Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 9===

They waited.

They waited and waited.

And they waited some more.

“What?”

Citrinitas was the first to speak.

Ignoring the cracks spreading from the doll’s face, the collared woman looked up at the metal roof as if viewing the sky beyond.

“Why is the falling work not completed?” she shouted. “Is my command being refused by the Logistic Hornet!!!???”

The tremor and roar of the comet-like destruction never arrived.

Because someone had stopped it.

Since Citrinitas was fruitlessly repeating the command over and over, this was not just a mistaken input. The villain had been booted out and the massive craft had to be leisurely circling in the sky above LA.

Maybe it could be called a miracle, but this was not some divine act. When something ordinarily unthinkable happened, it had to be the result of some very unordinary efforts.

In this case…

“Melzabeth Grocery?”

“Why speak that name here?”

Kamijou Touma’s absentminded utterance caused the doll to turn its cracked face his way. If not for the metal restraint shaped like a dog’s snout, its entire head may have been destroyed by now.

The Transla-Pen picked up the magician’s confusion.

“She is the smallest of fries and not even a magician! And she was long since defeated! She was helpless and she still is helpless while a stain in the sand!! Why that woman’s name!?”

“She left that malware with you in case she failed,” whispered Othinus from his shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean she was sneaking into the R&C Occultics HQ with the intention of failing. After setting up that insurance just in case, she would have bet everything on completing that challenge herself. So she could win. All to ensure she had delivered the finishing blow to the Logistic Hornet she herself had created.”

“No, impossible, it can’t be…”

“Maybe she didn’t actually achieve that dream. Your surprise suggests it was you that stopped her.” Othinus snorted with laughter. “But did you forget? The Logistic Hornet is so large it can’t stay airborne in the normal ways. It includes a digital spinal cord developed from optical neurocomputer technology and the basis of its movements as a flying machine came from the attitude control and center of gravity movement data taken from a certain person hang gliding.”

“…”

“That person was of course Melzabeth Grocery, the genius who lamented her husband’s death but never gave up on his dream for their daughter’s sake. The Logistic Hornet took in a portion of her neural network, so did you really expect it to keep helping you forever while you were trampling on people’s dreams and making families cry?”

“It learned from her?” said Kamijou in a daze.

Yes.

“The malware attack may have failed. She may never have plugged the USB memory into the HQ’s server. But the Logistic Hornet still picked up on her regret. It sympathized as another of Melzabeth’s failures! So ''it'' chose on its own to stop your attack!! It knows it was built to give her daughter a wedding in space and it felt anger at losing that purpose. Maybe it has no conscious mind, but the artificial nerves of its digital spinal cord still subconsciously ''sympathized'' and pushed it to act accordingly. Nothing else could explain this miracle!!!!!!”

Kamijou had sworn he would save her.

But he had been a fool. She had ended up saving them all.

Melzabeth Grocery was not just a symbol or a key item. She was a human being with possibilities all her own. She too was in Los Angeles, so it was possible for her to be the one to bring about their ultimate victory.

This was a free country where anyone’s dreams could come true.

That was not just an ideal and Melzabeth had proven it.

Besides, ''the'' Anna Sprengel had wanted the woman so very badly. No one like that would go down without a fight.

Kamijou Touma took another step forward. It was a large step, full of confidence. He also clenched his right fist.

This indoor battle gave him the advantage.

His doubts and his fears were gone.

“Hee.”

The pet and the owner trembled.

The doll in the dog-like restraints and the woman crawling like a dog both trembled and shook their heads.

“Hee hee. Go to hell. Go to hell right now. This was only a scenario set up outside our knowledge. This was a tug-of-war between Miss Sprengel and Melzabeth!! It does not mean that I was defeated by a mediocre like you!!”

“True, I’m just a high schoolboy. And the way things are going, I might have to repeat the year.”

“…”

“But that ordinary, and maybe even below-average, high school boy will be the one to defeat you. You’re not worth any more than that. I won’t let Melzabeth, Helcalia, or any of LA’s people be your toy.”

