Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 11===

Evening had fallen.

Based on the information they had taken from Maidono Hoshimi’s phone, Neoka Norito had his base in a giant building in District 15, which acted as Academy City’s largest shopping district. With a shopping mall and movie theater on the lower floors, fancy corporate offices on the middle floors, and luxury apartments on the upper floors, the skyscraper was a symbol of wealth and power. The topmost floors acted as the Director’s mansion.

“Just like the powerful people of old.” Misaka Mikoto put her hands on her hips while looking up at the 70-story building from below. “The foolish lord looking down at the city from the top of his towering castle. Or maybe he wishes he could live in those older times.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean, but I always thought the corrupt and rich were really cautious about their own life,” said Kamijou. “How do you protect that place? With a building that tall, isn’t he afraid of being trapped during a fire or attack?”

“He’ll have a personal VTOL craft on the roof. There’s as much space as a helicopter carrier’s flight deck up there, so he has room. He can also send several remote-controlled ones out along with him to make it harder to target him with anti-air missiles.”

“Well, isn’t he rich.”

Index was looking all around while carrying the calico cat in both hands.

“I saw that person before,” she said.

“Index?”

“Same with that woman and that person eating ice cream. They were in different clothes before, though.”

“Then Anti-Skill is making their move,” said Mikoto.

You could not fool Index’s perfect memory. Anti-Skill officers must have been taking up position in the area while slipping past any mechanical surveillance by frequently changing their clothing and makeup. Since technology was available to good and bad alike, surrounding a target while avoiding detection had grown very difficult.

That building was undoubtedly Neoka Norito’s castle, but it did not belong to him alone. The mall on the lower floors, the offices on the middle floors, and the apartments on the upper floors meant a lot of ordinary people would be coming and going, allowing anyone to move almost up to the very top floors.

There were thick doors in the way and the elevators had several layers of security applied, but they could still break through the ceiling from the floor below to reach him. It was unlikely Anti-Skill intended to just attack the main entrance.

“So what do we do?” asked Kamijou.

“We can let Anti-Skill climb up from below like normal. We wouldn’t accomplish much more than them if we took the same route.” Mikoto pointed straight up. “If he’s going to escape, it will be with his rooftop VTOL craft. So if we can take the rooftop beforehand, it should have a huge overall impact. And no one will notice us if we climb the wall with magnetism. So…”

A moment later, explosives flames erupted from the windows on the highest levels of the building she was pointing at.

They gasped because they had no clue what had just happened.

This undefinable occurrence just about left Kamijou’s mind blank. Much like a computer that had forcibly tried to read a corrupted file. This unexpected event violently ate into his mind, swallowed up his thoughts, and tried to drag him into the deadly depths of the water.

Neoka Norito.

He had caught a glimpse of who that man was before actually seeing him. Unlike Maidono Hoshimi, this man had to be someone who created his own waves. The tiny waves a child like Kamijou could create by gathering up all his courage and willpower would be crushed so very easily.

However…

“Wha-?”

“Don’t just stand there, Misaka!! The glass is falling!!”

He had to force himself to keep going.

No matter what might happen, they were done for if they came to a stop and the gears of their minds jammed. Time would cruelly pass them by and that delay would force them to accept a horrific conclusion to it all.

So.

His words acted like a slap to the cheek.

After he shouted at her, Mikoto frantically took action. She used magnetism to forcibly move some Christmas decorations like giant stockings and a huge Christmas present and she placed those above the plaza and major road in front of the building. Who knows how much blood would have soaked the ground around the crowd there otherwise.

There was no direct damage done, but there was some chaos. Someone in a snowman costume rolled wildly along the roadside and a reindeer girl selling toxic-colored donuts from a food truck quickly shut off the gas, perhaps fearing secondary damage from a panic.

“Wh-what just happened?” asked a dazed Index.

Kamijou bit his lip because a bad idea had just occurred to him.

Just like with Maidono Hoshimi, this was a stage magician’s sleight of hand. That explosion ''would cut off the standard route of pursuit''.

“Neoka predicted Anti-Skill would be arriving at his castle.”

“So he set his house on fire!?”

“Right when Anti-Skill was showing up. What if it turns out that Anti-Skill took no damage, but he alone suffered from a fire in his home?”

He had never spoken with any of the Directors, but he had seen bits and pieces of how they did things.

They were a twisted sort of clean freak that never wanted to dirty their own hands, so they always had “shields” prepared allowing them to safely win.

And if you viewed this situation from that perspective…

“''He’s using the rules as a shield.'' That’s the most effective method against the people who are supposed to protect the peace here. He’s going to completely flip this on its head and make himself the victim. Anti-Skill didn’t do anything, but what happens if he points at them and claims they nearly got him killed while forcing their way into his home as part of an illegitimate investigation with insufficient evidence to back it up? Anti-Skill will take all the blame, the investigation will end, and he’ll remain free to go around destroying all the inconvenient evidence!”

The methods meant to empower the good would instead be used to attack the good.

And Anti-Skill was not ''paid'' enough to continue searching for a villain that might not even exist.

Before even reaching him, they could already see just how nasty a foe this was.

“B-but we handed Maidono Hoshimi over to Anti-Skill,” said Mikoto. “Her phone had real evidence on it, so isn’t Anti-Skill following proper procedure in coming here!?”

