Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 9===

Screams echoed up from the floor below.

Something like gunshots rang out a moment later and those continued on and on without end. That meant whatever was wrong remained wrong even after concentrated fire from the professional Anti-Skill officers.

“Wh-what in the world is happening!?”

“Shirai-san!!”

Someone grabbed the girl’s hand as she reflexively started in that direction. It was that middle-aged man who had been working at his heated bento until a moment ago. The light in the eyes behind his glasses was much stronger than before.

“If you are going to make a choice here, do so with care. You only have one life. We are now in a world where a single wrong choice can mean death for anyone. That Teleportation is yours. You have the right to escape the building to seek help and safe shelter. No one will blame you for whatever choice you make here.”

“What are you-?”

“''This is how the dark side works. These are probably harmfuls. You can’t assume one of the seven Level 5s would survive here or that children or the elderly will be spared. There are no safe zones here. This is already dark side territory. It doesn’t matter if we move in on them or they come to us. Once we are in their territory, any of us can lose our lives at any time!! And when I say any of us, I mean no exceptions!!''”

What had he seen in the past? It may have been something so shocking it had broken his spirit and entirely changed his value system. Shirai Kuroko shook her head while he still held her slender wrist.

She looked that experienced one in the eye to give her answer.

“I still choose to fight!!”

Her Teleportation allowed her to break free of the three-dimensional restrictions, so she leaped to the floor below. She could move more than 80 meters at a time with her power, so moving straight down to the first floor was a simple task.

But that may have been a mistake.

“!?”

Her vision blurred.

Something was wrong with her eyes and nose. A powerful stench was physically wearing down her mind.

(Is this…a gas!?)

The floor was dark from the blackout, but what she could see was badly distorted. She assumed the unidentified odor was messing with her senses, but she finally realized that was wrong.

The walls were rotting.

The ceiling was bowing down. Rats were running around on the floor, which was full of holes like in an abandoned building. The modern reinforced concrete building looked like an abandoned home that had soaked up plenty of moisture at the bottom of a dam.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

She heard laughter from further in, but it was the fake and wooden laughter you might find in a bad stage play. That actually made it hard to tell what emotion it carried.

The figures Shirai could see were twin sisters of elementary school age.

That itself was not malicious, but they were as badly out of place here as small mascot sandals lined up on the edge of a rooftop or a stuffed animal floating down a muddy river.

“This is Judgment!!” shouted Shirai to shake off her dizziness. “Who are you!?”

They were not listening. Their world was so closed off they may not have even seen her as human.

The young girls pulled each other close, pushing together their large breasts which were horribly imbalanced with their height, and they spoke in a singsong voice.

“Hey, Kaai. Someone’s still alive.”

“Oh, dear, Youen. But don’t worry. She’ll be dead soon enough. I don’t feel like waiting, so how about we ignite this floor and move on to the next one?”

“Do you think she’s familiar with the dark side etiquette to survive our initial attack? I wonder how deep in she is. A corrupt Judgment member, maybe?”

“Even if she is on the dark side, she’ll only be one of those opportunist beneficials. We can’t expect much from her.”

Ignite.

Shirai still did not know what these twins were up to, but that word was bad news. She focused her mind so she could send in a metal dart the instant they pulled out a lighter, a match, or anything of that nature.

“''I mean, it’s not like we can even count the bodies when they all rotted away like that.''”

Shirai Kuroko’s soul was pinned in place by words that should have had no physical power whatsoever.

“''And even if someone did survive somewhere on this floor, we can blow them away easily enough now that the others have rotted enough for methane to fill every nook and cranny.''”

Bodies, rotted, blow them away, methane.

Only then did Shirai realize the source and identity of the odor entering through her nose and mouth, passing through her windpipe, and filling her lungs. It was not just the walls, ceiling, and floor that were falling apart. What was that the squeaking rats were stepping on? What had happened to all the Anti-Skill officers who should have been here? What were those dark and sticky stains splattered everywhere? The answers to all those questions hit her at once.

''Those twins had caused the people here to rot away while still alive.

''Shirai Kuroko had been breathing in the flammable gas that caused corpses to swell out from within.

“Ugh!?”

Efficiency and logic did not come into play. When she held a hand over her mouth and doubled over, the twin sisters grinned sweetly while holding each other close and squishing their chests together.

The Decomposer and the Carrier pulled something out like a magic trick. The twins held a pencil-sized electric candle lighter like the bride and groom at a wedding.

Their small fingers reached the trigger and produced a solid “click”.

The stench and gases of death had transformed the first floor into a single giant bomb, so it all exploded.