Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover3 (section)

===Part 6===

'''(10 Hours After)

It was 8 AM and breakfast was over. The survivors had made it through the second challenge of the morning by politely turning down the breakfast made from delicious-looking Intellectual Village ingredients.

Beatrice and Aika were discussing something.

“Sorry, but I think either Index or Misaka Mikoto will drop out next.”

“Yeah, they are the only group with two girls left. And eating will lead straight to falling asleep and dying, but that white nun couldn’t resist the temptation and ate her fill.”

What had happened to working together? Those two were already making ominous predictions, but the sad parting came from elsewhere.

“Ah, ahhhh!? Liger!!”

“Yeah. Don’t felines spend 20 hours a day dozing off? They barely ever fall fast asleep, though.”

“Ahhhh!”

Aika lamented as the 5 meter loser was dragged into the forbidden room by a bunch of white ribbons. Farewell, white liger. Go with pride.

Now that mealtime was over, the Jinnai household began cleaning and laundry. Boo Boo was being chased around by the vacuum cleaner that Shinobu’s mother was using.

“Boo! What is this loud thing? It isn’t going to explode, is it!?”

“Hm? That’s a vacuum cleaner. It’s a magic box that sucks anything up. Look, it’s gonna suck up your big head, little piggy.”

“Ahh, ahhh!?”

The nozzle began sucking at his forehead. He seemed to be having fun, but Beatrice worried he would start feeling sleepy. Once the excitement wore off, he could fall sleep in the blink of an eye.

But…

(How exactly are we supposed to defeat that Queen?)

If she managed to answer that extremely difficult problem, she could end an entire series right here, but standing around was not going to help anything. They would eventually fall asleep and the white would get them.

“Vweeeen…”

Young Shinobu spread his arms and made airplane noises as he ran across the tea room to the veranda. Boo Boo was curious, so he left the vacuum cleaner and followed the boy into the yard.

He heard a slapping sound.

“Squeal. What are you doing?”

“Beating the futons is my job. Do this and the futons will be nice and fluffy!”

Based on his life in Ground’s Nir, it was a miracle that Boo Boo could have such lively interactions with people.

“I wonder if you’d get nice and fluffy if I hung you up to dry.”

“S-stop that. I wouldn’t make tasty jerky. You wouldn’t get any concentrated flavor!”

This world seemed very open to “outsiders”. Beatrice and Misaka Mikoto were not blatantly inhuman, but they could use Magic or fire lightning from their bangs. Nevertheless, they had been readily accepted. Not to mention that the Holy Swordswoman was wearing red miniskirt armor and carried a sword at her hip. Boo Boo was very obviously a Nonhuman and had the family really not noticed the White Queen who gave off such a thick and sweet smell of death? It was entirely possible they had noticed but were ignoring it.

(Phew. Not good. This place started feeling so nice and I forgot why we’re here. This is a death game where we fight the urge to sleep. I’ll be in danger if I get too relaxed.)

Beatrice shook her head all on her own. She felt bad for Haruka and the other maids taking care of the Detached Magic Palace in her absence, but she would not mind staying here for a while.

And as that heartwarming mood came over her, she saw something horrifying.

“Thud. Zzz.”

The Princess had been sleeping by the veranda with her eyes open, but a slender white form tapped her on the shoulder and then she vanished. But that was not her main concern.

“S-squeal…”

She felt like she had been hit by Stun. Boo Boo was falling asleep. He had been helping with the futons hanging out to dry, but his head was drooping as he pulled on the thick cotton.

“B-Boo Boo!?”

Beatrice did not have a moment to spare. Since calling out to him had not worked, her options were incredibly limited.

Two extreme options came to mind:

*Boo Boo is cute, so I could never kick him.

*I must kick him. It’s for his own good.

Time slowed so far it easily surpassed the limits of relativity. She used that infinitely stretched moment to think until she nearly got a nosebleed. In other words, she thought really, really hard.

But Boo Boo’s round eyes were more than half closed. When she saw his eyelids rise a little before falling the rest of the way down, the red Holy Swordswoman made up her mind.

(I’m sorry, Boo Boo!!)

She bit her lip hard and ran forward, looking as resolute as she did when risking her life to explore the Labyrinth.

She was the ace striker and he was the soccer ball.

“S-squeeeeeeal!!!???”

Just like a saw wound, a duller blow would only hurt more, but did that really mean it was better to go all out? It was such a clean hit that it almost seemed comical.

She had done the right thing.

If she had not done this, cute little Boo Boo would have been grabbed by the White Queen and throw into that small room.

But.

As Boo Boo flipped upside down and trembled, there was fear in his eyes.

“B-Beatrice… Did I do something wrong? If so, I’ll fix it…”

She could not hold back any longer.

She kneeled on the spot, grabbed her dull rapier-shaped Shining Weapon in both hands and pressed it against her navel even though that would not do anything.

“O-ohhhhh!? I-I-I-I’m sorry, Boo Boo. I’ll apologize by sending myself straight to hellllllllll!!”

“Squeal! You’re being a little too unstable, Beatrice. Don’t go around kicking people or dying.”

But when he thought about it, he realized she was always like this.

At any rate, she had to reevaluate the situation.

Survival here had nothing to do with life and death. All things would fall asleep when the time came. They might slap their own cheek, press ice against their back, or stuff super spicy food in their mouth, but that was only fighting the symptoms. It would only escalate unless they found a more fundamental solution. And they would eventually hit a limit.

Would they fall asleep or get knocked out by an ally?

A ruinous borderline was coming and those would be their only options.

(There’s nothing we can do. We have to break free of this situation.)

And there was only one way of doing that.

Defeat the White Queen.

She knew the answer, but she could not think of an actual method.

But make no mistake about this.

“Here” was not “there”.

That might be abstract, but it was the truth. History had proven the White Queen was the absolute pinnacle of existence because that was her world. It was the place where she had killed all possible enemies and built up a “system” that was comfortable for her. But what if she was thrown back into unordered chaos? She had essentially lost the countless pillars that lifted her up and supported her. It was like sending a deadly jellyfish or giant squid after a killer whale or white shark which were the kings of the sea.

It was an unforgivable taboo.

They were impossible odds.

But here they had people from worlds that Beatrice and even the White Queen were unfamiliar with.

That Queen looked like an unscalable cliff, but what if they went after it from the opposite side? That reverse side might be a gentle slope.

So…

(I want to ask Aika about her to learn about her original specs.)

Beatrice was beginning to recover from the shock of the Boo Boo Kick (that she had made).

(But it would be best to compare that to some strange and unfamiliar technology in case we can find a loophole in her almighty power. My money is on that white nun.)

Having a goal was nice.

Having something to do and something to accomplish gave people motivation. The scariest thing was to wander around a nondescript universe without knowing which way was forward and which way was up.

They had already joined forces (by ganging up on Lu Niang Lan as a scapegoat for their flat chested grudges), so Beatrice decided her top priority was discussing this with Index and Misaka Mikoto.

But she had been too naïve.

There was no sign of those two anywhere in the house.