Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===

He had not thought much of it when going inside, but going back outside was more of a challenge.

They knew all those people had disappeared, but everything else about it was a mystery.

So they wanted to know the rules at play here: what was safe and what would get them attacked? Ideally, they would get that information before attacking the HQ building and without R&C Occultics noticing them.

“Yikes, it’s cold!!!???”

The chill seemed to squeeze at Kamijou’s skin – no, at his heart. Getting used to the heated building had been a bad idea. The cold pierced right through his thin synthetic jacket. He actually started stepping back into the building, so an annoyed Stiyl had to kick him back outside.

In the empty streets, Kamijou stood in the center of an intersection between 8-lane roads without even paying attention to the light’s color. He felt like he had stepped into another world.

“What’s wrong, Touma?” asked Index.

“Nothing…”

He could see his breaths and his ears hurt. The cold was so bad he was pretty sure a wet towel would freeze even as he swung it through the air, but there was more than just that. He had an awkward sense that he was spying on a place he was not meant to be.

The traffic light’s colors kept changing, but there were no other pedestrians or cars and the large screen on a building wall was loudly playing a cosmetic ad no one was around to see anymore. The headline news showed a familiar face. The bearded President was saying something into the mics surrounding him. With so much English all around him, Kamijou pulled out his Transla-Pen and let its mic pick up the English conversation.

“I am one. I think love is free and…”

Kamijou gave the pen a confused look.

“Huh? Do I have the settings on this thing right? Hey, Index, what is he actually saying?”

“Let’s see, ahem… ‘I am single. I think nothing should impede our freedom to love whoever we like and express that love however we like. So I will hold my head high while I say: goo goo gaga, mommy!!’ ”

A flame roared as it consumed oxygen. If Kamijou had not immediately held up his right hand, Stiyl’s flame sword would have reduced him to ashes.

“Why would you make that girl say things like that! You’re just asking to be killed now, aren’t you!?”

“Gah!? Bwah!! What is wrong with this country!? Is the entire place nothing but landmines!?

Anyway, that President clearly hadn’t changed. Was he afraid of anything? Kamijou was reluctant to ask because he was fairly certain the man would say he was scared of manju.

But that footage looked like it came from another world. Kamijou could not believe he was in the same country as that smile. He felt like the screen was being used to communicate between Earth and Mars.

The presence of electricity actually made it feel colder.

He might have been able to accept it easier in a complete blackout.

“At least there aren’t any fires,” said Kanzaki.

“Probably due to all the AI appliances and smart houses controlled through the internet,” replied Stiyl.

Those comments led Kamijou to belatedly wonder about the kitchens in all the homes where the people had vanished. With the fire fighters gone too, the smallest fire could engulf the metropolis in a great conflagration, but that had not happened. That was thanks to the machines automatically putting out the fires.

Kamijou was honestly impressed.

“Way to go, LA. Those aren’t even common in Academy City yet.”

“Hmph. Have you forgotten, human? Your Academy City is 20-30 years ahead of the outside world.”

“?”

“Those who stop to think things through before adopting a new technology can progress further, faster. A power system hooked up to the internet? An online home? The companies supplying those services aren’t going to tell you all the risks involved. Just look at computers and phones – electronics are riddled with vulnerabilities the manufacturers aren’t aware of. R&C Occultics’s IT team would be able to abuse those systems to set fire to any home they want or spy on you from the other side of the globe.”

“Aww…”

“What, trying to win me over with your moe sleeves? Well, if you’re okay with giving the unseen online masses access to your gas line and front door lock, be my guest. If your luck holds out, you might just live comfortably like that. Me, though? I’m sick of relying on luck.”

Kamijou wasn’t sure if the magic girl’s paranoia was impressive or concerning.

At any rate, it was hard to believe the city really was abandoned. It reminded him of a ghost ship. If he peeked inside a nearby office, he was pretty sure he would find the coffee pot was still boiling and there might still be delivery drones flying around with packages.

“There it is again.”

