in the exact same way with no change of expression. They were so perfectly synchronized they looked like heads of wheat blowing in the wind.

“Misaka is providing security for the New Year’s shrine visitors, succinctly replies Misaka #10998.”

“This Misaka is on janitorial duty. What are you doing here, Original? asks Misaka #14979 with a tilt of her head.”

“Misaka is blowing off her duties in the District 2 museum to visit the shrine, reports Misaka #19090 with a cute upturned look.”

“Hm. Misaka was doing some people watching, but now she notices a lovely aroma coming from the free amazake area over there, says Misaka #10777, showing off her observational skills.”

“This is Misaka’s chance to participate in some economic activity, says Misaka #15850 while detecting a chance to cause some trouble. Like this!”

The Sisters were already getting off track all on their own.

Meanwhile, Shirai Kuroko was trembling.

“What!? S-so many Onee-samas. Am I already having my first dream of the year?”

The passersby all reacted in their own ways. Some curiously aimed their phone cameras at the clones that had been recently revealed to exist. Others walked right past the identical girls to line up for the offering box. They reacted about how they might for an unusual new design for a security robot.

“But they just aren’t the same as the real one. They lack that intangible divinity! They don’t have the aura of a goddess!!”

Shirai Kuroko still came to cling to Mikoto, so Mikoto intercepted her with a fist and pondered what was happening.

People were accepting those girls.

They were allowed to just be another part of the scenery – a harmless piece of the city.

Just like any of the students or teachers walking through here.

“…”

Misaka Mikoto narrowed her eyes as she watched it.

Maybe this was nothing more than an ordinary New Year’s scene.

But who could have imagined this could ever happen?

Shokuhou Misaki whispered in Mikoto’s ear with her cup of amazake held between her hands.

''Mikoto didn’t know the actual story behind it,'' but she had heard enough to guess this girl had established her own bond with the Sisters.

“Aren’t you glad you got to see this in your lifetime, Misaka-san?”

“It irks me I didn’t make it happen myself, but that’s a me problem and doesn’t mean anything to them.”

“It won’t all go this well. The people are still mostly just unsure what to make of this new revelation ability. The loving and righteous bashing will come once they’ve had time to process this☆”

“I’m well aware, social media queen. I don’t intend to sit back and let someone else handle it all.”

Twenty thousand Sisters had been made, but not even half of that remained.

She doubted she would ever forgive the person who had caused that, but she felt like she could accept that his remorse and his efforts toward atonement were genuine.

And…

“Hey, Misaka. Are you here for the shrine visit too?”

“I’m hungry, I’m hungry! Ohhhh!! There’s shiruko, zoni, and a mochi pounding festival!!”

She heard some familiar voices.

She looked over to see the pointy-haired boy and his strange companions approaching through the crowd. She could guess the usual nun had insisted they go to the balcony where they were giving out various New Year’s foods. First thing in the new year, that wasn’t enough to rattle her or Shokuhou.

However…

“(Who is that exhibitionist wearing a modified bikini in the middle of winter!? And why are those two holding hands when I’ve never even seen her before!!??)”

For once, Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki were in perfect sync. They had to be careful because, with Kamijou Touma, falling behind by even a day could make it just as hard to catch up as with a weekly battle manga.

Was she a fortuneteller? A dancer maybe? Given District 12’s scientific focus on mythology and religion, just about anything seemed possible. Strangely, the woman kept giving him murderous looks (but never tried to let go of his hand).

And then…

“Um…''have we met''?”

When the pointy-haired boy’s gaze wandered next to Mikoto, he hesitantly bowed his head, unsure what to do.

Shokuhou Misaki only smiled.

“Hm? What’s going on here?”

Misaka Mikoto was confused.

She couldn’t figure out why he was acting like he didn’t know Shokuhou.

The electric furisode middle schooler tilted her head until a look of realization appeared on her face.

“Oh, you’re implying you didn’t recognize her because the furisode and special hairstyle made her look more adult, aren’t you? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m wearing a kimono too!!”

“Wait, why are you going nuts all of a sudden, electric girl? Can’t you at least give me a break from this nonsense on New Year’s!?”

“Hadn’t you heard that kimonos look bad on people with big boobs!?”

“That line of reasoning is only going to hurt you in the long- gyahhhh!?”

The shrine here was not dedicated to a god of thunder, yet lightning struck him all the same. That was a good summary of how Mr. Misfortune’s year was going.

