Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 12===

Removing the human rafflesia (that was also the queen of the underworld) from the wall proved difficult. She must have been caught on something because she would not come out no matter how hard they pulled. On top of that, she seemed embarrassed at having her butt sticking out in front of them because she braced herself with her arms to keep them from revealing her face. As they continued their attempts to rescue her, she finally used her slender legs to grab Kamijou Touma like a crab’s pincers and attempted to drag him through to the other side of the wall.

Anzai Kyousuke summed it all up in a single shout.

“This is just scary!! It’s like some carnivorous plant from the tropics!”

“This just shows how much she wants some ‘high-quality souls’. Honestly, why are gods always so Absurd?”

Regardless, Hel was outnumbered, so they grabbed her legs and pulled like a game of tug of war and she ultimately popped out of the wall like a giant turnip in a children’s picture book.

The sudden release sent them all tumbling to the floor and bliss filled Heivia’s face as the bikini armor and bunny suit lay in a pile with no division between gender. But a closer inspection showed his usual companion was lying on top of him, so he was forced to half-seriously attack the other boy.

The tropical leaf swimsuit Zashiki Warashi was the first to crawl out of the pile of people.

“So what are you planning to do now, queen of the underworld who is more frightening than sexy and has introduced that disturbing claw pincer to the world?”

“Mwa ha ha!!”

Hel scrambled to her feet and laughed loudly (and meaninglessly). She was likely getting desperate.

“True strangers visiting from outside the nine worlds supported by Yggdrasil are rare indeed, so the lovely queen of the underworld is of course going to take all these souls for herself!! It would be hard to find a reason to let you go. This is like running across a duralumin case full of cash in the woods. What? Take it to the police? Yes, yes. Thanks for the textbook answer!!”

She sat in a random chair and (still meaninglessly) crossed her legs. She seemed to want to mentally place herself above them to crush the embarrassment in her heart.

But Kamijou and the others did not follow.

Index rubbed a finger against her temple and spoke.

“Hmm… The cultural customs here are completely different from ours, so we might not be able to understand each other like this. I think we need to come to a better mutual understanding of each other first.”

“What?” asked Heivia. “You’re confusing me more than her. What exactly are you suggesting we do?”

The bunny girl smiled bitterly and gave a comment of her own.

“Surely you aren’t suggesting we read through a thick law book.”

“Now that you mention, it’s kind of amazing that Japan’s laws are gathered in a single book but no one really knows the details.”

Kamijou did not sound too interested in this, but the Zashiki Warashi pushed them in another direction.

“Morals, ethics, and role models. Every world and every era has ‘installation’ books with all of that simplified enough for a child to understand.”

“What kind of brainwashing books are those?”

“Fairy tales, picture books, and old stories. Those are all meant as lessons for children, you know?”

When they heard those words of a centuries old Youkai, Kamijou and Mikoto exchanged a glance.

It seemed worth a shot.

People often talked about living in a tolerant society, but discussions and negotiations worked best when both sides had an equivalent set of values. Of course, most people tried to change the other person instead of trying to understand them.

Kamijou made up his mind.

“Mrs. Hel!”

“I am a young bachelorette! Do I look like some old woman to you!? And what is it!?”

“You’re like a hidden boss in an RPG, so how am I supposed to know how old you are? And more importantly…”

“Don’t sidestep the issue like that! But what is it!?”

“Have you ever heard the story of Momotarou?”



In truth, Kamijou did not remember all the details of Momotarou, but he remembered enough: a superhuman crawled out of a peach, tamed three beasts, attacked an island of oni, and made off with all their riches.

He was pretty sure it was a longer story than that since it was told in picture books and scrolls, but when he explained the main points, it took less than ten minutes.

However…

“Sob, sob. That Momotarou was such a wonderful guy. He was a real hero for conquering the outside world and creating his own kingdom. That’s what you call a true man! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“Ehh!? You’re crying? I’ve never seen anyone cry over Momotarou before!”

Mikoto shouted in surprise, but Nanajou Kyouichirou did not sound delighted.

“Um, uh. I think there really is a discrepancy in our interpretation here and I heard a dangerous word mixed in there. Momotarou isn’t a story of war and conquest.”

Quenser and Heivia were the most taken aback of all.

“(Now I’m scared. What is with the Island Nation? They raise kids with that kind of story!? If they see exterminating an island of man-eating giants as a happy ending, I can see why they produce such frightening soldiers!!)”

“(We need to rethink some things. They’re known as a nation of technology, but it looks like they’re also focused on the kind of combat education needed to breed a fighting spirit!)”

