Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover Extra (section)

===Part 2===

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Kamijou Touma, Index, Misaka Mikoto, Quenser Barbotage, Heivia Winchell, Milinda Brantini (aboard the Object), Jinnai Shinobu, Zashiki Warashi Yukari, the Yuki Onna, Anzai Kyousuke, Higashikawa Mamoru, Bunny Girl Karen, Nanajou Kyouichirou, and Satsuki all stood in complete silence on the Divine Ship Skíðblaðnir’s deck.

After so confidently declaring they were going home, here they still were.

Their surroundings had seemed to blur, but they found themselves standing in the exact same place again. A few hours seemed to have passed, Waltraute and Hel were gone, and the absence of the previous heat left them feeling even colder about being stranded here.

It was the same feeling as waiting to scare some people during a test of courage, but having no one walk down the path and realizing you had been left all alone in a haunted area.

The search for the culprit soon began.

“Is this what I think it is?” asked the Zashiki Warashi. “Did one of us want to have some more fun and didn’t want to go back, so they ended up shutting down the entire process?”

“You mean someone is keeping us from going back?” asked an enraged Misaka Mikoto. “Well!? I don’t really get what’s going on, but boys!! I’m sure it was you as gave us dirty looks!!”

“What!? Wouldn’t it be you girls who don’t want to go back? After all, you’ll be thrown out in the streets wearing nothing but your bikini armor!!”

“And whose fault is that!? I’ll fry you!!”

Starting with Mikoto and Heivia, sparks flew between the girls and boys.

The only one they could rely on here was their big brother in spirit, Kamijou Touma.

“C-calm down,” said the gentleman. “We all want to get back home, so instead of fighting, we should try working togeth-…”

“Shut up!! Let’s attack him first!!!!!!” the rest shouted.

After they created a great cloud of dust filled with flying star marks, they stood around the pointy-haired idiot who could only crawl along the deck with his clothes about to fall off.

“I-I really think this treatment is unacceptable…”

No one listened to what the bastard said.

“Anyway, if we don’t solve this problem quickly, we might be stuck here forever!” (Index)

“Quit trying to take the reasonable side!! I hate when people try to stay so pure! You’re so full of yourself!!” (Anzai Kyousuke)

“I don’t like how heated up you get. Should I cool you down?” (Yuki Onna)

“Um, is it just me or are all of you so preoccupied with finding the culprit that you don’t care about getting back to our worlds?” (Bunny Girl)

“I’ve never liked this place! It’s supposed to be a legit fantasy world, but there’s no sigh of a nude Witches’ Sabbath or a cursed swimsuit that makes any girl who wears it horny!!” (Quenser)

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re trying to say, but I can assume you’re saying you want me to kill you, can’t I?” (Satsuki)

The second round began.

Some might wonder which side would win in a serious conflict, but generally, the girls were far stronger. If the boys could be seen as a pawn with a chance to be promoted, the girls were all rooks and bishops.

They might have been able to strike at the weaknesses of any one of the girls, but there was nothing they could do when an Object, some Youkai, a Level 5, and a Killer Queen all attacked at once.

And after thirty seconds, all of the boys were forced to crawl along the deck with their clothes about to fall off.

“Wh-why don’t you get that no one wants to see this!? This is where the armor is supposed to break for a nice illustration!!”

“And all of you are too powerful!! Did you create an angry beauty barrier or something!?”

The victors were not about to listen to the complaints of the pummeled ones.

The girls began planning while looking down on the boys as if they were dung beetles.

“So what should we do now?”

“Hmm. Whether intentionally or not, I think someone is interfering with the process to take us home.”

“In other words, we can get back if we slaughter all of the despicable guys?”

“Starting with all of them would be too cruel. How about we kill them one by one and see when the sparkling transportation effect comes back?”

They were about to see firsthand how executions were used as public entertainment in Medieval Europe, but something stopped them.

Or rather, a bigger problem fell on top of them.

Waltraute, the fourth Valkyrie sister, and Hel, queen of the underworld and second head god, crashed down like a shooting star while tearing at each other’s hair and clothes.

“Gwoooooohhhhhhhh!! Just give up already, you damn thief!! I already know you took that boy down into the underworrrrrrrlllllllllld!!”

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!? I know you’re the one that dragged him up to the heavenly world, you murdererrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”

The others had no idea what these two were talking about, but fortunately, their collision with the deck did not create a giant crater in it.

Instead, they tore up the ground like a plane making an emergency landing and they slid toward the others.

“Um, I think this is bad news. A fight between people on the level of gods isn’t the kind of Absurdity you run into every day!”

“Aren’t they on a complete collision course!? G-get out of the way! Everyone get to the left and right!!”

On Mikoto’s instructions, Index, Satsuki, and the other girls scrambled away.

And like bowling pins, the pummeled boys were sent flying into the air.

But the goddesses paid that tragedy no heed.

“Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die!!”

“Do you want to try starting Ragnarök again!? Well, do you!?”

In this battle of gods, they teleported from point to point and the shockwaves of their clashes arrived after a short delay, but then Index muttered something.

“Hmm. I think maybe we weren’t the cause. These rampaging gods may have destroyed the laws of this world. With polytheism, each god is essentially assigned part of the world’s formula.”

“I-Index, you just said something really important. …That means you attacked us for no reason, you perverted nude cape girrrrrrrlllllllllllllll!!”

History was written by the victors, so Index and the other girls did not listen to their complaints.

More importantly, the proper resolution was rolling around in front of them.

“So if we stop their fight, we can get back to Academy City?”

“There might be more than one cause, but a fight between a Valkyrie and the second head god is undoubtedly one reason. So either way, we need to stop them.”