===Part 4===

Kamijou’s biggest mistake had been using his right hand for the Aradia countermeasure. He was firmly holding her hand, but the high-voltage current running through his body was negated when it reached his wrist and none of it reached the Transcendent.

The pointy-haired boy was twitching on the gravel when one of the expressionless Sisters addressed him.

“Um.” In fact, she crouched down, grabbed at his jacket, and refused to let go. “Misaka heard about a New Year’s custom from another Misaka over the Misaka Network. Specifically, #10032, hints Misaka #10998 while fidgeting nervously.”

“Misaka wants to do that too, says Misaka #10777 to ask for a lovely memory.”

“Misaka wants in too, says Misaka #15009 while making sure you don’t get away.”

Kamijou looked puzzled.

For the Sisters, this truly was their first ever New Year’s. He had no reason to turn them away if they wanted to enjoy the holiday. There was hanetsuki, flying kites, and maybe karuta? He could think of a few New Year’s activities that a high schooler wouldn’t be all that into.

“Wait, #10032? You mean Misaka’s Sister? What did she tell you?”

Maybe it was their brainwaves being synchronized for the network, but they all nodded at once.

He shouldn’t have let his guard down. These were cursed words he had to avoid hearing at all costs.

But the gates of hell were already opening.

“Misaka #10032 told the Misakas about the custom of receiving New Year’s money, say the Misakas, bringing up the filthy topic of money.”

Kamijou was petrified.

Come to think of it. As his life started flashing before his eyes, he saw #10032 working as a guard at the east gate. It was true he had paid her a bribe to let him through while carrying tied-up Aradia and he had indeed claimed it was only a gift of New Year’s money, but did this mean every one of the Sisters knew about that thanks to the Misaka Network!?

The clone girls were inching closer with yen signs and dollar signs dancing ominously in their emotionless eyes.

“Wait, wait, wait!! N-New Year’s money? I get what you mean, but how many of you are there!? Even if I gave each of you 500 yen, there are almost 10 thousand of you, so…eh? Wouldn’t that be enough money to buy a car!?”

“Even an elementary schooler would click her tongue at her kindly grandfather if she opened the envelope and only found a single 500-yen coin in this day and age, warns Misaka #18000 with a glare.”

“Why are new numbers popping up!? C-can’t we simplify this by focusing on how much I’m giving to the Sisters as a whole? And you can share memories and experiences through the Misaka Network, so don’t I only need to give it to one of you?”

“But that wouldn’t be fair, says Misaka #19518 while pouting her lips to look cute.”

“Another new number… How many Sisters are wandering around this shrine!?”

“To begin with, the amount #10032 was given at the east gate was-”

He quickly reached his arms around the expressionless girl and covered her mouth with both hands.

“(Stop it, you idiot! That super-serious-looking twintails girl over there is wearing a Judgment armband, so please don’t let her know I smuggled Aradia into the city!!)”

But that choice backfired.

The various currency signs vanished from the Sisters’ eyes as they found something new to focus on.

“Misaka too.”

“Misaka wants to be held like that too, begs Misaka #10777.”

“Is the surprise New Year’s hug another Japanese custom? asks Misa-”

Kamijou’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

Mikoto took Shirai Kuroko’s hand and Shokuhou took Hokaze Junko’s and they swiftly escaped outside the encirclement.

Letting go of Aradia’s hand while being zapped had been a mistake. When the real possibility of death showed itself, she casually put some distance between them.

Index was too busy stuffing her face with free dangos to notice what was happening.

The Sister in charge of security here would have received an important warning when she was being trained in how to handle lost children, what to do with suspicious abandoned bags, and whether to call Anti-Skill or an ambulance first when someone needed emergency assistance for alcohol poisoning or whatever else.

Namely, she would have been told to avoid a domino effect when guiding people.

When more than 100 people fell in the same direction, the pressure could be destructive enough to crush a light truck.

An unpleasant squashing noise echoed across the New Year’s scene.

Imagine Breaker was powerless against the pressure caused by a crowd of girls.

===Part 5===

In a way, this was the most dangerous prison in the already unruly District 10.

Or it should have been.

“Tah dah!! Happy new year! says Misaka as Misaka gives the standard greeting!!”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What the hell are you doing here?”

The atmosphere in the visitation room was entirely off.

Accelerator briefly thought the thick glass had been made too thick and his voice hadn’t reached the other side, but apparently it had.

The girl who looked to be around 10 was celebrating even after hearing every word. She was so overexcited she was hopping around.

“Misaka is here to visit you because you must be lonely all on your own, says Misaka as Misaka explains the purpose of her visit.”