That was the end of it.

He could use his right hand to eliminate any sand attacks or sandbag defenses. The fine sand in the air was sucked out of the smoke vents activated by the fire alarm.

Nothing could get in his way.

He could rush right up to his adversary!!

The most crucial move was how he planted his foot on the ground. Just as the crawling woman tried to open her jaws and fire compressed sand, he stomped on the leash attached to her collar, snapping her head to the ground.

He wasn’t going to let them flip around any longer.

He could keep her from moving by holding down that one spot.

And this did not just stop the crawling woman. It also stopped the doll who was being irregularly tugged around by the leash.

“The Rosicrucians and R&C Occultics don’t matter here. If you seriously think you get to trample on people’s feelings just because you have some special magic…”

And.

Once they couldn’t move, he could reach them.

This time, his right fist could end it all!!

“I’ll destroy that illusion!!!!!!”

With a dull sound of impact, the doll was knocked backwards despite the foot on the leash.

Its hand had come off.

The torn-away hand remained on the leash while the creaking body writhed in the narrow passageway of the cold battleship.

“Ah, gah, gah, gah, gah, gah, gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

It released an inhuman scream, but Kamijou felt like this was his first time hearing its real voice. The hard doll desperately covered its face with its broken hands as if trying to hold its crumbling body together. But something spilled from between its fingers and the destruction began to accelerate.

When it fully broke apart and fell to the ground, it sounded a lot like sand piling up.

The face glimpsed between the fingers had wrinkly skin. It was not even a woman. It was an old man who looked as desiccated as a mummy. Had it never been just a doll? Had he been this way from the beginning, or had he become this way over many long years? With a tattered yellow cloak billowing around him, an old man who looked nothing at all like a certain mother lamented to someone who wasn’t here.

“Why? I…I am a magician of the glorious rose. I am Citrinitas of the 3rd Stage(■May be a poetic metaphor)!! Mine should success be!! By Miss Sprengel I was granted the rank of expertise, so how could I fail herrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!???”

“Citrinitas. Fermentation. Ruler of the 3rd Stage.” Othinus snorted and crossed her legs atop Kamijou’s shoulder. “Or to put it another way, you were a magician who could never reach the 4th Stage and complete the process. The black, white, yellow, and red are the four stages needed to achieve ultimate wisdom, but did you know that the Rose’s teachings say most any magic user can complete the 3rd Stage, but they fail to fully control the bird born in the fourth and final stage? Their worldly desires distract them, so they lose sight of the item’s essence on that very last step.”

“Ghh…”

“So was that a title that Anna gave you and not one you adopted yourself, ''Mr. Vice President''? If so, this is just sad. It means she never expected much from you. Explains why she sent you out to give her the much more valuable Melzabeth. She was throwing out the trash to obtain someone actually useful. Like catching a tasty fish using a gross worm as bait.”

“Ghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

The battered old man curled up into a ball and trembled.

He was pathetic enough to earn Othinus’s pity, but she showed no mercy. She would do whatever it took to save her understander.

So she directed the boy’s attention.

“Did you notice that, human?”

“!?”

His right fist flew again.

With a dull thud, the crawling woman pinned by the collar and leash was shattered. She fell apart like sand. Citrinitas’s last chance for a surprise attack had ended in failure.

And when the crawling woman crumbled into a pile of sand, a round object appeared. It was about the size of a clenched fist, it was transparent, and it jiggled like jelly. Something like a partially-formed baby bird was curled up within. It was covered by black feathers and soaked with red blood.

But it did not look like a living thing.

It lacked the glow of life or the grotesqueness of death, so it was not even a dead thing preserved in formaldehyde. No matter how real it looked, it may have been like a wax food sample.

“The beheaded king and queen are dissolved, two types of bonds are used to form the egg, and the egg is buried in the sand to ferment.”

Kamijou did not understand a word of what Othinus was talking about.

But what she said next he understood perfectly.

“That’s the yellow core. Destroy that spiritual item with your right hand and this all ends.”