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

===Part 2===

Things had crossed a dangerous line.

The ICUs, the operating rooms, and even the treatment rooms for new arrivals were at max capacity.

The ambulances just kept bringing in too many patients.

“Get back!! Authorized personnel only!!”

“Get some extra sheets over here so we can block them from view! Don’t leave them exposed to the phone cameras!!”

Angry yelling and shouting were traded back and forth and the tension had spread even to the Christmas-decorated main lobby.

But it could have been worse.

This hospital had been receiving so many ambulances because the others had already stopped functioning altogether and this one still had its personnel and supplies in some semblance of order. What would happen to the patients if they were turned away here as well? Every second counted in EMT work, so they would know all too well that these people could not just be handed off to someone else.

But there was no saving them without solving the fundamental problem.

Closing up their wounds and stopping the bleeding would only buy some time unless the patients stopped doing what was causing them new wounds.

“Use localized anesthetic. Don’t knock them out. If they go under now, they might never come out of it!!”

“What is all that shaking outside?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care as long as it doesn’t knock this patient from their stretcher. But do make sure to be extra careful with the IV needle due to the shaking. Don’t harm their blood vessels!”

The elevator hall looked like a battlefield, but then a small set of footsteps cut across it.

For some reason, no one paid any heed to the white nun while everyone else was running around in a hurry.

“Wait, what was that?”

When they turned around again, she was already gone.

The young doctor looked to the patient on the stretcher and then stared at the medical monitors lined up alongside it.

“''Why did their vitals just stabilize? What just happened!?''”

Hearing that, the girl walked to another stretcher.

She was Index the Grimoire Library.

“Hm, hm, I see, hm.”

“They have this all backwards. But they don’t have the necessary information, so it’s not really their fault.” The fifteen centimeter god seated on the nun’s shoulder remained somewhat cautious of the calico cat on Index’s head. “As long as they remain conscious, their anxieties remain, as long as their anxieties remain, they can’t stop using magic, and as long they continue using magic, their wounds will remain. It’s all part of that pattern.”

It was like someone who obsessively washed their face over and over to calm themselves. If they rubbed their face bloody and saw that bloody face in the mirror, they might just decide they needed to wash their face some more because it was still dirty.

The simplest forms of magic did not require tools or a specific location.

They were terrified of dying, so they could not relax without continuing to use the good luck charms and fortunetelling methods they had been taught.

And that ended up destroying their esper bodies.

They only had to stop using the magic, but they had no idea what was causing it, so they would either use magic to figure out what it was or they would conclude it would only get worse if they stopped using magic.

Left like this, their lives would eventually run out.

“It doesn’t matter how much you try to bail out a sinking boat with a bucket if more and more holes are opening in the hull. It doesn’t matter how skilled the doctors are – if the patients don’t cooperate with the cure, their injury or illness will never heal. That lead doctor has done a hell of a job for someone who looks so silly. Without his instructions, these students would probably already be dead.”

“They’re all breathing with a unique rhythm. That means they’re refining their lifeforce into magic power.”

“We need to start by confiscating the spiritual items hidden in their pockets, but the simplest forms of magic don’t rely on tools. We really will need to put them to sleep to level out their ''conscious breathing method'' to accomplish anything here.”

“It would only weaken them to keep them asleep for too long.”

“We only have to break the rhythmic breathing they’re using to refine magic power. Let’s find an arbitrary reason to hook them up to a ventilator.”

Magic was the latest fad in scientific Academy City.

Even an Anglican nun who knew how to properly manage magic could tell how abnormal this was. She had never heard of it spreading like this before, yet Index and Othinus did not make their way to the center of the explosion.

They had a clear reason for remaining in the hospital.

“That human will not consider this a win if he simply defeats Anna in a fight. If all these people die in the process, he will place the burden of their deaths on his own shoulders. Even though they are not his responsibility.”

“…”

“That colossal idiot did not rush out there to protect his own life. He says he’s scared, but he still finds the destruction of this hospital or us to be worse. Refusing anything but zero deaths against a monster of that level is about as insolent as it gets, but just this once, that fool is correct. When things get truly hopeless, downgrading your goals will only mean being swallowed up by the situation. Compromise? Adapting to reality? The opinions of the wise? They can all go eat shit. There’s clearly something wrong if people are dying. If you can’t bring your self to shout that obvious fact, you’ll only drag everything into a long, drawn out war with many more deaths to come.”

This one hospital in District 7 could not take in all of the victims across Academy City. Index and Othinus had all the necessary knowledge, but neither one could use convenient healing magic on their own.

But not being able to do that one thing was not the same as being helpless.

“Anyone could solve this if they only had a manual telling them espers can’t use magic. We need to make one and distribute it through this hospital. If they see it work once, they’ll start using it even if they don’t know how it works. That will stop the city from spinning its wheels on this issue.”

“But the people of this city might not officially recognize that magic exists.”

And there were ceremonies that managed to spread despite being unofficial.

In this country’s case, the most obvious example would be the Kokkuri-san. Because the adult organizations had taken so long to accept its existence, they had been slow to react and it had caused real damage such as mass hysteria.

“We have a source we can use,” replied Othinus with a smile. That god of deception based her answer on Academy City’s bizarre situation at present. “We use R&C Occultics. The material they’ve spread around can be used to show magic is dangerous. Anything we say might be rejected outright, but official information from a well-known giant IT company will seem more reliable. We can use that to our advantage. That information is meant to get people to use magic, but we can use it to show people the risks and keep them away from it.”

“You mean…?”

“We just have to create something that bridges the gap. An extra text that explains the problems that occur when an esper uses magic.”

Index and Othinus would have preferred to be on the front line of this fight.

Magic was their area of expertise, so they were confident they would be of some help there.

But.

They turned away from that temptation.

They had chosen to fight alongside him, so they had to do everything they could to face the problems they had found. So they could avoid the horrific conclusion where that boy dragged his battered body back to the hospital only to find after the fact that everything had fallen apart.

“Listen, we can’t let anyone die.”

“Right.”

They would protect Academy City, the people who lived there, and the home he would return to.

“This hospital is a sanctuary. We start here, establish a methodology, and then spread that sanctuary out until it covers Academy City as a whole. And that will also help that softhearted human.”

“I know that already!”

So this was their battle.

It was fought in a different place and in a different way, but those girls were giving their all just like Kamijou Touma was.