Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter2 (section)

===Part 7===

The clock was ticking even as they called in each of those five to gather information.

And there was no getting that time back. If Agnese got this wrong, there probably would not be time to try again.

“Y-you can see it, can’t you?” Stoop-backed Angelene was looking out toward the sea. “Isn’t that the Hood there!? If it’s close enough to see, we only have a few minutes before it arrives!”

That was close enough to fire its main cannons directly instead of along a mountain-like arc. However, Agnese was most afraid of it “landing”. France would begin fighting a war for real once that happened. A largescale magical shootout would begin between England’s Dover and France’s Calais and it could cause enough damage to require redrawing their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

They could not escape even if they abandoned their work and fled to safety now and the social system protecting them would fall if England lost its capital of London and ceased to function. 
The distance from Dover to London was ''only'' 100km.

Lucia sighed.

“Pierre, Rini, Plum, Harris, and Rouen. Those are the five who used that shared ceremonial ground. One of them must be the summoner, so have you noticed anything suspicious about their testimony?”

“…”

All five were suspects.

The Hood had been summoned from that container ceremonial ground, so one of the five had to have done it. Nothing else made sense.

But at the same time…

“''They couldn’t have been lying.''”

“''True, we did set it up that way.''”

Agnese pulled out a pair of scissors she had been hiding behind her back.

That had been a piece of magic where the scissors would turn like a doorknob if the target knowingly lied. The spell normally worked with a pair of scissors stabbed into a sieve. Lie detectors based on fortunetelling were common in their world. But they required being in a limited one-on-one space just like ordinary fortunetelling and required focusing on a conversation with the other person. That made it a difficult trick to actually use.

Agnese held a hand to her chin.

“The scissors didn’t move, so all five of them are renting out that secret ceremonial ground for the reasons they gave.”

“Could they be hiding a smaller objective with the larger one? They could be telling the truth but not the whole truth. Like someone saying they went out to make a delivery for work, but their true reason was to talk with the attractive housewife receiving the package.”

That was of course a possibility.

If the scissors could reveal everything, the Tower of London would not need all its cruel equipment. This was only the first hurdle used to see how the other person would avoid telling the truth when they could not just lie.

The ceremonial ground was definitely this container yard.

The information they had gathered on the way here proved that. There was zero chance of this being a decoy and the real one being elsewhere.

That left one question.

“How did they avoid telling the truth?” asked Agnese. She lost herself in thought. “How did they hide that they summoned the Hood?”

Agnese Sanctis thought back on what she had said. She had made her own predictions about the composition of the summoning magic circle when she located the container.

Iron was Mars and lead was Saturn. Gunpowder included sulfur, so it was earth. The ship was salt, so it was ether. The energy entered from the south and left to the west-northwest.

Of course, the seven metals, the three alchemical principles, and the five elements were some of the most basic principles in the magical world, so most any ceremony would include them. Even Agnese’s beloved Lotus Wand had them hidden within the spell. But the odds needed to find the exact same sequence lined up like that were astronomical. Everyone used random alphanumeric sequences for their passwords, but no one could guess it perfectly by pure chance.

This was the same.

The explanations gave by those five might partially match, but none of them could be used to summon the Hood.

So…

“One of the five has added something extra to their ceremony.” Lucia must not have been able to bear the silence because she spoke up, sounding fairly impatient. “And so they created an environment capable of their original purpose ''and'' summoning the Hood. That lets them tell us a partial truth without actually lying. Isn’t that what must be happening here, Sister Agnese!?”

“…”