“Huh?”

“It was Yomikawa’s idea.”

He glared over Last Order’s head, but the gym teacher with her long black hair worn in a ponytail only grinned at him. Her arm was in a sling after breaking it in the mess with the dark side, but that hadn’t dampened her spirits any.

“C’mon, what’s the harm?”

“Go to hell, Yomikawa. You too, Yoshikawa. I see you trying to look inconspicuous back there.”

The adult in a lab coat clicked her tongue despite being too old for that kind of thing. But best not to let her hear you call her “too old” for anything if you wanted to keep out of trouble.

“Accelerator, we understand that you’re a prisoner now. And we understand you need to set an example for Academy City.” Yomikawa Aiho shrugged out of habit and winced when it moved the arm in the sling. “But that means you need to use the rights given to you as a prisoner. You’re allowed visitors. Forcing yourself to suffer unnecessarily would be setting a bad example too, wouldn’t it?”

Now it was Accelerator’s turn to click his tongue.

Either Last Order didn’t notice what this was about or she pretended not to notice.

“So why the hell are you wasting your New Year’s holiday here?”

“Misaka knows what happens after she says happy new year: she gets New Year’s money!!”

“Talk to the grownups.”

Yomikawa Aiho and Yoshikawa Kikyou looked the other way at the exact same moment. They had clearly known each other a long time because they even whistled the same tune.

Meanwhile, Last Order pulled out a large box wrapped in cloth.

“Look, look, says Misaka as Misaka shows this off to you. Let’s eat this New Year’s food together.”

“Did you fail to notice the thick bulletproof glass between us, brat? Visitors aren’t allowed to share food with prisoners!!”

“Ehh?” came the cry of disappointment.

When his perfectly reasonable observations were answered with protest, he just had to accept that the just deserts of his highly unprecedented life were boomeranging back to hit him.

Last Order tilted her head and continued in obvious displeasure.

She opened the lid and looked inside as she did so.

“And after we stayed up late last night making New Year’s food, says Misaka as Misaka puts on a disappointed face.”

“…”

Accelerator noticed the food was mishappen in a way that said it wasn’t premade. Not only did the kobumaki and datemaki look wrong, but the kamaboko was cut unevenly and that only required using a knife. (It was a mystery how Yoshikawa, who preferred experimental beauty devices over cooking equipment, and Yomikawa, who cooked everything in rice cookers, had made this food,) but) Last Order likely hadn’t been allowed to use a knife while she helped. The crushed edges of the herring roe suggested she had used a pair of dull kitchen scissors instead.

Accelerator hated that he was spending his peaceful New Year’s analyzing what type and size of blade had been used based on the shape of the cut.

He sighed and made a suggestion.

“Then head to the general reception on the 1st floor.”

“?”

“All the paperwork should be there. Including the request form for ''gifting a prisoner food''.”

Last Order’s face lit up and she ran off.

Yomikawa and Yoshikawa’s laughter made Accelerator click his tongue.

===Part 6===

Academy City was a unique city that had been built using the western third of Tokyo.

That meant some of the city beyond the tall walls could be seen from the top of the taller buildings in neighboring Shinjuku.

The administrative area was actually less busy on January 1.

''They'' were gathered atop one of the tall buildings there.

That included Magician Anna Kingsford and the golden retriever Kihara Noukan.

“Now, now, 🐕. You know 🚬 is bad for your health.”

“Please leave this old dog with one of the few things that makes worth living. And since it is New Year’s, I am in the mood to smoke a Japanese kiseru instead of a cigar.”

“No, that will ❌ do at all. Have some Muru☆”

“Wait, stop!! You can’t just give a dog or a cat that secret weapon of a treat! Gwahhhh!!”

Given something (in delicious wagyu flavor) which may as well have been like a cutting-edge science version of catnip, the golden retriever stood on his hind legs and went to town licking at the opening in the stick-shaped package held by the founder magician. He clearly wasn’t happy about it, but he couldn’t stop licking either.

Meanwhile.

A metal disk larger than a record was slowly flipping from one side to the other.

That was a film canister used for movies. It was currently held between the hands of a blonde nun in a beige habit.

A human face was plastered to the outside of the disk.

The face belonged to Anna Sprengel.

Instead of a simple drawing, this face blinked and breathed. And if the film canister’s owner asked it questions, it had the intelligence needed to provide a response.

“What a pain. If only defeating you was enough to call it a day,” said that owner.

