Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Virtual On Chapter2 (section)

===Part 8===

Kamijou could not remember what had happened, but the next thing he knew, Furashina Ririn was gone. She would apparently appear and wander off randomly whether she was feeling sleepy or not. She had a surprisingly ephemeral presence for how much of an impact she left.

Kamijou was returning the empty coffee jelly sundae container to the food truck. Unlike the styrofoam bowls from before, this was an expensive-looking glass container. He had Index wait for him at the table. Not because he was spoiling her, but because taking her through the food cart zone would only increase their expenses.

And that was when he ran across someone.

“Huh? You…?”

“Misaka?”

After casually speaking her name, he recalled what Furashina Ririn had said earlier.

She was dangerous.

She was known as a Hunter Hunter.

“What are you doing here? Are you watching the tournament?”

“More importantly.” Kamijou took a step back with a quizzical look on his face. “What’s with that getup? Are you a cheerleader???”

Mikoto followed his gaze down to her chest, her navel, and below. She quickly covered her miniskirt with both hands.

She rubbed her thighs together and blushed.

“I-I have my reasons! Like friendship, or unity, or something that started as a bit of fun but turned into representing District 7!!”

“???”

She snapped back at him, but she seemed to be her usual self.

He could not tell what had made Furashina so concerned.

Mikoto spotted the portable device attached near Kamijou’s belt.

“Oh, so you’re playing Virtual-On, too.”

“I only started recently, though. I really don’t know what I’m doing yet.”

“(I see. So he’s a beginner. Then he wouldn’t be deep enough into it to Defect. That’s good.)”

“Misaka?”

“Nyothing!!”

She shook her head, stuck her flailing hands in front of her face, and kept him from getting close.

“If I have time later, I can show you the ropes.”

“Hm? But…”

“Oh, well, you know what my school is like, right? I’m afraid what would happen if it got out I had a guy’s address registered. Unlike a cellphone, a lot isn’t known about how the data is managed, so it might be automatically linked to some SNS and the list might be stored somewhere else where the dorm manager could see it.”

“Oh, I see,” was all he could find to say.

Kamijou himself wanted to avoid playing against normal players since he had Defected. Defecting happened when you destroyed your controller while playing, but he had been inspired to do so while fighting the Blue Stalker who was a Defected player. That might not happened again, but there was still a chance of him leading someone else to Defect. And if he knew the risk, he wanted to avoid forcing that on another player.

“Well, I’ll be going,” said Mikoto. “Oh, right.”

“What is it?”

“If you see any other girls dressed like this, could you tell them I’m here?”

She clasped her hands in front of her face and made an odd request.

Kamijou looked puzzled.

“It’s not like I know anyone else from Tokiwadai.”

“They’re not actually Tokiwadai students. But if I get into the details, I’m afraid it would give you a connection to them and cause an unwanted miracle to happen. Then again, you have a way of expanding your group of friends no matter what, so that might not help much… Well, it doesn’t matter. Just please do that if you see them!”

“Sure.” After that casual response, Kamijou felt a need to say more. “But, Misaka, if things get really bad, come talk to me about it. I don’t want things to ever again end up like they did with that experiment.”

“…”

“Don’t think you’ve missed your chance because you didn’t come to me earlier and don’t assume I’ll get involved on my own when things get worse. As soon as things look bad, come tell me about it. It’s never too late to get a helping hand.”

“You…”

Mikoto started to say something, but she swallowed the words.

And she smiled.

“Understood. I won’t hesitate to get you involved next time. It doesn’t matter if you’re lined up at a ramen shop or if you’re fighting for a one-per-customer pack of eggs. You made me promise, so don’t you cry about it later.”

“Sure.”

Kamijou and Mikoto waved goodbye and parted ways.

After getting rid of the trash and taking a breath, the familiar girl was gone.

Only then did a fundamental question occur to him.

(What was she doing here anyway?)

He had no answer to that question.

He belatedly looked around the area.

But the familiar face he spotted was not Mikoto.

