Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

Misaka Mikoto knew now was not the time for running away via window.

The clone girls were still sneaking around and they were sure to attack that hospital room again if not stopped. And once she noticed that, she had no choice but to drag them back to the hospital’s research area.

Those identical girls stared back at her with a complete lack of expression.

“But Misaka was hoping to enjoy her Christmas, says Misaka #10032 in a dejected way.”

“Ugh…n-no, you can’t fool me! What does being naked in the bath have to do with Christmas!?”

“The information we found says Christmas has more bare skin than most any other time of year. Just think of the miniskirt Santas or the girls wearing only a ribbon or some whipped cream, says-”

“Where in the world did you find that picture of Christmas? Don’t believe everything you see online and do something Christmasy!!”

Misaka Mikoto thought she was going to overheat.

She sighed after pushing away the identical girls.

As usual, she seemed to lose control of her life while around that boy. Her image of herself as the Ace of Tokiwadai always seemed to crumble away. She never knew how to deal with it, but it was not what she would call unpleasant either.

(There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him beyond the obvious injuries. That Anna Sprengel person sure seemed confident, but was her plan a dud?)

That was not impossible.

Misaka Mikoto had some of the best grades at the prestigious esper development school of Tokiwadai Middle School, but not even she had managed to analyze what exactly Kamijou Touma’s power was.

She just knew it was capable of negating Academy City’s #3 power.

In fact, it seemed to carry ''some greater mystery'' and it was the greatest black box of anything she had come across to date.

That meant it was even greater than the #1’s blatant sort of “strongest” power.

If he had something so powerful hidden within him, maybe it was not all that surprising that Anna Sprengel’s plans and predictions had fallen apart.

That was Misaka Mikoto’s conclusion.

But her thoughts were interrupted by the racket of some small wheels turning.

Several doctors and nurses were pushing an emergency patient to the operating room on a stretcher.

“Clear the way!! Please clear the way!!”

“Blood pressure is dropping. Check the Bank for their blood type and allergies!! Oh, no. They’ve gone into shock. For now, we need to get some saline in them to keep their blood pressure from falling any further!! We need to at least know their blood type ASAP! Hurry!!”

It was a like a storm blowing in.

Had there been an accident? Or was it an attack? It was Christmas, but trouble happened year round. With the snow and the events, the roads had to be packed with traffic, so the ambulances probably had a hard time getting around. Based on what the doctors were saying, this was a pretty bad case too.

(That can’t be fun.)

With that silent comment, Mikoto decided to return to Kamijou’s hospital room. Seeing that had helped cool her carefree anger and put her in a serious state of mind.

She rode the elevator to the 9th floor and walked down the hallway.

On the way, she spotted a blonde girl pressed against the wall. She must have stripped down and changed somewhere again because she was in her school uniform now.

Also, that was not the wall she was pressed against. It was an examining room door.

“Shokuhou?”

“Shh,” shushed the blonde girl with a finger to her lips.

Leave it to the strongest psychological esper to not respect other people’s privacy. Mikoto considered blasting her away with a lightning spear, but things changed on her way to grab the other girl by the collar.

She caught sight of a pointy-haired boy through the cracked door.

He was speaking with the frog-faced doctor.

“The tests have told me most everything I need to know.”

“And?”

Her heart leaped into her throat.

She realized she was no better than Shokuhou when she did not raise her voice and chase the other girl away.

If she stayed here, she could learn about the boy’s test results. She knew it was wrong, but her curiosity won out.

She wanted to rid herself of her lingering concern.

She clenched her teeth because she felt like this was no different from when she had been causing trouble night after night over those clone girls.

Oblivious to her presence, the conversation in the examination room continued.

“You said you saw a pill, yes? Whatever it is, I believe it will be difficult for your right hand’s power to negate.”

“Kh.”

“Let me rephrase that. Your right hand is destroying it, but it is multiplying inside your body at an even faster rate. It’s much like a situation where the body can’t heal itself fast enough.”

If Index had been here, she might have been reminded of the Innocentius spell.

But Shokuhou Misaki and Misaka Mikoto were the ones hearing it.

They were unfamiliar with the rules of magic.

“You said you had been bleeding, yes? Was it a nosebleed?” asked the frog-faced doctor to be sure.

He sounded serious. At the very least, it did not sound like this was a case of a teenage boy getting a nosebleed due to arousal.

“There are cases where someone can burst their capillaries through extreme mental focus, but we need to take a more pessimistic view here. More and more of your body is being infected as we speak. I do not know of a vaccine or antidote for this and I doubt a stomach pump or dialysis can forcibly eliminate it.”

