Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===


“Why is Anna being so nice all of a sudden? Wh-why would that wicked woman hand me a blanket? Wait, hold on. She hasn’t fallen in love with me, has-”

“Do I need to bite your dick off, fool?”

Kamijou shrank down a size smaller. No, two sizes at least.

Her personality and appearance were just too different!! She had been in adult woman mode not long ago, but she apparently couldn’t stay in that form for long. So that line had come from what looked like a mini-size girl. The way she tilted her head and asked it in an innocently gentle way only made it more terrifying.

Anna put on a thoroughly exasperated look and handed him a jelly drink that apparently contained a lot of iron.

“I can’t have you making a habit of collapsing when we are trying to stay off the grid. Haven’t you heard that cavities and appendicitis are deadly for fugitives? You seem to be short on blood, so drink this and command your body’s factory to start producing more.”

“Let me guess, Aradia. You’re only giving me that fruit-flavored nutrient block because you tried one and realized you don’t like it.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

At any rate.

He had gotten quite an eyeful earlier and the vehicle was filled with the heat and sweet scent of girls, so he felt unnecessarily nervous. He was beginning to think living together in this armored vehicle (or whatever it was called) wasn’t going to work. He now had two big sisters(?) with only a single living space between them all! He might have a cat, a nun, and a god living in his no-pets-allowed boys dorm, but even there he made sure to sleep in a separate room!

The witch goddess stared at him

“Are you still hung up on that, you pervert?”

“You don’t know how to handle adolescents, do you, banana woman? Your sulking insult caused it all to rush back into my mind. The image is in there this very instant, in fact.”

Aradia blushed a bit and wordlessly kicked his chair.

Why didn’t she understand that being attacked by an older woman like that made his heart pound in something like the suspension bridge effect!?

“Then do you want to sit in the driver’s seat, fool?”

Kamijou was doing his best to focus entirely on his jelly drink when little Anna gave him a thoroughly scornful look.

“The vehicle can be operated from any one of the console monitors, so there’s no real need for a vehicle commander or a gunner anymore. But there is still a diver’s seat in case there are technical issues with the electronics. It’s located right up in the front instead of below the gun.”

“You can’t make me drive! I don’t even know how to drive a car or a moped!”

“I just got through saying my console monitor can handle that. A fool like you only needs to sit in the seat. Being all alone in that cramped space probably won’t be fun, but you could move in there whenever you need to take a break in your own private world.”

“I guess I could do that.”

“(Of course, the Predator Octopus’s driver’s seat isn’t really necessary, so I bet it was redesigned to stop projectiles from reaching the rest of the vehicle. A separate space at the front of the vehicle would be perfect to sacrifice so it can stop any Munroe effect blasts or metal jets. Hee hee.)”

“You need to give all the detailed warnings so I can hear them, Anna-san! You can’t just whisper them real fast at the end like a consumer credit ad!!”

Meanwhile, it could be easy to forget in the sweet girls’ room that the military vehicle had become, but they had work to do.

“Okay.”

Kamijou Touma opened the overhead hatch and climbed out of the Predator Octopus. It was already dark out. Sunset came early in the winter, but his fight with Alice had been in the morning. He must have been passed out for quite a while.

He could see his breaths.

He felt refreshed like he had just washed his face.

The January 3 night air carried the biting chill of midwinter.

He was surrounded by true darkness. The fact that the city was under martial law was much more obvious at night. He could hardly believe the city had been lit up with Christmas and New Year’s decorations so recently.

The spiky-haired boy finally climbed down to the ground.

“A 20ton mobile combat vehicle can only travel on certain roads.”

So someone had to walk out ahead and check on the road to ensure they weren’t going to break through an aged overpass or something. And they of course also had to avoid the checkpoints set up around the city.

There weren’t any checkpoints here – because Anna had found a poorly guarded spot – but he got the impression there were more cleaning robots, security robots, and fixed surveillance cameras than normal. While inside the vehicle, he had spotted several of them staring their way from where they had been attached to makeshift metal poles. Those were meant to track down Kamijou’s group, so he had to be careful.

“Now, then.”

The tool Anna had given him looked like a 50cm stick.

He had expected a disturbing superweapon when she called it an ultrasonic sonar kit, but it was more like the glowing red staffs used for guiding traffic but with a small monitor attached near the bottom. The entire side apparently functioned as a scanner, so he was supposed to pass it close over the road surface.

(Hm. Do I really have to stoop over the entire time I use this? It would be so much easier if it had a long handle like a mop.)

“I don’t have to scan every centimeter. We only need to know the general condition of the pavement, so I only need to get a few samples for every square meter, right?”

Kamijou muttered his instructions to himself while teasing the switch with his thumb.

Like an AED, it was best to simply follow the machine’s instructions.

He noticed the cold shutters lowered at a shop selling strange, toxic-looking donuts. The posted notice suggested it was closed for good, not just for today. Even when a trend looked like it would last forever, you never knew when it was going to end.

(Still…)

He saw some faint light in the distance.

The martial law had its advantages.

Most every business had closed up and lowered its metal shutters, so the light at the checkpoints was hard to miss. That considerably reduced the risk of running into one on accident. Even at this distance, he could make out the military vehicles blocking the street and a bunch of outdoor lights like you would find at a construction site.

