Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 2===

At the insistence of the sexy crybaby, they set off for some emergency grocery shopping. Mostly because sleeping in the kotatsu was impossible with her making such a racket.

Kamijou decided it would be a good idea to get the shrine visit done with while they were out. He was getting his new year off to a somewhat guilty start since he felt bad going so soon after telling Kumokawa he wouldn’t be.

“Ugh, I’m too tired to move.”

“And I don’t have it in me to cook. Hey, Index, how about we buy some ingredients and then grab something we can eat right away? It’s New Year’s, so they must have food stands set up near the shrine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Touma. Anything you can buy at a food stand counts as a snack. I demand three full meals!”

“You always ask for croquettes and yakisoba at the shopping district, so I think your definition of snack is too broad. A set of four takoyaki I would understand, but an entire okonomiyaki is a meal!”

Kamijou’s group sluggishly left the dorm room.

But one of them still wasn’t satisfied.

“…”

Transcendent Aradia scowled down at her left hand.

It was written clear on her face that she appreciated not having her hands duct taped behind her back anymore and she could live with the makeshift duct tape shoes covering her feet, but she did not like having Imagine Breaker tightly grasping her hand. A lot to fit on the beautiful goddess’s small face.

The Transcendent spoke with her voice pitched terrifyingly low.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What is this?”

“An Aradia countermeasure. What else?”

Her unimaginably icy voice only got a confused look from Kamijou.

Were Transcendents just too far removed from humans? This hot-blooded boy would get in the bath with the Bologna Succubus if necessary for a battle and he didn’t seem bothered by this either.

“The idea that you can’t use magic as long as you can’t make your ointment makes a lot of sense, but only duct taping your feet doesn’t feel like enough. I wanted a little more insurance.”

“Don’t I get a say!? And how about showing some tact regarding me being a woman? You’re even intertwining our fingers like we’re lovers!!”

“Ow, ow, ow!! How did you even twist your hand like that!? You’re bending all my fingers the wrong way!!!”

Aradia twirled like she was ballroom dancing to hit Kamijou with a Broken Heart Finger Smasher, but Kamijou couldn’t even let go, fell onto his butt, and writhed around on the same sidewalk he normally used to get to school. It looked a lot like the beautiful aikido moves that Anti-Skill used and even a graceful young woman could pull off.

Aradia hissed at him like a snake and Othinus sighed after managing to avoid falling from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“What a pain. Transcendent Aradia, you should have noticed something now that you’ve tried moving around.”

“…”

“You’re furious with him, but ''this is all you managed''. But the way things were yesterday, you would have torn through this human’s torso with your bare hand if he so much as irritated you.”

Aradia quietly clicked her tongue.

And her hand remained in his grasp. She could bend his hand using her finger joints, but she could not tear the hand from his wrist or break the arm from his shoulder.

Although this difference in the superhuman’s power was lost on Kamijou as he wept in pain on the ground.

“Hmph. So what is this about a shrine visit?”

“?”

“No matter how silly it is, it is worth my time to know your plans. So I can plan a counterattack or an escape.”

“Is she openly telling her enemy that because she’s some confusingly high-level form of tsundere?” Othinus whispered in his ear, but he had no way of judging that.

“D-District 12,” he replied. “Even Academy City has a district where all the mythology and religion research is done.”

Othinus had suggested they use more duct tape to wrap Aradia up like a mummy and toss her in the bathroom, but that idea had scared Kamijou. Even if she was somewhat neutralized at the moment, she was still a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal. If she managed to get the tape off her feet and made some ointment while they were away, things would get quite literally out of hand.

He honestly didn’t want to let her out of his sight. He knew firsthand she would not hesitate to kill if it would advance her goals.

He hesitantly looked over and the witch goddess responded in a sulky voice.

“What do you want?”

And so they set out.