“Hi there, Kami-yan. I hear you’ve gotten a Defected PD and taken a step off the straight and narrow.”

He turned that way and saw short hair dyed blond, thin blue sunglasses, and gold accessories jangling from the neck. It was Tsuchimikado Motoharu. He was one of Kamijou’s classmates just like Aogami Pierce, but he had another face as well.

He was a magic side spy who had infiltrated Academy City from outside to monitor the city from within.

He was also a double spy who had worked his way into the underside of Academy City where he acted as a vanguard of the science side.

Kamijou’s mouth flapped.

“What? How do you-? How much do you-?”

“We’ll both be much happier if you don’t know the details, nyah. More importantly, Kami-yan, do you really understand what kind of situation you’ve wound up in?”

“Situation?”

“Where does the danger lie and who’s the enemy? Where shouldn’t you go and what shouldn’t you do? What does Defecting really mean? There are a lot of questions needing answering.”

“…”

Now that he mentioned it, Kamijou did not know any of that.

In his mind, gaining a Defected portable device gave your Virtuaroid much greater freedom but losing came with some kind of dangerous penalty. And during battle, there was a risk of causing your opponent to Defect if the situation was right. He had no proof of it, but that vague understanding gave off the same pressure as a minefield.

That was why his only plan was to avoid randomly challenging anyone else while finding a way to defeat the Blue Stalker who was likely to return for a rematch.

What was the penalty?

How exactly was it triggered?

“Open the search engine called Lord of Lords, change the overall search settings to a video search, and type in ‘The Phoenix’. With a Defected PD, you should just barely manage to pick up on the site.”

“The Phoenix?”

“The administrator doesn’t give a crap about ‘the right to be forgotten’, so it’s a cruel site that gathers and saves any posts, videos, streaming broadcasts, records, leaked classified data, or personal information that was requested to be deleted. If you find it, then search ‘Fate of a Defected PD’ on the site itself. That should get you all the data you want, Kami-yan.”

However, Tsuchimikado added a “but”.

A light sharper than a knife stabbed out from behind his sunglasses.

That secret plotter continued to drive home a point.

“Do not search for anything else. Don’t mistype a single character. That place is a crucible of malice and home to the people who enjoy the internet’s dark side. If a normal person stays there for too long, ''it’ll seriously destroy their personality''. Don’t forget that, nyah.”

“You mean…”

“It’s like Kunekune or Mary-san. Make a mistake and you could star in your very own creepy online legend, Kami-yan. …And be very careful from here on out. ''Nee-chin and that group'' should be taking action soon, nyah.”

“…”

Kamijou was left entirely speechless.

What had he gotten himself involved in? And how deeply? Wasn’t Defecting no more than turning off his own security settings to let Temjin move more smoothly?

He heard a cheer erupt in the distance.

Something major must have happened in the Virtual-On tournament.

But that enthusiastic heat only made this place feel all the colder.

Tsuchimikado waved and left, but Kamijou remained motionless in front of a food cart for a while. He felt a cold weight in his stomach that should have been full of coffee jelly.

He looked down at his portable device.

Accessing some strange site felt like throwing himself into the antlion pit, so he was hesitant to take that first step.

But he would definitely fall behind without enough information.

If it was just him, that would be one thing. But what if the depthless problem surrounding the Blue Stalker also reached Index and the others?

“I guess I have to do it.”

With that annoyed comment, Kamijou operated his portable device.

He changed the settings as Tsuchimikado had said, found the site, and typed in the search terms: Fate of a Defected PD.

That text had a dangerous ring to it and it produced a few dozen results. There were too many to fit on the screen and scrolling did not immediately reach the end.

But he was surprised to find that the results were not all cruel and gloomy files.

He tried opening one and found text from a short-message SNS.

“Cat Tar: I tried out that Defection thing that everyone’s talking about. I’d heard it really powers up your Material Analyze and, if the rumors are true, it also lets you use the Reverse Convert. I’m about to go try it out, so I’m really excited.”

