Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 7===

''What am I doing?'' wondered Hamazura Shiage while hiding in the bushes, but Benizome had him beat in terms of skill. He knew this was not the time, but she had made it very clear what would happen if he messed with her plan. This was the dark side—a world where strength was king.

“Once I’m done here, you’re free to do whatever you want.”

The woman in a red China dress with a see-through stomach opened her duralumin case and pulled out a single-lens reflex camera, a bazooka-like lens, and a tripod. The way she crouched down pushed the already risqué slit of her dress to the limit.

Then she pulled a gold coin from her thigh and kissed it.

She had a Coin of Nicholas too.

“So stay put until then. I’ll capture a dark side superstar with this bad boy. I’m not letting someone use Anti-Skill or Judgment to eliminate the darkness. Don’t give me that. Good and evil aren’t what decides what information should be sent out into the world—it’s all about the price tag and newsworthiness.”

“Wait, you’ve realized Anti-Skill is going wild? Then why don’t you-”

“It was an accident.” Benizome cut him off. “It was only an accident. Every last detail was set up so it would only ever look like an accident no matter how deep you dug. Like I said, it’s about the price tag and newsworthiness. No one’s going to buy a photo that won’t bring them a profit, so there’s no point chasing after one.”

“D-did it never occur to you to run away?”

“To where? Don’t give me that. If you want to survive, you have to make the attempt. I know time is limited, so before they catch up, I need to get such an undeniably scandalous photo that I can threaten the unseen people at the top with it.”

“…”

“You can do business by directly negotiating a deal with the people connected to your photo. It’s generally frowned upon, but I can decide whether or not I’ll sell the photo to a publisher. But it’s a crime and the risk of death goes up considerably when you threaten someone with a shady past, so I wouldn’t recommend trying it if you can avoid it☆”

He could not believe this. He had seen a lot of different people in the dark side—twisted researchers, powerful espers that saw no value in the lives of others, and high-ranking soldiers—but she was clearly different from all of them.

She would not be an esper since she was an adult, but she also showed no sign of any bizarre weaponry. Using a camera as her weapon sounded unusually civilized for the dark side. He had not met someone this reasonable in a while.

Was she part of the beneficial dark side that those twins had mentioned? Or maybe she did not qualify as the dark side at all.

He did not have to fight her.

And even if he did, they could do it in a nonviolent fashion.

It really had been a long time since he had seen someone so wonderfully reasonable.

“Use them,” whispered track suit girl Takitsubo. “You said someone was using Anti-Skill. So do you know ''what is making them go berserk''?”

“Huh?”

Benizome almost sounded offended.

But she was not saying no. In fact, she sounded confused why they would ask something so obvious.

“Don’t give me that. Are you testing me? Do I even have to say that it’s—”

She started to answer but then held down the top of her cowboy hat with a hand. She held her breath and further lowered her already lowered head.

Hamazura’s eyes widened.

“(Is someone coming?)”

“(Don’t give me that. Quit asking stupid questions. You’re in the way!)”

They were out back behind one of the Secret Residences. Normal guests would have no business in this area and the rich people who had spent great sums of money to live there would have no reason to walk into the shadows behind the homes.

No one would come here unless they knew about the tents there.

Now that he was seeing it from this angle, Hamazura could not believe how conspicuous people were when taking that route. He was lucky the person waiting here was a paparazzo because a sniper could have shot him and Takitsubo both. That possibility should have occurred to him before. He could no longer laugh it off as ridiculous.

This time, it was an old man walking down that path. He was as skinny as a matchstick. He almost looked like he was using his jumpsuit and lab coat to disguise some wires as a human silhouette.

“Who is that?” asked Hamazura.

“A Kihara.”

He had not expected that answer.

Even Benizome Jellyfish was trembling a little.

“He’s a part of that researcher family. This is bad. I was hoping for a dark side bigshot, but don’t give me that. Kihara Hasuu is too big!!”

“Hamazura.”

Takitsubo grabbed at his jacket and called his name, but she was not looking his way.

He could also hear a metallic creaking sound.

“Hamazura.”

“…”

When she called his name even more forcefully, he looked the direction she was.

The tall metal fence in that direction had what looked like sharp barbed arrows or spears at the top, but they were probably more for decoration than security. Those spikes were too sharp for a lightweight stray cat or wild bird to stand on, much less a human.

Yet two bare feet were standing atop one.

A girl was crouched up on the fence looking down at Hamazura and the others with a tilt of the head.

This was not right.

If she were a normal human, she would have been 13 or 14. She was a short girl with long hair and bangs cut straight across, but even those ordinary things looked wrong to him.

Her blinking and visible breaths were too regular.

