Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter2 (section)

===Part 2===

Once the battle with the Cypher named Blue Stalker ended, Kamijou Touma and Index were released unharmed.

The white and black Specineff was nowhere to be found.

Only after pushing the ultra-thin goggles up onto his forehead did Kamijou remember that he could even do that.

He no longer felt the extreme realism that had seemed to dive deep below his skin.

The portable device he held was unharmed. There was no sign of it having been snapped in half.

He saw the usual scene of District 7 in front of the center.

“Index. That’s right! Index! Are you okay!?”

“Bwoh, mgah!? Wh-what is this!? I can’t see! …Is this a bag!?”

Kamijou suddenly remembered they had done that to her.

Index managed to get her head out of the sack, but the calico cat only stuck its head out and mewed. It seemed to like the enclosed space.

Meanwhile, Aogami Pierce blinked in confusion.

“Kami-yan, how are you feeling? Are you really all right!?”

“Eh? Ah? Well, I feel just fine…”

“I was really shocked when ''you suddenly disappeared'', Kami-yan. I thought you’d been kidnapped by a Teleporter.”

“Disa-…what?”

“You just up and vanished. Want to check the center’s security camera? It was like a magic trick. Do you know what a Ring Scan is?”

“No.”

“When you play Virtual-On, a ring of light appears and scans you from head to toe. Well, you might not be able to tell when you’re playing with the goggles on. I think it’s used to display your body when you move around in the cockpit.”

“Ohh…”

He had seen that in front of the center. He recalled the ring of light that appeared over the heads of the boys and girls as they played Virtual-On.

“So that’s called a Ring Scan?”

“But that only appears once at the start. I’ve never heard of the scan suddenly starting in the middle of a game and I’ve definitely never heard of the player’s body disappearing into it. No, wait…disappearing…a Virtual-On player disappearing… Could it be…?”

Not even Aogami understood what was happening, so his explanation was quite fragmentary.

But he failed to notice Kamijou’s confusion and tilted his head as he continued.

“Right after you disappeared while joining the battle, your Temjin began moving like I’ve never seen before. But once the game was over, you reappeared like nothing had happened. What was that?”

(A Teleporter? No, my right hand would have negated that, right?)

That second Ring Scan should not have happened.

And if Aogami Pierce was to be believed, Kamijou Touma’s disappearance had happened in the short period between Temjin’s sudden activation and the end of the match.

A certain idea came to mind first.

(It all felt oddly real and I couldn’t quite tell where I really was.)

A chill ran down his spine.

“Did it happen when I smashed the controller – my lifeline – inside the cockpit?)

He still did not know what that had meant or if it had even been the right thing to do. He was even doubtful that simply breaking their portable device would provide other players the same result.

Perhaps it had more to do with throwing out all assumptions.

Perhaps it had more to do with truly believing he could move the way he wanted.

Or something like that.

“Hey, Aogami.”

“Yeah?”

Kamijou just about asked about it, but he held his tongue.

Aogami Pierce had held a negative view of the Defected players. But the puzzled look on his face suggested he had yet to realize that Kamijou had Defected.

(He mentioned something about anti-tracking stealth, didn’t he? Can the center’s monitoring system not tell who’s Defected? Well, I guess they’d just search them out and delete their accounts if they could.)

After thinking through it all, a new question occurred to him.

Yes…

“Index. What about her? Did an unnatural Ring Scan start in the middle of the battle for her too?”

“No, it was only you, Kami-yan.”

“Touma, what are you talking about?”

“It was…only me? Index, did anything happen while you were fighting that Blue Stalker? Um, how should I put this…?” 

“No. There were only some times when Bal-Bados’s movements were a little unstable.”

“Unstable?”

“It was like the movements were catching on something. I would move the stick, but it only strained and wouldn’t react like I wanted.”

Was that it?

Kamijou could not say for sure, but had he resisted that odd feeling by taking things a step further and breaking his portable device while Index stayed put and returned to the rules of the Next Generation Game?

Was that the source of the difference?

Kamijou’s physical body had entirely vanished, but Index had simply continued operating her portable device like she was possessed even when her vision was blocked.

But…

(In that case…Aogami might be wrong about the change occurring when you fight a Defected Virtuaroid.)

Kamijou looked down at the device in his hand.

(Does it actually begin when you realize you can do more in that cockpit than just operate the Virtuaroid via the portable device? Well, I had a little help getting there thanks to the Blue Stalker’s unfair movements and that weird corrupted message.)

Question it.

That mysterious message had been sent to his address from his address.

But he seemed to remember something similar happening when reporting on a system error. For example, the automated email sent back when an email could not be delivered. It might have been something happening inside his own device with no connection to the Blue Stalker.

But this was different from an email delivery error.

He had no idea what the portable device had read from him to trigger that message.

“…”

The Next Generation Game Virtual-On was only the tip of the iceberg.

A massive amount of data and scripts were hidden below the surface.

His intuition told him the Defection was not adding anything to the system; it was switching off the security to use the system’s full functionality to some end. Yes, what was the purpose of the Ring Scan used on normal players? Index had said it seemed to be scanning their bodies, but Kamijou doubted it influenced how they controlled their units. Could it be nearly useless and the proper Ring Scan was the one that had made Kamijou disappear?

But.

In that case, the Blue Stalker’s intent was a mystery. Why did they not keep that secret to themselves? If they wanted to cheat and show off their superiority, it might be best to target people who could not cheat in the same way, but that would ultimately let the secret out and rob them of the very superiority they wanted to show off.

Kamijou doubted they were too stupid to understand that.

In that case, did they have some other goal?

“Whatever the case, I’m glad you drove them off. The center might get fewer visitors if someone like that kept hanging around nearby.”

(Oh, then I should probably avoid fighting others from now on. It would hardly be fair now that I’ve Defected and I want to avoid providing an odd inspiration like the Blue Stalker did for me. It’s a shame because this seems like a lot of fun.)

“But is it really over?”

“Who knows, Kami-yan. Your movements were pretty superhuman to keep up with the Blue Stalker, but that blue Cypher never did transform. And it made several miraculous dodges in a row. I bet it was just toying with you. Plus, look at its name. You don’t want someone like that following you around everywhere, do you?”

“Ugh…”

“There’s no guarantee since a Temjin base might not be able to keep up with a transformed Cypher’s hit-and-away tactics, but if you’re going to be defenseless otherwise, wouldn’t it be a good idea to come up with a self-defense plan?”

“Hmm. You mean like changing my username and selecting a different unit?”

Kamijou tried to do just that, but the unit selection would not accept his alternative choice.

“What’s going on there?” asked Aogami Pierce. “Some kind of error? Try rebooting it.”

(No, could this be due to Defecting?)

He set that plan aside and tried coming up with something else.

“Instead of that, what if I turn off the wireless…or just switch off the power?”

“That might work, but it’d be pretty inconvenient. These days, you need these things to ride the train or withdraw money at the ATM, right? I don’t know how far you’ve gotten into using them, Kami-yan, but it seems a lot of people can’t calculate change or remember any English vocabulary without them. Y’know, like how people grow reliant on cellphone kanji conversion. The people who are really into it can use them to produce really complex kanji you’ve never even seen before and foreign languages even more ''chuuni'' than German, but take away their portable device and they can barely communicate with another human being.”

“I-I can’t even think about living without the coupons!! …But that only leaves me one option.”

“You’ve gotta thoroughly customize that plain Temjin, right? Most rookies have barely touched the customization, but that means they have plenty of room to grow.”