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

===Between the Lines 1===

The two of them walked through the automatic door, fully ignoring the “no pets allowed” sticker on the tempered glass.

That door led into the Miyashita Ark, a large shopping mall in Shibuya.

A golden retriever stuck his tongue out next to a blonde woman in a beige habit.

“The place is deserted.”

“Not surprising after a commotion like that. We’re talking about a battle between two Transcendents here. Even the ''guards'' fled for their lives.”

A dull clattering sound came from the two stuffed duffel bags the human was carrying.

Aleister, the magician who had hijacked Great Demon Coronzon’s body, showed no hesitation in his gait. There were more than 90 small shops in the mall, but he led the golden retriever straight to a multinational restaurant.

He viewed the photo of French ramen with shrimp and cheese and a toxic neon orange soup displayed on a poster that would provide further information on your phone.

“This half-assed campaign is challenging people to eat an XXL serving of ramen, but the best dish they make is the fish & chips. And that’s coming from someone who was born in England and eventually came to hate the place, so you know it has to be good.”

“So is the multinational thing ''a bluff'' and it’s actually an English restaurant?”

“Oh, the entire restaurant is a front,” he casually responded on his way inside.

There was no one inside the restaurant either. Which was perfect. Aleister wouldn’t shy away from bloodshed, but he would prefer to avoid wasting perfectly good food.

“Now this is a surprise,” he said. “This really is convenient.”

“Is it really that much help? You had already checked the place out, hadn’t you?”

“Even so. ''They'' are generally a group of wandering treasure keepers who don’t even give their group a name to keep people from tracking them. It is highly unusual for them to stay in one place for so long. A restaurant isn’t the only place you find largescale refrigeration equipment: labs, factories, harbor warehouses, refrigerated trucks, cargo ships, wood dryers, and so on. So they can change their disguise as often as necessary.”

“But why would they run away? Even if these treasures are small enough to carry with you, that seems like all the more reason they would stay here and defend them with their lives.”

“The people onsite don’t even know what they’re storing, so why would they throw away their lives away for it? Ha ha. For once, the extreme information restrictions set in place by their central group has come back to bite them.”

They crossed the deserted restaurant to the very back.

The vibe given off by the wallpaper and lighting changed once they were inside the professional kitchen. It was all cold fluorescent lights and sterile tile. Aleister found this more comfortable. The large silver countertop was so systematically organized it was reminiscent of a hospital’s autopsy table. It was hard to imagine any food prepared here making a pleasant meal that put a smile on people’s faces.

This was the place’s true face.

By adding on more and more camouflage to keep this icy atmosphere from escaping the confines of the tiled space, a popular restaurant had eventually formed.

“''They'' were originally an organization tasked with eternally preserving the remains of holy men and women deep in the snowy British mountains. Of course, these people couldn’t come back to life and disappear like the Son of God. They were a little more grounded.”

“Eternally preserved corpses? I occasionally hear that legend from the former Soviet Union, but it looks to me like they just froze their dead people. That does not qualify as preservation on the microscopic level. The cells will be constantly breaking down.”

“That doesn’t really matter to them. I know you haven’t lost your love of romance in your old age, so would you be interested in seeing Robin Hood’s corpse? What about Jack the Ripper’s? That’s the kind of person ''they'' now specialize in preserving. But the death of someone that charismatic can be a powerful thing. A nearly eternal amount of time is needed to soften the blow and lessen the people’s sorrow.”

“You know an awful lot about this.”

“I dabbled in the topic ''in relation to the previous Imagine Breaker.'' Although that was something the Golden cabal stole and modified for their own purposes.”

Aleister was referencing the weapon stored in a certain armory that he had used to deliver the finishing blow to Mathers.

But he also hung his head for some reason.

“And back in 1947, I was very nearly made a part of ''their'' collection. And I only avoided that fate because that perfectionist of a doctor put me in ''too perfect'' a state of suspended animation.”

Several pieces of industrial equipment were lined up by the wall. No ordinary home would have one so large or one that only had a freezer with no refrigerator.

There were seven in all and Aleister stopped in front of the fifth one.

“But not even a group dedicated to preservation can do so indefinitely. It became clear that all forms of sanctuary were being ransacked during World War Two.”

Aleister lowered his two duffel bags to the tile floor.

“So the occult sphere was so ''overwhelmed by anxiety'' that some British witches even performed a strange cursing ritual in the nude until some of them froze to death. British witches fighting the approaching German army with curses sounds like something from a B-movie, but it was very real.”

“So this group needed to evacuate their ‘treasures’?”

“Ever since, their most dangerous stash has only ever been kept in temporary locations. Because that war taught them that the national borders are not a trustworthy defense. If you want to hide something, you spread it around and constantly move it around instead of keeping it all in a single secure building. Heh heh. The Miyashita Ark, huh? ''They'' claim to be travelers, but I get the feeling ''they'' were the ones behind the opening of this new shopping mall. If I missed them here, it might have been decades before I tracked them down again.”

He used both hands to fling open the doors to a refrigerator larger than a drink vending machine.

A white chill pushed out at him.

At first glance, it only looked like it contained frozen blocks of shrimp soup, a curry separated into frozen blocks of meat and a frozen paste, and other restaurant food. If a chef who didn’t know the truth happened to open the door, they would likely find nothing amiss. But after moving that camouflage out of the way, Aleister spotted the true prize found in the very back.

He saw a 49kg mass measuring about 150cm long.

A modern preserved corpse was wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap and coated with a layer of frost.

“Found her.”

“So do we now make a swift withdrawal?”

“I would love to, but I am not lugging 49kg of frozen corpse home with me.”

“Sigh. You’re getting old, Aleister.”

“I think I’m doing pretty good for someone born in 1875.”

Meanwhile, Aleister pulled out the solidly frozen mass (using the great demon’s youthful body). He laid it on the silver countertop with a dull thud.

Then he unzipped the heavy bags he had placed on the floor. They contained a roll of thick plastic sheets, ethanol disinfectant in a spray bottle, and a UV light so powerful direct exposure to the skin would be dangerous.

By disinfecting the entire space – including floor, walls, and ceiling – and forcing the air to swell out from within, he could create an isolated space on the same level as an emergency operating room during a disaster or a field hospital on the battlefield.

Next, he pulled out some precision equipment nicer than anything found inside a smartphone and lined it up on the countertop.

“So I’m at least going to fiddle with the contents before taking her back to my lab. That way she can walk back herself – no carrying necessary.”

“With battery power?”

“Wireless power. Fueling the human body with the nutrients found in their food is terribly inefficient, really. We live in a more ecofriendly world now, so let’s turn this legendary magician into a sustainable something-or-other.”

The golden retriever pulled out a cigar, but Aleister snatched it away. The thorough sterilization of the room would be meaningless with the dog puffing away on that.

The dog looked upset, but started chewing on the bone-shaped gum he was given instead.

“So this is a ‘she’ to you? Sounds like you think this corpse still has a personality.”

“This is all a waste of time if I can’t ''rebuild her'' that way.”

Aleister sounded so casual as he turned to face the 150cm mass.

And the human who created the very concept of the science side spoke to it.

“Rise and shine, Anna Kingsford, our true starting point.”

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