A quiet sound could be heard in the silence like the humming of a refrigerator late at night.

Even on this winter night, she wore something like a racing swimsuit colored a toxic orange and black like some kind of insect. The technology within and purpose for her clothing was clearly different from that of Hamazura or Takitsubo’s clothing. The bands on her shoulders held phones and the belts around her thighs held a rolled-up silicone keyboard and bottles of some kind of liquid. The long hair spread out behind her was inhumanly crimson. The pupils in her widened eyes were expanding and contracting even more mechanically than a security camera’s lens.

The atmosphere had changed.

He might not know the details of the tech, but his heart froze. His instincts told him the answer without even needing to see the brutal machete attached horizontally atop her small butt.

She was from the dark side. And she was probably a harmful. The paparazzo was not the only one laying a trap. That Kihara man had used himself as bait to reveal any threats. And this mystery girl had been launched as an attack.

She made no attempt to hide what she was.

Raised middle finger symbols appeared in the mechanical eyes looking down at them.

A strange noise echoed out, but the emotionless girl had not said anything. She had kicked off her unstable footing and that had caused the metal fence to loudly creak.

And where was she jumping?

Benizome Jellyfish was slow to react because she had been peering through her camera.

“Wah!”

Her soft body and specialized photography device were noisily knocked to the ground.

Hamazura did not even have time to reach out a hand toward her.

“Wahh!! Ahh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He only managed to grab Takitsubo’s skinny wrist and back away after falling onto his butt. Every centimeter between them and that girl felt valuable. Benizome’s skill was real, so if she had been taken down so easily, he did not stand a chance. It was over if he was caught.

However.

The attacking android actually looked puzzled. The machete she had drawn from the back of her hips had slipped from her hand. It hit the ground with the same crash and tremor a boulder would have caused.

“Ferromagnetic quick-drying paint, 256-times concentrated.” The paparazzo held a spray can, but it did not seem to contain pepper spray. “Analog film is dying out, but the manufacturers have made a vast fortune with chemicals and cosmetics. Haven’t you heard of film companies making health supplements? And there are chemicals out there that cause corrosion in high-power machines!!”

“So this chemical will not harm my carbon skin but will melt away my synthetic clothing and underwear? Sensei would love this.”

Hamazura definitely heard a lovely voice, but the actual voice did not match the lip movements. He could not imagine why they would do that intentionally.

“But I will do what I can. Sensei said someone would try to interfere and he was correct. Which is why I was waiting here.”

“!!!???”

Hamazura immediately shoved Takitsubo Rikou away.

He heard a dull swoosh of air, similar to the swinging of a metal bat.

That came from Benizome.

The mystery girl planted her bare feet firmly on the snow, grabbed the woman in one hand, and swung her around. Benizome had to weigh forty to fifty kilograms. You might think of women as soft and light, but an axe customized for battle would only weigh two kilograms and a ball-and-chain only three. Forty kilograms might be light for a woman, but it was a devastating weight for a striking weapon.

“Gahh!?”

Hamazura could not avoid the attack to his torso and was sent flying along with the China dress paparazzo. It knocked the breath out of him and he did not have time to even move his limbs before he started rolling across the cold ground. This was his limit. A single hit and he had already hit his limit. Dark shadows were encroaching on the edges of his vision and he felt a great temptation to let go of his consciousness.

But…

“Bh.”

He and Benizome had unintentionally managed to put some distance between them and that dark side girl.

That meant the closest person—and thus the likeliest target—was Takitsubo Rikou who had been left behind.

“Kh, aghhhh!!!!!!”

Benizome Jellyfish was lying limply on top of him, so he pushed her aside and forcibly got up from the ground.

Just before the mechanical girl leapt at the closer target, she turned her head around toward him.

The slow movement of her head looked less like a conscious act and more like a targeting program keeping him in its sights.

He had drawn her attention.

But what did he do now? How could he survive this unidentified enemy?

“Hey, don’t give me that. Do you even think before you act?”

He heard a voice. It came from Benizome Jellyfish who he had just pushed away. Still lying unnaturally on her side, she reached into the slit of her China dress and drew something from her thigh.

It was not quite a handgun. 

It was a stun gun that used compressed gas to launch the electrodes.

“No biological reflexes, abnormal strength, and night vision? ''I bet she’s stuffed full of machines''. So this might work better than a plain old bullet.”

Hamazura Shiage felt like he had narrowly avoided death here.

But it had slipped his mind that he was still being swallowed whole by the world known as the dark side.

When the woman pulled the trigger, the electrodes stabbed into Takitsubo Rikou.

“Eh?”

The track suit girl looked down in surprise. She did not seem to understand what was happening even when she saw the electrodes and cables attached to the center of her chest.