Kamijou held his body for warmth and looked to the 1st-floor tenant of a nearby building. It was a burger chain that had restaurants in Japan too. He ignored all the slang-filled English, but the big picture in the window was enough to know they were advertising a triple burger with beef, pork, and chicken patties. Since he had not seen it in Academy City before, it may have been a regional thing, or it might end up in Japan eventually.

But his focus was primarily on the entrance. The glass door had makeshift weatherstripping applied with thick duct tape. That gave it a very unwelcoming feel, but the door itself was ordinary, non-bulletproof glass. He was sure he could break it just by grabbing a stone off the ground and throwing it. It reminded him of the similar mismatch he had noticed at the airport.

“What’s the point of this? Why bother with the weatherstripping when they could lower the metal shutter?”

“It may not be to keep people out, human. Academy City will have been distracted from monitoring their people here due to Handcuffs, so maybe ''someone desperate for victory ended up using a poison gas weapon in a foreign city.''”

He was not sure what she meant by “Handcuffs”, but he could not focus on that right now.

The mention of poison gas made him look down at his shoulder where the god sat with legs crossed. She looked exasperated.

“It’s only a possibility. I have no particular reason to think it’s that. But it would explain why R&C Occultics hasn’t said anything and all the infected bodies have been removed. Remember, we don’t know for sure that massive IT company is behind the disappearances.”

Othinus was not serious about this…he hoped. If she actually suspected it, she would have warned him not to touch things.

Still, 30 million people were missing.

It was enough to inspire some absurd theories and a fair amount of fear.

“I-it’s too cold,” complained Index while shivering.

Come to think of it, did nuns wear different habits during the winter? Not to mention that hers was held together with safety pins, so it had to be drafty. And just like a cough at a student assembly could be contagious, her mention of the cold kept Kamijou from focusing on anything else. He shivered and asked a question of the entire team.

“So what should we check first? You mentioned wanting to check the police and hospital records, right?”

“Our first stop is right over there.”

Stiyl pointed with his lit cigarette even though they were in a no-smoking area. Was that because the city was empty, or did he simply not care?

There was a decent-sized space in between two skyscrapers. It must have been a basketball court to begin with.

But it was now filled with thick, moss green tents. And instead of small triangular camping tents, these were garage-like tunnel tents.

“Overlord Revenge was meant to land on the West Coast and attack the R&C Occultics HQ building in downtown LA. It was meant to be a rapid strike.” Stiyl blew out some cigarette smoke. “But LA had become unfamiliar territory for the Anglicans and Academy City. The largest city on the West Coast had been transformed into a Rosicrucian hideout without the US government even noticing. So they must have set up some field bases on their way to attack the HQ building. They needed to claim some territory for themselves or else they could be trapped between the building’s defenders and another unit attacking from behind.”

Kamijou breathed a sigh of relief. He had already set off the alarm in the airport, but trespassing on ordinary private property felt like an even worse violation.

They would be treasure hunting without permission regardless, but he was more comfortable with some tents set up outside than breaking into those weather-stripped LA buildings. He had to preserve that feeling. These houses and buildings were abandoned, but they were not ancient ruins abandoned centuries ago. He could not just waltz on in and help himself to whatever was inside.

“I hope this is safe. I wouldn’t want that unmanned machinegun to start swiveling toward us.”

Othinus’s whispered remark made Kamijou cower down. That squat three-legged thing could move on its own?

But Index walked right on in before he could stop her.

“Now, then,” said Stiyl on his way to one of the thick tents.

Kanzaki was a little more considerate because she looked back just once to give him a warning.

“You can search around if you like, but do not touch any of the firearms or explosives. I know you can’t read the English labels, but be on the lookout for the words ‘danger’, ‘caution’, and ‘warning’.”

“It’s a military base,” said Othinus. “You might as well tell him not to touch anything.”

Kanzaki set off to quickly search the base, her long ponytail swishing behind her, and Othinus breathed an exasperated sigh. Kamijou and Index exchanged a glance.

“What should we do?”

“The key to survival is securing food, Touma.”

