Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

The Skybus 550 belonged to the British government.

It had originally been a luxury passenger plane that seated 1200, but all of the ordinary seating had been removed and the layout was thoroughly customized to allow government VIPs to concentrate on their duties and online meetings. It truly was a flying castle. It was equipped with informational stealth protection that allowed it to disappear from ordinary air traffic control radars at the flip of a switch. At 6.5 billion euros, its price tag was even higher than a boomerang-shaped stealth bomber.

“Um,” said Kamijou Touma, standing awkwardly by the wall. He had expected the airplane to be lined with seats like a movie theater, so he was hesitant to approach the leather sofa surrounding a round table.

This was one of the conference rooms protected by thick soundproof glass. When he heard the 70-inch flatscreen monitor on the wall could send a nuclear launch order, he was even more hesitant to approach.

“The British royal family’s round table? What world have I stumbled into? The tiltrotor alone was enough for a journal entry and now this? Is our next fight an RTS where we fly around the globe ordering armies to fight?”

“If things were that dire, we would never let anyone as thickheaded as you near the queen’s seat.”

That irritated comment was accompanied by the scent of nicotine. They both came from a priest who stood two meters tall. But his long hair was dyed bright red, he had a barcode tattoo below his eye, and he held a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

Stiyl Magnus ran an exasperated hand through his hair.

“You are no more than that girl’s chaperone. Not that anyone knows if the treaty between magic and science still means anything now that we have a new Archbishop and you have a new Board Chairman.”

“New leadership, huh?”

“Although it looks like your Chairman is already trying to commit social suicide.”

Cynicism was the default for Stiyl. It didn’t actually mean he hated anyone.

What mattered here was “that girl” he had mentioned.

“How are you going to use ''Index''?”

“This is how she was always meant to be used. Leaving her with you was an aberration. But if you insist on tagging along, you can make yourself a disposable shield for her. We’re paying for the ticket, so you’d better work yourself to the bone to pay us back.”

The priest blew some cigarette smoke into the conference room surrounded by thick glass, seemingly turning it into a gas chamber.

“The full population of Los Angeles is missing.”

To Kamijou, that one statement felt like a thick stake to the heart. Magic could easily overturn the laws of physics that so solidly bound the ordinary world, but this was taking it a bit far.

“The city itself is fine. It’s the people living there who are missing.”

“Um…how many people is that?”

“It’s the second largest city in the US. The official population is around 15 million, I think. But add in the illegal immigrants, the homeless, and others the government can’t track and that number goes up to more than 20 million. You can also assume that temporary visitors like travelers adds another 10 million on top of that. After all, in the broadest sense, Los Angeles includes the movie town of Hollywood and the headquarters of the world’s most famous amusement park.”

And they were all gone.

Every single one of them. Without even a chance to scream or tell anyone anything.

Kamijou had been informed that Anna Sprengel had escaped from her Academy City holding cell after he thought he had defeated her. Her whereabouts were unknown, but the odds were very good that she was directly or indirectly behind this.

He had already seen her toying with people’s lives before.

He quietly held a hand to his chest.

Punching her out had not been the end of it. And just because she had been able to escape – due to no fault of his own – ''this'' had happened to the world. Then what could he possibly do about it?

(St. Germain.)

“The Anglican Church and Academy City have convinced the US government to grant us permission to act, so a largescale joint operation is underway from the coast to LA. It’s called Operation Overlord Revenge. That’s why we actually noticed something was wrong.” Stiyl resumed his explanation. “The joint operation is meant as an attack on R&C Occultics’s HQ. Before, no one knew what country the giant IT company was base in, but we finally found a lead after checking through the records of some special Cayman Islands banks…or so we thought.”

“Then is it known the disappearance of LA was something magical?”

“The way we see it, R&C Occultics fought back against the joint magic and science force pushing in from the Pacific and that led to a mass disappearance of combatants and civilians alike.” Stiyl pressed his shortened cigarette into a glass ashtray. “What happened to LA’s people is unknown, but I say the most reasonable assumption is they’re dead. There are benefits to keeping them alive, though. Keeping survivors around makes an enemy more hesitant to bomb you with drones and hostages can be used as a bargaining chip.”