The train schedule was different for the holiday. When they arrived at the station, they saw a kadomatsu decoration at the entrance. There was also a kagami mochi display in the employee waiting room next to the ticket gates. And even though it was early morning during winter break, one of the platforms was lightly crowded with students. That was of course the platform for the line leading to District 12. The crowd included a lot of brightly dressed girls.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy viewed his companions one at a time: Index, Othinus, Aradia, and Sphinx.

“(With a group like this, I should just throw out any hope of making any adolescent memories today. Ha ha ha.)”

“Human, what kind of hope did you just give up on?”

He ended up with the 15cm god tugging on his ear. But no matter what any of them said, a nun, a god, a witch, and a cat were not the appropriate party for a New Year’s quest. None of them would look at home wearing a furisode. If they had to choose one thing to bring with them to a desert island, they would seriously choose something like a musty old grimoire or a sketchy ointment, so a swimsuit vacation or a seasonal event was too much to ask of them.

The LCD ads covering the sides of the trains were in full New Year’s mode. They were playing ads for a New Year’s sale at a fancy department store or for an AR campaign to win New Year’s money by going to different parts of Academy City with your phone in hand. Interspersed among the ads were the occasional horoscope or a headline seemingly taken from the top online news stories.

“A social phenomenon some are calling an entrance exam boycott is showing signs of growing,” read one story. “Academy City has rejected the recommendation to adopt the less alarming name of kotatsu syndrome.”

“Ugh…”

“Index, stop trying to read the scrolling text if you aren’t used to it. Some people get motion sickness from it.”

“Why is it so hot and humid in here? It’s like this gross invisible haze is coming up from below us.”

He had thought Index was being unusually well-behaved, but apparently she had been hit by the mysterious heating effect of trains.

“…”

Meanwhile, Aradia was looking somewhat upwards while still holding his hand in the crowd. He thought maybe she was nervous around modern technology since she too was from the magic side, but he realized her focus was on the fluorescent light near the door.

Or more accurately, on the 2mm security camera hidden on the fluorescent light’s joint. Kamijou’s eyes widened too.

“Huh? When did they install those?”

“They must be to increase security on the trains. In other words, to catch pickpockets and molesters. …Interesting. This boy insists on holding my hand, which keeps his dominant hand hidden within the crowd. If I scream and say he’s molesting me when the door opens at a station, I might just have a chance to escape.)”

“Don’t you dare turn preserving my social standing into an impossible challenge!”

Academy City covered about 1/3 of Tokyo.

That was too much to cover on foot, but it didn’t take long to cover on a train.

The train soon arrived in District 12 and the view outside the window entirely changed.

“Impressive,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder.

Giant pyramids and Greek-style temples were lined up in between the skyscrapers made of thick concrete and glass. One temple had various color patterns applied to it with projection mapping, perhaps to research the theory that the Parthenon wasn’t originally white. There were plenty of enormous stone monuments and goddess statues. The colors washing down the river were not fallen leaves or flower petals – they were origami dolls designed to decompose naturally. A herd of deer wandered happily along an elevated street which was closed to traffic. More than a research institute for mythology and religion, the place felt like a theme park full of replicas of famous tourist locations from around the world.

Kamijou had rarely ever visited the district, but he knew the basics.

“It isn’t that they actually believe in any gods. The idea is to research why humans believe in gods and what is needed to keep people in the special psychological state known as ‘belief’ long term. Most of the research is in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and architecture.”

“Hmph.” “Hmph.”

Othinus and Aradia both sounded less than pleased. Unsurprising when they were both known as gods.

“(I probably shouldn’t tell them this is the headquarters of Academy City’s analysis of all things unscientific and supernatural and that it’s commonly known as the Occult Denial Society.)”

“We heard all of that.” “We heard all of that.”

The two divine ones were suddenly the best of friends as they responded in perfect unison, but that was when the train arrived in the District 12 station.

Kamijou’s group followed the crowd exiting onto the platform. The train actually tilted to one side so many people were leaving. Most of these people were here for their New Year’s shrine visit.