Index was her normal self, at least. Left to her own devices, she would probably consume every last one of the base’s rations – or whatever they called their portable food – so he decided to accompany her and restrain her when necessary. After all, he was officially Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum’s “chaperone”.

“This place is incredible… What are those things?”

“Grr! They look like mechs. Does that mean they only keep gasoline as food?”

Kamijou groaned when he took a peek inside one of the tents that reminded him of a garage or a tunnel.

He was finally seeing Japanese again, but that only made him feel even more lost.

This was supposed to be an Academy City field base, but it looked more like one of the high-tech car factories he had seen videos of. There was a large work table that moved up and down with a jack and countless robot arms surrounded it. Looking up, he even saw metal rails and cranes for carrying machinery around. It looked more like a dentist’s office for large machines than a place for living soldiers.

Yet the ground crunched an awful lot below his feet. Anywhere that worked with semiconductors needed to be even more sterile and dust-free than an operating room for humans, but maybe that wasn’t possible with a ''field'' base. Maybe they had to be prepared to deal with this level of filth.

Even inside the tent, a few metal containers were stacked up. They were far from organized, so it looked a lot like someone who had yet to finish unpacking after moving to a new home.

“Danger, caution, warning…”

“Those ones have all three,” pointed out Othinus.

Kamijou scrambled back, but that was when he noticed the stickers labelling the metal doors.

''Five Over – Model Case: Railgun.

''Five Over – Model Case: Meltdowner.

“Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…”

He pulled out his Transla-Pen, but only let it wander aimlessly through the air.

He did not want to trace those letters and confirm they said what he thought they said. The labels were enough of a shock, but the careless way the containers were piled up was even more frightening.

And there was more.

One of the metal boxes was given a special spot in the very back. It had a much more sinister label attached diagonally across its door.

It almost looked like a cursed charm.

''Five Over OS – Model Case: Accelerator.

“U-um, Othinus-san? My, uh, English must be worse than I thought. Eh heh heh. Because this can’t possibly say what I think it does…can it?”

“Use your Transla-Pen.”

“No, no, no! If I do that, it’ll appear to me in undeniable Japanese and I could never accept it! I’m too scared!!”

He had no desire to check inside the container. He could only pray nothing like this had been set loose in the abandoned city.

“Anyway.” Othinus sighed from his shoulder. “Academy City’s technology is 20-30 years ahead of the outside world, remember?”

“?”

“That means the militaries out here are going to trend toward mechanized and unmanned warfare in the future. These have been upgraded since we last saw them, so they can switch between manned and unmanned. Hybrid weapons like that may become the mainstream, but it’s so boring and uninspired. These only lead to unfeeling wars ruled by efficiency and calculations. …And it raises a concerning possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“R&C Occultics is a massive IT company known the world over. And they’re an ultra-corrupt company that tears down the world’s barriers to use magic alongside science. I have my doubts Academy City could really take the initiative while using ''only'' science. Hey, you there.”

“Yes?” asked Index, turning toward them.

Othinus haughtily crossed her arms and pointed at a random device with her chin.

“What would you do if I asked you to break through that computer’s firewall?”

“Um…what’s a firewall?”

“Basically, it’s a form of numerical code.”

“Then I would check the stars and pray to god!”

“…”

Kamijou was speechless.

But not because it was absurd.

“Do you remember now?” asked Othinus, smiling.

Kamijou gulped and hesitantly turned toward Index.

“On the 24th… Didn’t you break through a phone’s password lock faster than Misaka or the Sisters could with their electricity powers?”

“That was just rearranging the numbers with a random number table, right? Those codes are used in the magic world too. It’s rare for a grimoire to be directly readable, for example.”

“She can do that ''without any magic power of her own'',” said Othinus. “Then what could someone do with actual magic? They can break passwords by looking to the stars and mess with the contents of quantum encryption by praying to god. Now, how is a science-only group supposed to defend against an attack like that?”

