Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 10===

More orange sparks scattered from the asphalt. This time, it was less than 30cm from Kamijou’s shoe. Shirai shouted “Benizome”, which he assumed to be a name.

The mysterious sniper fire kept them from leaving the station.

“Th-this is bad.” Kamijou had gone entirely pale. “And the worst part is I’m barely even questioning the presence of a real sniper rifle here in Japan.”

“Wow, it’s already night outside. The girl wants to spend the night with her teacher. She wants to talk about things she can’t tell anyone else!!”

Alice rejoiced for entirely unrelated reasons, so he grabbed the back of her collar to restrain her while walking back into the station building. He was afraid she would run out into the sniper fire with a big smile.

There were two large holes in the corridor walls. Sparking light came from one, suggesting the battle between the ghost and the muscles was still ongoing. That meant it would safer to try the other hole, the one Rakuoka Houfu had come from.

But Youen was still calm enough to think rationally. Which he found unbelievable.

“The accuracy of those shots suggests the sniper can see the moisture and electricity in the air. Bullets weren’t exactly rare in Operation Handcuffs, so I would rate them a lower-middle threat maybe? The biggest threats were all bizarre nonsense.”

“You are imagining things,” insisted Shirai. “It is the 29th. That nightmare ended on the 25th!!”

“For example, this justice exhibitionist’s teleportation. But I never saw that ghost back then.”

Could they confuse the sniper with Youen’s 3D images? No. No matter how many false images they created, it was still up to luck who the sniper actually targeted. That wouldn’t eliminate all risk of the girls being shot.

The hole in the wall led to a shower room. That seemed like an odd thing for a train station, but it may have been for the station workers. They couldn’t return home in their uniforms, so maybe they needed a place to change and freshen up. With the wall broken through, it was impossible to tell where the general public was and wasn’t supposed to go.

They walked across the tile floor and found a locker room. There was a bench with a back, so Kamijou finally got to sit down.

Low tremors continued to shake the floor.

Hanatsuyu Youen was focused on his shoulder.

“I should probably treat your shoulder wound now.”

“Eh? What?”

“First, I will remove the dart.”

The agonizing pain made stars dance before his eyes.

It honestly felt like the wound had swollen to several times its size.

He let out an incomprehensible shout, but he wasn’t sure the sounds leaving his mouth and the ones entering his ears were actually the same.

He was glad the dart didn’t have a barb. Removing what was plugging up the wound definitely caused the bleeding to increase, but the wicked 10-year-old wasn’t concerned.

“I need to disinfect the wound before I stop the bleeding. Come on out, you adorable maggots!”

“What? What did you just say, you horrible girl!?”

“Have you never heard of maggot therapy? Ignorant, hotblooded, and short-tempered is so not a good combination.”

She intertwined spider silk around a hornet stinger and used that to sew up a thick blood vessel and then used a coagulating mixture of snake venoms to seal up the wound itself. The difference between poison and medicine was mostly in how the substance was used, so there may not have been a strict boundary between the two. Of course, an amateur attempting it would only get the patient killed.

In other words, this small Carrier didn’t lack the skills to help instead of harm and it wasn’t that the option had never occurred to her.

She could do it, but didn’t.

The option was right there in front of her, but she didn’t choose it. Was that due to her personal interests and preferences? Or had she lived a life where her situation never allowed for that option?

It didn’t seem to bother her any and she patted her small hand on the closed wound.

“There, all done. When I decide to heal someone, I make sure not to leave a scar. You’d better cry your eyes out in thanks.”

She blew him a kiss and then pointed her small thumb toward a tall machine tucked into the gap between two sections of lockers.

“The bleeding has stopped, but you’ll still want some vitamin C or folic acid. I’ll buy you some vegetable juice from that vending machine, so hand over some change.”

“Vitamins?”

“As ingredients for a hematinic drug. Closing up the wound doesn’t bring back the blood you lost.”

That made perfect sense.

Needing blood made him think of iron-rich foods like liver or spinach, but if an expert in the field (what field?) said this was best, he wasn’t going to argue. Blood had several different components, so maybe there were ways beyond directly ingesting iron.

