Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover2 (section)

===Part 9===

'''(Heivia/Ground’s Nir)

They checked his back just to be sure. Not for the mysterious wings that would come out sometimes, but for a zipper.

“Boo? What’s a zipper?”

“Is this pig good for anything!? Hey, you beautiful young ladies, can’t one of you do something about this?”

“Just so you know, I’m keeping track of every time you insult Boo Boo.”

“That red one really does scare me! I doubt I’m going to get a nice prize if I gather enough stickers!!”

Heivia trembled as the glasses White Witch circled behind him and tilted her head.

“Hmm, I’m not seeing anything like a zipper.”

“Are you sure this is something you’re ‘wearing’?” Armelina suggested a new theory. “If this is made from Cultivated Muscles that have covered your entire body and synchronized with your fingers and senses, then could it be attached on the cellular level, fusing your nerves and blood vessels together? If so, it would have to be surgically removed.”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Heivia bristled at the thought. It would certainly be convenient to don a good-looking face so he could pretend he was someone else and do all sorts of things, but all that changed when he could never remove it again. The idiot felt the same disgust as wearing someone else’s sweat-soaked shirt.

“Hmm,” said Beatrice. “If you’ve dissolved inside there like a butterfly in its chrysalis, then there’s nothing we can do.”

“You don’t sound like you care at all if that’s the case!”

“Well, I really don’t care about much other than Boo Boo…”

“You need to open your heart more! Someone do something about this mentally locked-down girl!!”

Heivia was overcome by a crawling sensation across all of his nerves, but he could not come to a stop here.

For one thing…

“These…Cultivated Muscles, did you call them? Are they really that simple? A theory and a practical product are entirely different things. It’s not like we can actually cause a big bang.”

Armelina looked troubled.

“I’m not sure what to say when you’re standing there fused with some.”

“Wearing! Say I’m wearing them!! Even if the zipper has disappeared and I can’t check on it myself!!”

“What does it mean that you have no idea what that thing is? Could it be something that arrived from ''elsewhere''?”

“Filinion. Unlike data or experience points, transferring physical items is close to impossible.”

“But they can send experience and data, right? So what if someone fully analyzed a DNA map and sent that ''somewhere else''?”

“But fully analyzing the human genome doesn’t mean you can just make a perfect copy of someone, does it? I’ve heard even identical twins have different enough fingerprints and irises that they can’t pass biometric scans for each other.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Heivia held out both his hands. “Talkative girls, you’ve completely left this handsome noble behind here. Are you basing all this on some kind of incredible assumption I’m not aware of? To be honest, I’m afraid the answer to this is going to make me question either your sanity or everything I thought I knew about the world.”

“Oh, be quiet, you masked man with a fake smile plastered on your face.”

“I’m handsome on the inside too! Yes, you should count yourself lucky, red girl. If you had seen the true face of Heivia the Ultra Handsome Genius Noble, your view of the world might just have fallen apart!!”

“Enough nonsense.”

“(H-hey, glasses girl. What is with that scarlet lady? She isn’t responding at all to my attempts to woo her. Is she a lesbian by any chance?)

“Don’t you dare drag me into your indulgent fantasies, twisted smile boy. But Beatrice focuses more on the mental side of things, so she honestly has no interested in anyone but Boo Boo.”

“…”

“Boo?”

Heivia’s twisted handsome face looked back and forth between the nearly-4m pig-faced giant and the slender girl in armor.

“Now I’m really curious about the nighttime logistics of that pairing. I’d like to see it live if possible! I-I fully support your niche fetish that might just break the bed! Gulp!!”

“Hey, fake handsome boy. I’m one thing, but if you sully Boo Boo in your mind, then I’ll just have to disinfect your brain by heating it up to 18,000 degrees.”

“Oh, what’s this? Are you not aware that human proteins are destroyed at a mere 42 degrees…!?”

“You are a genius when it comes to adding fuel to the fire, you know that? If you used that ability properly, you could probably be the king of online marketing.”

“Don’t say I’m like a panty thief who failed to become a tuxedoed spy, Miss Cool Beauty. …And you have a familiar presence about you. Are you a soldier?”

“Cough, cough!! I am the daughter of an ice cream shop owner in the real world, so I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Armelina…”

“Acting like that flaaaat chest has ever even met a dairy product is pretty hard to believe.”

Armelina shouted “That’s it!! Let’s take this out back, Beatrice!!” and grabbed at the other girl, so they ignored her.

“No, wait. But, hey, um.”

“Boo. What is it?”

“Could it be…yes, could it be that you all are, um, talking about casually moving between worlds?”

Boo Boo brought a hand to his mouth and tilted his head.

Meanwhile, the three girls readily answered.

Beatrice started.

“Of course. We came here to Ground’s Nir by passing through the Gates on earth.”

“…”

She made it sound so simple.

As simply as saying a device the size of a card was both a phone and a camera.

“You heard me mention Gate Crushers to Beatrice before, right?” said Filinion “Those are some cruel pranksters who go around encasing the Ground’s Nir side Gates in blocks of concrete so no one can go in or out. Well, they might be thinking they can take all of Ground’s Nir’s resources for themselves if they take out all the Gates back to earth except for the one they use.”

Concrete might sound like a symbol of modern construction, but its original form dated back to the Roman era. And in the Island Nation during the Edo period, a method mixed with water to harden it had been widespread under the name “tataki”. So there was nothing odd about coming across it in a fantasy setting.

“We can freely move between ‘our earth’ and Ground’s Nir,” continued Armelina. “So it’s possible you could reach here from ‘another earth’ as well. That would assume the existence of parallel worlds, though.”