But once the dry crackling sound started, she arched her back.

“Takitsubo!?”

“Ha ha ha!!”

It was a mystery how she still had so much strength left, but Benizome hopped up from the ground, let go of the stun gun without switching it off, and slid herself away. She also pulled a thick metal pen from her large cleavage. It had a two millimeter hole at the top of the grip, so it was probably a hidden camera. Its photos could not compare to the specialized single-lens reflex camera, but it would have the same quality as a phone camera.

Yes, she had been after one thing this entire time.

It was almost refreshing how dedicated she was to her goal.

“''A mechanical brain will always go for the weakest target first, right''!? Now I can escape and get my shot from a safe location. A shot of a Kihara-built secret weapon is sure to change history!! Don’t worry, she might turn you to mincemeat, but your deaths will allow me to set the world in motion!!”

(They’re all garbage! Is she a harmful too!?)

He glared at her while wishing he could kill her with his thoughts, but no one had ever said Benizome was on his side. She had merely let them live before, so it had always been on her terms. If she decided to cut them loose, there was nothing they could do to stop her.

However, he did have one thing he could use. Using it would leave him defenseless for a full hour afterwards, so it was best left unused until he absolutely needed it. There may have been a better way to use it, like to save his girlfriend suffering from that high-voltage current.

But he acted on reflex.

He did not have it in him to think rationally at the moment. His mind was boiling with rage. He could not let her get away with this. He could not let Benizome Jellyfish escape after using Takitsubo Rikou as bait for her own survival.

He stuck his hand in his pocket and grabbed the hard and cold coin within. He did not know how much power it had over humans who acted with a will of their own, so he chose to target something inanimate.

One option immediately came to mind, so he raised his voice.

“''Make Benizome’s shoes slip, Coin of Nicholas''!!”

“''Keep my shoes from slipping, Coin of Nicholas''!!”

He grimaced as soon as the words had left his mouth.

It had failed.

In fact…

“Ah ha ha!! Don’t give me that. Your eyeline was so obvious. Don’t underestimate a pro photographer!”

She was laughing.

The cause of his girlfriend’s pain calmly jumped into the bushes. All while a shotgun, a large handgun, and other weapons of various sizes spilled from the silver case she held.

He wanted to curse himself for thinking even for a second that she was a reasonable person.

She gave one last parting comment from the shadows.

“I knew something like this might happen once these things were being spread around! Don’t give me that. I can survive without its help, so I knew there was only one way to use it: To ''negate'' anyone else using one!!”

“Dammit!!”

He had not done any detailed research into how the coin worked. He had never tested to see what happened when two people used the coins on the same thing, but he felt so worthless now.

He had accomplished nothing and had to wait an hour for it to charge again.

He could not get back at her now.

The only people left were powerless Hamazura, Takitsubo who was still exposed to the high-voltage current, and the girl who moved through the cold like a piece of construction equipment. If she could swing a forty or fifty kilogram person around with one arm, she might be able to break through a concrete wall with her fist.

(What do I do?)

Leaving Takitsubo and running was out of the question.

He could never leave her to be the victim in a snuff film.

But that only told him his objective.

He still needed the realistically achievable means with which to achieve that.

(What do I do!?)

Just then, the heavy machinery girl’s eyes passed right by him as her head turned slowly like a swiveling fan.

He did not understand. It was not quite like she turned from right to left, ignoring him along the way. Once she turned to the left, her gaze moved back to the right. Since she was repeatedly turning her head side to side…had she lost sight of him?

He had no idea what was happening as he tried to catch his breath in front of her.

Given how much stronger she was, he doubted she would need to use any bluffs or feints, but he was through with rejoicing when he did not understand why something had happened. He had learned his lesson about that with Benizome Jellyfish.

“Pick it up.”

When he heard a female voice, he reached toward the ground almost on reflex.

He grabbed the pump action shotgun from the weapons Benizome had spilled on the ground.

“Fire.”

The blast knocked him onto his butt. That thing was clearly packed with too much powder. Benizome must have customized it herself, but he was pretty sure that increased the risk of it blowing up in your face.
The racing swimsuit girl had also fallen onto her butt.

He did not have time to feel guilty about shooting a girl at point-blank range.

There was a small scratch on her forehead and a miniscule trail of red liquid, but the wound of only a few millimeters revealed a bundle of something silver on the other side. That was clearly not a human wound.

“Y-you’re kidding me. That was an overpowered shot and I think it was a slug based on the way it hit!”

“''Now is your chance.''”

“?”

He finally spun around toward the voice that had been whispering in his ear.