However…

“I-I only have 49 yen.”

“Garbage. Human garbage,” spat the white coat girl, giving him the look of a girl when her worthless date left her with the entire bill.

Kamijou’s shoulders drooped at his utter failure in the New Year’s Tokyo survival life, but then he felt something crinkle at his feet.

It was a rolled up 10000yen bill.

“Good fortune does exist!!”

“It’s lying near a change machine, so take it and I’m handcuffing you for theft,” warned Shirai.

“Fine, whatever. You can let the fugitive criminal take care of it.”

Youen swiped the money from terrified Kamijou’s hand and inserted it into the vending machine. She ignored Shirai’s protests and bought all of the vegetable and fruit drinks shown on the display.

“Go, creepy-crawly fusion☆”

“You aren’t just going to give me the drink as-is!?”

“I said they were only ingredients, didn’t I? Now say ‘ah’♪”

“Wait, no! I’ll drink it, I’ll drink it! I won’t waste your home cooking, so at least let me decide when I do it!”

“Shut up, you.”

“Hm? Why did you just put it in your mouth!? I really don’t have any good memories when it comes to receiving sketchy drugs mouth-to- mghmghmghgmgh!!!??”

The mystery liquid allowed Kamijou Touma to realize the male dream of a cute girl giving him his medicine mouth-to-mouth. And unlike with Anna, this wasn’t even poison. For some reason, Alice stared jealously with her mouth forming a small triangle.

This was supposed to help with his blood, but his mouth tasted like a grassy soup.

After pulling away and letting out a breath, Youen held a finger to her lips in realization. The gloomy but hard-to-read girl whispered to herself.

“Oops. That was my first kiss, wasn’t it?”

His male dream received an added bonus. This was reaching legendary levels on par with warming each other’s naked bodies with a cute girl while snowed into a mountain cabin. (Q1. By what miracle would a guy end up snowed in alone with the kind of girl he would normally be too nervous to even talk to?) At this point, he was terrified a horrifying catch was about to reveal itself.

“(And here’s half the change.)”

“(Why do I get a 5000yen bill while you get four 1000yen bills and 520yen in coins? The way you can combine substances into just about anything, I don’t like the idea of you carrying around several different metals like that.)”

She placed the money in his hand and he whispered back with a shadow on his face. If he didn’t get that money back from her, he feared she would use it to create a chemical that could melt through anything. But if he did take it from her, he feared she would claim he owed her a debt.

“So is all that stuff with bugs and snakes really safe? The area around the wound feels hot. I’d swear it’s swollen to twice its size.”

“You’re just imagining things. But if the pain bothers you that much, I could inject the affected area with a medicinal leech’s anesthetic. The stuff makes sure you don’t feel a thing while the leech tears through your skin with saw-like teeth and gorges on your blood, so it’s more effective than the morphine issued by the military. Although if I did use hirudin, your blood wouldn’t clot and the wound would open back up.”

“No, thanks!! I don’t want to rely too much on drugs!!”

Shouting made his shoulder throb with heat.

He grimaced and groaned, which created a heavier mood.

He told himself to be more careful about that. They were already in a bind, so the most badly injured person’s mood could affect the overall mood.

“Let’s review what we know.”

He had refused the easy help of anesthesia himself, so he would have to accept the pain in his shoulder. He tried not to let it show on his face as she got talking.

“The station is deserted, a weird ghost is wandering around, and she got in a fight with some mass of muscles. We were right to conclude this place is dangerous, but when we tried to leave, a sniper fired warning shots to push us back in. If we tried to force our way out, I bet they really would have shot us.”

Shirai Kuroko sighed.

“At 17:20 today, the Overhunting prisoner transport train issued a break alert within South District 7 Station. That means criminals from Operation Handcuffs are loose in and around this station. The muscles, the sniper, and this pest here are the fugitives who triggered the break alert. But the ghost I have no information on. The Overhunting’s EM brakes and a few other safety devices malfunctioned, so I would imagine the ghost played a role in the crash, though.”

