Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover4 (section)

===Part 5===

After everything that happened, they decided to ban the king game.

Why?

Hint: the stench of nicotine smoke and burned flesh.

Anyone who wanted to know more could hear all about it from Quenser Barbotage who was writhing on the tatami mats and covering his face with his hands. No one else wanted to end up like that. From a video game perspective, it would just barely keep a D rating. This was the problem with the Western military games that were fine with getting a Z rating from the get-go.

But this was an Intellectual Village full of Youkai, so there were plenty of people with excellent medicines. Like the third Kamaitachi.

Young Shinobu tugged on Kamijou’s clothing.

“Hey, spiky-haired guy. What do we do next for a group blind date? This is the latest way to have fun! So there has to be more than just this!!”

“Well, I’m not all that familiar with party games, but what about the Yamanote Line game?”

Just as he named the first thing that came to mind, he heard a pleasant little sound.

Everyone looked over in surprise and saw the small Norse boy holding a flyer to his mouth after rolling it into a long tube.

The giant gray pig’s giant eyes widened even further.

“B-boo!? What was that!? Some kind of incredible invention!?”

“It’s called blowgun and anyone can make one.”

He had apparently stuck a cone-shaped scrap of paper inside the rolled-up flier tube and launched it by blowing on the end like it was a pipe. By making notches in the paper, it could fit together tightly enough with no need for tape or glue. Some people might look down on it as mere paper, but the sharp point of the cone was quite solid. It functioned well enough as a dart.

But red-armored Beatrice surreptitiously poked at green-armored Waltraute’s side. Those two with fox and tanuki colorations began a whispered discussion.

“(Hey, did Norse culture even have blowguns?)”

“(H-hmm, I know I’ve never heard of a military god who specialized in them. But it’s a fairly primitive idea, so you can probably find weapons like it anywhere. Just like the humans down on the surface all use similar swords and spears even though no one ordered them to.)”

Beatrice herself did not actually know where on the planet blowguns had originated from or where they had traveled from there, so she ended the discussion. As a Japanese girl, she tended to just assume most of civilization either originated China or Korea and crossed the ocean or originated in India, the Near and Middle East, or Europe and traveled down the Silk Road.

But Waltraute had other things to worry about.

“Hey, don’t fill people’s homes with holes just for fun. Do that and you’ll end up like that bearded head god in Asgard.”

“Oh, okay.”

The boy’s casual reaction was actually impressive given the eyepatched and bearded person they were talking about. Waltraute wanted to believe he was not as bad as the extremely unfaithful head god of Greek mythology, but the Norse head god was also well known for being an unpopular bastard. After all, he was enough of an idiot to cheat on his wife Frigg with Freyja and end up having a third of Asgard’s army taken away. And when a giant had said he wanted that Freyja for his wife, the utter moron had tried to drive him away with some impossible tasks, but when it looked like the giant would complete them all, he panicked and ordered Loki to interfere. It ended with his cheating being revealed, so he had to order his son Thor to go kill the enraged giant. To sum up, he had forced the crime of murder onto his own son because he was afraid to give up a mistress.

“But I want to try out that blowgun thing,” said Boo Boo.

“Then how about we make a target? If we don’t hit the walls, Waltraute won’t be mad.”

The bunny girl lightly kicked Higashikawa’s leg below the table.

“Ow. What was that for?”

“Oh? Would you prefer I used these seeeexy feet to play footsie with you?”

“Nothing would scare me more, so please don’t! I never want to be even remotely indebted to you!!”

“Anyway, if they’re creating a blowgun target, can’t we use that for the next game? If we write commands on the target, we can turn it into a fun party game.”

Thanks to that suggestion, Higashikawa began by handing out card-sized pieces torn off of napkins and had everyone write a “command” on theirs.

Unlike the king game from before, the person who hit the target had to carry out the command themselves. So there were two strategies here:

*Write a simple and happy command that you would be fine with hitting yourself.

*Write a harsh command that you hoped someone else would hit.

“Hee hee. Hee hee hee. ‘Hit this and you become one with brother.’ Kyah☆ Now everything is set up for a happy ending.”