“You sound doubtful it’s either of those.”

It sounded reasonable enough to Kamijou, but Stiyl had an immediate answer.

“Previously, R&C Occultics preferred to spread chaos around the world by distributing detailed how-to guides for magical ceremonies. Their normal MO is to leave the actual attacking to a bunch of people they’ve never even met. By avoiding doing anything directly themselves, they can avoid any unwanted attention. …But they broke that rule here. That means the joint Anglican and Academy City force looked like an actual threat to them. R&C Occultics is taking this very seriously. They have to be to vanish 20 or 30 million people, don’t you think?”

“…”

“They felt their backs against the wall, so do you really think they would ''tie one hand behind their back'' by limiting themselves to nonlethal methods? I take the pessimistic view here. And even if they did carelessly slaughter all those people, the dead can still be used as hostages as long as no one can find the bodies. R&C Occultics has remained entirely silent this whole time, so either they’re focused on defending their HQ at all costs, or they’re gathering their things and skipping town.”

“Eh? They’d run away already?”

“In this modern age of loathsome science worship, even the Golden cabals keep their money in electronically locked safes.”

“Oh…ha ha ha ha.”

“During the Cold War, there was even a dictator that would eliminate his political rivals with Voodoo curses. But magicians are meant to be the outlaws hidden in the shadows. If R&C Occultics understands that, they won’t get overly fixated on a temporary victory here. Instead of trying to reign as a king, they’ll prefer to erase all trace of their name and appearance and vanish into the shadows.” Stiyl gave a disinterested click of his tongue. “Will they stay put and defend their HQ, or will they run off and ensure their safety? Their outlaw mentality will settle on those two options, but which way their scales will tilt is harder to say. But whatever their next objective, they don’t need living hostages to do it.”

“Quick question.” Kamijou Touma spoke softly but stared directly into Stiyl’s eyes. “''What is our objective here''?”

“The destruction of R&C Occultics. And to do that, we need the grimoire library’s help figuring out the trick behind the mass disappearance spell. Any hypothetical hostages are of secondary concern. Besides, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum works for the Anglican Church, so we don’t need her chaperone’s permission to use her.”

“Kh.”

“But.” Stiyl sounded like he barely cared as he stuck a new cigarette in his mouth. “We also aren’t going to monitor every little thing an outsider like that does. You go do your own thing. As long as you’re harmlessly wasting your time on that ‘secondary concern’, we won’t interfere.”

Kamijou Touma couldn’t help but smile.

“I see.”

“Hey, make no mistake here. The odds are 99% that my pessimistic view is right. Again, R&C Occultics has no reason to spare them. They don’t even need them alive to use them as hostages.”

“Then I’ll work toward that remaining 1%. Since the rest of you can’t spare any time for it.”

The menacing priest pulled the still-unlit cigarette from his mouth and clicked his tongue.

Their quick-and-dirty strategy meeting was complete.

When Kamijou opened the transparent door and left the soundproofed conference room, his mind was shaken by the loud noise.

The government plane was fully equipped with everything necessary for a worker’s duties and online meetings, but it offered more than that. Since it would sometimes remain in the air for days on end thanks to midair refueling, it had lodging equipment like a shower, a bed, and a kitchen and it had entertainment equipment like a home theater, minigolf, and a bar.

Also, each of those things appeared to have been designed to match an individual’s personal interests. For example, the TV, stereo, and other electronics were all Japanese. Japan must have met the exacting demands of the kingdom of rock’s queen.

(I can hardly believe it. Does the queen use this like a personal car?)

The wall display – which was larger than a karaoke box’s enormous monitor – was playing a news program. It must have been a station for the Japanese people living in the broader Pacific region. Although they were repeating an older story since it was so late at night.

“Our next story comes from Academy City. They will soon be holding an unprecedented trial in which their Board Chairman – known only as Accelerator – is the defendant. His real name and age remain unknown thanks to Academy City’s Personal Information Cleaning System. According to one of our sources, a team of doctors attempted to delay the trial using juvenile law and a mental evaluation of the Chairman, but the Chairman himself refused the delay. This sets the stage for the trial to be held on schedule. The Chairman claims he participated – of his own free will – in a bizarre ‘experiment’ that required the killing of 20,000 human clones, so…”

“…”

Kamijou Touma briefly fell silent. He had seen the news story already, but he still came to a stop.