The Zashiki Warashi, who had suggested the idea, and the Yuki Onna, who was still embracing Jinnai Shinobu’s frozen form, both shuddered as they were briefly reminded of reality.

“From ‘our’ point of view, that certainly isn’t a story we want children hearing. And it’s still a mystery what exactly Momotarou was.”

“He was a horrifying mutation. In all seriousness, ‘we’ could all be wiped out if five of him appeared in the world.”

However, it seemed to have been more effective than they had thought.

Hel grabbed Kamijou’s collar and shook him back and forth whiles shouting at him.

“Do you have any more!? I thought your clothes were weird, but if I’d known you were a group of minstrels, I would have given you a warmer welcome! Anyway, tell me more about your world!!”

“W-wait! My neck!? I’m gonna die!”

Whether liked or disliked, Kamijou was about to be taken to the underworld, but he was released at the last second.

After waiting to recover from Status Effect: Confusion, he coughed and tried to continue speaking.



“Princess Kaguya is about…”

“What? Who cares if you had to leave!! I bet the old man and woman wanted to go with you, so you should have just married for life, Princess Kaguyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”



“Urashima Tarou is about…”

“Ohhhhhhh!! After all that, it’s a story of tragic love!? And when Otohime’s going on the attack like that, you need to take her up on her offer, Urashima Tarou!! How could you want to head back to the surface then? What are you, a dense protagonist!?”



There were some definite discrepancies in interpretation here and there, but Hel no longer seemed impossible to understand. It felt like they were gradually seeing where her heartstrings lay.

She seemed to like it when a protagonist fought and won.

She seemed to find it sad when people were forced to part ways.

She seemed to want romance that was ultimately fulfilled.

Despite her frightening title, she seemed to have the same emotions as a normal human being.

At that point, Quenser and Heivia began whispering to each other again.

“(If this is enough to get her crying, what would happen if we gave her a Shakespeare story?)”

“(Wait, wait. That would require a lot of background knowledge, so she might just be confused. How about A Dog of Flanders? I’m not really sure what kids are supposed to learn from it, but no story has more despair.)”

“Hey, you two. I see those looks on your face, so no playing around when we’re about to get this settled.”

Mikoto put a stop to the boys’ plans, but their goal was to keep Hel from acting violently and a fairy tale related to life and death might not be all that bad an idea.

“Hey, hey,” spoke up Mikoto. “Have you heard of the Little Match Girl?”

“And you say the look on our faces was bad!? I’d say a girl freezing to death is far heavier than what we were thinking of!!”

Hel had tearfully latched onto Momotarou and Princess Kaguya, so what would happen with the Little Match Girl who had no great reversal thanks to a super hero or magic?

The group watched on half in interest and half in fear.



“What? She didn’t work hard enough to survive, so of course she died.”

An aura of confusion filled every inch of the inn.

The tears and snot covering Hel’s face vanished almost immediately.

“Wait, wait, wait!!” Kamijou cut in to check on something. “That was…how should I put it? You don’t get it? It’s a stereotypical tragedy and it teaches people to try to reach out and help someone they see in trouble so they won’t die like the little match girl did.”

“What are you talking about? She only died as a match-seller because she only sat there and continued selling matches. Not only did she not work to break out of her predicament, but she’s supposed to force that effort onto someone else? That’s not leaning on each other for support; that’s one side leaning on the other and crushing them.”

They seemed to have found the root of the discrepancies, so Kamijou thought for a moment and presented a different litmus test.

“You didn’t seem to like that one, so let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh, that sounds great! I want to hear about a dragon slaying!! Or about an intense fight between muscular macho men!!”

“Sorry, but there are no dragons or macho men here. It’s called The Little Mermaid.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“What? She let some other woman steal the love of her life and then went to die on her own? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Kamijou, Quenser, and the others knew they had found it, but Hel had not noticed the discrepancy and continued talking.

“I mean, love is the simplest basis for conflict. If you fall in love with a guy, you have to slaughter the competition and take him for yourself! You can’t speak? You have fish legs? Who cares!! If you love the prince, then get him by any means necessary! Is that all your love was worth, Little Mermaid!? Hmph!!”

“A lot is starting to make sense,” said the Killer Queen while choosing her words carefully.

The queen of the underworld did not beautify human death no matter what form it took.

She especially hated anyone who avoided conflict and chose their own death.

That kept her from accepting a story that ended in tragedy. She would angrily proclaim that the protagonist should have killed one of the other characters to win a happy ending.

