Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 6===

It was actually a pair of lips.

But Kamijou only identified the 10m squished elliptical shape torn in the wall after blowing away the beam with his right hand.

He was looking at a massive, deadly kiss mark.

Even her attacks had a somehow sexual aspect to them, perhaps because she was a witch.

The slender woman appeared in the hot spa like she had passed through a natural cave, but even that was odd.

Her long silver hair and giant wimple were spread wide behind her.

Maybe it was the temperature difference with the outside air, but the bath’s white steam was even more noticeable now.

Still soaked, Kamijou raised his fist and his voice.

“H-how the hell did you get in here!? We’re nowhere near the ground floor!”

“What kind of witch can’t fly?”

The yellowish grease silhouettes gathered around Aradia’s feet on the wet floor. They surrounded her like a strange flower or like cultists bowing toward the statue of their goddess.

The Bologna Succubus joined the conversation with her feet planted on the floor covered in bathwater, rubble, and filthy grease.

“Aradia!! How do you plan to survive the massive triple return for all this destruction!? All your bad deeds are turned back on you, so any magic you use here will only come back to destroy you in the end!”

“Will it? Then how am I standing here ''after killing him more than once''?”

“?”

Kamijou gasped.

Aradia pressed two fingers against her lips and blew gently through the gap between them. That was enough to produce an earsplitting high-pitched roar and an invisible shockwave passed right by Kamijou and the Bologna Succubus, breaking down the hot spa’s wall.

“Tch! The witches of the forests can control the winds to shake the royal ships! But doing this will only hurt you in the end!”

“It is true I am destroying this building, but who says that counts as a bad deed?”

“Hold on a tick. Aradia, don’t tell me…”

“What about someone who holds a grudge against the spa after being refused entrance? I bet the environmentalists worried about CO2 emissions would inwardly rejoice and claim I was saving the future by destroying a large bath that runs its giant boiler nonstop. Whether an act qualifies as a good or bad deed ''depends entirely on your point of view.'' So all I have to do is acquire the necessary point of view or interpretation needed to make me the good guy in everything I do. After that, Triple Reload loses its thorns.”

In that case, Aradia wouldn’t be affected by the triple return of her bad deeds that usually ensured witches did the right thing.

She snapped her fingers and several lights and sounds burst out.

Kamijou froze after realizing that was the gas pipe rupturing, but a soft sensation had already surrounded his mind by then. Aradia herself had tightly surrounded his body with her ankle-length purple fabric to protect him.

But he knew what that had to mean.

“''I have protected an innocent life from an explosion.''”

“Dammit. Dodge, Bologn-!!”

The Bologna Succubus had not been protected from the blast, so she flinched just long enough for Aradia’s long leg to jab her barefoot heel into the center of her gut. It didn’t look like an ordinary kick. The demoness had already been hit by the gas explosion, but then it was like a thick invisible wall slammed into her with three times the force. She was flung through the air and rolled all the way into the dressing room.

Aradia gently rubbed Kamijou’s head and gave him an adoring smile.

“This is what it means to receive triple the blessing of your own good deeds. Hee hee. And that triple can be stacked on top of itself as many times as necessary. Give me the chance and it will snowball far beyond anything you can handle. All I have to do is perform good deeds throughout my everyday life – ''or set things up so my actions are interpreted that way'' – and my power will eventually grow to the point that I can one-shot a Magic God or a Transcendent.”

“Kh.”

“And that judgment is made by the invisible monster known as the local ‘mood’. Or maybe you could call it the general consensus. Just like a class rep can criticize students for breaking the rules, but that very class rep can be labeled a tyrant if an outsider who doesn’t care if they are criticized manages to tilt the class’s consensus in their direction. All I need to do is monitor the current local ‘mood’ and adapt my actions accordingly. Then everything will be judged good.”

She saved people for malicious reasons.

She used people’s appreciation of good deeds and kindness to obtain the power needed to take lives.

Or in other words, she was a witch.

“Aradia!?”

“Killing you would be easy.”

Shouting her name was all Kamijou could manage.

He felt like his arms and torso were being squeezed by a thick crane wire or something, but that wasn’t the case. The constriction came from the two slender arms contained within the giant piece of cloth that fell to her ankles. Had kicking away the Bologna Succubus somehow been interpreted as a kindness or a good deed? He couldn’t break free. He heard a disconcerting creaking coming from his body, but was that his arms, his ribs, or his spine?

“Gah!?”

The squeezing of his ribs may have been applying pressure to his lungs because he had trouble breathing.

But he doubted he was going to suffocate to death. If he was going to die here, it would be from his flesh, bones, and organs all being crushed together.

“I must protect the witches.”

Aradia, on the other hand, was smiling thinly.

She displayed the unique joy of someone who had completed their task and was freed from all that tension.

“You would lead Alice to ruin our cabal’s plans and possibly even destroy the world we already have, so killing you is the same as saving the world – making it a very good deed indeed. So rest in peace. You have no chance of a comeback now. If you give in and let yourself pass out, it will be quick and painless. I do hope you accept ''this kind advice I am offering you''.”

“No chance of a comeback? You have a pretty poor opinion of your fellow Transcendents.”

Someone else interrupted.

They didn’t throw a punch or a kick and they didn’t send out a beam of light or a shockwave.

Nevertheless.

“Bh?”

The next body to squirm wasn’t Kamijou’s. Transcendent Aradia had been trying to crush a full human’s worth of weight with her arms, but now Kamijou felt an irregular tremor coming from her.

(What the hell?)

Again, there was no obvious injury.