Kamijou was speechless again. In modern battles, people were not immediately sent to the truly dangerous places. Satellites and drones would be used to get footage that would be carefully examined. This situation was far from ordinary, but why hadn’t they done that here? Yes, the magic side was leading the recovery, but they also couldn’t trust those electronics. Not when it required an electronic warfare battle with an international IT company that had more than just science at its disposal.

“But this is only one possibility with no real proof yet. It’s just an idea I had, so you don’t need to take it too seriously. But if it does turn out to be true, it is possible that ''Academy City’s own weapons were hijacked and used against them''. Combine that with my previous poison gas theory and you have a decent explanation for these mysterious disappearances.”

They were surrounded by computers, but Kamijou had no idea how to check for hacking or viruses. He briefly thought of the #3 electric girl back in that Japanese hospital, but that wasn’t much help when she wasn’t here.

“Look, I found some hamburger steak!!” rejoiced Index. “But it’s frozen solid. I can’t eat it like this.”

“Wait, that’s not meant to be frozen. Is it so cold the boil-in-a-bag stuff has frozen solid?”

Kamijou had no obligation to help with Stiyl’s work, but he was worried about the people who had lived in this cold, empty city.

He wasn’t looking for a program or a script. He wandered around looking for something that an ordinary person could recognize as a clue. Eventually, he discovered a box smaller than a dryer in one corner of the garage-like tent. It was a safe. Carelessly, there was some thick paper caught in the door, preventing it from locking. That actually creeped him out because it suggested how chaotic things had been here.

“What is that?” asked a voice from atop his head.

The half-open door did not reveal stacks of cash or gold bars within the thick safe. It only contained a watch. But not even a Swiss one with gems covering the face. It was made of glass and plastic and the band was colorful rubber. It was weirdly digital and honestly looked pretty cheap. He pulled it out and tilted his head at what he found.

“A smartwatch?”

He was fairly certain this accessory was meant to sync with a phone to monitor the wearer’s health and simplify operation of the phone. As a poor student who was more worried about getting enough to eat than going on a diet, he had little need for that sort of luxury gadget, but he had a different reason for questioning its presence here.

“This model…''doesn’t work without a phone, right?'' It’s useless without syncing, so why would it be in the safe without the phone?”

“Trust your instincts, human. This is the same as the missing 30 million. If something strange has happened, there must be a strange reason behind it. …There is more to this watch. Storing it in the safe on its own must be a message from whoever put it there. They were saying the watch is important on its own.”

He pressed the button on the side that was made to look like a watch’s crown, but it displayed a connection error instead of a lock screen. Was that what it did without the phone nearby? It couldn’t do anything without a phone, just like wireless headphones couldn’t play music on their own. However, a name, presumably of the user, was displayed across the entire face of the watch.

Index moved her cheek right up next to his to get a look and read off the name.

“Melzabeth…Grocery?”

“Hey, over here!!”

Kamijou’s thoughts were cut off by a shout from outside.

They left the tent to find Stiyl holding a thick stack of papers.

The priest blew out some smoke in annoyance.

“We can’t trust the reports they left. It looks like they were too confused to make proper records, so we won’t find any further answers in their data.”

“There are unmanned weapons all over the place, so what about their camera footage?”

“Do you know how to get past the authorization screen to view the data? It uses analog involuntary muscle fiber movement identification. That means it reads the unconscious trembling of your fingertips, which comes straight from the cerebellum.”

Kamijou winced. He briefly thought of what Index had said a bit ago, but knowing how to decode grimoires did not give you free rein over computers. If it did, they would have had her manipulating computers on the level of Misaka Mikoto by now. In a way, Stiyl and Kanzaki knew Index’s specs better than Kamijou, so they would rely on her abilities when they were useful. That was the entire reason she had been taken from Academy City, after all.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head.

“Then what next? The police? The hospital?”

“There is more we can do. Although it might seem primitive to an Academy City student like you.”

With that, Kanzaki sprinkled some kind of liquid at her feet.

Kamijou waited a bit, but…

“?”

Nothing happened. The liquid froze, but that was hardly a surprise when it was 20 below freezing. However, this was apparently how it was supposed to work.

