Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 7===

One step.

Kamijou Touma only needed the courage to take that one step and he could end his battle.

He had been stabbed in the side and Misaka Imouto’s quick sew-up job was far from perfect. Then he had forcibly twisted his body around to dodge and defend against Maidono’s attacks. He could not even imagine what things were like below his clothes right now. The wound might even be worse than when he was originally stabbed.

But.

Even so.

(I will end this.)

He had to save Last Order no matter what.

His lack of memories and Maidono’s inability to use chopsticks were not Last Order’s fault.

He had to stop Maidono Hoshimi.

Adding onto her crimes would not return the thing she wanted. All that would await her after this battle was more of the same harsh reality. But if she did not stop here, she could never go back. He could not allow her to move even further from the world she dreamed of.

There was no more room for tricks.

They both knew where the other stood. Trying to draw each other in with further words would accomplish nothing. He only had to bring this to an all-out head-on collision.

He understood her and she understood him.

That understanding was more than sufficient.

So.

They did not need a final signal.

“I swear I will end this! Here and now!!”

She aimed her two finger guns at him.

This was a hopeless enemy.

They lived in two different worlds.

But for some reason, it looked like she was smiling. Her face was crumpled up on the verge of tears, but he still could not help but see a smile on her lips.

Finally.

For the first time.

It was like she had found a friend she could reveal her ugly and violent truth to.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

They both roared.

Kamijou Touma clenched his right fist and ran forward while Maidono Hoshimi wielded her two Telekinetic fingers that could move an entire nuclear aircraft carrier.

The ground rose up and broken pipes were exposed.

Flames and shockwaves erupted around him, but the boy ducked low and clenched his teeth to charge through while the large screen installed on a building wall dropped down like a guillotine. Glass and metal shards scattered in all directions and red cuts appeared on Maidono’s own cheeks. She had not expected this herself, but that no longer mattered to her. The screen crashed into the ground, shattered, bent, and bounced back up while she once more “grabbed” it with her two index fingers. She separated the two fingers and that LCD device larger than a tour bus was torn more easily than toast and the two halves were raised up like a giant’s fists.

A cloud of gray dust filled the air.

It threatened to hide everything, but that did not happen.

Kamijou Touma ran full speed toward the Santa girl who was vanishing behind the gray curtain.

She would be enveloped by the intangible dark side and be taken beyond anyone’s grasp.

He refused to let that happen.

He moved as if to give his thoughts a tangible form.

“Are you immortal!?” she shouted, despite likely realizing otherwise.

She threw a right straight and a left hook. Those arms could have knocked the average car up to a skyscraper rooftop, but Kamijou dodged them just by swinging his body.

This was not some special ability. He was not entrusting this to luck or the divine.

He would protect.

He would save.

And that applied not just to kidnapped Last Order but to Maidono Hoshimi as well. If all he had to do was reach out to the person in front of him, he could suppress the shaking of his legs. When you got down to it, that right fist was all he had. If he was going to end this, he had to get close. So he would do it. The powerful explosions and sharp glass and metal shards flying about were irrelevant. If he could not save her without reaching her, then he would make sure he got close enough to do so. He clenched his teeth and swallowed the pain.

''Yes.

''Needless to say, he was soaked with blood.

He was not escaping this unscathed. The wound in his side was not the end of it. He was being pummeled by shockwaves and pierced by blade-like fragments. Dark red blood was leaking from all over his body, but he had decided from the beginning that he would take this one step here. That decision allowed him to move. That was all there was to it.

“Don’t worry.”

It did not matter if it was only for 10 seconds, 5 seconds, or 1 second.

He just had to keep his body moving a little longer.

If he managed that, he could tear apart the chain of tragedy that had trapped Maidono Hoshimi in the spider’s web!!

“You might never again use chopsticks, you might have everything taken from you, and you might end up behind bars, but I will never abandon you!!”

An intensely dull sound – a more violent one than expected – reverberated through the broken streets.

His right fist slammed into her.

What was on that dark side assassin’s mind when that dull strike hit her cheek?

She did not scream even once.

That girl, who had wanted to be normal more than anyone else, dropped to the ground.