Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

It was two against two.

“Hmm.”

The small girl smirked.

She was the monster who would simply travel along a straight line to her destination, destroying all that stood in her way.

“Now, this is a little more interesting. Can you expand on this unexpected turn of events and send it my way?”

On one side, Kamijou Touma and St. Germain.

On the other, Anna Sprengel and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass.

“One step.”

The naked little girl who looked about ten held the red cloth to her skin below the falling snow and smiled confidently with the bizarre angel by her side.

She seemed to threaten the hospital’s front gate like it was a mystical barrier.

She began to walk with an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who looked like you could blow her over with your breath. And that strength was not just figurative. The snow at her feet really was blown away, the asphalt sank down slightly, and cracks formed around her.

“If you’re going to talk big, then stop me from taking this one step. R&C Occultics is a new trend the world over. If you can’t push back a mere global trend, I will be sorely disappointed. And you can figure out for yourself what that would mean.”

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently clenched his right first.

But that was not all he did.

He pressed his other palm against the center of his chest and spoke toward that point.

“St. Germain, can you do this?”

“Who do you think I am? Leave the ley line landmines to me. You only need to fight the threat before your eyes.”

Two different statements came from the same mouth.

Kamijou saw Anna Sprengel’s eyebrows move ever so slightly.

That other voice was audible to other people and it was accompanied by a visible breath.

And it was Kamijou Touma who readied his fist now. He would not hold back no matter what form his enemy took. In fact, something inside him was telling him it was abnormal for an enemy so great to be contained in a body so small.

He could not ignore what R&C Occultics was doing. Or that the girls who had stood up for him were collapsed on the ground here.

He could work to understand this person after he had punched her and settled this.

They were still a good bit apart.

Kamijou would have to take five steps to reach her even when running at full speed.

But…

“Aiwass.”

The instant Anna’s young lips whispered that name, the angel next to her was gone.

No. She had clenched and unclenched her small hand and gently swept it to the side like she was using a fan.

And she made an announcement.

“Open the pathway from Gevurah to Hod ''and reside in my right arm.''”

The distance did not matter. That was all it took for the distant skyscraper that formed a crucial corner of the scenery to be sliced through by five slashes and drop to the ground like a poorly-made Daruma Otoshi. Since the building had no windows, it must have been an automated agricultural building that could be harvested more than twenty times a month.

“Structure Breaker,” said her small mouth.

That great firepower had been entirely unpredictable.

That kind of unfair attack would normally kill you before you even realized what it was.

Yet Kamijou Touma remained alive.

“!!”

He had dropped straight down.

He got face-down on the ground with his limbs spread out, grabbed at the ground with his arms and feet, and then launched himself toward Anna Sprengel while down on all fours like a beast.

Right hand clashed with right hand.

Of course, the ''symbolism'' brought in by the Rosicrucian leader was worse than the actual destructive power.

“''Shall I take over?''” asked St. Germain. “The slightest hesitation will lead to death here, esper!!”

“Not yet!!”

Anna apparently had no intention of keeping her distance and wearing him down with a barrage of attacks. It was possible that over-the-top attack had only been a way of shocking Kamijou into moving in closer since he had no projectile attacks of his own.

She had only moved her opened hand as casually as swinging a tennis racket.

That was all it had taken to mercilessly slice through space itself with no regard for distance or material. ''The mere touch of her palm would negate the world, tearing through whatever was there along with the dimension and space itself.'' Kamijou felt impatience burning at the back of his mind, but he was now within a meter of Anna Sprengel.

He took aim at her small jaw with an attack that tore upwards from below.

“Ohhhh!!”

That fist could return all magicians to being mere humans. That attack stole their means of fighting back against the cruel world and threw them out into the wilderness with no way of defending themselves. But Anna calmly took a step toward that critical attack. That was all it took to avoid it.

She seemed to be nestling herself up against the boy’s chest.

Moving even closer than the swinging fist naturally kept it from hitting her.

And.

With her other hand, the left one, she held a perfectly ordinary but deadly knife.

Kamijou Touma could negate all forms of the supernatural, but he had no way of defending against those fatal ten centimeters.

“Hee hee.”

“''St. Germain''!!”''

There was a loud clang, but the knife held by the little girl was not equipped to make that sort of noise.

So what had caused it?

“A diamond? Is that eternal light a variation on the lamps that illuminate the tomb?”

“…”

They had traded places.

An unseen baton had changed hands.

And in that moment, the weapon used by the pointy-haired boy changed from his right hand’s fist to his left hand’s magic.

Specifically, some kind of glittering particles were scattered in the few millimeter gap between the boy’s chest and the bare-skinned monster’s palm.

It was said diamonds were so hard that they were in fact easily breakable, but that did not mean the blade that hit one would escape intact. The knife’s tip broke off and the blade chipped when it split the stone.

“You were never planning to block that with the strength of the diamond. Was it more like a matador’s cape? That glitter throws off my visual aim and the chipping of the blade diverts the speed and vector of destruction. Still, Academy City must have very polluted air if you can manipulate that air to produce diamonds.”

“So what if I did?”

St. Germain’s magic did not require a special sword or cards.

He could create anything with just ordinary carbon.

“I would call it inefficient,” said Anna. “Using magic with that body requires circulating his lifeforce throughout the body and refining it into magic power, right? You will always have a large chunk of that precious magic power negated before you can use it.”