“You noticed Alice back on the 29th, didn’t you? And you realized she was too dangerous to ignore, whether or not she was good or evil.”

That was true enough.

Miss Sprengel was not like Aleister. She may have been the type to push people away by speaking the truths no one wanted to hear.

“This can only mean one thing.”

Aleister, the magician hijacking a great demon’s body, took a deep breath.

He was flanked on either side by a golden retriever and Anna Kingsford, who had been revived by machinery after 100 years.

The human protected by the inhuman stated his conclusion.

“Does the Bridge Builders Cabal have more than one base of operations?”

“For risk reduction purposes, almost certainly. The Transcendents of that cabal know exactly how strong they are. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say they know better than to let Alice Anotherbible’s interest stay in one place for too long.”

Their incredible charisma had influenced a great many people while they remained hidden from the world. That had to be how they had caused the massive riot across Shibuya.

“I have no idea how you reached that conclusion, but I don’t understand any of this magic stuff anyway,” said Noukan.

“Hee hee. Do ❌ worry, 🐕. He will sum it all up for you afterwards. It seems every 🧙 since the 🥇 cabal really likes to hear themselves 🗣️.”

Alice was something born from Crowley’s brand of Magick.

“Who could have created Alice? Not that I expect them to still be alive. I doubt anyone could safety control that capricious thing for long.”

“Oh? You think death is the worst case scenario there? How naïve of you. Especially when you have a fate worse than death literally in your hands right now.”

Cruel laughter left the film canister.

Aleister thought for a moment.

“That R&C Occultics company you started was a model meant to analyze the Bridge Builders cabal, wasn’t it? To gain a deeper understanding of that mysterious enemy organization, you built a similar organization and did some roleplaying to work out its internal structure and, more importantly, discover its vulnerabilities.”

To put it another way, the Bridge Builders Cabal had caused similar harm in the past.

Either to advance the Transcendents’ interests or on some innocent whim of Alice herself.

They had just been less openly cruel than R&C Occultics, so their harm had remained hidden below the surface.

“You really are shortsighted. This is why you should have left me to it for a while longer.” The film canister laughed, pointing toward Aleister Crowley’s constant failures. “My ''short-term goal'' is the destruction of that harmful organization that has taken root in the hidden part of the world. Revealing the Bridge Builders Cabal’s structure and weaknesses isn’t worth it if I can’t supply enough damage to take them down. All I did was unleash Alice to throw some chaos into their little group. That would have taken a much more amusing turn if you had left it alone.”

“For you, maybe. It would have been an unmitigated disaster for everyone else.”

Just remember what happened in Academy City and Los Angeles.

Even in the Shibuya riot, she had tried to turn everything around in the very, very end by pitting a certain boy against Alice.

Of course, just because the Bridge Builders Cabal had multiple bases around the world did not mean they were helpless here. If there were 100 such bases, they only had to crush every last one of them. Even if they didn’t find anyone at a particular base, the documents and other evidence left at the hideout would help them pursue Alice and the Transcendents.

Meanwhile, something still bothered Noukan.

“Setting aside everything about magic, are you saying R&C Occultics was a false organization created to learn how the Bridge Builders Cabal is structured? In other words, it was intentionally designed to resemble the cabal?”

“👍, very good. Have a 🎁 of Muru as a reward☆”

“Please, no more of that cursed substance!! No, don’t tear open the packet with a smile! Noooooooooo!!”

This conclusion may have been hard to reach for the children clenching their fists and fighting on the front line.

This was a job for Aleister who worked behind the scenes.

Anna Kingsford asked a question while petting the golden retriever who had abandoned his pride to lick at the treat in a bipedal pose.

“Does that mean Alice and the Transcendents are ❌ just an indiscriminate gang of 😈 armed with superior occult weapons?”

“Hm. Are you suggesting they also have a powerful enough ''source of funding'' to influence the global economy?”

===Part 7===

“…”

In truth, Kamijou Touma had two keys to the hidden side of the world.

The first was of course Transcendent Aradia. If he wanted to know about Alice Anotherbible’s Bridge Builders Cabal, the best option was to ask Aradia. He just had to figure out how to get her to talk when she was supposedly powerful enough to rival the entire magic side on her own.

Then there was the second key.

The pointy-haired boy’s thoughts turned to the old folk’s smartphone in his pocket.

(Kumokawa-senpai hid a GPS tracker on the Bologna Succubus’s clothes. I don’t know how many hideouts they have around the world, but this lets us ignore that question and know exactly where Alice and the others are hiding.)

