Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

The sun had set.

The sky was dark and, true to the December date, the winter season became impossible to ignore once sunset arrived. However, it was also New Year’s Eve, so Shibuya was only starting to get fired up.

“…”

One girl wore a translucent raincoat over a swimsuit-based outfit. She wore an eyepatch and looked something like a comical ghost or a clione, but she was currently staring at the scenery of Spain Zaka.

She saw a large piece of cloth fluttering there.

A small girl of about 10 was trotting along in a witch outfit, probably on her way to the scramble crossing. “How cute,” said the ghost, but on closer inspection, that witch girl had her navel exposed and she was barefoot. She could easily freeze to death in that modified bikini, so did she have a thick layer of some kind of heat insulating gel applied to her bare skin?

“A witch.”

The ghost had had a frightening experience with one of those earlier in the day.

Her hand froze up while reflexively reaching for her phone to record the possible news in front of her. But this witch costume looked a lot cheaper than the last one. The clasps didn’t look like real gold, for one. It may have been made with a clothing printer that used a remote machine to perform automatic high-speed sewing based on the supplied pattern data. Recently, White Spring had a deal where you could order a printed garment online and then have their delivery service deliver it to you in less than half an hour.

(But is that really a popular enough character for someone so clearly new to cosplay to choose? For that matter, ''is that even a character from something''? Well, someone may have thrown together the pattern data based on the uploaded videos and then released it for public use.)

Just then, the ghost took a step back and nearly bumped into a witch.

But this witch looked to be of high school age.

“?”

(Um!?)

A moment later, the ghost realized there were even more of them.

Everywhere she looked, she found witches wearing ankle length wimples and modified bikinis. There were 5 or 10 or maybe more. The number gradually increased like stepping on the white beach and seeing dark oil start to seep out from below the sand. It was like the scratchy sound of cheap bells were drowning out the crowd’s chatter.

None of them were looking her way.

They were only respectfully holding some folded clothes in their hands. For whatever reason, blank pieces of looseleaf paper were stacked up on top of the clothing.

They were all muttering the same thing under their breath.

It was a forbidden, profane, and sweet utterance that brought the word “secret” to mind.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

For some reason, when the ghost heard those whispered voices, something started to grow in the back of her mind.

This was something she had tried to forget. It was an unseen scar on her heart that formed the foundation of her current life and could not be removed at this point.

She belonged to a group who posted videos to a video site. She was always conscious of her numbers, but that wasn’t always a battle against herself.

She had once had a rival.

She hadn’t heard anything from that rival ever since the girl made the mistake of uploading a shoplifting video and had to move away.

They had been friends…or she thought they had. But the silly number of followers tacked onto the end of their account names had always led them to compete, for better or for worse. And if the ghost hadn’t come out just barely on top, that friend, whose real name she didn’t even know, may never have felt the need to gather attention with a shoplifting video.

She had been terrified of the guilt catching up to her.

So she had grown even more obsessed. Because if she dressed in crazy outfits and received the praise of so many people online, she could forget all about the more colorful reality she lived in. And who was going to complain about that choice if she also earned more money than most adults made?

But she couldn’t shake off, wash away, or escape reality.

She was wearing a translucent raincoat over a costume based on a practice swimsuit. That cheap, meaningless outfit wasn’t enough. That plastic and synthetic fabric had no mystical significance and couldn’t free her from reality. It couldn’t relieve the weight suffocating her.

So what else could she do?

What could she do to finally shake free of the reality doggedly pursuing her?

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

“Oh.”

There was the answer.

The witches continued to multiply.

Just like with Halloween costumes and video posting, it was so much less frightening when you weren’t the only one doing something.

There were more and more.

More and more and more and more and more and more.

More and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more.

They came from every direction. Witches emerged from every street corner to flood the scene. There were some suppressed screams as people were overwhelmed by the sight, but everyone was paralyzed by it and no one began recording with their phone.

The ghost should have felt the same.

But this didn’t even seem strange to her anymore, much less frightening. She instead felt an all-encompassing sense of calm. Most everyone understood what a follower count was these days and it was so much easier for new content creators to get started. This worked the same as video sites and the rest of the internet. Once enough people were doing something, it gained legitimacy.

Everyone was doing this too, so she had nothing to worry about.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

One witch must have sensed something because she held out some folded clothes and a stack of looseleaf paper.

The ghost smiled as she accepted the invitation and opened a new door by repeating the secret keyword.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”



Meanwhile, someone was humming atop Shibuya Scramble Squiz, a skyscraper complex connected to Shibuya Station.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm.”

On the special observation deck at the 46th floor, Transcendent Aradia raised her arms and stretched in the large space with a view of the city’s nightscape through the surrounding glass.