(What are they doing? They aren’t just stopping that truck passing through – they’re opening up each and every one of the packages its delivering.)

The driver stood outside the truck, scratching his chin uncertainly.

So much for privacy. If they were checking through any vehicle at that level, then one of Anti-Skill’s own 8-wheel mobile combat vehicles would be at risk too. Staying away from the checkpoints looked like the best plan.

The checkpoints were located at large intersections, tunnels, or other areas where multiple routes converged.

But there were bright spots at other points as well. It scared him that he couldn’t determine the pattern.

“What’s this, fool? Too stupid to figure it out on your own?”

Little Anna poked her head out from the hatch, holding some smart glasses that looked a lot like sports sunglasses. It apparently gave her control without being in the commander’s seat. Using her gaze and voice had to feel a lot different from using her fingers on the large monitor and it probably didn’t give as much control, but she had said something about it being a lot like remotely operating a ground-based drone.

She gave her usual toxic laughter, but she also gave him the answer.

“I will only explain this once. That light is likely a carwash or a taxi maintenance shop.”

“?”

“Or it could be a shipping company or rental car lot. Fool, they are using a preexisting industrial garage to maintain their tanks and armored vehicles.”

Academy City’s Anti-Skill probably weren’t bad people, but letting them find Anna now would only complicate matters. He was afraid they would shoot without even trying to talk it out and things would get even worse if Mut Thebes or Aleister’s group showed up to join the fray.

Those schoolteachers could find themselves in the middle of a deadly battle between magic users so powerful their presence had been kept a secret even on the magic side.

Kamijou took a look through a pair of binoculars he had found in the vehicle.

(Tch. I know the Sisters were helping bolster security during the holiday, but I don’t see any around here. Nothing but grownups. I should probably assume they won’t listen if I try to explain the situation.)

The Sisters’ absence bothered him.

Even though he knew intellectually that he simply felt so trapped that he was searching for special meaning in every little thing.

Were the Sisters alright? And what about Index, Mikoto, and the others?

How many Transcendents had been at that consulate? The confusion caused by the martial law hadn’t redirected the pursuers toward anyone else he knew, had it? Because those people probably would come running to save him. Even if he couldn’t get their help, he wanted to know they were safe.

(I know Anna said using my phone would be dangerous, but still.)

“You haven’t turned on that amateur phone of yours, have you? Don’t you dare post anything on social media. Even carelessly marking a message as read would be a mistake.”

Kamijou looked away from the binoculars.

He looked down at the asphalt below his feet, but…

“Fool, don’t even think about leaving a message with chalk or stones. That might be better than using a phone or computer, but any code you can come up with on the spot will be cracked in seconds by an Academy City supercomputer. And I don’t just mean textual or numerical codes that are easily represented as 1s and 0s. Even messages left in fuzzy graffiti or color patterns can be cracked using image linkage algorithms that find common factors between them.”

“Kh.”

“Were you unaware this city’s scientists seriously analyzed the crop circles left in crop fields and announced at an academic conference that they found no trace of actual language and concluded they were merely pranks? What a dreary way to view the world,” lamented Anna. “Your friends will of course be monitored. And they could be taken hostage if you give any sign they could be used to lure you out. So if you want to protect them, cut off all forms of contact. To the point that this city’s giant computers can’t find a single thing. That is what it means to take this seriously.”

“Okay, okay.”

Anna seemed legitimately exasperated with him, so Kamijou raised his hands in defeat.

Anything that his friends would instantly recognize probably would be discovered in seconds by their pursuers.

That meant their only option was to find their own way ahead while avoiding those lights – the checkpoints set up by Anti-Skill.

“But can we really find a way around the checkpoints? That 20ton thing can’t fit in the narrow alleys and Anti-Skill is set up at all the major intersections, so we’re bound to run into them no matter what wider road we choose.”

“Try using your brain for once, fool. It will rot in your skull otherwise.” Anna shrugged. “Not every route is found on the map. And if we find those hidden routes, we can pass right under Academy City’s collective nose. Especially when those Anti-Skill people are using their computers to share information and monitor their surroundings.”

“Routes not found on the map? What, are we going to dig our own tunnel like bank robbers?”

“Nothing that involved, but surprisingly close to the mark for a fool. It’s scary how wild guesses are correct on occasion.”

“?”

He had meant that as a joke, so her response took him by surprise.

Apparently Anna hadn’t given him a trick question with no real answer.

“Hint 1: these routes are invisible when viewed from the ground. Hint 2: map apps provide detailed information on public roads, but are much less thorough when it comes to private property. Hint 3: they are more common in densely populated areas with limited land. After so many generous hints, I seriously hope you have figured it out by now.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to just give me the answer?”

“Not happening, fool. Those so-called intellectuals of the Golden cabal all let their brains rot in the same way. If they hadn’t all been conceited enough to think they were the world’s greatest magicians, the Battle of Blythe Road never would have happened. Either side could have withdrawn and kept things peaceful.”

With that, Anna Sprengel ducked back into the hatch.

Then the turret turned to the side.

“?”