He looked away from the large screen to shake it out of his mind.

And even if that program was for Japanese people, was that really the headline story? There was nothing there about LA. They may have had trouble putting together a story when they were unsure if those 30 million people were actually missing or if it was a largescale prank. He had heard that ''the really bad stuff'' started spreading online before you could find it on TV.

Index was sitting at the bar counter like it was her home now.

But not because she needed to take shots of 80-proof liquor to keep her fingers from shaking.

“Oh, Touma!! Look, look!! The fish and chips here are to die for!!”

“I don’t trust your taste buds. You rate anything you eat 5 stars.”

Kamijou approached with a bitter smile. She had a talent for making people happy, which was very nun-like. If he let himself believe her praise, he would get a big head about his cooking.

Instead of a bartender, a black-haired ponytail woman stood behind the counter. She was Kanzaki Kaori. She worked with the Anglicans, but as her name suggested, she was Japanese. She wore a T-shirt with the bottom tied to show off her navel and special jeans with one of the legs cut off at the very top of the thigh. She also wore a denim jacket since it wasn’t summer, but she was still an 18-year-old showing off an awkward amount of skin. And the parts without skin showing still inspired similar feelings in him.

“Do you need something?”

“Give me a mizuwari, barkeep. <span style="font-size:75%">…Sorry, that was a joke. It won’t happen again.</span>”

Her glare shut him up real quick. He had no real interest in the drinks themselves, but all the colorful bottles lined up like that gave the place a real mature atmosphere. The English on the labels made it feel super fancy. …Of course, he may have been assuming it was cool because he didn’t understand it, like the people who listened to Western music without understanding the lyrics.

Kanzaki provided an explanation in an exasperated voice when she saw Kamijou’s eyes sparkling in ignorance.

“That’s Drambuie, absinthe, Spirytus, and Japanese awamori. There is also ancient Egyptian beer in the fridge. But don’t touch any of it. As you might imagine from such a bizarre lineup, I think Queen Elizard is sick of her own country’s scotch and sherry. My point is, it would be an international incident if you drank part of the queen’s personal collection.”

“Oh, right. You’re only 18, so you don’t drink eith- <span style="font-size:75%">yikes.</span>”

She glared at him again. He was afraid to find out what happened if he angered her a third time. If she was glaring at him like this when he still had extra lives to burn, he couldn’t even imagine what a true game over would be like. He doubted he would get any continues.

“When does this mission start? What I eat depends on that. I’ve got an unsophisticated palate, so my gut instinct is to go with a hamburger steak or omurice, but I’m also afraid of getting motion sickness while trapped up here above the clouds.”

His common way of thinking made Kanzaki laugh.

“We will arrive in Los Angeles at 3 AM on the 26th and the mission begins as soon as we arrive.”

“What? Um, but it was already 2 when we left Academy City. Did I just imagine eating a meal and getting some sleep on the way? And what about when it felt like I was sitting around for longer than the runtime of 5 movies? How fast is this super magic plane moving? Did we end up flying back in time!?”

“There is none of that fantasy magic at play here. It’s a much simpler and more convenient trick. Did you forget about the international date line running down the Pacific Ocean? Time appears to go back a day when flying east from Japan.”

“Huh?”

The pointy-haired boy puzzled over that one. ''So it’s there and we fly through here, which means…what?'' After a bit, he gave up trying to figure it out. The world was too complicated for him.

“We’ve been on this plane a while, so how much longer do we have?”

“Less than an hour. I would recommend a light meal since you will be moving around a lot.”

“Hm,” he said, grabbing one of the fries from Index’s plate of fish and chips.

The next thing he knew, the fry had vanished from his hand, like some kind of trap had snapped shut. And Index was munching happily next to him.

It all happened so fast he did not have time for a cold sweat.

“Um, uh, Index-san? Did you just, um…”

“The fish and chips here to die for! …And this plate is mine.”

She was not going to give him a single bite.

He had been more bored than hungry, so he didn’t press the issue.

