Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma forgot to breathe.

“Gah…”

Nothing felt real for a while.

The world came into view tilted on its side and that world was not the truck container lab. Alice, Shirai Kuroko, and Hanatsuyu Youen were nowhere to be found. The floor was littered with shards of glass and the jagged remnants of a colorful plastic jungle gym. He was apparently inside the Delivery Go Round shopping train.

(Good. Shirai teleporting Alice off the train wasn’t a favor granted by Wonderland.)

But what had happened?

When he tried to get up off his side, a storm of agony assaulted his body.

“Gahh!? Cough, dammit, what is this? Ow, ''is something stabbing into me''!?”

Trying to move brought on a weird stiff feeling. He initially thought a broken bone was obstructing the movement of his muscles or joints, but that wasn’t it.

It was the plastic jungle gym from the play area.

When the trains had crashed, he had been flung from the café to the next car, where he crashed into the jungle gym, breaking off a few jagged plastic rods that had pierced his flesh.

But in all likelihood, ''it could have been far worse.

Without breaking through that “cushioning” to slow himself down, the impact with the wall probably would have killed him instantly.

(Ugh…a-a real train crash really is a disaster, isn’t it?)

His head spun within the crashed Delivery Go Round’s play area. He was at least thankful there hadn’t still been any children in here.

The plastic jungle gym had been smashed to pieces.

The bright colors had become a pile of deadly weapons.

He searched the unusual sensations in his body, grabbed one of the jagged edges that was duller than a bamboo spear, and clenched his teeth. He pulled as hard as he could. The pain when it came out was much less than he had feared, but he didn’t have time to think about that. With the plastic plug removed, he was now bleeding much more rapidly.

He was glad he had been returned to the starting point, but he had to stop this bleeding or he would die.

“Pant, pant.”

After removing the jungle gym shards from his arm, gut, and thigh, he didn’t even have the energy to writhe in agony. He crawled along the gritty floor. He hated how the metal box on the wall was all the way up at hip height. His fingers kept slipping on his own blood, but he finally managed to get a grip. He forced the box’s door open, pulled out a thick synthetic bag, and collapsed onto the floor with a wet splat.

He now had the AED and first aid kit.

He pulled out some disinfectant, removed the cap with trembling hands, and rubbed it on his arm wound. Burning pain immediately exploded in him. It was so bad he initially thought some static had ignited the ethanol. But he couldn’t hesitate. He moved on to the wounds on his gut and thigh.

“Gahhh!! Ahhh!?”

He was dripping with sweat.

But completing the hellish disinfection process wasn’t the end of it.

His real task was stopping the bleeding. But these wounds were too bad for bandages to suffice. His vision was flashing in and out, so he mostly relied on his sense of touch to pull out a device wrapped in plastic. The gadget was shaped something like a small submachinegun, but it was in fact a handheld sewing machine. He couldn’t think straight from the blood loss, so he didn’t have it in him to read through the small text. He relied entirely on the illustrations printed on the side as he pressed it against the wound in his side and pulled the trigger.

The series of “thunks” sounded more like construction work than a medical procedure, but in just a few seconds, a sturdy silk thread had closed up the dark red wound. He couldn’t fully control the full-auto compressed gas device, so he ended up overshooting the end of the wound and sewing up intact skin.

He was scared.

The whole concept terrified him, but he would die if he couldn’t close up all his wounds.

Only after the first one did it occur to him to hold a handkerchief in his mouth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue in shock. Then he sewed up the wounds on his arm and leg too.

“Damn, I really want to tap out already. Ugh. I’ll go through with this, but I’m at least allowed to cry about it, right, Alice?”

He threw the gun-like sewing machine to the floor.

He had forcibly stopped the bleeding, but his head still felt just as heavy. Closing the wounds did not return the blood he had already lost. Finding the only correct answer and taking the optimal course of action did not mean everything would go his way. When your life was at risk, there was no guarantee a cute girl with highly-specialized knowledge was going to show up and fix everything for you. He smiled at the reminder he was back in the real world.

A first-aid kit would not contain a blood transfusion kit that included a pack of blood or a hematinic drug.

He would have to attempt the rest of this as he was.

(Damn, and I’m back down to 49 yen. I’m right back in the New Year’s Tokyo survival life. ''You really don’t just find money in the real world, huh?'')

Where was Alice anyway? He doubted she was going to help him anymore.

It took him a full minute to get up on his feet with quite a bit of groaning.

The sweat on his brow was unusually chilly. He had lost so much blood he was having trouble keeping his body temperature up. He appreciated how it also dulled the pain, but the intermittent nature of his vision was disturbing. He was afraid he would pass out altogether if he let his guard down.

The situation was already on the move.

He was no longer playing on easy mode with Alice to help him along.

He doubted getting Hanatsuyu Youen or Shirai Kuroko’s help would be so easy this time. Rakuoka Houfu’s violence had been on another level and Benizome Jellyfish wouldn’t fall for a trap so easily. Even Frillsand #G would probably be ''even more deadly'' then she had seemed before.

And above all, the dead could no longer be resurrected.

Human lives did not get a continue.

“…”

He bit his lip. Everyone had just the one life, so instead of carelessly jumping out of the window, he carefully and unsteadily walked through the crashed train. He found a surviving spiral staircase, descended to the 1st floor while making sure his feet didn’t slip, checked through the bent and dislodged automatic door that the platform was safe, and only then took a step outside. He had escaped the train.

He would not push himself too hard. He could not afford to neglect the standard safety measures.