On the other hand, once he had that answer, he would be throwing himself back into the fighting. The peaceful New Year’s spread out before his eyes would fall apart.

“Touma, this sign says an Eastern god will do you a favor if you throw money in here, whether or not you follow their religion!”

“That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”

Was it really okay for an Anglican nun like Index to pray at a Shinto shrine? Well, this was a District 11 facility meant to scientifically analyze religion, so it had no connection to the real occult stuff Stiyl and Kanzaki worked with. It probably wasn’t an issue.

Othinus, who was just as disconnected from Shinto, whispered something from his shoulder.

“(Who do these people think they’re praying to if they know this is an empty shrine without a god inside?)”

“What, sad they aren’t all praying to you, Miss God?”

Kamijou’s rejoinder earned him a hard tug on the ear. Apparently a mere human wasn’t allowed comments like that.

Also, he doubted anyone in Academy City gave any thought to whether or not there was a god there. Mikoto and ''some unfamiliar girl'' were lined up in their furisodes, but the looks on their faces suggested this was just a seasonal event for them. Maybe it was like how you didn’t need to believe in ghosts to enjoy Halloween. Or how people would throw coins into concrete fountains with nothing remotely mystical about them. Even if you knew there was some kind of jinx involved with coins and fountains, it was the same as someone praying as a last resort when in trouble: they didn’t have any specific god in mind when they did it.

Meanwhile, there was one thing about this large crowd that bothered Kamijou.

“Aradia.”

“…”

“Please promise me you won’t try to run away when I shut my eyes and clap my hands to pray.”

He made a whispered plea to Witch Goddess Aradia who was looking for a chance to run off. He didn’t want this to count as his once-a-year New Year’s prayer, but where did he put his offering?

While he was dealing with that, someone else stepped up alongside him.

The ringlets girl threw a generous 500 yen in to the offering box, clapped her hands, shut her eyes, and made her prayer. Maybe she thought she was keeping it inside, but it escaped her adorable lips in a whisper.

Kamijou was close enough to hear it.

“''Please do not let me pass my entrance exams.''”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

(Eh?)

He forgot to breathe for a moment.

When the ringlets girl opened her eyes and saw him staring, she tilted her head.

Apparently she hadn’t meant that as a joke for him to hear.

“Excuse me.”

The honey blonde girl was just as confused and hesitantly spoke up.

She approached this as cautiously as someone defusing a bomb.

“Hokaze, what was that about?”

“''Oh, that?''” The ringlets girl smiled and explained without a moment’s hesitation. “''I don’t want to move on to high school for no other reason than ‘it’s time’ when I could instead stay home and spend years seriously considering what path in life would best serve you, my Queen.''”

“Hoka-”

The honey blonde girl started to reply, but couldn’t find the words.

In their stunned silence, Kamijou’s group was ejected to the side of the line. They ended up a bit outside the shrine’s grounds and they saw something else unusual there.

The ringlets girl wasn’t the only one.

The ema, on which the shrine visitors wrote their wishes, included some shocking examples.

“Keep my parents and teachers off my case about passing my exams.” “Please don’t let my System Scan results improve because I don’t want to stand out.” “I don’t need any New Year’s money.” “I want to give up.” “Don’t let anyone get mad at me when I don’t study.” “I want an easy life.” “Why should I care if I get held back?” “I’m so tired.” “FML”

“What the hell is this?” groaned Kamijou.

It didn’t look like a prank. They were all written with different handwriting and different pens. So instead of a single person spreading negativity, this was the result of each individual person writing out their thoughts.

“Kotatsu syndrome, huh? Quite the social phenomenon for such a pleasant-sounding term.” Othinus sighed from his shoulder. “And this is especially bad news for a city of schools like Academy City. For better or for worse, this city is built on the competition between students. If enough people stop caring if they have bad grades and don’t mind if they get suspended or expelled, the teachers lose all power over the students.”

How had this happened?

The anti-elite Winter Cleaning that had sprung up near the end of the year had supposedly been a naturally-occurring social phenomenon caused by Accelerator’s guilty verdict coming at the same time as the collapse of R&C Occultics. And as the new year began, it had apparently transformed into this kotatsu syndrome.

Shirai and Mikoto were holding their own discussion of the issue.

“What do we do about this?”

“It doesn’t look good. Assuming this isn’t a prank by the #5 over there, anyway.”

Without anyone directly harming anyone, the structure Academy City used to prop up a minority of elites was collapsing from the bottom up.

