Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Cold Game (section)

===Part 5===

'''(the_hierophant)

The victim was not yet dead.

Whether the frozen 14-year-old girl would live or die was in the hands of those making the judgment.

“Hey, what do we do? What do we do about this? I-is there a precedent!? Is there anything to guide us here…? We’re not bearing all the responsibility here, are we!?”

“Order! Order in the court!!”

“Kill…eh? What? Anyone can view it…you’re kidding. Why does this have to happen when we’re doing this? I’m sorry, wait, can I go to the bathroom? I’m feeling…u-ugh, gehhh!!”

The pressure of that simple fact was far greater than what they had been expecting. The lay judges had simply been chosen from the public at large, so one of them fell from her chair and began convulsing. It was the same as vomiting after seeing a photograph from a gruesome murder scene. This was made all the worse by the fact that she knocked over the computer terminal when she collapsed. Academy City’s speed trials required the support of those machines, so the trial was sent into recess as soon as it had begun.

“Wait, what do we do, Kuroko!?”

After the judges, lay judges, prosecution, and defense had all left, there was no point in remaining in the gallery, so Mikoto, Shirai, and Uiharu left the courtroom and began a strategy meeting in the lobby built in the hallway for taking breaks.

“Confirming his claim takes top priority, of course.” Shirai Kuroko placed a hand on her chin. “But I bet the defendant, Innai Chigiri, completely ignored the normal court proceedings with this absurd defense in order to mess with the computer.”

“The computer?”

Uiharu nodded at Mikoto’s question.

“Um, lay judges are chosen from the general public, but 80% of Academy City’s population is made up of students, right? We’re minors, so we can’t necessarily make choices that influence the rest of someone’s life. So a large computer is used to support their decision making.”

“It is not a sentient AI or anything like that,” said Shirai. “It is a learning machine that contains the results of hundreds of thousands of past trials. After all, precedent is everything in trials. Because of a past judgment, you know what to do with a very similar case in the present. Teach the computer those precedents the same way you teach a spam filter and the number of years in prison or total fine will appear on the screen like your phone predicting what you will type next. The middle and high school lay judges just have to judge whether those numbers seem too light or too heavy. However…”

“There’s nothing it can do when there is no precedent, hm?” muttered Mikoto.

Uiharu rubbed a finger against her temple.

“Without that specialized computer, they’re nothing more than middle and high school students just like us. Tell them they’ll be killing someone and that the record of that will be forever viewable by anyone, and of course it’s going to cause a panic. Especially since the lay judges didn’t volunteer for this, so not all of them wanted to do this in the first place.”

“As I said, precedent is everything in trials. So the legal world wants to avoid setting a bad precedent at all costs. That would be like teaching your spam filter the wrong thing. Their focus might be on the influence this will have on the next decade of trials rather than on whether or not the defendant is guilty in this specific case. Without the support of the machine, can they properly judge this villainous criminal known as Loophole? It is possible the government will put a stop to all of this out of fear of a mistaken judgment.”

“…Um, uh, I only vaguely remember it, but wasn’t there a m-molestation case where it became apparent during the trial that the accusations may have been false as part of a scam? The computer could not handle having the position of the defendant and accuser swap out like that, so it crashed, right?”

“Is that why he started saying those ominous things about the lay judges killing someone and the result being a noble thing…?”

“With tricky judgments like this, it is possible to make an exception to the lay judge system that uses normal people and instead hold a trial judged only by professional judges. But the trial had already begun in this case, so it’s too late to request that kind of change. …They made it look like a simple case and then turned that on its head. If they investigated the system’s vulnerabilities to take it down, then Innai Chigiri and the lawyer next to him are something else.”

But there was still the fundamental problem.

Misaka Mikoto frowned.

“Isn’t taking this all so seriously exactly what…Innai Chigiri, was it? Isn’t it exactly what he wants? Besides, this city is full of doctors, professors, and other experts. Can’t we just have them unfreeze the girl?”

She looked back and forth between Shirai and Uiharu.

They seemed to know something.

“…To dig a little deeper into this, cold sleep is not a medical technique recognized by this country.”

“Um, meaning?”