“Um, does that mean we’ll have to step in between two furious goddesses? It looks to me like they’re about to start using some ridiculous overpowered attacks that directly destroy each other’s existence.”

It was not often that the bunny girl looked like she wanted to run away, but that just showed how dangerous the situation was.

So the gentleman known as Kamijou Touma gave his own suggestion.

“Why do all of you assume it has to come to a fight!?”

“I don’t want to hear that from the guy who immediately clenches his fist when faced with any kind of problem!!”

“No, the key to a battle is the speech!! So, Waltraute, Hel! What happened? If you like, you can discuss it with Kamijou Touma, the boy who ended World War Thr-…”

“Shut up, you worm!! Get in my way and I’ll kill you first!!!!!!”

“Shut up, you worm!! Get in my way and I’ll kill you first!!!!!!”

The boy was left with his clothes in an even more precarious position.

No one wanted that, so they were fortunately just barely hanging on.

“Bh…bfh. Bghbfh…”

“You really are stupid. This is what happens when you try to judge a raging god by human standards. You should count yourself lucky that you aren’t suffering from a strange fever brought on by divine punishment.”

However, the goddesses seemed to feel a little guilty for attacking a normal person on pure momentum, so they cooled down some.

“T-Touma sacrificed himself for us…”

“You’re just saying something that sounds meaningful to distract us from what happened before that, aren’t you!? If this is how this world works, I feel sorry for the people who live here!!”

Waltraute and Hel had cooled their heads enough to hold a conversation, so they explained the situation.

Apparently, the small boy who was always with Waltraute had vanished.

“I got some help from Hliðskjálf, the throne that lets you see across all nine worlds, and the Norns, the three goddesses who make unchangeable prophecies. Those goddesses have even seen the result of Ragnarök, but not even they know where that boy is. That means he must be in the underworld where the power of the gods doesn’t reach!!” (Waltraute)

“Yes, but Niflheim contains the villa of the priestess spirit that even Odin bowed down to and asked to prophesy for him! And she claims that boy isn’t anywhere in the nine worlds! I can only imagine the gods are using their greater spiritual power to jam the priestess!!” (Hel)

The goddesses pointed at each other and pleaded their case to the audience.

Jinnai Shinobu finally recovered and got up.

“So you’re talking about that kid who’s always grabbing onto your waist? He seems a lot like me, so do you think maybe he got caught up in some trouble related to something non-human?”

“Uuh!? Th-that isn’t it!!”

“But you can see the entire world using the prophecies and viewing devices in the heavenly world and the underworld, so I’d think you would find him if he had been abducted by someone or just gotten lost.”

Index tilted her head as she spoke, but the goddesses jabbed each other’s cheeks with their extended pointer fingers.

“Weren’t you listening!? She’s clearly lying!!!!!”

“Weren’t you listening!? She’s clearly lying!!!!!”

The Zashiki Warashi and Yuki Onna both sighed.

“Does everyone turn into an idiot when they become a god?”

“If so, I want to stay a mere Youkai forever.”

A step away, the bunny girl observed them even more lukewarmly.

“(Well, it’s always the ones who say that that end up going three times as far when the same thing happens to them.)”

At any rate, it seemed they had to do something about the boy who had suddenly vanished, so Mikoto looked back and forth between Waltraute and Hel.

“Um, if we’re assuming one or both of you are lying, how about we try that ‘compare their stories to find the truth!’ thing?”

“Will that really work under the rules of the gods?” asked an amazed Satsuki. “To me, it seems like anything goes with them.”

It seemed unlikely to work, but they could only search for a hint from what the two goddesses had said.

''“I got some help from Hliðskjálf, the throne that lets you see across all nine worlds, and the Norns, the three goddesses who make unchangeable prophecies. Those goddesses have even seen the result of Ragnarök, but not even they know where that boy is. That means he must be in the underworld where the power of the gods doesn’t reach!!” (Waltraute)

''“Yes, but Niflheim contains the villa of the priestess spirit that even Odin bowed down to and asked to prophesy for him! And she claims that boy isn’t anywhere in the nine worlds! I can only imagine the gods are using their greater spiritual power to jam the priestess!!” (Hel)

Satsuki held her head in her hands because there were a few things she still did not understand.

“Um… What even are the nine worlds anyway?”

“Well, this entire Norse world is supported by the World Tree Yggdrasil. The nine worlds exist on its roots, around its trunk, or at the end of its branches and altogether they form the Norse world.”

“To name them, there is the heavenly world of Asgard, the giant god’s world of Vanaheimr, the human world of Midgard, the underworld of Niflheim, the giant’s world of Jötunheimr, the elf world of Alfheimr, the dark elf world of Svartálfheimr, the underground world of Niðavellir, and the fire world of Muspelheim. Odin and the other gods rule them all, but Surtr and I have essentially hacked in and overwritten some of them with our own rules.”

“That’s why the power of the gods wouldn’t be able to find the boy if he was hidden in Niflheim or Muspelheim! Because they’ve hacked them!!”

“What!? You gods are the ones who rule the nine worlds, so you’re the first ones to suspect when someone goes missing there!! This is like having to worry about a global corporation’s authorized spyware!!”

“I’ll kill you, you thief!!”

“Shut up, you old wife!!”

The goddesses started heating up again, so Index threw Kamijou Touma between them. At this point, it was a miracle his clothes were still hanging onto him.

After the goddesses calmed back down, Quenser suddenly realized something.

“Hm? So you can only use your power inside those nine fields? That’s like having a set range for your spy satellite.”

“Only inside? But that’s everything.”

“But…”

He pointed in a certain direction.

He pointed off of Skíðblaðnir but not toward the land.

In other words…

“Based on what you said, wouldn’t he be in the ocean?”