She snapped open the clasps to her modified bikini, letting the garment fall away. She only ever exposed her naked body to the green trees, but in artificial Shibuya, the temporary botanical garden being held here was the only option available.

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW4.png|thumb]]


Her long silver hair became much more noticeable.

Witches were meant to bathe in the moonlight and live secret lives deep in the forest, so if she wanted to eliminate the noise from her thoughts and get a fresh look at her situation, moonbathing and forest bathing were her only real options.

(I had prepared myself for the lack of starlight, but this is bad. Even the moonlight is barely leaking through.)

So this was little more than a way of calming herself.

Aradia spread her arms and bathed in the night air of the artificial greenery.

The witch goddess slowly walked naked across the 46th floor observation deck, stopping to snatch a free pamphlet from the magazine rack along the way. The action had no meaning. She was only relaxing her body and eliminating all biases from her thoughts.

The ad campaign described on the pamphlet was apparently a common thing in the shopping district lately.

''“Help grow more greenery and kick global warming’s butt with Magical Powered Kanamin! Get your free flower seeds now! If we all do our part, we can save the planet with our flower pots!!”

“Hee hee.”

Aradia laughed when she saw the magical girl drawn on the pamphlet in primary colors.

But not because she found it laughable.

(So this teaches people to love the deep forests and to assist those close to them?)

This was an Academy City entertainment product made for small children and the campaign’s claims had little to no scientific basis behind them. But ironically enough, it hit a lot closer to the essence of a witch than those texts written to criticize witches that based their beliefs on all the ancient parchment documents they had gathered.

Aradia glanced to the side while toying with the pamphlet in her hand.

She saw some billowing clothes there.

But they weren’t hers. They were worn by the girls who were serving the witch goddess in the hopes of receiving even a small fraction of her blessing. They were watching Aradia as a living model of a perfect witch, making note of everything from her gait to her breaths, and jotting it all down on their looseleaf paper.

That was known as their Book of Shadows. Modern witches bound by the Rule of Three were given a stack of blank paper when they first started down that path. The newcomers would continue writing down all the knowledge they obtained until the day they died to create their own personal grimoire.

The girls kept writing without even looking up and they all spoke in unison.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

That sounded important, but the phrase was actually meaningless.

It was the same as youth slang and online memes.

Having some kind of secret shared term or phrase created a sense of unity while also creating a sense of superiority over anyone who didn’t understand it. Those in the know were separated from the world at large and formed a loose community. But it was easier for people to get onboard if the phrase felt like it had some history or tradition behind it. Repeating that phrase created the illusion of invisible bonds and made them think they were protected as part of some great purpose. The same method had been used at the Sabbats during the Middle Ages, a time when some people wanted to return to their ancestors’ ways after Christianity had taken over.

''I want to know too.

It was an intellectual poison that silently spread using that common desire.

When a demon (or something forced to bear that title) were summoned at those gatherings, the process to perform the summoning tended to be a lot lengthier and more complex than the part where they actually did anything with the summoned being. Why? Because those arcane rituals were the best part and it was so relaxing to be actively working on something. Perhaps it would be too romantic to liken that to the period leading up to an unrequited love being fulfilled.

“Hm.”

With influencers on social media and whatever-tubers on video sites, the world continued to transform and evolve at an accelerated rate, but the basic desires at the bottom of it all had not changed. Aradia saw the world as a living fossil.

“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::::::I want to live an active life without anyone knowing who I really am.

:“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::::::I want to be an entirely new person.

:: “''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::::I don’t want to screw up or fail.

:::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::::I don’t want to make a fool of myself in public.

::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::::I want to learn how it works without needing to be an expert.

:::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:::But I also want a skill no one else can imitate.

::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

::And I don’t want to work hard for it.

:::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

:I don’t want to bow down to the know-it-alls.

::::::::“''May the holy witch guide us.''”

I want a trick that makes reaching my goal easy.

(This city’s people have so many openings for me to utilize. I don’t think it’s as bad as New York, though.)

So these girls would not rely on the mythologies and religions linked to great political power. They were only using their young sensibilities to link together some slang and memes they all knew, but that was to be expected when they all lived separate lives. It was selfish, willful, and entirely for themselves. They were driven by their own desire, so they could never get along with the mythologies and religions that asked for a unified lifestyle before seeking happiness – in other words, ''that demanded their followers protect their teachings that had already been finalized so long ago.

This is what witches had always been. The Sabbat had always been this sort of gathering.

Transcendent Aradia was the one who gave concrete form to those desires and provided the witches with the necessary knowledge and a place at which to practice it.

The nude idol spread her arms at the center of the Sabbat and sang loud.

“It is time to begin the second round.”

She would keep this simple.

If she could not settle this on her own, then she would crush her target with an onslaught of 100 thousand witches.