Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma left the hospital and walked through the streets.

Aogami Pierce walked with him.

The other boy apparently rented out a room somewhere instead of living in the dorms (which was probably against the school rules), but their way home was the same for part of the trip.

“Man, we just barely got out of the hospital before winter break ended, huh?” said Aogami.

“What, are you happy you’re out? In the hospital, they serve you three meals a day and even clean the place for you.”

“Course I am. I’ll admit I’m sad to say goodbye to the intellectual lady doctors and the nurses, but school starts back on the 8th. The end of the break sucks, but I’ve gotta show up to school on the first day.”

“…”

“I mean, if I skipped the first day for a reason everyone in class accepted as legit, I’d make a habit of it and I’d never work up the motivation to go to school again. Hah hah!!”

Aogami laughed it off.

Even though they had no guarantee the new school term was going to start on schedule.

Was it called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome?

It seemed to have gotten even worse than what Othinus had seen.

The main street was packed full of costumed students like it was Halloween, so vehicles couldn’t get through. The boys and girls climbed on top of the stuck armored vehicles and some even climbed up on top of the wind turbines. It looked like they might even break the turbines down like the tower-toppling game during the Daihaseisai.

“Uh, oh. It’s as crowded as a rush hour train out here.”

“Then how about we charge headfirst into a zone with a high concentration of girls and all the plump boobs and butts that come with them?” suggested Aogami. “It wouldn’t be our fault! They’re the ones blocking our way and forcing us to push through, so we’re the victims really!!”

“Do you want to end up like the creepy guy who gets arrested at a fireworks show or on Halloween?”

The density of people was a lot like a solid wall. Kamijou did not have the courage to plunge in and try to part the crowd to get through.

So he and Aogami took a detour while complaining.

They ended up in a boxy area full of cheap artificial marble and greenery, making it a lot like a sanctuary for people who bring their lunch. But instead of a park, it was technically on the grounds of a trendy office building. The small pathway ran alongside the large building, but it was strangely void of people.

“None of those partiers here,” noted Kamijou.

“Phone GPS maps tend not to show private property. All the popular kids letting their phones guide them to the party don’t even know this kind of path exists. That’s what you get when you don’t think for yourself.”

On the main street, a taxi was being lifted like a mikoshi.

Without knowledge of paths like this, you couldn’t even get around on foot right now.

“Heh heh. The knowledge you pick up living as a Level 0 comes in handy sometimes,” said Aogami.

“Yeah, you can never have enough escape routes to use when some bored delinquents decide to chase you around.”

Now that they were out of the crowd, they found themselves able to observe it more objectively.

They watched the crowd after climbing the stairs to the top of an unnatural rise in the path, probably built up to avoid gas pipes and high-voltage lines.

People were even crowding the top of an elevated train track.

“A miniskirt, a bare midriff, and thigh armor? Hokaze-san, is that supposed to be an armored cheerleader?”

“No, Kobayashi-san, I am obviously the legendary Soaring Knight who flies through the sky and fights with a spear. The character is doing a collab with Gekota at a...I believe it is called a convenience store? Hee hee hee. These ringlets do come in handy from time to time☆”

“How is that supposed to be the ultimate gear? Is it one of those things where your strength grows the more of the heavy seals you remove!?”

“I really don’t want to hear that from the person dressed as a demon character who only wears black tape over her naked body yet has added an apron to try and pretend she is a wholesome homemaker. ...It’s probably just that the closed environment death game is so complicated people lose interest before you’re done explaining the basic rules, but I really wish they would find a less indecent way to sell the character merchandise.”

“Oh, dear. And the entrance exams are coming up soon.”

“I’m going to lie around in the kotatsu all day and no one can stop me!!”

It was honestly bad for his heart.

His distance from them didn’t really matter.

This space didn’t exist on the phone GPS maps, but it wasn’t actually a sanctuary protected by a thick wall. It simply hadn’t been discovered ''yet''. A great crowd could flood in at any moment.

“Wow, look at all the people on the tracks there. Even the trains must be stopped.”

“Wow is right. Check out all those cute little middle schoolers showing off their navels and thighs. If they’re gonna give me some delicious eye candy, they can stop the trains all day for all I care.”

Kamijou and Aogami descended the arch-like stairs to continue along the narrow private pathway.

But their safe zone did not last for long. Once they left the office grounds, they were out on another major street.

In place of fireworks, someone had ignited car smoke bombs and started twirling them through the air.

They weren’t low-temperature fireworks, so they made a lot of noise.

“Anyway, I had no idea you could ask at the hospital reception counter and they’d arrange to have your luggage sent to your dorm.”

“I was worried with the martial law and all, but the delivery industry still seems to be working. We need to thank those delivery drones that can get through even when the ground routes are blocked like this.”

But these life-or-death issues apparently didn’t matter much to the boy who lived for moe.

“More importantly, did you see that ultra-rare cosplayer dressed as Biritta-san? I’m ready to weep for joy. I can’t imagine how hard it was to get that right. I mean, that demon girl only has black tape to cover up her naughty bits. Or maybe the hard part is cleaning up after removing it? Now that I’d love to help with.”

“What are you talking about? Biritta-san?”

“She’s the girl in this year’s winter anime who dies in the first five minutes of the closed room death game. Her death was so unnecessarily well animated that she’s become the latest meme online. The animation team really poured their heart and soul into it since it was in the first episode, so she gets slaughtered with the smoothest animation you’ve ever seen. Seriously, don’t search for ‘Biritta Burrito’. The rest of us were traumatized, but you don’t have to be.”