“That was tannin,” explained Kanzaki.

“Tan-what?”

“You can find it in tea. And did you know it reacts strongly to iron and can cause black discolorations? That is one reason teacups are usually porcelain.”

What was her point?

Kamijou had gotten in the habit of asking questions instead of thinking for himself, but then it hit him.

“Iron as in…blood?”

“The joint Anglican and Academy City force was attacked by R&C Occultics and then 30 million people disappeared from LA.”

This was probably a spell that used tea, not just tannin itself.

“But as you can see, there is no trace of bloodshed inside one of the bases that had to be their primary targets,” smoothly explained Kanzaki. “This could be a major hint toward figuring out what happened.”

This meant R&C Occultics did not slaughter the Academy City personnel with blades and guns and then drag away their corpses. But then what ''did'' happen?

Had they been attacked in a bloodless fashion?

Had the Academy City people been taken elsewhere before they were dealt with?

Or had Academy City caused the disappearances, so none of their own people were harmed?

“All this digital nonsense isn’t how we magicians do things.” Stiyl’s cigarette wiggled up and down in the corner of his mouth. “We can get better information using a spell to draw out residual thoughts. So back away. I’ll be getting the grimoire library’s help for this magic, so I don’t want your right hand getting in the way.”

“Yeah, yeah. I want you to get this done with as soon as possible too. Index, you be a good girl, okay? …Um, Kanzaki?”

Kanzaki Kaori did not respond.

Her eyes were fixated on a point in the distance.

“?”

Puzzled and sensing tension in the air, Kamijou followed her gaze to see one of the skyscrapers jutting into the night sky. It was located past the buildings surrounded the basketball court, so Kanzaki was staring through the gap between some of the buildings.

But now was not the time to be impressed with her observational skills.

There was something there.

The clean, straight lines of the artificial structure were somewhat disturbed by a small black dot. Was that a human figure!?

“Here it comes,” whispered Kanzaki Kaori.

Just then, Kamijou saw something flash.

A bluish-white blade of light stretched out endlessly to slice through the Los Angeles night.

But that was only an illusion.

“I-it’s sand!! They sent out a bunch of pressurized sand, like an industrial cutter!!”

It was over by the time he had identified it as sand. It rushed in so fast he could have mistaken it for an attack made of light. It was too late to act by the time he had noticed it and shouted about it.

''However.

“Hm.” Kanzaki Kaori did not even draw her nearly-2m sword. “This magic is not known to the Anglican Church, so this must be an R&C Occultics defender. But a cutting attack would splatter blood everywhere, so it doesn’t fit with 30 million people vanishing without a trace.”

The sand magic approached with enough force to slice through a tanker, but it scattered when it hit the scabbard she removed from her belt and held up horizontally.

Several lines of bluish-white light raced through the space around her a short moment later. They were the glint of seven wires. Kamijou did not know how to use magic and he could no longer borrow St. Germain’s power, but the light filling the space around him reminded him of a string figure. Whatever it was, he figured it was necessary for her spell.

She was a Saint.

Those extraordinary magicians could draw on a fraction of the Son of God’s power because their physical characteristics so closely matched his.

But a direct hit was not the only threat, so Kamijou spoke up in a panic.

“I-it isn’t over yet.”

Kanzaki had blocked the sand magic – the cutter? – launched straight at them from the skyscraper rooftop, but the large shopping mall and parking garage in between had been fully sliced through.

“It’s coming here! Kanzaki, now isn’t the time to stand around and think!!”

Had the direction of the collapse been part of the enemy’s plan?

Worse, the mall appeared to have included a large gym. The indoor pool kept warm with a heater or a boiler caused a large white explosion like a massive water balloon had burst, scattering the water across the minus-20 world.

It slammed into the ground and froze over while approaching with who-knows-how-many tons of weight behind it.

“Run to a nearby building,” spat Stiyl with a click of his tongue.

“Eh? Huh?”

Kamijou was confused, but the priest did not bother with him.