“Touma, where exactly are we going?”

“I’m not sure, but we should reach a popular shrine if we follow the crowd, right?”

The mythology focus showed through even in the station’s exit signs. They said things like “A9, Great Pyramid Area Exit” or “This way to Tree Worship, Megalith Culture, and Near Death Experience Labs”.

Kamijou was intensely curious what the pyramids of Egyptian mythology did on New Year’s, but today was the day for a Shinto shrine visit. He followed the crowd containing a lot of furisode girls through the ticket gate.

And…

“…”

They were still out in front of the station, but Aradia stared up at something in astonishment. A skyscraper covered on all sides with glass rose more than 50 stories.

“W-wait a second.”

“C’mon, Aradia. Let’s get to the shrine.”

“When you said shrine, I thought you meant your country’s unique religious structures! With torii, offering boxes, and komainu!! Why are all those kimono girls entering a high-tech skyscraper!?”

“Hurry up.”

The large entrance area contained a lot of people. There were more than 20 elevators to reach the higher floors, but there was still a line.

There was a building guide in the center of the floor, explaining what could be found on each floor.

Floors 1-5: General Information and Shopping Area. Floor 6: Christian – Latin Relief Cathedral. Floor 7: Museum. Floor 8: Egyptian Mythology – Nile Nome Temple. Floor 9: Buddhism – Great Red Lotus Temple. Floor 10: Shinto – Daybreak Shrine. Floor 11: Folk Belief, Folktale, and Multipurpose Fortunetelling. And so on.

Needless to say, the Shinto shrine and Christian cathedral found here had none of the things that mattered to the magic side. They were only shallow recreations made from the scientific perspective of Academy City. Their research wasn’t even asking why people believed in Shinto fortune slips. They asked what psychological conditions led people to pay money for fortune slips when the outcomes were determined by nothing more than random chance.

The witch goddess’s eyes widened in disbelief. How many times in history had that miracle occurred?

“This can’t be real.”

“If there’s one thing Academy City can’t spare, it’s land. They can’t have big shrines and temples sprawled out along the ground. That’s why each one is built in a huge garden on a floor of these buildings. It’s all indoors, but I’ve heard you can even meditate under a waterfall if you want. Since each floor has no interior walls, they have even more space than your average school campus.”

Index just about wandered off to where they were giving out grilled mochi for free, so Kamijou grabbed her by the back of the collar. Take one step from the elevator line and they would have to return to the very back of the line.

This one building was not a special case.

Most of the skyscrapers sticking up from District 12 like bamboo shoots were the same. Any one building did not contain just one type of religious or mythological facility, so the people (well, the university research team) that wanted a type of temple or cathedral just struck it where there was an opening like leasing a room in a multi-tenant building. In District 12, it wasn’t unusual for the ground floor to hold a discount store and the 2nd floor to contain a church.

“This is unusual, Touma. Why do you know so much about the occult here?”

The answer to that was a secret Kamijou had sworn to take to his grave. In truth, Aogami Pierce had once gone here on an ascetic journey to rid himself of all worldly thoughts, but instead found the shrine maiden so cute that professional warrior monks from the neighboring temple had to be called in as reinforcements and the boy was thrown out and banned from ever entering the district again. Then when the idiot had wanted to recover the contents of the hard drive he had wiped in his short-lived zeal, he had ended up writhing in pain in a back alley junk shop where a villainous professor had nearly digitized his brain and DNA. The story made Kamijou suspect that such heavily concentrated desire was like a dark crystal carrying a form of power all its own.

Eventually, it was Kamijou’s group’s turn.

They crammed themselves into the fairly large elevator and rode it up. The elevator was so crowded, they couldn’t even reach the buttons, but they knew they would still reach the floor containing a giant Shinto shrine.

The gentle acceleration suddenly stopped.

The doors slid open to reveal what lay beyond.