It made sense at first glance, but something about her reasoning was twisted. That may have come from how she looked down on the dead as the losers. There was no special category for victimhood or self-sacrifice and she threw all the dead under the category of “loser”.

But was this thinking unique to Hel?

Or was it shared by all the people of this Norse world?

“Besides, it’s wrong to say the afterlife is full of pain and hardship.” Hel sounded thoroughly annoyed. “Even Niflheim has the ice palace Éljúðnir. That’s my house, by the way. Any usable souls are invited to that hall and received as guests. Light God Baldr is probably hanging around there somewhere and you’ll be given a guest room depending on your ability once you’re dragged down there. The humans in Niflheim don’t undergo eternal suffering because I’m cruel. That show of cruelty only happens because all of the sinners who end up there are too useless to be my guests.” Hel sighed. “And there’s really no helping it since I only get the leftovers after Odin takes all of the decent souls.”

“The sinners can’t be your guests? And what do you mean by useless?”

Kamijou sounded skeptical and Hel waved a hand in front of her face.

“Useless as far as Ragnarök is concerned. I don’t know what basis you all use to divide heaven from the underworld, but those are the rules here. The powerful and courageous warriors who die in a blaze of glory or the witches supported by magic are deemed ‘useful’ and that idiot Odin recruits them and takes them to heaven. That leaves me with the souls of the sick, the elderly, and anyone else who died without fighting. There’s just no way I can win Ragnarök with a group like that,” she complained. “Anyway, Odin <strike>who has become something like an obsessive gamer</strike> hasn’t called dibs on you all, so you can see why someone like me would really want you as a part of my army. Of course, I say army, but a battle of the gods comes down to the radiance of individual souls and a single hero or god of war can easily influence the entire battle. <strike>Maybe you can think of it like the galactic alliance fleet stealing a dozen of the enemy’s new ace fighters.</strike>”

Despite her explanation, one thing did not sit well with Kamijou and the others.

In fact, it only filled them with more questions.

Kamijou asked about one fundamental issue.

“Wait. Wait just a second. You claim to be Hel, queen of the underworld, so that means you’re a lot like Satan, king of the demons, or Enma, lord of hell, right? Sorry about only knowing this stuff from RPGs.”

“Well… Since it sounds cooler, I would recommend calling me the one who rules over evil rather than the incarnation of evil. But either way, it isn’t wrong to view me as the queen who rules over the depths of the earth where sinners’ souls arrive.”

“There, that’s it. Call it hell or the underworld, but you say that’s where sinners go, right?”

“Generally, yes. But sometimes, when the spirit of a female medium grows too powerful, her soul will end up living down there. Supposedly they bring disorder to the patriarchal Norse society.”

“Then why are there all sorts of sick or elderly people’s souls there?”

His image of the underworld did not fit.

He could not figure out why the depths of the earth would contain a child who tried his best to live but could not take a step out of bed or an old man who had worked hard and saved all sorts of people.

If the underworld was what Kamijou, Quenser, and the others were imagining, those people would be suffering there regardless.

If those people ended up the victims of sinners, it was unreasonable, but they could still imagine it.

But if those people were considered sinners themselves and treated like the perpetrators, it was too unreasonable to even imagine.

“Eh? But…”

However, Hel looked utterly confused.

She had the same look as someone who was told, in all seriousness, that it made no sense for the sun not to fall from the sky.

Without a second’s lag, she replied.

“''Society will never forgive the great crime of living an entire life without killing a single person.''”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Silence fell.

This was to be expected of the supposedly “normal” high school boys Kamijou Touma and Nanajou Kyouichirou, but it included even the Killer Queen who fought with murderers for a living, the bunny girl who had cast aside her morals for world peace, the Zashiki Warashi who looked in on human society from outside, and Quenser and Heivia who waged war year-round. All of them completely forgot to breath or think for a bit.

Hel alone spoke smoothly as if ruling that stopped moment of time.

“Hm? Was there something wrong with what I said? If you die without taking part in human wars… No, no, if you die without taking part in the preliminary practice for the war of the gods…. No, no, no… Well, anyway. Anyone who can’t help kill is sent straight to the underworld.”

If she had spoken those words with great malice, they might have been able to accept it even if they could not understand it.

That would mean Hel was the end result of swallowing up human tragedy and misfortune and she distorted the paths of humans who tried to live a proper life despite it all. It would be normal not to understand that.

But that was not the case here.

Hel’s expression and tone of voice were no different from someone speaking with the classmate at the neighboring desk.

And those rules did not just apply to the residents of the underworld. They applied to all the humans and gods in this world.

She had not created that unreasonable system on her own.

