Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:AgneseSS Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

For example, there were ways of erasing blood stains. It was hard to do so ''completely'', but if you only needed to avoid a luminol reaction, special oxygen detergents available for purchase online would do the trick.

Of course, washing a spot clean with that was a sign that there ''had been'' a bloodstain there. There was no reason to go to all that specialized effort to wash a spot clean if there was nothing suspicious there in the first place.

And this was the magic side’s forensic cleaning, which was designed for situations where a dead body might just stand back up all on its own. Only someone familiar with their world would even know that needed doing.

So why had the restaurant been wiped so clean?

Had something happened here requiring it?

“Well, we just stumbled into some trouble,” said Agnese once they were back in the mobile home.

They had not contacted Stiyl and they did not know if they should tell him about this even if they had. Again, they were still seen as outsiders within Necessarius.

They could think of two broad possibilities.

“First, this is a continuation of last night, making this a part of our Anglican training. If we do nothing, we might lose a ton of points.”

“Ugh,” groaned Angelene who was already growing tearful. They had spent all night cleaning up a mess that made cleaning up dog poop seem more appealing, so it was distressing to think all that effort could go to waste because of some second round.

Also, there was no chance some other group was being tested in the same area. If the two teams ended up interfering with each other due to a failure on the supervisor’s part, the entire training session would be for nothing. If they were told all of this had not counted because they could not be graded properly, they might just murder the grader.

However, the real danger was the second possibility.

“Second, ''something real is happening.'' That would mean this isn’t training and this really is something Necessarius should be dealing with. I don’t know what it could be, but this hint is enough to know the culprit is aware they’re up to no good.”

Unfortunately, actions taken to hide evidence did not immediately work as evidence of misdeeds. Just because someone thought they had committed a crime did not mean they had. Some people were overwhelmed by fears that they had done something truly terrible even though no crime had ever occurred. It fit the same pattern as someone taking in an abandoned puppy on a rainy day and later fearing that counted as theft because they did not have the original owner’s permission. In that case, the original crime was entirely imaginary, yet the actions taken to hide that they had taken in the puppy would be all too real.

They did not know enough to say in this case.

If they overlooked this, it might lead to some otherwise avoidable disaster, but if they made a fuss about it, it could turn out to be nothing.

Lucia sighed.

“Whichever it is, you know what we have to do next, right?”

“What’s that?”

“Gather enough information to make an informed decision. We need to know if this is simple training or a real battle and, in the latter case, we need to know whether or not we need to intervene. We need more information before we can hope to figure any of this out.”

Agnese shrugged.

She had hoped to reach a different conclusion, but nuns tended to be diligent. The odds of this being wasted effort were around 75%, but they had to go to the effort regardless.

After all, if this was the remaining 25%, someone’s life could be hanging in the balance. Those odds were too high for them to irresponsibly pretend they had not noticed anything. When the odds were even worse than a game of Russian roulette, they could not just let it slide.

So they had a plan.

“Okay, everyone, I hope you’re ready for some more thankless work☆”