Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 14===

A lot had happened, but they had to get moving or they would be caught.

So Hamazura and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet walked to an antenna tower a short distance away. The small tower was only about three stories tall, but it did have stairs leading up it, perhaps so it could double as a shelter during a disaster. Which was understandable after the previous trouble with jet fuel.

And as a shelter, it was stocked with water and food.

“Ohh.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made an impressed noise when she saw the contents of the sturdy silver metal box. Was this the most excited she had been since meeting him? The box contained bottles of water and a portable food resembling cookies, so was she always hungry or something? If she managed those superhuman actions running off of nothing but water, oxygen, and carbs, then Hamazura would be the impressed one.

After excitedly choosing between the chocolate and vanilla flavors, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet asked a question like it was no more than small talk.

“So what happened with that thing? Y’know, that laser that reflects off the moon. Wasn’t it supposed to fire again after 50 minutes?”

“Bffff!!?”

Oh, right! That thing!

And the laser wasn’t the only threat. District 23 was packed full of dangers, like the mass driver and the nuclear fusion reactor that used deuterium for its tokamak or stellarator or whatever!!

He couldn’t afford to choke and die now. He belatedly took a nervous look up into the sky.

“That’s weird. There’s no sign of a laser from the sky, is there? After being attacked, I would think the villain would want to strike back once they’d escaped. In fact, just one shot outside the country would be enough to trigger a planet-destroying war.”

They wouldn’t be hesitant to use it since they had already fired it once.

Yet they weren’t doing it a second time.

This felt incongruous and inexplicable…which was actually more concerning.

“Hmm. I thought there might be a scientific reason for it. Y’know, like that using Black_Oneday requires accessing a satellite that only comes by at a specific time, or something like that.”

“Is there a condition like that?”

Had Aneri mentioned something before?

He thought he remembered something about a large antenna or a signal amplifier.

He hadn’t made it inside the Kujerung exoatmospheric shuttle they used as a hideout, so he didn’t actually know what kind of computer they used.

But the Black_Oneday user couldn’t have been using much equipment while escaping in the bathtub-sized mobility device at least.

“I see.” For some reason, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet sounded convinced. “If there’s no explanation from the science side…then could Black_Oneday’s usage condition involve the logic of the other side?”

“?”

He didn’t know what she meant, but that was true of about half of what this Transcendent said while moving on ahead of him. And if her explanation wouldn’t clarify anything for him, he would just have to put off understanding that part.

So from his perspective…

“I’m also curious about those damn Brits.”

“What about them?”

“They don’t even know about Black_Oneday. They think it’s all me and Aneri, so how did they know to come to the Hotel Town?”

District 23 was a big place, so he refused to accept they had arrived there by chance.

The Anglicans had arrived, so there had to be some line of information linking the airport to the Hotel Town. But who had linked what?

And that weird precision felt out of character for the Anglicans who had spent so much effort chasing after Hamazura over false charges.

It was like the logic of their pursuit had suddenly changed.

And not just that they had gotten better at detecting his location.

The Anglicans were certainly a threat, but there was something out of place about them, like they weren’t familiar with how Academy City worked. Even with help from Aneri and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, it was that very unfamiliarity that had allowed Hamazura to escape this long.

But something had changed.

Someone with a sharper and more intimate knowledge of the city was pursuing Hamazura along the shortest path.

That meant an ultra dangerous tracking expert had joined forces with the Anglicans.

He could only think of one possibility.

He spoke the name aloud.

With a shudder.



“''Takitsubo Rikou.''”