It was just how the world worked and even those who called themselves gods did not question it.

“Well, to put it simply, you’re sent to heaven or the underworld based on your ranking. The stronger you are, the more people you’ve defeated, and the more you’ve killed, the higher up on the list you are. Only the people on the upper end of the list get to go to Asgard and everyone else is sent down to the underworld. It’s obvious what happens to the sick and elderly who couldn’t build up their score, right? ''If you don’t kill a bunch of people, you don’t get a happy life in heaven.'' Honestly, what a troublesome system.”

“Wh-what…the hell?” groaned Heivia.

Even a soldier covered in firearms was very nearly swallowed up by this.

“I know I’m the last person to speak out against this. I really do. But this is messed up. Isn’t it normally the exact opposite? Doesn’t the ''afterlife'' usually work by saving the people who were killed instead of the ones who did the killing!?”

“Take that up with the bearded head god who made up the rules. He’s terrified of the prophecy, so he’s been that way ever since he learned he’d be eaten by Fenrir during Ragnarök. To him, ‘good’ people are heroes who can kill lots of people and ‘evil’ people are pacifists who can’t.”

“Don’t you think it’s wrong to go along with that?” muttered Misaka Mikoto in a daze. “I mean, what’s this Ragnarök thing anyway? What are you fighting for? It isn’t to win. That’s only the means. What are you trying to gain by fighting and defeating people!? Is it to protect? If so, then this underworld or whatever is throwing the ones needing protection in cages and making them suffer! That’s just plain wrong!!”

“Eh? Fighting to protect? What’s that?”

The girl had thrown everything she could into her yell, but it was deflected all too easily by confusion.

“Whether we win or lose Ragnarök and whichever army comes out on top, the world is still going to be destroyed. That’s how it’s set up. That idiot Odin doesn’t want to be the world’s protector or savior. He just doesn’t want to be eaten, so he’s using the entire world to make sure he alone can survive Ragnarök. That’s all it is.”

“What…?”

“The prophecy says we, the gods, and the humans will all be killed during Ragnarök. However, Light God Baldr and his brother Höðr will be resurrected from the rubble and create a new world and new humanity from scratch. So in the very, very end, the gods will cover the entirety of the new world. That is why winning the war is considered the true meaning of Ragnarök.”

Hel waved her index finger while still sitting.

“So those of us who will be left out want to change that ending. Only one or two have to appear in the end, but if one of them is someone from the underworld, we can cover the entirety of the new world. In a brand new world without any selfish gods, we can create our own paradise without anyone getting in our way.”

The gods and their enemies were never thinking about protecting the world or conquering the world.

It was all set to be destroyed. It would be such a great catastrophe that they were calculating out what they would gain after it was all destroyed.

In that case, what remained for the humans of this world who were caught in the middle?

They did not have the power to overcome a catastrophe that could destroy an entire planet and they could not pray to the gods because those gods wanted to see the world’s destruction. Yet they could not start worshipping the enemies of the gods instead because those enemies also hoped for the world’s destruction.

There was no rest for the people of this world. All it had was a giant eggshell.

The world was meant to be broken open from within so something could crawl out.

It was a paradise warmed by a hen and raised to meet its own doom.

“That’s just wrong,” muttered Kamijou.

“Hm?”

Hel slowly turned her head around and the pointy-haired boy continued.

“If there really are gods, the world is probably made for their convenience. And if people show up and claim to be enemies of the gods, that very thought is probably all under the gods’ control.”

But…

“If the enemies uses that thought to fight the gods and win, what’s left for them?”

However…

“Whether the gods win or their enemies win, nothing changes. Even if you create a paradise unopposed, that paradise is only for you who had no problem with making the sick and elderly suffer. How is it any different from the paradise created by some combat-obsessed god? So what are you really fighting for? If the next world is the same no matter who wins or loses, then it’s all about the gods from the beginning to the end.”

“True,” replied Hel while still sounding completely carefree. “But the winners get to choose how the world works. The only people at the two great peaks of the nine worlds think that way. It may be a lot of trouble for everyone else to go along with it, but you expect people to hate you when you’re the queen of the underworld. I’d say the arrogant bearded god who is worshipped despite spreading fear and slaughter is far more evil.”

There was no stopping it.

Kamijou and the others would leave here after only a short stay. After that, the people of this world would obey its rules and the world’s shell would be broken.

Like a bad dream, they would soon be thrown out of it.

Or…

“Then what are the people who live here supposed to do?”

“That’s simple.” Hel smiled. “Either let themselves be killed or kill those of us at the top.”