“True enough. This boy’s right hand is powerful indeed and it is not something I can fully control even with his permission.”

St. Germain could not use Imagine Breaker.

Kamijou Touma could not use diamond magic.

No matter how hard they tried, they had to support each other as they fought.

So their best bet was to switch back and forth between those two sides based on what was currently needed to fight the conflagration before them. Even if something was deadly to one of them, the other might be able to break through it. They switched back and forth like they were moving a tennis racket from one side to the other during a high-speed match. It sounded convenient, but their opponent was Anna Sprengel. One wrong decision and the ball of survival would slip past them and they would lose the game.

“But even if the Sephirah and the channels between them correspond to parts of the human body, you never hear of someone who can no longer use magic after being injured or falling ill,” said St. Germain. “Magic is a means of making up for what we lack and making our dreams come true, so a lot of students enter the world of magic after just such an injury or illness.”

“Are you saying you can separate out his right hand or divert around it?” asked Anna.

St. Germain’s words contained fear and respect, but he still bared his fangs.

“I was always a lowly magician who refused to be defined solely by the two characters of RC. I instead worked to make my mark on high society under the individual name of St. Germain. There is a considerable loss in power from diverting the flow around that hand, but I am accustomed to wasted effort and this is not enough for my diamond spells to fail. The acute version of me you created appears to be even more powerful than you thought.”

The boy’s body veered to the left while those two spoke.

But not because they had any kind of plan.

A sticky sound splattered against the ground, decorating the road with a Christmasy red.

“Gh, bh!!”

“Yes, the side effect. And let’s not act like you can do that a set number of times or anything like that. Just like Russian roulette, one unlucky round and you die instantly.” The little girl gave a cruel smile at close range. “So I think it’s about time I did this by force.”

She swung her small hand around, but she was not going for an occult attack. Her fingers tore through the gas pipe running through a nearby wall.

St. Germain had to fight against this sort of physical danger.

If this kept up, Kamijou could not rejoin the battle. And if this remained a magician vs. magician battle, it could not have been more obvious who would win between St. Germain and Anna Sprengel.

“Tch!!”

Even so, an attack based on ordinary physics would obey the well-known rules found in ordinary textbooks. St. Germain created a double layer of diamond sheets thinner than an umbrella. That was not for attack or defense. Any obstacle would change the direction of the wind, just like buildings did. And if the wind direction changed, the invisible but highly flammable gas would be diverted elsewhere.

They had avoided an explosion, but Kamijou coughed up blood due to the internal injuries.

“I was hoping to buy some time for you to catch your breath, but perhaps I spent too long talking. This isn’t over yet, esper. ''Back to you!!''”

Something whooshed through the air.

And a supernatural attack meant it was his turn.

A powerful light returned to the point-haired boy’s eyes. As a small hand swung down toward him, he leaped to the side with all his might despite not being able to stand up straight. He ended up falling to the ground. Normally, he would have failed to avoid the next horizontal swing of her arm and he would have been sliced through.

But that was not what happened.

After a dull sound, he had all of a sudden jumped several meters straight up into the air.

“St. Germain, ''take care of this''!!”

“Fine, but switching back and forth like this will only shorten your life. ''Back to you!!''”

Instead of jumping up with his legs, it was more like he had been hit by a car. A diamond hexagonal pillar had thrust up from below him, launching him about three meters into the air. Anna’s fingers missed the human torso and instead sliced through the thick mass of diamond.

The two minds took turns controlling the single body by switching between right and left.

They really could overcome it this way. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker was weak against multiple simultaneous attacks, but St. Germain’s diamonds could defend against them all. St. Germain’s magic could not fully stop Anna’s brute force attacks, but Kamijou’s right hand could forcibly blow them away.

“Ohhh!!”

The right fist clenched tight, so this was clearly Kamijou Touma in control.

It was the ordinary boy’s turn to attack from midair.

He held the blood back in his mouth while clenching his fist again. Anna should have had no way of stopping this since she was already in the middle of casually swinging her palm to the side.

The little girl looked up with just her eyes and smiled.

Her fingers had been gently bent like claws, but now she extended them straight. That spread out the angle of her deadly fan without changing the force of the swing.

As a result, the snow and asphalt at her feet were torn through and the ground collapsed below her. She was taken down along with it.

Changing the height of the ground greatly threw off Kamijou’s aim from midair.

There appeared to be a subway platform directly below.

That counted as indoors, but the chill grew even worse.

He did not recall there being a subway entrance nearby, so this appeared to be a fairly complex underground structure. Or maybe it carried some kind of secret, like it was connected to the basement of ''that hospital''.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou failed his landing and rolled along the rubble-covered floor, but he did not have time to writhe in pain. He spat blood from his mouth while diving behind a drink vending machine with its clear cover broken.

He and St. Germain could keep up with the fight, but that still had not allowed them to actually strike back.

Anna had already swung her right palm to the side.

“Oh?”

But then she sounded somewhat impressed.

She had come across something slightly unexpected.

As soon as the little girl sliced through the boxy mass of metal she had been guided toward, the chemical coolant that preserved a temperature well below zero came in contact with the ordinary air. Only a brief moment later, white steam resembling a cumulonimbus cloud expanded in every direction like a smoke bomb had gone off.

It was an obvious smokescreen.

Attack, escape, hide, rest, or think.

With the flow of battle delayed, Kamijou and St. Germain now had endless possibilities.