Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 4===

District 7 had a certain iron bridge.

While most main streets were aflood with costumed rioters, that bridge alone didn’t have even a single car driving on it. Although it may have been better to say they ''weren’t allowed'' to.

Only a few people occupied the bridge.

It was Transcendents vs. Transcendents.

Given what spells they had, they didn’t even need to cross the bridge on foot and there wasn’t just one route leading to “A Certain High School” that had become the center point of the world’s distortions.

Still, they had all chosen to gather here.

No one had told them to, but here they all were.

Perhaps making the conscious decision to cross a river acted as a sort of ritual.

“Well, we did decide to help him because we could easily predict this would happen.”

“So from the cabal’s perspective, are we traitors to Alice?”

“These opportunists scattered the instant Alice died and came back as soon as they learned she was alive again. Their word doesn’t carry enough weight to stop the goddess of witches.”

Seeing Aradia give a snort, Good, Old Mary shook her head in her large hat.

“You certainly have taken a liking to that boy.”

“Wha-buh-no- I have no idea what you mean by that.”

“That isn’t very convincing after the stammering.”

“Well, by any normal reckoning, I don’t see how any number of us regular Transcendents could hope to win against Alice Anotherbible ''herself''.”

The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and held her hands behind her head.

That much was true.

But their actions didn’t seem to agree.

“Yet here we are. I’d like to take that as our real answer.”

“The fight against CRC actually helped us in a way, Aradia. We no longer need to argue over our stance as individual Transcendents concerning that boy.”

“And I’d like to know why you think I’d agree with you on this!”

“That seems self-evident, you naughty girl.”

“Aye. She’s like the naughty girl next door who tries and fails to put on an intellectual front.”

“Aradia is naughty?”

The final comment from the expressionless brown-skinned girl made Aradia hang her head in despair.

“That’s just too much. Why am I being mocked by the goddess who instantly fell in love with that boy so hard you could practically hear the ‘kyun☆’ sound effect?”

“The fact that the punishment expert isn’t doing anything should be enough to know we don’t deserve any punishment.”

“Hm?”

Aradia, Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and head-tilting Mut Thebes had gathered to travel toward a certain high school, but they all stopped speaking to look in the same direction.

Because they weren’t the only ones here.

“Which tells me they’re the ones who need a beating.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

Several other shadowy figures were gathered on the opposite side of the bridge. They were all Transcendents. By abandoning the magic name which had acted as the pillar of their lives, those monsters had dressed up in their chosen god’s appearance and abilities, they wielded powerful spells, and they had gained enough strength to take on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The global power balance had shifted.

The balance just barely maintained by leaving the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the center of the science side had clearly grown unbalanced.

Then again, the distortion had reached a critical point from the moment Alice Anotherbible remained in this city.

The Bologna Succubus grimaced after seeing one member of the enemy group.

One of them was particularly unpleasant.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Kyahah☆ Thanks for the shout-out!”

The girl with fluffy blonde hair (who looked around 16 ''if her outward appearance was to be believed'') gave a flirty smile. Unnaturally so.

“What’s an old lady like you doing with twintails and double chignons?”

“You should really count the candles on your birthday cake before calling anyone old.”

She had a beautiful face.

And that was all you could see.

She looked like a teru-teru bozu, or like she was wearing one of the towels that used rubber bands to cover everything below the head during pool class. Her girly silhouette was obscured by a coat-like explosion-resistant suit made by attaching thick copper armor plates to a sturdy cloth.

Or maybe she looked more like an iron maiden.

The original Blodeuwedd was a flower goddess or fairy from Celtic mythology. When the goddess Arianrhod cursed a male god to never marry, an impossibly beautiful but clearly artificial woman was created from flowers and other plants to be his bride. The created woman boasted dazzling beauty, but her internal settings were altered, turning her into a wanton traitor who colluded with a lover to murder her husband. Horror stories of an artificial monster created with too-advanced technology rebelling or running wild were not exclusive to modern SF. That was in fact a historical and traditional genre dating back to BCE times.

This Transcendent had chosen to dress up as that goddess.

And her salvation condition was…

“''Saving all the lonely and unloved,'' wasn’t it?”

“And what if it is?”

“You’re like an animal that inundates people with condescending love and leaves them no room for reprisal. I’ve always hated you because you’re more like a succubus than I am.”

The Bologna Succubus was answered by a smile.

Blodeuwedd may have agreed with her.

“Hwa ha ha☆ Love is meant to come from an outside source. And why shouldn’t I provide you with enough of that sweet nectar you could drown in it? And since one of us has to kill the other anyway, this seems better than sharing tear-jerking stories while we slug it out.”

“On that we agree.”

But that was only Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and the Bologna Succubus’s personal beef.

The other Transcendents had no reason to go along with it.

So…

“Alice has broken.”

She looked to be around 25. She had black hair, brown skin, and a model’s figure with a height of probably 180cm. Her red eyes bent.