Oh, so was she the character the show kills off right away to make it clear people know are actually going to die in the show? Kamijou stared into the distance. What a waste. He felt like there were better ways to shock the audience without actually reducing the number of characters, like having her brought back with CPR or revealing it was actually a human-sized hunk of raw meat thrown into the tiger’s cage.

“Okay, say cheese. My phone’s the newest, so I’ll share the photo with you all.”

“Wait a second, Saten-san. …Kongou-san, we’re taking a photo, so try to cover your chest more when you lean over like that. I can see something I shouldn’t!”

“Oh, this isn’t my areola – it’s a rash on my boob. I think it’s the costume’s material making the skin turn all pink. Maybe I have a metal allergy?”

“Um, I wouldn’t know.”

“Seriously though, say cheese! We’ve gotta get a photo of us with this VIP armored car we flipped when it tried to run off!! See, this is what we can do! We don’t need esper powers! With 20 of us together, flipping a 1ton car is nothing☆”

“Oh, no! But I’m supposed to be with Judgment!”

A bunch of girls in revealing costumes were gathered around a single phone to take a commemorative photo.

They wiped their faces with sports towels, drank tea from plastic bottles, and laughed cheerfully together.

Ordinarily, these girls would be chatting peacefully. And a lot of their costumes were about as revealing as a bikini, leaving a lot of skin and curves exposed, so Kamijou got the feeling he would get yelled at if he stared.

At the same time, he had also seen them shouting while they flipped Anti-Skill vehicles.

They were enjoying the freedom of their winter break, but they would also fiercely attack anyone who tried to interrupt them even a little.

Peaceful did not always mean harmless.

They may have been like a swarm of hornets guarding their large nest of peace.

“The world is ending.”

The 15cm war god hiding in Kamijou’s coat collar whispered that in his ear.

The partiers were bad, but the ones trying to stop them weren’t much better.

“Fweeeeet!!  What are you doing, you uncivilized barbarians!? And why are you abandoning Academy City’s rules right along with them, Uihar-wahhh!!?”

“But, Shirai-san, a bunch of suspicious gold bars spilled out of that car’s trunk after we flipped it. We may have actually busted a crime.”

The Judgment members were dressed in strange costumes too. Like the busty glasses girl in bikini armor or the twintails girl dressed as a necromancer in a cloak with only thick chains worn below it. This wasn’t quite the same as the Dr. Police who showed up on that giant Shibuya Scramble Crossing during Halloween. The lines were blurry, like they were simply being influenced by the overall atmosphere.

Shirai Kuroko was still managing to resist thanks to her strong sense of justice, but the glasses girl with a high STR value was viewing the riot crippling the city’s ability to function with exasperation, like she had partially accepted the state of affairs already.

Othinus stared into the distance.

She was more bothered by the moral collapse than by the actual destruction.

“These people treating Academy City like their own secret base will bring down the city. And the world economy supported by science will go down with it. They can’t suppress this with force like they do with demonstrations. Not when it’s backed by Alice’s charisma. This is being fueled from the outside. Aiming a gun at these students will not stop them, nor will actually firing on them. So like I said, the only way to stop this is to slaughter every last Academy City resident with Academy City’s guns. Win or lose, the city is done for.”

It was a shift – a distortion – in morals.

Even if captured Index lost her life now, would it be caught up in this bizarre scenery and converted into something that was considered “for the best”?

If so, Kamijou had to settle this before that happened.

He had to draw on everything he had and face Alice.

He understood what had to be done.

“But…”

Misaka Mikoto had died. ******** ****** had died too. (''…? Why did I think there was someone else there?'')

Aradia and the Bologna Succubus had been killed before his eyes.

Mut Thebes had likely been killed instantly.

That had only been fixed thanks to Good, Old Mary’s resurrection and they were all staying in the frog-faced doctor’s hospital, but what had happened was still etched deep into Kamijou’s heart.

Talent, aptitude, skill, equipment, hierarchy, and rank were no guarantee.

Anyone could die at any time.

That was an obvious but absolute rule.

And this time he would be facing Alice Anotherbible, who had easily slaughtered Christian Rosencreutz, the very person who had caused all that death. That simple firepower was bad enough, but there was a more fundamental condition he had to keep in mind.

As a regular Transcendent, Good, Old Mary could not defeat an irregularity like Alice. That was plain as day from the fact that her resurrection had failed to save Anna from the Shrink Drink which had ''only'' contained a portion of Alice’s power.

They already had the proof.

The resurrection would not work on anyone killed by Alice.

''Or to put it in a simpler, more direct, way, if anyone died this time, it really was over for them.

“…”

Kamijou had to rethink this.

Could he really ask this of them under these circumstances?

Who would be eliminated from this unpredictable death game?

Mikoto and the others might decide they wanted to take part and the Transcendents might think it was their responsibility, but was getting them involved really the right thing to do? No, this wasn’t about right or wrong. The question was whether or not Kamijou himself could let it happen.

This wouldn’t be his own misfortune.

So many people he knew well would experience even greater misfortune than him. Could he really let that happen?

This wasn’t shogi – it was chess.

No matter how insignificant or crucial – no matter how it happened – the taken pieces were permanently gone.