Instead, he grabbed Index by the collar and left.

“A tent isn’t enough to stop this. You’ll be engulfed and frozen like a mammoth!”

Kanzaki could not bring herself to abandon anyone, so she explained while falling back. That just left Kamijou. He had to get running if he was going to catch up. Stiyl had already sliced through the basketball court fence with a flame sword and left with Index struggling in his other arm.

“Kanzaki, use the surface area!!”

“I can try, but I can’t guarantee it will freeze!”

The magicians shouted to each other and then the thin wires sliced and diced the wall of water, making it bubble. But it only lasted a moment. The small blocks of water crashed back together to create a single torrent once more.

They were in no position to worry about this being private property.

Kamijou and the others ran into the first floor of a building – a shop full of fancy-looking Grapple phones.

(There aren’t any stairs!? But we don’t have time for an elevator!!)

“Ahhhhhhhh!!!???”

The massive gray sherbet created from all the concrete dust, glass shards, and sand was drawing close. Stiyl started to attach some rune cards to the windows, but he gave up and ducked behind cover. Kamijou didn’t know how the magic worked, but Stiyl must have decided he didn’t have enough time.

Kamijou grabbed Index who was standing nearby and dove behind a showcase lined with MilliPhones.

He heard an explosive rumble.

The walls shook.

All of the windows were audibly broken by something like sharp ice spears and the sofas and magazine racks by the windows were knocked over.

Kamijou was actually thankful of the minus-20 weather for saving them.

There were 100m between her and the broken indoor pool. If the water had not fully cooled and frozen in that space, they would have been forced to go for a hellish ice water swim that might have stopped their hearts.

He held Index close and trembled in fear while desperately searching for some silver lining here. Without one, he feared his spirit would break.

(C’mon, R&C Occultics! Grapple’s a fellow IT company! Can’t you get along with!?)

“It seems slicing the water to increase the surface area sped up the freezing process enough to help. The more surface area, the more of it is in direct contact with the cold air.”

“You mean that wasn’t a coincidence? Yeah, I guess it would be weird for me to get lucky, huh?”

They had survived for now, but the tension remained. That had only been a secondary effect. The unseen magician could do the same thing as many times as they liked and that initial long-distance sniper attack would be deadly for anyone who couldn’t break the sound barrier and knock a bullet from the air like Kanzaki could. Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker could negate any and all magic, but that meant nothing if he could not react in time.

The shopping mall and parking garage had been fully sliced through, so building walls would not shield them. Not even all the water in a pool had fully absorbed the damage. Walls were only good for hiding them from view and that might not work if they didn’t know where the sniper was located. The fear of exactly that led Kamijou to shout.

“Oh, right! Where is that bastard!? Did you see where they went!?”

“They appear to have left,” calmly stated Kanzaki Kaori.

They could be sniped at any moment if they were seen, but she had still been monitoring that person’s movements. She really was extraordinary in a multitude of ways.

But the other professional magician was focused on something else.

Stiyl Magnus asked about something other than the mysterious attacker.

“How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“''That magic attack broke the sound barrier, so how did you recognize it as sand at first glance?'' You shouldn’t have noticed until its speed dropped after Kanzaki repelled it.”

Oh, that.

He had admittedly cheated on that one.

“I found this.”

Kamijou showed off the smartwatch. It was a support device meant to sync with a phone, so he could only check the time and his blood pressure with it right now.

However.

He flipped it over and ran his Transla-Pen over the underside. When the mic at the top picked up a foreign language or the pen tip traced out a foreign text, it would translate it into Japanese.

And when he traced it along the scratches on the underside of the watch, it produced an artificial voice.

“Caution: sand.”

“This smartwatch was separated from the main phone and stored in a safe on that base.”

Kamijou pushed the button on the side to show the connection error that appeared instead of a lock screen and to show the name he assumed belonged to the owner: Melzabeth Grocery.

“With the face, the frame, the band, the fastener, the colors, the small scratches, and the various smudges, I just know there has to be more to this watch.”