Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

Kamijou’s visit with the Bologna Succubus came to and end without any real results. In fact, the more information he gathered, the more confused he felt.

He left the room following Good, Old Mary as she pushed out the cart loaded with empty dishes and he asked a question of Aradia by his side.

“What are you doing about a bath? It looks like each room has their own.”

“Why are you, a boy, asking about that? No, never mind. You don’t have to explain it for me. Keep that right hand away from me, Kamijou Touma!!”

He doubted there was any getting out of staying the night at the consulate and he did want to get as much information as possible while he had a chance to stay in contact with the Bridge Builders Cabal. They could also keep an eye on each other and he definitely wanted to know what Mut Thebes, the execution expert, was up to.

Hence his curiosity about Aradia’s bath. Needless to say, Aradia’s spells used her bare feet. Her power could return if she got the duct tape off her feet while he wasn’t paying attention.

“Guess I’ll have to ask Index to handle that again.”

“Could you not strip me of my rights as casually as coming up with tomorrow’s menu?”

“Eh? But who other than Index could-”

“The girl!”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Uh, oh.”

This idea must not have even occurred to Witch Goddess Aradia because she sounded like someone watching a dump truck about to hit her in slow motion.

And so…



“Ahhhh!? No, wait, Alice. I can do that on my own. I can wash myself there, I promiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!!”

“But the girl’s teacher asked her to do this. Look, this is the natural sponge everyone recommended. The girl also has this loofah and this bumpy silicon one! We can try them all out tonight! Scrubby scrubby☆”

“Bologna Succubus, aren’t you going to stop this? Or at least remove the duct tape from her feet?”

“Can’t you see me holding her in place to support her scrubbing assault, Good, Old Mary? She beat me up last year, but now she’s all tied up and begging for attention. Besides, I know firsthand the accusations against her aren’t false, so I have no reason to help her.”

“Mut Thebes. What about you?”

“I believe in the importance of communal bathing.”



Kamijou listened to the female Transcendents through the door.

(They certainly sound like they’re enjoying themselves. But is that only an illusion? The real problem with Transcendents is that this isn’t enough to know who they are deep down.)

He sighed out in the hallway.

It was like they could understand each other’s words, but there was some fundamental difference in their viewpoints.

But based on what he heard, he didn’t have to worry about the duct tape being removed from Aradia’s feet. He didn’t need to stand watch over the door, so he chose to leave.

Now was no time for being in such a quiet mood.

(Wait, if Mut Thebes was in the bath with them, then who’s looking after Index and Othinus!?)

Could you not trust a verbal promise from a Transcendent, or was that a problem with Mut Thebes in particular?

He returned to the 1st floor dining hall to find H. T. Trismegistus clearing away the dishes left on the table. He opened another storage case he pulled from a pocket and pulled out a rag, cleaner, and a large tray. Could he fit his black cane in there too?

Index must have eaten a prodigious amount because she was now resting her head on the table in utter satisfaction. 15cm god Othinus hopped up and down on the table to catch his attention. The fearful looks she kept giving the calico cat said she wanted to reclaim her spot on his shoulder immediately.

“(Human, I got a few pieces of information out of H. T. Trismegistus, but…)”

“(But this is a lot more dangerous than you thought? My findings say the same thing. Although those findings are mostly just even more things I now know I don’t know about the Transcendents.)”

H. T. Trismegistus glanced their way while they whispered to each other.

He was a Transcendent as well.

It didn’t matter if he could understand the ''words'' they spoke. How much could they actually ''communicate''?

“I began clearing the table when my master showed no sign of returning to eat.”

The young butler prioritized his master Alice above all others, so he must have decided dinner was over when she did not return to the table.

“We all grabbed something in the Bologna Succubus’s room. …There isn’t much food left, is there? Let me guess: Index ate it all.”

“She is a very eco-friendly person.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means.”

The problem was not leaving food behind. The problem was that not enough food made it to everyone. Eating several people’s worth of food on your own, even if it was close to expiring, was not the same thing as being economical. Confusion there was what led to meaningless announcements about “creating a sustainable society by reducing the number of unused take home boxes thrown out”. It was the restaurant that spent year in and year out buying more than they could possibly use and then throwing them out, so why did they sound so smug about cutting that waste in half? And why were they even throwing out take home boxes like it was a seasonal trend?

But the young butler didn’t seem particularly interested in the planet’s future.

“Mental exercise helps digestion as much as the physical type. So how about a game of chess? Alice and the others enjoy playing too.”

“Sorry, but I don’t know the rules to chess.”

The young butler had been partway through pulling out collapsible table and chairs when Kamijou answered and he ended up dropping everything to the floor.

His eyes shook as badly as a university professor who visited a supposedly haunted location with all the latest tech necessary to disprove the existence of ghosts and then started getting some very ghostly readings.

“C-common sense says you can’t possibly have lived 15 or 16 years without learning the rules to chess. E-even Alice knows how to play.”

“Oh, yeah? And when is knowing how to play chess going to help me find the loophole needed to win a battle, you fancy-pants butler?”

Kamijou Touma also didn’t know anything about the cricket game that Alice’s bat came from, but he now knew that was a secret he had to take to his grave.

“Besides, I’m Japanese, so what do you expect? A lot of people pretend to know, but only a handful of people can actually play chess without a set of instructions on how the different pieces move.”

This time, H. T. Trismegistus really did physically collapse backwards. Just toppled over like a felled tree.

The loud sound made Kamijou jump, but the butler himself didn’t even notice.

He rolled onto his side and clawed at the carpet while muttering to himself. Icepacks, headache medicine, and other similar items spilled from his cloak and scattered across the floor around him. He apparently didn’t have a chess rulebook on him and that failure came as something of a shock. To him, chess was apparently as basic a game as rock-paper-scissors or tag.

“C-common sense is not…common to everyone? No, that can’t be. It is absurd. I knew Academy City was a devilish place, but I never imagined it could be this bad. Grgbhdfbeewrby…”

“Hey, Transcendent? Your common tone thingies are breaking down.”

This confirmed H. T. Trismegistus was as eccentric as the rest, but Kamijou’s thoughts on the matter were cut off.

“This is the plank of Carneades.”

“?”

“I saw something like that long ago. The world is a cruel place indeed when people lose their ability to treat the concept of justice with care. No matter how logically you explain your academic theories, there is nothing you can do when people brush them aside based on emotion.”

The young butler didn’t seem intent on saying anything more.

It had come up several times when he spoke, so it sounded like H. T. Trismegistus measured his actions using the idea of “common sense”, or at least his definition of it. He normally felt untouchable there, but once that concept was shaken, it affected the very foundation of his thoughts.

Kamijou couldn’t afford to forget.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, Mut Thebes.

And Anna Sprengel.

It wasn’t clear what kind of spells H. T. Trismegistus used, but he was definitely on par with those monsters. And this felt like a case of “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”.

It wasn’t as simple as duking it out to compare strengths.

This really was a wonderland.