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

===Part 12===

Fearsome electricity surged in every direction.

It radiated out from a central figure.

Finding some kind of shield wasn’t enough this time. Thick reinforced concrete broke like styrofoam and the row of metal lockers exploded. The vortex of destruction was so great it was a miracle the entire station and adjoining buildings didn’t collapse.

Imagine Breaker would not negate this

If not for the long pink cricket bat that popped out from below Alice’s apron and flew around her, Kamijou would have been hit and killed by the lightning. In fact, the bat wasn’t alone this time. Several balls dropped down from below her apron and then sharp needles shot out in every direction.

The effect was unclear. Or rather, he didn’t have time to watch what they did.

He was too busy escaping the locker room even if he had to roll along the ground.

“Ahhhh!?”

He couldn’t afford to worry about the wound Youen had treated and sewn up. He grabbed smiling Alice under his other arm (because she didn’t seem to grasp the situation and didn’t try to escape) and pushed open the metal door on the opposite end of the room. There he found a few office desks lined up with one wall covered in LCD monitors. Those would be for displaying the security camera footage from the station building and platforms. Some unfamiliar machines were lined up along another wall. He tilted his head until he realized what they were. They were ticket machines. He could remember a few times when his change or smart card had gotten stuck and a worker had opened a metal slit to speak to him from the other side of the wall.

Youen listened to the explosions through the wall while she took a look at her test tubes and pulled out a few that contained a muddy brown liquid. She threw them away.

“Tch. A few of my artificial pheromones are ruined. The test tubes have an airtight seal, so is that ghost using electrolysis? No, this may be photolysis, which only needs a bright enough light. If we keep running away, I’m going to lose more and more of my stock.”

Shirai Kuroko wasn’t sure how to react. She liked the idea of a criminal losing her weapons, but she didn’t like the idea of losing the weapons they needed to survive.

Then the twintailed Judgment girl turned toward Kamijou.

“Anyway, ''what ‘just might work’''?”

“Teacher, you did say that.”

Alice nodded repeatedly. She seemed eager to join any conversation related to him.

“No one can defeat that ghost called…Frillsand #G was it?” He glanced over at some grainy security camera footage. “But I do know why she’s doing this: Drencher Kihara Repatri. If he was here, he could convince her to stop.”

“That doesn’t do us much good.”

“Right. He wasn’t in the Overhunting’s records and there’s no record of him being hospitalized either, so the odds are good he died during Handcuffs. I know that.”

Kamijou did not deny how bad their situation was.

However.

“But we know this is an ''artificial ghost'' since my right hand doesn’t work. And if it’s possible to create a ghost purely with technology, then couldn’t you drag a dead man back to the realm of the living?”

“…”

“…”

No one responded for a while. That wasn’t a surprise from good Shirai Kuroko, but it also applied to Hanatsuyu Youen who would throw out certain possibilities because she saw herself as a bad person.

He understood this wasn’t an easy thing to agree with.

This would be an unthinkable kind of violation. He felt a solid taboo in his hands. He knew all that, but he still couldn’t abandon this possibility he had discovered.

“I mean, what happened is so sad.” He found himself speaking without meaning to. “All of Handcuffs was. So many people died and it didn’t accomplish anything. But I’m thinking about Frillsand #G who we’re all treating like a villain just because she’s grieving someone’s death.”

Kamijou Touma had not been involved on the night of the 25th. He had fought a different deadly battle on the 24th and 25th and been left groaning in a hospital bed.

But what did that matter?

“Don’t you want to change this tragic ending?”

Just say it.

It’s not about whether or not you’re qualified.

Anyone would do. Raise an objection against that tragedy!! Don’t turn away and say you can’t bear to look at it. Face it head-on and figure out if there’s anything you can do to help now!!!!!!

“I don’t care what kind of trick we have to use. Don’t you want to use everything found through Handcuffs to actually save her and give the finger to the god in heaven who let all this happen?”

All technology could be reproduced.

When a new tank, mine, rocket, or other weapon appeared on the battlefield, the enemy would be using the exact same thing before long.

Finally, one of the girl’s sighed.

“The ethical and moral aspects don’t matter to me. I just don’t want to explode from all that electricity. If you have a plan to avoid that, I’m all ears.” The exasperated comment came from Youen the Carrier. “We can set up a ghostly date if we want, but do you have any guarantee a second ghost based on this one will last very long? It won’t be much of an emotional reunion if he only exists for a few nanoseconds. I also hope they don’t blow up the whole city as soon as their powerful electrical energy bodies tearfully embrace.”

“Yeah, a hug might not be all that satisfying between two intangible ghosts,” agreed Kamijou.

This was a puzzle, so he hadn’t expected a single piece to solve it.

“But the artificial ghost wasn’t the only piece of bizarre tech seen at Handcuffs. There was that Ladybird android who could use an esper power despite being a machine. If she really exists, couldn’t we give the intangible ghost a tangible body?”

“…”

“I don’t know how we would attach the ghost to the machine body, but there might be some tech we could use. Youen, maybe your chemicals or microbes. Or, Shirai, maybe that quantum 11th dimensional awareness you can handle like it’s nothing!”

Operation Handcuffs had been more than just death and destruction.

If they combined the technologies used by both sides of the conflict, they could even obtain the ability to overturn a decisive tragedy.

They had to cast out their biases.

They couldn’t let their assumptions and preconceptions lead them astray.

They had to remember that Handcuffs was originally envisioned as a way to tear down the dark side and help the people found there. For every piece of death and destruction, there had to be a corresponding piece of life and salvation.

What did the dark side label matter?

Was that any reason to just shrug and give up?

''I’m sick of your shit, misfortune. Sure, I didn’t make it in time on the 25th, but it’s not too late.

''I’ll show you how Kamijou Touma does things.

“We can’t know how Frillsand #G works just from observing her. And we have nothing beyond Ladybird’s name. So is there anything we can do!? You were both involved in Handcuffs, so do you have any ideas? Like where any of them had their hideouts or labs!? Anywhere the plans or equipment for their tech could be hidden!!”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Youen casually raised her hand. “I had some small connection with Ladybird – or really, Kihara Hasuu who created her. That old man was connected to the corpse disposers you can find crawling all throughout the District 10 landfill. Those disposers would periodically receive corpses from the Kiharas and remove anything of value they could find. Those disposers would sometimes pay Kaai and me a lot of money to help melt down the parts they didn’t need. Following the path of bodies back should lead us to Kihara Hasuu…and his android lab.”

Kamijou and Shirai were horrified by the flood of disturbing words in that explanation, but Youen only shrugged with a “don’t let that shock you” look.

But why would someone building a mechanical android need human corpses?

“Frillsand #G is a complete unknown for me, though. Judgment, what about you? The official announcements claim Operation Handcuffs is over. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”

“How would I know? I haven’t seen any records related to Drencher or Frillsand #G, so we should assume an entire group participating in Handcuffs went overlooked.” Shirai Kuroko sighed in disgust. “But if we want information on the dark side, wouldn’t it be best to ask someone else from the dark side?”

Kamijou’s eyes wandered through the air.

No, he had turned toward something on the other side of the building walls.

He could only think of one other person they could ask.

“That sniper. They’re a Handcuffs survivor too, right?”

“Her name is Benizome Jellyfish, a paparazzi willing to kill to get a scoop. But she is basically a professional peeping tom, so she probably would know a lot about ''other people’s secrets''.”