“Ee em brakes?” asked Alice, tilting her head and smiling. She was harmless as long as her attention was on that, but Kamijou feared she would start poking at his treated wound if he let his guard down.

“It’s an emergency brake system that uses electromagnets to clamp down on the trains wheels,” explained Shirai. “But contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t send electricity to the device to produce the magnetism needed to stop the train. The magnetism is always on to keep the brake pads open and the electricity is cut off in an emergency, freeing the brake pads’ springs.”

“Wait, but how could that malfunction?”

If the electromagnets were used to stop the heavy wheels, a lack of power would cause a malfunction. But when the electromagnets were preventing the springs from returning to their original position, electrical trouble would cause the brakes to activate.

That wouldn’t lead to the train crashing at full speed.

“That is why I think that ghost is behind it. Really, it’s scary to think that anyone other than Onee-sama can control such a deadly amount of electricity. But this doesn’t tell us who they are or why they attacked the Overhunting.”

“It has to be someone involved in Operation Handcuffs,” said Youen. “And the whatever tech that ghost is using doesn’t seem to be standard issue Anti-Skill or Judgment gear.”

“Are you suggesting it’s a criminal neither of us are familiar with?”

“My guess is she was the final boss of that crazy bloodbath. ''If we had seen Handcuffs through to the end, we might have encountered her then.''”

“There it is again,” muttered Kamijou.

Good Shirai Kuroko and bad Hanatsuyu Youen both turned his way and innocent Alice followed suit without appearing to understand what this was about.

He continued now that their attention was on him.

“You keep mentioning that term. What is that Operation Handcuffs thing?”

His question earned a sigh from both the good and the bad. They narrowed their eyes as if to criticize him for being so behind the times, but also with some envy of his ignorance.

Then they both explained it for him.

Operation Handcuffs.

It had started as the ''new'' Board Chairman’s sweep of Academy City’s dark side.

The initial focus had been on shining sunlight on all that darkness, so it was a long-term plan that included rehabilitating the arrested criminals so they could be released as productive members of society.

But that had fallen apart somewhere along the way.

The information had gotten confused and the cause was still under investigation. Some claimed that the damage had grown beyond anyone’s expectations when some criminals slipped past Anti-Skill ''with an uncanny level of luck'' and furious Anti-Skill had drawn their lethal weapons and relied on deadly force. There had been heavy losses on both sides.

The two girls made a point of mentioning the Coins of Nicholas as a key item.

They took about an hour to charge, but if you held one in your hand and prayed, a locked door would open, you would win the lottery you were playing, or ''something else bordering on miraculous would occur''. That was apparently how the criminals had escaped the smart encirclement and gotten in an unexpected “lucky punch”.

“Hold on,” interrupted Kamijou, pale in the face. “Coins of Nicholas? Those have got to be spiritual items. There’s no way they’re a product of the science side’s research. Why was a magic side toy being passed around in Academy City’s darkness!? In a way, that’s one of the biggest taboos out there!!”

“?”

“?”

Shirai and Youen both tilted their heads. They weren’t playing dumb to hide something from him – they simply weren’t familiar with the terms “spiritual item” or “magic side”.

But that was a major problem in and of itself. What if those coins were given to people with no understanding of how they worked and they kept using them with no knowledge of the risks and downsides?

(Was there something magical going on this city and I didn’t even know about it?)

His anxiety spiked.

The Coins of Nicholas were extremely effective and creepy, but no one would give them away for free like that. He didn’t know who, but someone had benefited from it.

(So that operation was the ''new'' Board Chairman’s plan? I sure hope he wasn’t letting R&C Occultics or someone trick him. Setting aside what their exact domains are, ''the magic side and science side do not get along.'' Hopefully he understands that.)

“Yawwwn.”

His thoughts were interrupted by a weirdly lengthy yawn.

It came from Alice who leaned against him on the bench and helped herself to his lap pillow. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How are you sleeping when we’re still at risk here?”

“No! The girl was not asleep! Because she is staying up all night with you!!”

She tried to sound very awake, but she was still slumped down in his lap pillow. The most she could manage was waving her little hands up from the bench. She always seemed overly careless for the situation. She rubbed her eyes while muttering something.