The image used in place of an icon was of a girl about Kamijou’s age. Of course, he had no guarantee that was actually what this person looked like.

It was something else that caught his attention.

(Reverse Convert…?)

He had never heard that term before.

He just about typed the term into the site’s search box, but then he remembered Tsuchimikado’s warning: ''Do not search for anything else. Don’t mistype a single character.'' He slowly breathed out and obediently scrolled down hoping to find an answer in the information he had now.

“There it is.”

It was in blog format, but the page made him think it was an individual attempt at writing an online encyclopedia.

''Reverse Convert.

''Category: Rumor.

''Veracity: Unknown.

''In the Next Generation Game Virtual-On, a player can use the Material Analyze function to alter the parameters of their Virtuaroid. But a Defected PD can supposedly send the customized Virtuaroid’s modification data back to the player instead.

''The veracity and meaning of this are both unknown.

''Is it similar to inputting an RPG’s STR, INT, VIT, AGI, MIN, and LUK stats into the human body, or is it more like drawing out the magic and skills directly? How the supporters of this rumor define it greatly changes what must be proven wrong in an argument against them.

''However, how the Material Analyze applies adjustments to the Virtuaroids is still mostly shrouded in mystery, so it isn’t hard to see how that black box led to rumors of how it might affect people instead.

''If this were entirely true and worked with the Material Analyze, it would go beyond the plain Virtuaroid. If the data acquired from the real world could be inputted into your unit and then returned to the player, would it mean any material, traits, or conditions from the real world – such as bird feathers or the weight of iron – be incorporated into the human body?

“Returned to…the player?”

Kamijou spoke it aloud possibly because he was having trouble processing it in his mind.

(So is it like levelling up in a game and becoming stronger in reality? But Virtual-On isn’t an RPG where you train your body. It’s about robots…)

It would definitely cause problems if playing Virtual-On made him grow to colossal size or able jump up to a high-rise building’s rooftop. He wanted a clearer definition of what this meant.

(Then again…)

This was Academy City.

Well-defined paranormal phenomena were common here.

The word Virtuaroid referred to a great variety of units and every one was different. He had selected several of them while fighting Index, and some had powerful attacks, some had thick armor, and some had high speed. There were simple ones like Apharmd which specialized in hand-to-hand fighting using nimble footwork, but there were also ones like Angelan or Specineff that gave physical form to the psychological or directly interfered with and attacked it.

What if that kind of “power” was directly drawn out?

That would mean more than just multiplying one’s physical strength, allowing them to stop a metal bat with their skin, or letting them run faster than a car. What if they could reach the kind of power that could only be described as paranormal?

Wouldn’t that mean the creation of a new “system” separate from Academy City’s?

(Esper powers and magic can’t coexist due to the side effects between them, but this could be dangerous if those side effects don’t exist.)

Academy City’s students found a great variety of ways to make use of a single power such as fire or water. So how far would things branch out if they could mix multiple powers?

For example, what if Misaka Mikoto gained the power to freeze her target’s feet to hold them in place before she fired her Railgun?

For example, what if Kamijou Touma gained any power at all to go along with his fist?

“…”

That possibility briefly crossed his mind, but Kamijou shook his head.

That seemed somehow wrong.

Even if he could easily acquire a new “system” and even if he could crawl up from being known as a Level 0, something was not right.

If he gained a power too easily, he would rely on it too easily.

If he had not faced that power over a long period of time, he would not know how to restrain himself.

And if he started using it like that, he would fail spectacularly at some point. If he broke his own bone, it might just mean a pricey bill, but if it bared its fangs against those around him, he could end up doing something unforgivable.

Plus, even if he could use the Material Analyze on himself, he could not predict how it would affect him or how far it would spread. He might combine the sturdiness of steel with the litheness of a wild beast, but that would not be thoroughly endurance tested and debugged like a corporate product. He would be incorporating it into his own body right away. The risk to himself and others was endless.