“That’s not a command; it’s your wish! C-can you not bet someone else’s life like that!? I feel like I’m being auctioned off at a slave market!!”

The worst part was how a few of the others were clearly inspired by her idea to write out a wish instead. The Queen’s mere presence really did have a way of contaminating everything around her.

For the target, they pasted together several flyers, used a rolled up flyer as a support pillar, and leaned the board back against that.

It was about the size of the drawing board in Shinobu’s drawing set. …And if you cannot picture that, think of it as a fully spread out piece of newspaper.

It was pretty big.

The “order” papers were pasted to the backside, so it was impossible to aim for a particular one. They would all have to run blindly out into the minefield and either laugh or cry at the results.

The blowguns themselves were simple enough for a child to make and they had plenty of flyers leftover, so there was no need to share them. Everyone had made their own.

“(Tch…)” (White Queen)

“(If only I could have worked out a way for an indirect kiss with Boo Boo…)” (Beatrice)

The main heroine known as Holy Swordswoman Beatrice was reaching the same dark depths as the Queen, but that was probably fine when the other person was an extra-extraordinary gray pig. The brother and the pig were so tough that the girl could take any approach they wanted without worrying, and that may have had a way of twisting something deep inside them.

After some arguing over the order they would fire the blowguns, they decided to fire them simultaneously after using highlighters to draw different colored lines on the cone-shaped darts so they could tell them apart.

And the White Queen, who could clearly see right through to the other side of the board, had a smile split across her face while her eyes sparkled brightly.

“Become one with brother, become one with brother.”

“Hm? White lady, is there something you want? Then you have my support. Good luck.”

6-year-old Shinobu had a way of tugging at the heartstrings of nonhumans, so there was no stopping the White Queen’s excitement now.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! Then I will give you a gift to thank you for your blessing, young boy. Have this White Professional-Grade Razor that can simultaneously slice through all four of the fundamental forces that make up the world☆”

Instead of a sword or a spear, she made it a large industrial razor that ignored any logic as a weapon…so Her Majesty clearly understood the chuuni heart.

“Hm? But I don’t have a beard???”

Shinobu tilted his head. He had been given an ultimate weapon on the same level as the holy sword that unified Britain, but it had happened so easily that he was not sure just how valuable it was.

…If the brother she kept mentioning had been this pure and dumb, the world might have been a much more love-filled and peaceful place, but that kind of thought experiment could wait until another time.

It was time for the blowgun tournament.

“Okay, let’s do this. Everyone get your blowguns ready. Fire it on my signal. You only get one shot at this, so it’ll be over real quick.”

“…Mutter, mutter. I have to take the Queen’s reward away from her. If I can hit the ‘become one with brother’ command myself, nothing should change…”

“Oh, c’mon. Do that and the world would be so boring and stagnant, brother! We need to stir up the world and cause change!!”

There was about as much chance of him agreeing with the Queen’s suggestion as amino acids suddenly appearing on the moon or Mars and creating a new ecosystem, but the time had arrived.

“Ready, set, go!” announced 6-year-old Shinobu.

They all fired their blowguns on the handmade target while lined up in front of it.

“Oh.” Kamijou sounded a bit impressed. “That worked better than I thought. It looks like we all hit the target.”

“Let’s see. What do the order sheets on the back say?”

The bunny girl tried to take a peek on the other side, but Shiroyama Kyousuke made a hurried suggestion.

“Ah! If that’s an option, then you needn’t bother! I can check on them myself…!!”

“Now, now, brother. Don’t even think about getting close and messing with the target. For example…yes, secretly swapping out the order sheets on the back to avoid an inconvenient order☆”

“Vwah, vwah!!”

The White Queen made her presence all too known by approaching that beloved boy from behind, smiling as she restrained him, and pressing her far-from-small chest against his back. Shiroyama Kyousuke struggled like someone who had made it a step away from boarding Noah’s Ark before it left, but there was nothing he could do now. Especially when the other participants were now aware of that method of cheating.

For better or for worse, the bunny girl was excessively fair when it came to judging death games, so she flipped over the blowgun target and checked the back.

“Okay, okay. Time to announce the results.”