“Guh. The only actual occult element of Operation Handcuffs was the Coins of Nicholas. But ghosts are occult too, so does that mean the ghost is connected to the coins?”

“I…don’t think so?” Kamijou looked down at his right hand. “Alice, I know you know this.”

It wasn’t just the electricity that pierced him to the core. His little finger still hurt from its burn. That meant Imagine Breaker did not work on the ghost. How was still a mystery, but that ghost had to be something scientific. She had to be separate from the purely magical Coins of Nicholas.

It was Alice’s immediate realization of that fact that let her shove him out of the way and save his life.

“Hm, then it’s a lot more straightforward. She would count as an ordinary robber, so wouldn’t there be a record somewhere?”

“But that justice exhibitionist and I didn’t see Handcuffs through to the end. We don’t know what went down later on.”

“…”

Could they be making a crucial misunderstanding here?

That concern suddenly crossed Kamijou’s mind. It wasn’t that they had made the wrong decision back at the beginning. It was more like ''there was someone else they should have been more worried about''. Like they had mistaken the fundamental cast of characters and now they would never find some of the basic information they needed to reach the correct answer. That worthless fantasy rapidly grew in his mind.

Shirai had remained silent for a bit now, but she finally pulled out her phone.

“Uiharu. Can you hear me, Uiharu!? Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s because Frillsand #G is producing so much electricity, but you’re supposed to be one of the best in the IT field, so use some trick of yours to get me a connection. Right this instant!!”

“Geez. Ksh. Why do so many people think hackers are basically witches?”

The girl on the other end complained but still got Shirai a connection right away.

Kamijou and the others couldn’t believe it, but Shirai just gave her next instructions.

“Gather all the records you can find on December 25.”

“What are you looking for? There were so many deaths that wouldn’t narrow it down much. I mean, around half of Anti-Skill is either dead or resigned due to mental issues. They’re trying to keep up appearances, but I doubt they’re really functioning as an organization anymore. They haven’t touched this Winter Cleaning stuff.”

Youen leaned forward with a “tell me more” look on her face, so Kamijou held her back. Shirai Kuroko glanced over at them before continuing.

“Then give me data on any criminals who managed to destroy an Anti-Skill branch or caused equivalent damage.”

“Coming right up,” said the girl on the phone. “Two girls thought to be the twins who call themselves the Decomposer and the Carrier attacked the South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station. More than 99.9% of the personnel inside were killed or injured. The majority of the dead were decomposed to the point that their genetic information was destroyed, which has made identifying the bodies a challenge. Shirai-san, you were there when it happened, weren’t you?”

“Oh, that’s about me. I’m the Carrier one.”

“Bff!?” spat Kamijou.

Youen didn’t sound particularly proud. She made it sound as casual as reporting on the results of a grocery run.

“Kaai and I also destroyed the Anti-Skill Chemical Analysis Center in District 18’s twin towers, but that turned out to be bait so I guess you can call it a draw.”

This explained the harsh looks Shirai Kuroko had been giving the girl.

And the report from the phone wasn’t done yet. They were only getting started.

“The District 1 General Anti-Skill Station was attacked by Kihara Hasuu and a girl known as Ladybird using a prisoner transport vehicle. They wiped out the ordinary Anti-Skill officers and some special forces known as Anti-Skill Aggressor and appear to have sabotaged the station’s server to shut down the network. I find it hard to believe, but the girl is reported to have deflected full-auto gunfire with only a heavy metal machete and thrown herself on top of a grenade to protect her surroundings. Not to mention the Anti-Skill Aggressor radio records include the phrase “She’s a machine, so how the hell can she use telekinesis?” There isn’t enough information to say whether that claim is legitimate or not.

“This is unconfirmed, but a few Anti-Skill officers in a District 8 street were apparently found dead due to friendly fire. No detailed records remain, but reports from people in the area suggest a girl named Vivana Oniguma was involved.