(Since this all goes back to R&C Occultics, could Anna Sprengel be involved?)

Kamijou had no idea where Anna was or what she was doing.

And knowing her, she might have set things up so events would continue playing out how she wanted even if she were somehow taken out of action.

(Anna belongs to the Bridge Builders Cabal, so could this be a plot run by them?)

He couldn’t preserve the peace by sitting around doing nothing.

If he didn’t do something about it, he could only watch as an invisible hand crept ever closer and crushed Academy City in its grasp.

Kamijou Touma focused on his pocket.

His phone was linked to the GPS tracker planted on the Bologna Succubus’s clothing. That was Kumokawa Seria’s special present to him. It was the only way to immediately locate Alice Anotherbible’s cabal hideout.

If he was going to use it, now had to be the time.

He made up his mind and reached into his pants pocket.

===Part 8===

One of the skyscrapers in Shinjuku gave an especially decent view over the wall into neighboring Academy City.

Inside, Human Aleister placed a large film canister on the polished floor.

“What are you doing?” asked the seated golden retriever, tilting his head.

This was not a cruel prank played at immobilized Anna Sprengel’s expense. Aleister surrounded the film canister with a complex pattern of white chalk based on some precise calculations.

“Are you trying to use me to backtrace the Bridge Builders Cabal headquarters?”

Even now, Miss Sprengel scoffed.

Aleister knew several people who knew no other way to communicate: Westcott, Mathers, and Aleister himself to name a few.

“Are you certain they have such a strong connection with me?”

“You don’t need all that much camaraderie for this to work. For better or for worse, you have tampered with Alice’s nature. Whether anyone wanted it or not, that had an unfathomable influence on the cabal, didn’t it? That creates an inseverable bond.”

So he would make use of it.

Throughout his life, Aleister had never been what you could call “well-liked”, so he found these methods easier.

“So this will tell me where Alice and her cabal are located,” said Aleister.

“I see,” was Kihara Noukan’s brief response. He was focusing on lighting his long, narrow kiseru while Mrs. Kingsford wasn’t looking, so he was probably only half listening to this talk of magic.

“Anna Kingsford.”

“Yes, what do you need?”

The film canister clearly shook.

The female magician herself only smiled gently.

“You do the honors. I have given up performing magic when I don’t have to.”

The true founder did not need any fancy poses or incantations.

Mrs. Kingsford simply held out her palm.

With a burning sound, one direction and a few of the letters of the complex white chalk pattern gained a scorched black coloration.

Deciphering that would provide the answer.

Aleister Crowley frowned.

He had a knack for drawing the unlucky straw at times like this.

“What in the-?”

===Part 9===

Kamijou Touma was surrounded by indistinct voices.

No, his brain’s processing power had reached its limit, so he couldn’t analyze each individual voice, causing him to perceive it as a meaningless mass of sound.

That was unavoidable given what he saw approaching him now.

The crowd of peacefully smiling boys and girls seemed to part before his eyes.

One look at the old folk’s smartphone in his hand would tell him where the Bridge Builders Cabal was located.

But he already knew the answer.

It was right there, not 5m away from him.

“I’ve come to play, teacher☆”

That was Alice Anotherbible.

He was now painfully aware of just how extraordinary she was.

Everything he had set up was meant to let him track down where she was.

But all of that fell apart after a single, unplanned action by that young girl.

===Between the Lines 1===

Once upon a time, there was a small girl.

Unlike now, she failed in everything she did. Everything she tried backfired and she grew to hate who she was.

The most frustrating part of it all was the presence of an actual correct answer.

She wasn’t dealing with a trick question without a real answer.

Maybe that answer was as miniscule as the eye of a needle, but if you did choose the correct options from the mountain of possibilities and combined them appropriately, it was possible to bring happiness to everyone. But it didn’t turn out that way. She felt like she was being presented with the fact that it wasn’t the world that was cruel – it was her.

It pained her.

It pained her.

It pained her.

She clenched her teeth, failed to accomplish anything, walked across the desolate earth in her bare feet, and wore herself down, covered in soot and dust.

Eventually, a being called out to her.

She heard that voice so clearly.

“Are you prepared to do what it takes to make your dream come true?”

Saying yes to that was simple enough.

It may not have taken any courage or thought at all.

So the next question was what approached the crux of the issue.

“''Are you prepared to remake yourself into a vessel to accomplish that?''”

That is what this story is about.

That small girl would go on to be known as a Transcendent, but where was it that she took a wrong turn?

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