“What kind of orders did people write anyway? Gulp.”

Kamijou voiced what everyone was thinking, but that honestly did not help or hurt. Still, people like that were necessary to allow society to run smoothly. A sharp tongue was not the only type of talent. Which was fortunate since it was only his hair that was sharp.

Shiroyama Kyousuke gulped.

“B-by the way, what kind of wishes did you all write? This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance! So you all wrote ‘hit this and the Queen dies’, right? Final answer!?”

“Only you would be that bloodthirsty.”

“Squeal. I wrote that I wished everyone’s worries would go away.”

“Don’t you know that kind of vague request is the most dangerous of alllllllll!?”

Kyousuke began seriously holding his head in his hands, but even someone as skilled as him could not change the things the Queen got directly involved in.

Then Higashikawa hesitantly spoke up.

“To get back on topic, what kind of wishes ''did'' everyone write? It would be great if we knew that…”

“Eh?” continued Kamijou. “Do we have to say? I thought the surprise was half the fun. Although I only wrote that I hoped I could grow another 5cm…”

“That sounds nice at first, but did you not stop to think how someone might go about making it happen, you moron!? If you let the White Queen do it, she’d almost certainly grab you by the head and ass and stretch you until your spine cried out in protest! Ya ha hahhh!!”

Shiroyama Kyousuke was now tearfully laughing.

If he could tearfully laugh like this, everyone began wondering if theirs was actually a mutual love, but none of them said it out loud. They were afraid that might trigger Armageddon.

Anyway, these were the other “wishes”:

“I want to eat snacks until I’m full!!” (Index)

“I just want some useful experiment results.” (Bunny Girl)

“I want Boo Boo all to myself.” (Beatrice)

“I wish Shinobu wouldn’t make these ridiculous requests.” (Zashiki Warashi)

“I wanna be pop☆ular!!” (Higashikawa Mamoru)

“I want colored pencils in every color!” (Jinnai Shinobu)

“Can’t that bearded head god just die?” (Waltraute)

That was when Shiroyama Kyousuke, aka Alice (with) Rabbit, reached the end of his patience.

“You’re supposed to ask for the White Queen to die! Those aren’t the kinds of responses we need right now! Ahhh!!”

But no matter what he said, history was already on the move. No one knew what to do when he protested the result after the fact.

Meanwhile, the spiky-haired boy tilted his head.

“By the way, what did the White Queen hit?”

“Hee hee. Hee hee hee. Hee hee hee ha ha!! Did you really think a perfect being like me would hit anything other than ‘become one with brother’!? Ho ho ho ho!!”

“I-I need to find a way to turn back time and change the outcome…!”

“Oh, dear. But this would end the same even if you retried it a million times. Surely you know by now that my queenly decisions cannot be influenced by something as insignificant as fate. Right, brother?”

It was the Zashiki Warashi and not Shiroyama Kyousuke who felt a chill down her spine at that.

What was this?

As someone who manipulated destiny, she felt like her very purpose was in danger here. She felt like she could not ignore that comment. If they were all on a train, then those words had switched them over to a set of rails from which they could never return.

Waltraute pressed her index finger against her temple and spoke up with exasperation in her voice.

“Yeah. I did see one dart clearly turn at a right angle as it flew.”

“Obwohhhhh!! Obwohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn!!”

That deafening scream rang out, but the result was absolute. They all needed to understand that the laws of the world all bent to the White Queen’s will.

Something like a giant white cocoon appeared in a corner of the tea room and two people were dragged inside it, but had anyone been able to see it happen? To keep up, you needed the eyes of the Queen who surpassed even a true goddess like Waltraute!

The spiky-haired boy did not pick up on the danger here, so he simply tilted his head.

“Wow. I hit ‘Can’t that bearded head god just die?’ What am I supposed to do about that?”

“Really!? Then go attack him! With your mysterious power, you can probably go around destroying all of his treasures without actually having to face him himself!!”

“…By the way, who is this bearded head god?”

“Touma, you can think of him as a full-power version of Othinus that never got distorted at all.”

“Wait, so how many millions or billions of times am I going to have to face certain doom this time!? Please, anything but that!!”