“20 Anti-Skill officers were killed or left in a state of confusion after attempting to raid a dark side mobile trailer base in the unmanned industrial section of District 17. The direct cause appears to be a supposed artificial ghost named Frillsand #G, but she was apparently acting as a hyper-aggressive decoy so a researcher named Drencher Kihara Repatri and some unidentified children referred to as ‘specimens’ could escape.”

That was a lot of information.

It included some names not present here in this station. It also didn’t explain the sniper or the mass of muscles they knew were inside or near the station.

Kamijou guessed some of the mentioned people were already dead.

This much was already complicated and it didn’t even touch on the magic side plot that spread the Coins of Nicholas, so he doubted they were even looking at the whole picture of what had happened on the night of the 25th.

However, one part stuck out to him.

“Frillsand #G. That’s the ghost who’s been causing trouble here, isn’t it? But…”

He trailed off.

Shirai Kuroko continued for him.

“Uiharu. Give us details on everyone connected to Frillsand #G. For example, who is this Drencher Kihara Repatri? It sounds like he was involved in Handcuffs, but he wasn’t aboard the Overhunting and he isn’t in this station.”

“Yes, well, doesn’t that suggest ''a certain possibility''?”

A short silence followed.

No one wanted to say it out loud.

“No body was found for Drencher Kihara Repatri. It seems like the criminals were attempting to escape outside of the city toward the end of Handcuffs, but I doubt any of them succeeded. If he wasn’t on the Overhunting and isn’t in a hospital’s ICU, we should assume he didn’t survive. He just hasn’t been found yet.”

“…”

A young man whose corpse hadn’t been found. And he had a connection to Frillsand #G.

Could he be the man from the scene that burst into the back of Kamijou’s mind whenever those electric attacks were flying?

“Umm, Shirai-san? Hello, you’re breaking up. Kssshhh, Shira- kssshhh!!”

The connection suddenly died.

A source of signal interference was slowly approaching. Just like the TV or radio signal growing staticky as a large typhoon or thick thunderclouds blew in.

The artificial ghost had been willing to act as a decoy against a squad of Anti-Skill officers to help Drencher and the children escape safely. But Drencher was nowhere to be found, Frillsand #G was running wild, and she was wandering around attacking any Handcuffs survivors. Kamijou was starting to get what the ghost was fighting for.

Vengeance.

Perhaps all ghosts were bound to the world of the living for some tragic reason.

Something exploded.

The nearby concrete wall burst apart and several metal lockers were knocked over as a huge mass of muscle rolled into the room.

“Rakuoka!” shouted Shirai, eyes wide. Strangely, she had the tone of someone worried about a friend’s wellbeing.

But the others had bigger concerns.

“Hello. This is Frillsand #G-chan.”

A face emerged from the hole in the wall, swaying irregularly side to side.

“Next stop: fried to a crisp. Repeat: fried to a crisp.”

Something was slowly but surely approaching.

“Po. Popopopopopo, popo…po………po………popopo…………po………po.”

Slowly but surely approaching them.

“Am I pretty?”

They heard the sound of gathering electricity and all the shower nozzles burst open at once.

Frillsand #G.

They had no way of avoiding her. But the water soaking the floor and walls must have come as a surprise for the ghost as well. A fearsome lightning bolt was redirected so it flew right past Kamijou.

Corrupted text appeared on the shower temperature displays until “42 degrees” glowed from all of them in a red light. Wasn’t that the dividing line between life and death with a fever?

Kamijou lowered his static-covered head to look at his right hand, but Imagine Breaker couldn’t negate this. An invisible force enveloped his head and data gradually seeped into his brain from outside his skull.

A scene from the past began to play.



“They’re just kids. And it’s not like I’m asking for all of them. Just two or three will do.”

“I wanted to protect them from the dark side scum who think like that.”

A young man had lost his life in a place no one in the world recognized.

For some reason, ''she'' had been helpless to do anything but watch.

It wasn’t an issue of courage or motivation. Her nature as an artificial ghost had gotten in the way. So she had been helpless to do anything. But that didn’t mean she had accepted what happened.

That young man had spent his life to protect those small children and successfully found someone in the dark side worth handing the children over to. He had breathed his last with a smile on his lips.

''She'' had watched it all.