Vidhatri.

In Indian mythology, that goddess lived underground and controlled fate in the form of weaving. She always accompanied the goddess of creation, freely controlled the path of the entire world, and just like the goddess she was paired with, ultimately became no more than an alternate name for the top level gods like Brahma and Vishnu due to her great ability. She was a symbol who had been rearranged for human purposes.

This performer had chosen to dress up in that role.

Her icy voice seemed to slice through the air with words alone.

“The first time, it was due to Anna Sprengel’s scheming, but the real damage was done by Kamijou Touma. His ignorance caused Alice to fully shatter. I will not allow him near Alice again. It is a miracle she managed to get back on her feet at all, so I will not let you cause even more damage.”

“In other words,” sighed Aradia.

In place of a broom, she was holding a black and yellow barrier she must have torn away from a railway crossing somewhere.

She rested that on her shoulder and sent over a look containing a generous helping of scorn.

“You’re siding with Alice?”

“Yes.”

“Liar. You’re just afraid of anything happening that could threaten or eliminate the foundation of your power as Transcendents.”

Silence followed.

Which was as good as confirmation.

One weakness of open-source programs was malicious third parties taking advantage of the ability to freely view the internal code to analyze it and develop viruses and malware specialized for that program.

So the Transcendents would be in serious trouble if a third party were to collect Alice, who was their original version. Especially if that third party was one of the ''despicable winners'' like Anna Sprengel or Aleister Crowley. Maybe it would be a poison and maybe it would be a curse, but there was a risk of Alice being used to develop a countermeasure capable of eradicating the entire Alice series of magicians.

Most likely, they were acting now to prevent Kamijou Touma from unwittingly causing such an occurrence.

That would mean the only Transcendent who actually cared about Alice Anotherbible was H.T. Trismegistus. That gloomy, inconspicuous believer in common sense had certainly found a way to make his presence felt. If only it weren’t by being a world-destroying pedophile.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet did not deny her weakness.

“We have our own salvation conditions to worry about. Keh heh heh☆ And we cannot afford to lose our power as Transcendents. For their sakes.”

“And now you’re using them as an excuse, you slut.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“How about I trample this stubborn dandelion growing from the a crack in the ground and continue on to Alice?”

With a pop, the thick copper coat covering Blodeuwedd the Bouquet from neck to toe opened to the sides like double doors. The thick locks lined up vertically down the front noisily unlocked one by one.

A dazzling light emerged.

Along with a sweet aroma so powerful it was like a thick wall.

The inside of the coat had been turned into a terrarium full of colorful flowers. That garden of eternal spring was contained in a glass container and supported by appropriate amounts of water, nutrients, electric heaters, and UV LED lights.

She herself wore only a frilly apron over her dazzlingly pale skin.

The sleeves extending from the metal coat had only been remote-controlled arms.

“Quite the showy transformation she’s got there,” said the Bologna Succubus.

“She may see that as releasing her true power. We do need to display our divinity or devilishness in an obvious form to convince ourselves as much as anyone, but is this really her interpretation of superhuman beauty? Does she think the amount of exposed skin is the only thing that matters? How vulgar,” said Aradia, sounding icy.

In her pursuit of higher morals in knowledge and miracles, that young witch was not actually used to being viewed in a sexual light (by younger boys), so it didn’t occur to her to consider how her own outfit played into this discussion.

The girl – who looked unhealthily skinny rather than sexy – grinned.

And with all the appropriate pieces present in her appearance, that sweet-smelling person spoke.

“My, my. Have you forgotten what it is we do?”

“…”

It sounded a lot like a crashing wave.

“Ah ha ha☆ Alice isn’t the only one. The rest of us regular Transcendents also have enough charisma for our very presence to distort human society and create new trends. Maybe you could call it a flaw of dressing up as a god. However, I am exceptional in that regard. In this one field, my ability is even more obvious than Alice’s.”

That they were on a bridge over a large river wasn’t enough to explain it.

This noise was unusual.

The dark water of the January night was stirring with no connection to the water or wind current.

Stirring violently.

“I am loved by all living things. And not just people – birds, land animals, bugs, and fish too.”

Something crashed into the large bridge. They were the black bass, bluegills, and other troublemakers of the river environment. They were small and common creatures with nothing divine about them, but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands had gathered to form a giant wave.

''These lives were so easily manipulated.

Red and silver.

They had enough force and mass to possibly break a bridge weighing more than ten thousand tons.

“What do you think of my Total Courtship?☆”

Using cries, pheromones, dances, and colors, she could seduce any living creature, including humans. Simply put, she was a courtship expert.

Was she already drunk on victory?

Euphoric, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet raised her voice.

“Ha ha☆ Love them, demon of the night. Love every last one of them. But there are plenty of environmentally destructive species that are hated just because there are too many of them!!!”

“Cold Mistress.”

“Agh!?”

Seeing that spell replace her euphoria with pain was quite satisfying.