A woman stood behind him and he could not even guess how long she had been there. She wore a formfitting light blue dress with a loose translucent long skirt worn over it and she wore her long blonde hair in twintails. But she looked around twenty and had the figure to match, so that dress-up doll attire looked weird on her.

She seemed inhuman in a different way from the girl whose pupils mechanically expanded and contracted.

It was like she was not really there.

He was afraid his hand would pass right through her if he reached out to touch her.

Yes.

The word had no place in this city of science, but it still floated up in his mind.

(A…ghost?)

Her tight and loose skirts hid her feet…giving the impression that she might not have any.

She was looking to the monster that had lost sight of her target. Of course, saving him did not mean this woman was a beneficial. She had not hesitated to order him to fire that gun and he never knew when that decisiveness would be directed his way.

“Pick up the stun gun if you wish to save your girlfriend. My nature affects ''mechanical senses'' such as cameras and sensors. Just like ghost photos and videos have not died out in an age of free image editing software. Just like phones lose their signal or have their location data or facial recognition malfunction during stories of paranormal encounters.”

Hamazura sprang into action.

Now was not the time to analyze what this ghost woman was saying. He snatched up the stun gun lying on the snow-wet ground and switched it off.

Takitsubo fell to her knees like he had switched off her power as well.

But the trouble was not over for her. That had been an illegal high-voltage current that did not adhere to any safety standards. Her cheeks were flushed and beads of sweat dripped from her forehead. Hamazura recognized these symptoms. She had suffered just like this from the Body Crystal drug extracted from the bodily fluids of berserk espers.

(Oh, no.)

He recalled the contents of the paper bag he was keeping safe: bC-96/R. What had Pet Breeder Aoumi Karei told him when she gave him that?

''“The temperature and humidity should be fine if you keep it in the fridge, but watch out for electricity leakage. Electrolysis can easily break down the medicine’s components.”

It had been destroyed.

The medicine currently circulating through Takitsubo Rikou’s body had been destroyed by this attack.

“Are you kidding me!?” he shouted.

But someone pressed their finger against his lips. It was Takitsubo herself. She was suffering from a high fever, but she still gathered what little strength was left to warn him.

Yes, that was right.

What had happened to that attacker?

“…”

His mind went blank. He had to have had his eyes off of the enemy for a full twenty seconds. She could have slaughtered him many times over in that time.

So why hadn’t she? The attacker slowly got up on her bare feet. For whatever reason, that heavy machinery girl wearing something like an orange and black racing swimsuit could not find the targets right in front of her.

She slowly turned her head side to side a few times to observe her surroundings, but then she pulled a bottle from her thigh and drank from it. Once she pulled the top of the bottle from her lips with a wet popping sound, she dumped the sticky clear liquid over her head.

He could hear electricity escaping from her head down to her feet. Something was happening.

“What is she?”

“She is not a cyborg that replaces human parts with machines.”

That whispering voice reminded him someone else was here too: the mystery ghost woman.

He would have fallen back on his butt if he had not been holding Takitsubo close.

“With that Kihara involved, she must be something even more grotesque.”

“…”

“I imagine artificial parts were built up one by one until they formed a full human. And with enough quality to be indistinguishable from a human on the outside,” explained the ghost women with the silhouette of a princess. “''Android'' would be the most suitable term. The word robot is more closely associated with the metal drums flooding the streets of this city.”

With a metallic scraping, the android girl pulled her thick machete out of the ground. She placed it in the sheathe directly attached to her swimsuit so it essentially lay horizontally atop her small butt. The undeveloped girl kicked off the snow with her bare feet to jump backwards and vanish into the darkness. Instead of running away, she seemed to be searching for the targets she had lost sight of. Not even she seemed to be aware what had happened.

Time passed, but Hamazura still did not feel any relief.

This was more than he had imagined.

He had known the dark side had cyborg parts that looked identical to biological ones, but this was a much greater taboo. If the ghost woman was right, that Kihara man had created ''something like'' thoughts and emotions from a machine.

And.

For that matter…

“Take your girlfriend and leave this place,” said the ephemeral ghost woman who he would have believed was a hallucination or hologram. “She has only lost sight of you. This seems to have placed a burden on her circuits, but not enough to damage them. I do not know when she will return. I cannot control where she searches and she would still smash your body to pieces if she happened to run into you without seeing you there.”

Her blonde twintails fluttered in a way disconnected from the blowing of the wind.

And she continued speaking to Hamazura who had been forced to confront just how deep the dark side went.

“There is more than one way to escape the city. Several dark side members have set their sights on this one, so this is now an extremely dangerous area. If you are not confident you can survive the deadly battle over this plank of Carneades, you should search for a different loophole. Before you lose everything and regret your choice.”