But, but, but…

“…”

“K-Kanzaki-san? Kanzaki-saaaan? Don’t give me that ‘you aren’t even going to try a bite’ look. Those sad puppy dog eyes are especially off limits! You might as well be threatening me! Because I sure as hell can’t touch anything on that plate! She’s liable to take off a finger, if not bite down to my wrist bone! Wait…you made this? Really? You didn’t just pop it in the microwave? It was made from scratch? Okay, fine, I’ll- oww!!!???”

He didn’t even get the whole sentence out. Whether you called it a reckless challenge or a youthful test of courage, the end result was the beartrap girl’s jaws snapping shut on his hand and him writhing in pain for a while.

“D-dammit. This is why I didn’t want to. Anyway, we’re on a special mission with a small team of elites, huh? Sounds like a movie.”

But the fate of the world came down to a skinny glutton of a nun instead of a former special forces macho man, so things were not looking good. It was the perfect setup for a tear-jerking tragedy, though.

“A spell was used to make an estimated 30 million people disappear, so overwhelming numbers are unlikely to work. Instead, a group too small for R&C Occultics to detect will sneak in close, investigate the disappearance spell, and destroy it. The bigger fighting force will be called in after that is done.”

“What is R&C Occultics so desperate to protect?”

He doubted they would throw some nuke-class magic out there just for a skyscraper of reinforced concrete. It didn’t fit the Anna Sprengel he had met. He had trouble imagining her even paying money to buy something.

Kanzaki had no solid answers there, but…

“R&C Occultics is not just a magic cabal. They have built up a giant IT company in line with the modern trends to disguise themselves.”

“And?”

Search engines, online shopping, social media, and phone makers – every Japanese high schooler was aware how little people actually knew what was going on inside the companies involved in every part of their lives. And the stories about them tagging the entire world population to manage them or using AI speakers and personalized advertisements to create a new digital religion were, for the most part, nonsense.

“Instead of laughing off the extremely worldly powers of money and data, R&C Occultics has thoroughly researched them as their own trump cards. They are a magic cabal with a brand new set of values. It might not sound like much, but it is a major development. Normally, these cabals, cults, and other occult organizations will shun those worldly powers the more devoted they are.”

“Eh? But I thought those phony cults were all rolling in dough.”

“The phony ones don’t count as part of the magic side.”

“Then, um…what was I thinking about? Oh, right. What about Birdway’s Dawn-Colored Sunlight? That little girl has a real wealthy aura to her, don’t you think?”

“(That segue makes it sound like you’re calling the Dawn-Colored Sunlight a phony cult, but I guess I don’t need to defend one of the magic cabals we’re supposed to hunt down.)”

“?”

Kamijou frowned and Kanzaki sighed.

“It is true some of the more powerful cabals have plenty of funding, but that is dirty money. Think of them like a gang. They have money, but if their misdeeds come to light, that money is taken away. It’s all an illusion that can vanish at any moment. R&C Occultics, on the other hand, has earned their money above the board.”

Kanzaki quietly added that even accused witches had their assets seized.

She leaned against the fairly tall bar and Kamijou felt the need to look the other way.

“???”

She was confused, so she must not have noticed how her large chest was resting on the counter.

“Living simply is a virtue, but it doesn’t give you the power needed to defeat your enemies. But corrupting yourself and gathering dirty money will only destroy you in the end. So money is most effective as a weapon when earned honestly. R&C Occultics has a terribly ''realistic'' understanding of that.”

“So you’re saying they might actually be fighting for nothing more than money?”

“That isn’t quite the right nuance. They’re big enough to use money that way, so it isn’t just that they greedily want money. For Miss Sprengel, it might be like having pieces of her completed collection stolen from her.”

“She doesn’t want her stuff taken?”

“Doesn’t that monster seem like the type to shriek and throw a fit even after insisting something is only a game?”

She did indeed. He could easily imagine her throwing the gamepad across the room and cussing people out on an online game when someone else delivered the finishing blow on the boss or took her rare item.