The only thing he noticed was…

(''Goose bumps?'' But what is she so afraid of? Or is she feeling sick and nauseous? Yes, like from a crawling sensation along her skin.)

“Jgbwh!?”

It was like she couldn’t help herself.

Her seeming invincibility had vanished. She weakly shoved Kamijou away from her with her palms and then staggered back. No, she failed to do even that and collapsed to the filthy tile floor. Her legs lay weakly below her while she covered her mouth with a hand. Her face was pale. And not just her cheeks and forehead. The lips visible between her fingers were as well.

The Bologna Succubus stepped over the broken wall to reenter the spa. She used her spread wings and her tail to prop herself up like a tripod or a crutch, but she had a grin on her exhausted face.

She still made no attempt to cover up her underwear with rose thorn decorations.

“My Cold Mistress spell is nothing like your Rule of Three magic, but that’s why you’re helpless against it, isn’t it? After all, if used right, this could make me the only Transcendent in the cabal who could ''fight back against Alice''!!”

“Ba…lo…gna!?”

“And the cat’s out of the bag now that you’ve experienced it, so there’s no point in hiding what it does. …Here’s a history lesson for you, my pure boy. During the Inquisition so long ago, there were quite a few sinners who claimed to have slept with an incubus or a succubus. Of course, these were confessions extracted with torture. Still, their recorded confessions generally come in one of two flavors. Either it provided pleasure too great to be of this world or it was painful, cold, and disgusting.”

“…”

“Cold Mistress ''is a spell that replaces any and all pleasure signals with pain.'' The desires for food, sex, and sleep are all instructions meant to efficiently guide people toward survival and reproduction through their attempts to fulfill those animal desires. My magic turns that on its head. All pleasure is converted into pain, so I can easily kill anyone through starvation or sleep deprivation. And I’m sure you know what happens if everyone in the world stops having sex.”

Was that why?

Victory had been within reach, so Aradia would have been awash with the pleasure of achieving her goal. And all of that had been flipped around and replaced by the greatest agony. The greater someone’s happiness, the greater the hell the Bologna Succubus could condemn them to.

Aradia’s ability to intentionally misuse good deeds and kindness was horrific itself, but the Bologna Succubus’s magic carried the sweet scent of the profane.

Both the witch and the demon would never be known as good people no matter how great their deeds were.

“Bh.”

Nevertheless, Aradia slowly stood back up with her legs trembling below her. Her face was pale and her shoulders were slanted, but she had not lost her will to fight.

She was the goddess of all witches.

No matter how twisted her methods, the weight she carried may have been very real.

“I will save the witches who continue to suffer around the world. No matter what it takes.”

“I have no issue there.”

“So I will kill this dangerous boy who could lead Alice to destroy the world. It does not matter if he intends it or not. The fact remains that he could very well direct that innocent tyrant in the wrong direction. So he cannot be allowed to survive.”

“That is where our views differ. The real threat is Alice, not Kamijou Touma. No matter what he might think himself, he is no more than the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere. Thus, you are attacking him over a false accusation.” The usual flightiness in the winged demon’s voice was gone. “And I am the Bologna Succubus, the demoness who appears in the story of a death sentence handed down over history’s most absurd charge: running a brothel full of wanton succubi. This is no April Fools joke – someone actually died over it. Thus, ''my purpose in life is to protect the reputation of the falsely accused.'' I can never bring myself to overlook your barbaric and deadly false accusations here. Even if it means battling a fellow cabal member.”

“Ah…”

As unsteady as she was, Aradia glared at the boy.

No matter what, he was her actual target here.

“Aradia, my goal overlaps with yours some. If you would calm down and recall the absurd excuses for a trial that brought such hell to so many witches long ago, perhaps you could have become the benevolent goddess of the peaceful night who would actively shield Kamijou Touma from these very accusations. …Boy, I will assist you here, but if you wish to survive, you will need to settle this with your own fist.”

“Grahhhhhhhhh!!!!!” roared the goddess.

Kamijou took a step forward at the same moment.

Maybe Aradia’s intimidation was actually directed at the contradiction within herself rather than at someone as puny as Kamijou. She was telling that voice in her head to shut up and just let her mind break apart if that was what it took. In the face of that self-loathing, she chose to instead become an empty shell that continues to save the witches who rely on her.

Aradia’s bestial fingers started to cross with Kamijou Touma’s right fist.

But even under the effects of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress, the witch goddess carried the greater weight on her shoulders. She clenched her teeth, ignored the extreme pain, transformed herself into a wicked being for selfless reasons, and took careful aim.

She did not bother blocking the fist.

Even if his fist found her jaw, her nails would slice right through his torso. And if she could power through all the pain, then there would be no convenient accident to save him. If nothing else shook her even further, the vast gap in power between a high school boy and a Transcendent would become all too apparent.

However.

“''Gotten used to the pain yet,'' you masochist witch?”

“Gah!!!???”

A tremor ran through Aradia’s body.

Kamijou could guess what had happened. The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell converted all pleasure signals into pain. With hunger, lust, drowsiness, and all other desires sealed off by that pain, any human or other lifeform would be trapped.

To take that step forward and continue to fight for the witches, Aradia had needed to accept so much pain it led people to reject the very act of living.

So what if the Bologna Succubus ''switched off'' that magic at the last second?

This didn’t shake her in the way the pain did by stealing away her concentration. The twisted agony vanished and all the pleasure and joy she should have been feeling came rushing back into her mind at once, so she found herself unable to control her emotions.

It only created less than a second of lag, but that was enough for Kamijou’s fist to catch up.

Kamijou Touma’s fist smashed through her approaching fingers and slammed dead center into her face.