“Since it is not a medical technique, it cannot be performed at a hospital. Whether they have the skills or not, it would be like having a doctor give you a piercing or tattoo in the operating room, right?”

“Then what about a university professor!?”

“They can try. But if they fail and Asajimo Saemi ''really'' dies, things are a little different from attempting a surgery but failing to save the patient. Um, it would count as a clinical trial or human experiment, so they could be charged with professional negligence resulting in death.”

So no one would attempt the dangerous unfreezing.

It might be possible to save her with their techniques, but they could protect themselves if they turned a blind eye.

Sparks burst from Mikoto’s bangs.

She consciously took a deep breath to calm herself before she continued the conversation.

“…So did Loophole know this would happen from the beginning?”

“The arrest itself only happened because of the selfie that, uh…''she'' took, right? I doubt he predicted that. But I can’t deny he could have started gathering useful pieces after he was arrested and built the current situation using those.”

Innai Chigiri was not after a not guilty verdict.

He wanted to erase the crime itself. He wanted the case dismissed.

“If this goes the way he wants, what will happen to, um, ''her''?”

If they were not careful, they would accidentally use Saten’s name.

They had to pause for a second to rephrase it.

“The prosecution is only protecting the witness because she is necessary to get a guilty verdict,” said Kuroko. “If the entire trial falls apart, that will no longer be necessary.”

This was not an issue of guilty or not guilty.

If the trial itself went away, the position of witness went away with it.

“Plus, Loophole will gain freedom. And ''she'' is the one and only person who cornered him to this extent. To put it another way, she marred his record of perfect crimes. It could not be more obvious who his next target will be once he is free once more.”

That was all the more creepy when his esper power was unknown in the name of privacy. They had no way of knowing what method he would use once he was free.

“C-can’t they get Innai Chigiri to tell them how to unfreeze the girl?”

“Uiharu. That is backwards. The process follows a standard order: arrest, questioning, indictment. After the indictment, Anti-Skill and Judgment cannot question him further.”

Once he had been sent to trial, he was actually off limits.

He could calmly break the rules and make exceptions, but they had to do something about it while constrained by those rules. Just thinking about it filled the pit of Mikoto’s stomach with irritation.

“…We of course can’t let the unthinkable happen here. Giving Loophole freedom and thus a chance to attack ''her'' is out of the question. It would be dangerous to ignore the shaken judges and lay judges.”

“But a human life carries a lot of weight,” said Shirai. “If the chosen lay judges continue to refuse the role, the trial itself cannot continue. After finally getting Innai Chigiri into court, the prosecution will want to stick with it, but they will not want to take the blame for losing a life that could have been saved.”

“Let’s not forget how many followers Loophole has. Whether they’re just joking or not, if they make a fuss online about this and it fills the lists of trending words, it could easily influence the decision of those at the top.” Uiharu looked worried. “Are you familiar with the concept of double jeopardy? Because double jeopardy is forbidden, you cannot repeat a trial that already reached some form of result. And that applies not just to a guilty or not guilty verdict but also to cases that are dismissed like this one would be. But we can safely assume that Loophole has committed several serious crimes other than the Cold Sleep Case. So even if he escapes justice here, he can be found guilty of a different crime and sent to juvenile hall. It is possible the judges will use that reasoning as an excuse here.”

But there was no promising evidence or testimony for any other case.

If Innai Chigiri was allowed out, he would effectively be free. Volunteers might keep an eye on him, but he would be free to wander the city and pursue his next target. And his gaze would most likely be on Saten Ruiko. He had an inscrutable power and anonymous followers. If he took action, it would be difficult to defend against it in advance.

What were the hurdles here?

Was there nothing they could do?

Mikoto mentally gathered what information they had and resumed speaking.

“…Yes. We’ve identified the problems here, so we’ll have to work through them one at a time. Kuroko, you said the trial won’t resume for a while after Loophole shook everyone so badly, right? Then we should be able to leave for a bit.”

“Onee-sama?”

“First, let’s find out what this cold sleep of his is all about.” Mikoto licked her lips. “Then we find a way to unfreeze the girl without relying on Innai Chigiri. If we can save the victim…Asajimo Saemi-san, was it? Save her and he’ll lose his bargaining chip. Then the trial would proceed as normal and he’ll be found guilty.”