It sounded so ridiculous that he might have laughed it off if he had simply heard the rumor.

But Kamijou knew he could not do that.

Yes.

There had been an unnatural Ring Scan after he had Defected.

And he had apparently disappeared. Depending on how that worked, this could be very bad indeed.

He continued through the data and found a series of posts from a message board.

''Unconfirmed Info Thread 19

''Post 113:

''Is the Reverse Convert really as convenient as they claim? Then again, there are some people getting all worked up over the possibility of it tearing down the current hierarchy that overemphasizes esper powers.

''Post 114:

''Yeah, but the risks are huge. It isn’t normal to take on characteristics of other plants, animals, and machines via your unit’s traits. It should be obvious to anyone who gives it two seconds of thought, but only people who can’t do jack on their own will fall for this Reverse nonsense. Those losers deserve to lose.

''Post 115:

''Plus, it’s not like you would only get the positive data from your unit. If you incorporated a fish’s gills with the Material Analyze and then used the Reverse Convert, would you suffocate? In fact, wouldn’t doing it with other animals screw with the layout of your blood vessels and pretty much always kill you instantly?

''Post 116:

''I don’t know about anything that extreme, but check out the video sites. When someone makes a ton of rough plays and the refs dock them tons of points, things get bad. They apparently fall into a state a lot like sensory deprivation. That might mean something’s being taken out of them, but it sounds dangerous when you add a Personal Reality into the equation. Real dangerous.

''Post 117:

''Personal Reality? I thought only the talentless would rely on the RC?

''Post 118:

''It’s actually no laughing matter. Oh, if you don’t know, sensory deprivation refers to being blindfolded and having your arms in tubes for a long period of time so your ability to think fades away. As they keep making rough plays and their debt piles up, their senses gradually dull and they end up in a similar state. And that’ll lead to a collapse of their entire personality. In the worst cases, it might mess up their motor nerves and autonomic nerves, leading to loss of muscular strength and organ failure.

''Post 119:

''Nice essay there, lol. But there are a lot of different kinds of organ failure. Is it gonna kill their appendix?

''Post 120:

''It’s the ones who laugh at it that go pale when they watch the video for fun.

Video sites.

Go pale.

Kamijou’s fingertips started feeling heavy. Ominously, this was the result of searching the site for “Fate of a Defected PD”. The closer he got to the heart of the matter, the greater the pressure grew.

He focused on the video files in the dozens of candidates available to him.

He soon found what he was looking for.

(Is this what they were talking about?)

It had likely been uploaded to some video sharing site or another. The window displayed the same girl seen in the short-message SNS icon.

However, something was wrong with her.

It was grainy footage. It looked like someone had filmed it with a cellphone or portable device instead of a specialized camera. The shaky footage appeared to be at a center somewhere and a large group of boys and girls were surrounding something. The cameraman was one of the onlookers.

That girl was at the center.

She was slumped down on the road and unable to stand on her own.

Her fingers clawed at her chest, her neck, and every other part of her body. Something not quite a voice and not quite a noise escaped the corner of her lips.

“H-hshhh…gahh, hkhhh…! S-someone…someone…!!”

Autonomic nerves and organ failure.

Wasn’t that what the posts on that message board had said?

“Fight-…cough, cough! Wheeze, wheeze…please…help…”

She lacked something.

And if she lacked something, it must have been taken away from her.

The footage was grainy and blurry, and Kamijou did not have any special video analysis software. But the odd tension escaping the small device told him all too well that this was not fake.

As the onlookers watched on in horror, a few of them finally prepared to fight her. Was that what she wanted, or was she simply so weak that lying down could easily cause her to suffocate on her own saliva? She could not walk herself, so she had to be carried to an egg-shaped cradle station inside the center. Eventually, the actual Virtual-On match began.

But.

“Hey, what’s going on? That girl isn’t moving!”