She seemed weirdly fixated on minor details for a mysterious historical figure. She had an abnormal temper whenever even one little thing didn’t go her way. So to prevent that, she would immaturely use major spells against non-magician amateurs, trying to smash them to pieces. Even Kamijou had come to understand that individualism ran rampant on the magic side, but Anna was even more childish than ''Crowley and Mathers''. Which was what made her actions so scarily hard to predict.

“Anna Sprengel probably did it on purpose.”

“Did what on purpose?”

“Getting captured and escaping was all part of her plan. It was a show of force for Academy City, demonstrating she could come and go as she pleased. She was telling them to give up trying to stop her.”

If so, was it possible Anna hadn’t been fighting seriously when Kamijou and St. Germain had been pouring everything they had into the battle? The difference in strength may have been so great that she had struggled to find a way to lose convincingly.

Kanzaki leaned on the counter and calmly continued her explanation. She smiled and watched Index happily scarfing down some bite-sized fried fish, but the words coming from her shapely lips were sharp.

“R&C Occultics can use every part of the online industry as a weapon – from individual mobile devices to the global infrastructure. Even if it requires buying out a company that specializes in whatever tech they need. They appear to be using online shopping as one primary pillar there. But that would be meaningless if the distribution centers and shipping routes could be used to locate their HQ. That is why they focused on drone deliveries.”

“Drone deliveries? So unmanned ones?”

“They can’t be captured and tortured for information, they can’t be bought or threatened, they do even the most dangerous work without complaint, and they won’t give in to intimidation. …Even I was once moved to emotion by ''a washing machine'', so I know how impressive modern machines are.”

The drone launch pads and product warehouses were located all over the world. R&C Occultics logos and billboards were as common a sight as traffic lights and hot spring symbols. But the flying drones never traveled to and from the R&C Occultics HQ. If all of the simple warehouses could be abandoned at a moment’s notice, then no one could find the giant IT company’s HQ by chasing after the drones.

Kanzaki sighed softly and scratched her smooth cheek with her index finger.

“But that doesn’t mean they are without flaw. With fiber optic cables and high-speed satellite communication, it takes less than a tenth of a second to send data all the way around the world, but following the many paths taken by all that data ultimately led us to LA. This is the R&C Occultics HQ. It matches the financial data hidden at the Cayman Islands, so there’s no doubting it.”

Kamijou was surprised to hear a magic specialist had used such a digital method, but then he remembered that this was a joint unit that included Academy City. Both groups must have played to their strengths.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

They had needed to accept that old adage in order to corner R&C Occultics like this.

“I doubt they can so easily transport away their giant drone management servers since they cover a space larger than a basketball court. I won’t say it is impossible, but they would have to buy a lot of time to separate out those parallel processing units and load them on trucks and helicopters. And buying that time would require making themselves extremely visible.”

“…”

“They see their money and data as a trump card on the same level as their curses, talismans, summoning, potion mixing, and spiritual possessions.”

“You mean like that sword you wear at your hip?”

“Yes. So they will protect it. They will work just as hard to protect the lowly power of money as they would a spiritual item or temple. But if we can prevent them from escaping here, we can take it from them. We can forever remove their power to repeat this nonsense.”

A soft tone sounded and Kamijou looked up to the ceiling just as a gentle flight attendant made an announcement.

“We will soon arrive at Los Angeles International Airport. Please take your eats and fasten your seatbelts before we begin landing.”

“This is going to be a rough landing,” cautioned Kanzaki with a cool look. She made sure the bar’s bottles and glasses were held in place by their special stoppers and locked the glass doors that covered the shelves. “The flight control and other airport workers have vanished. The Skybus 550 is a large plane, so the cockpit is reliant on sensors to see below. This will be a late-night emergency landing with no guidance from the ground radars and guide lights. Even professional airborne troops could crash in those conditions. We need to pray to our god in heaven the belly of the plane isn’t torn open by the shock.”

“I-Index!!”



After smoking three cigarettes and leaving the thick glass conference room, Stiyl Magnus icily commented on the scene before him.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“K-Kanjaki-shan…?”

Kamijou was in tears. He had pushed Index to the floor and laid protectively over her, but then nothing happened. They had a perfectly smooth landing. And the black ponytail woman only covered her mouth with a hand and laughed.

“I think it’s fun. It reminds me of our time with her, Stiyl.”