“…”

“Your Imagine Breaker is successfully slowing the advance of ''this disease that science alone cannot explain'', but it is not working quickly enough to fully eliminate it. The microbes are even now gradually spreading through your body, so they will destroy all your body tissue at an accelerated rate if nothing is done to stop them. I do not know how long you have. This looks similar to deadly bacteria, but I believe it is different on a fundamental level.”

“Then…”

The boy’s voice was barely audible.

Mikoto could not see his face from her position, but his voice was that of a lost child who felt left behind.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“It would probably be fastest to speak with whoever caused this. I have never seen a microbe like this before, but since it is being used as a weapon, they must have some way of preventing it from infecting and killing them, right? So they almost certainly have some way of stopping or fighting it.”

“Do you have any idea at all how much time I have?”

“Two days at the most, but it’s frankly a miracle you’re still up and moving now. I do hate how I feel like I am pushing a child toward danger, though.”

“So…I’m going to die if this continues?”

“You are a minor, so I am not allowed to answer that question. Unless you have your parents sign a consent form.”

A monotone electronic beeping sounded.

The frog-faced doctor pulled an outdated mobile device from his pocket, but it was part of the unique communication infrastructure that was still in use at certain workplaces. Hospitals were one such workplace.

“Hm, we are receiving an awful lot of emergency patients today.”

“Um…”

“Oh, don’t worry about them, Kamijou-kun. Their symptoms are different than yours. Fortunately, we have yet to see those microbes spread from person to person. Much like yeast cells and rice koji, they only infect you if you directly ingest something containing them. …Then again, you could say this has the same cause.”

The frog-faced doctor seemed to have stood from his seat.

The emergency patients were a major problem, but he must have also decided there was no more advice he could provide here.

“R&C Occultics, I mean. I hear a lot of the children have been babbling about what seems like nonsense. It makes you wonder what kind of non-scientific hocus pocus they have been dabbling in.”

The boy was not his usual self.

He looked so tiny while seated with his back to the door.

His head was hanging as he quietly muttered something.

However, ''this was the normal reaction.

He had been given a strange pill, he had coughed up blood and collapsed, and he had been taken the hospital. How could he be his usual self after that? He would understand better than anyone that now was not the time for smiling.

“Doctor.”

“Yes?”

''Don’t listen,'' thought Mikoto with a grimace.

She knew she had to avoid listening to this. She realized now he had been forcing a smile because he did not want anyone to see him like this. And by eavesdropping, she was rudely trampling on those efforts.

Yet she could not make herself leave.

So she heard it.

She heard the difference.

She realized just how hard he had been working to stay so cheerful in order to avoid worrying the others.

''The'' Kamijou Touma curled up his back and spoke his honest thoughts in a vanishingly quiet voice.

Those two simple words seemed to shatter her world.

“I’m scared.”

“I know you are. Everyone is at times like this.”

There was only one exit.

But when the frog-faced doctor opened the door to go see to the new emergency patient, there was no one there.

The two girls were hiding behind a nearby corner in the hallway and exchanging a glance.

The air seemed on fire around them.

“Misaka-san, you heard that, didn’t you?”

She just about clicked her tongue.

She wanted to punch herself in the face more than provide such obvious confirmation.

And since Mikoto only clenched her teeth, Shokuhou kept talking.

“I’m sure you’ll be heading out to search for Anna Sprengel now that you know what’s going on, so how about we make this easier for both of us? If we work together, we can use both people and machines to search more easily. We ''will'' find her no matter where in the city she is hiding. Right?”

“…”

Anna Sprengel had already explained how they could give up. If they could not do anything on their own, they only had to contact R&C Occultics.

But then what would happen?

They had no bargaining chip of their own to use in exchange for receiving Anna’s help when they gave up. Anna was sure to mock them if they gave up without any kind of plan whatsoever. At this rate, Anna would call their bluff and it was that boy who would suffer for it.

So they had to defeat Anna and directly steal whatever antidote or vaccine she had.

That was their best bet.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_091.jpg|thumb]]

Mikoto made herself take a deep breath.

And she asked a question.

“Where should we start?”

“With every single idea you have in mind. I’ll do the same.”

The two girls stepped out into the biting cold of the outdoors.

That boy had already taken a beating in order to crush Academy City’s dark side, so now it was their turn.

The 24th was over and they would make sure the 25th was different. It was time that boy was saved by someone else for a change.