“How could you throw away your own life over this!? When you get down to it, those kids are just strangers! How could a goddamn harmful go this far just because you ‘wanted to save them’!? How!? Tell me!?”

“Do you need a reason to protect someone? Of course you don’t.”

So he had lost his life.

And ''her'' inability to do anything about it had broken something deep inside her.



Kamijou Touma’s mind resurfaced as a blinding light flashed before his eyes.

“Agh!!”

He lost his equilibrium and nearly fell to the side, but he managed to stay on his feet.

He could tell there was some connection between the electricity and his brain, but he couldn’t explain what exactly was going on in his head. He felt the same fear as being cursed and then suffering from a mysterious fever or finding a wound shaped like a human face. It was the same horror as seeing the doctor try everything they could think of and then throw in the towel.

But the passion swirling inside him was enough to sweep aside that fundamental fear.

What had he just seen?

Frillsand #G was not doing this because she hated Kamijou’s group or was after the bounty on the fugitives. But that was why she wasn’t really viewing the reality around her. Her rampage was on a deeper level, so she could not be reasoned with.

A good person had been killed and she had been unable to stop it, so she had lost sight of who she was and now continued to cause further damage. Wasn’t that the whole story here!?

He wanted to speak with her. To exchange words with her.

But he doubted that was possible anymore. That point had passed before he even met her. The keyhole was right there in front of him, but the key had already been broken and thrown away.

With her blonde twintails, white skin, and doll-like blue dress, she looked European, but Frillsand #G was ''a very Japanese kind of ghost''. She couldn’t be destroyed by holding up a holy cross and sprinkling holy water on her. Writing a Buddhist sutra all over your body would do nothing to stop her from ripping your ears off. She was a different sort of paranormal being.

There was only one person in the world who could possibly stop her now: Drencher Kihara Repatri.

Anyone could come up with that answer, but no one could make it happen.

She was like the vengeful ghosts in many stories who were doomed to eternally wander the earth because they had lost the one solution to their problem. Like someone forever searching for their body after it was mistakenly cremated while they were astral projecting, like a stalker ghost who was forever attempting to pursue a woman who had already died by suicide, or like the spirit of a serial killer’s victim who pursued their killer without realizing they had already been executed. Frillsand #G was searching for something she could never find, yet no one among the living could ever inform her of that.

(''Wait.'')

But.

Kamijou Touma had a fundamental question about all this.

Operation Handcuffs had rocked the shadows of Academy City. It would leave its name in scientific history due to the countless tragedies that he was sure the simple reports did nothing to adequately describe.

Anyone would want to cover their eyes at what they were seeing. But what if?

Handcuffs was something you wouldn’t hear about if you lived an ordinary life in Academy City. And a lot of strange technology had been at play there.

Frillsand #G was the perfect example, since she was an artificial ghost.

Then there were Youen and her twin Kaai with their roles as the Carrier and Decomposer.

There was that mass of muscles Rakuoka Houfu and the unidentified sniper. Even the Vivana Oniguma who had only been listed as a name had likely used some kind of technology all her own.

There was some other puzzle here.

He had to throw out his preconceptions that this was nothing but unmitigated tragedy. He had to focus on all the technology laid out on both sides of the field. The night of December 25 had already passed. He could not return to that time. But those events had led directly to this on the 29th, so the same technology, or remnants of it, had to still be in the city.

Was it really true that the mysterious dark side could only cause death and destruction?

He couldn’t let those assumptions lead him astray.

Technology didn’t take sides.

Military martial arts were designed to kill, but that same knowledge could be used to provide first aid. A chef license and nutritional science were used to support a healthy diet, but that same knowledge could be abused to include enough salt and sugar to shorten someone’s lifespan or to create a torturous dish that was unbearably foul to taste.

This was the same.

The question was how all these different technologies would be used.

He had to rethink this horrific puzzle and take another look at Operation Handcuffs. Was there really no salvation left in that incident? Was there really nothing there they could still use now?

Really???

(''No.'')

This grudge came from an artificially-created ghost.

So could that same artificial method be used again?

Was it possible?

“''It might just work.''”