“Which is why he needs to buy enough time to go and ''eliminate Maidono now that she has escaped the dark side''.”

Kamijou did not wait even a second before responding and even Mikoto went pale and fell silent at his answer.

Neoka was not acting alone. He had plenty of fighters on Maidono’s level and he would have released them into the city. Something would be moving toward the Anti-Skill station where Misaka Imouto and Last Order had gone. The #1 was there and it would take a lot to break through that barrier, but there was no guarantee that Neoka could not provide a lot.

They could not let his plan continue.

They did not have a feel for the adult power balance, so they had to end this today before that became an issue once more. They could never turn this around then.

(Think.)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

They could not let the confusion sweep them away. There had to be a way to retake control.

They could not give in to fear.

There was no need to narrow their range of freedom at the thinking stage. They had to come up with ideas based on an ideal version of themselves, like they were a Hollywood star or a mysterious special forces unit.

The answer had to be hidden beyond that leap of logic.

Especially in Academy City where so much craziness could be made a reality with technology.

(If he’s going to weasel out of this with a cheap act, he’ll need to make it look good. In stage magic terms, this is an escape artist’s trick. Escaping the box before it explodes is all well and good, but the audience won’t be satisfied if he’s just standing there in some other place.)

“He’s nearby.”

“?”

“Neoka Norito is somewhere around here!! Pointing at Anti-Skill and accusing them will be most effective in front of a large audience, so he’ll show off the injuries he gave himself and use that as a shield to bludgeon them with by blaming it on their attack!!”

In that case, they more or less already had the answer.

If Neoka’s intention was to influence people’s view of the situation to reverse the positions of attacker and victim, get the people on his side, and throw the investigation into confusion, then he would want people to see Anti-Skill entirely unscathed while he was all bloody. That meant he would have to harm himself. But could an amateur really do that to himself? He would not want to accidentally lose too much blood and Anti-Skill and the doctors were experts at viewing injuries. They would probably see right through a self-inflicted wound only meant as an act.

So what would he want most right now?

The stab wound in Kamijou’s side started to throb and make its presence known.

He did not need any special knowledge for this one. He only had to use his own personal experience.

Yes.

“A medical facility,” said Kamijou.

He knew he could not wound himself like that as a form of disguise. If he accidentally nicked an important artery or an organ, the wound would quickly grow fatal.

Of course he would be terrified.

He would want to rely on a medical professional.

Neoka was apparently an expert in firefighting and disaster prevention, but this was about his authority as part of the Board of Directors. Just like the chief or superintendent general of the police was not the best police officer, he might not have the actual skills of those fields himself. And even if he did, he would not want to sew up his own wound with the dirty sewing needle and fishing line he had lying around. That could even lead to an infection of some kind. Partial knowledge would lead to fear and he would get someone else’s help to make up for the gaps in his knowledge.

So…

“If he is going to injure himself, he’ll want a sterile environment and a doctor with all the proper knowledge. ''And this needs to be done in absolute secrecy''. That building is a single giant complex, so it’s bound to have a clinic, a medical room for treating anyone who falls ill, or…” The boy’s eyes stopped on a specific point. “Or at least a first aid kit!! Is the parking garage underground? A surprising number of minor injuries happen there, due to people getting their finger caught in a car door or dropping their luggage on their foot when trying to load it into the trunk, so they might have some specialized emergency equipment along with the fire extinguisher and AED!”

He began running before he had even finished speaking.

That would not provide the sterile environment, but it may have been worth it to Neoka to have something mobile that he could carry with him or have removed from the scene.

Kamijou ran down the slope and into a concrete space larger than a soccer field.

But.

“Th-there’s nothing like that here,” said Index while looking all around.

There was a fire extinguisher at the base of a concrete pillar and an AED in a metal box on the wall, but…

“There’s no first aid kit. Could he have already taken it away?”

“…”

Had Kamijou misread this?

It was possible someone as absurdly rich as Neoka would have a personal doctor who never left his side, or he could feel even more desperate than they thought and had decided to injure himself despite the risk.

But Mikoto looked up above.

“It might not be a first aid kit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I said the roof is like a helicopter carrier, didn’t I!? So he can have an air ambulance parked up there. Some of those have more equipment than the average medical room!!”

Why had he started by blowing up the very top floors?

Because that would destroy the elevator pulleys, making the elevators unusable and delaying Anti-Skill’s arrival. Meanwhile, he could appropriately injure himself in the air ambulance and then have the helicopter itself fly away. That would of course require altering the airport’s control data. That might sound absurd, but he would not have let Maidono Hoshimi make such a mess of things if he ever thought he could be captured. He definitely had what it took to pull this off. Once the exhausted Anti-Skill officers had finished running up 70 flights of stairs, he could point at them while all bloody and say the magic words: ''How could you do this!? These injuries are your fault!

“He definitely gave this some thought, but not enough,” said Mikoto while kicking down an elevator door in the parking garage.

The elevator would never arrive no matter how much they pressed the button, but that was no problem for her. She gave a belligerent smile while staring up the elevator shaft that looked like a gaping mouth of hell leading high into the sky.

“Did he forget we’re in Academy City? I can tear through this puny barrier like it’s nothing!!”

Yes.

She was Academy City’s #3 Level 5, the Railgun. Magnetism was only a secondary effect of her power, yet it was all she needed to cling to the skyscraper’s wall.