“This is bad. The negative judgment took away some of her points. She can’t fight like that. The ref doesn’t like how she’s relying on long-range and being too careful. No amount of shooting will help if she can’t score a down and she’s only losing points in the meantime. Her command log must be growing entirely black. And if she loses any more points…!”

“That’s enough. We need to get her out of there. Cut her connection!”

People quickly gathered around the cradle station. They slid open the door.

And they found something strange inside.

Or rather, they did not find what should have been there.

The cradle station was a small room with no other exit.

And yet ''the girl had entirely vanished from within.

It quickly disappeared, but a slight ring of light was visible for a moment.

It looked like a hula hoop and it disappeared like it had been no more than an illusion.

Come to think of it, hadn’t Aogami Pierce mentioned an unnatural second Ring Scan?

The ring of light had passed over Kamijou from top to bottom and then he had vanished.

The size more than the shape reminded Kamijou of something.

(That thing on the Virtuaroid’s back. Was it called the V-Disc?)

As a beginner to the game, Kamijou did not know what that meant, but the documents gathered for him contained a text that answered that question.

“Well, it’s only part of the game’s setting,” [but it seems like the Virtuaroids aren’t just normal robots.] <The data in> {the V-Disc on their back} (is materialized and remade into something tangible.)

Kamijou frowned.

The text and explanation seemed to jump around because, while this was generally an amateur-compiled encyclopedia, it was made to gather the corresponding keywords from blogs and SNSs all across the internet and combine them as smoothly as possible when the cursor was placed over it.

You could always just call it big data, but this was only the most trusted opinion at the moment and that did not mean it was absolutely correct. Once more posts were made, this text would change. It was only a piece of reference material and could be dangerous to simply accept.

[The V-Disc sometimes glows red.] “And the cover called the motor deck” (will pop open.) <What does that mean?> {It also glows when dashing.}

But the contents shocked Kamijou enough that he froze in place for a while.

Was that true?

It wasn’t just gathering some false information?

It was enough to make him wonder that.

“Aren’t Virtuaroids pretty slim? They don’t really have a spot large enough to fit a cockpit, do they?”

[The original setting has them being remote controlled.] (It’s true I’ve never seen any kind of door or hatch open on the armor.) {That part on the back does seem the most suspicious since they all have it in common.} “And even if they did have a hidden door, there’s no space inside. You’d be squeezed in tight.” [Maybe it’s more like being absorbed or swallowed than boarding. Where do our bodies go???]

That was no laughing matter when Aogami Pierce had said Kamijou Touma had vanished before his eyes.

Plus, this had turned up in the results of a search for “Fate of a Defected PD”. Anything here had to be related to that.

There was more written there.

It must have been locked in some way because the text here did not change.

''(Personal Opinion)

''I honestly think the most likely explanation for the disappearing players is that they simply do not return after entering their Virtuaroid. Is it some kind of side effect, or is it a physical phenomenon made to look like that? However, I have no idea why anyone would want to copy a phenomenon no one knows about. Copycats generally see value in mimicking a famous incident that shocked everyone.

''Are these disappearances centered on the Next Generation Game Virtual-On, or is there some overlap with something entirely different or a natural phenomenon? More discussion is needed on that question.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

He tried to say “You’re kidding, right?”, but he could not even produce a scratchy voice.

What was really going on here?

Some unbelievable incident was underway at some level or another.

“…What happened?” he said without thinking.

What did this mean? What was he supposed to ask next???

If Aogami Pierce was right, a ring of light (The V-Disc’s power?) carried the player away when using a Defected PD to fight.

So what had happened to that girl?

Could it be?

Had she disappeared and never returned?

Everything he saw here was data from the past. He could not ask it questions and expect an answer and it was impossible to change what he saw there.

But it affected him too.

He too had been thrown into that world.

So his senses could fade away.

He could fall into a state much like sensory deprivation, find himself unable to maintain his thoughts, and even have his organs fail.

And ''did it get even worse than that?

“You have to be kidding me. I haven’t heard much about these disappearances, but are Defected players of this Next Generation Game truly disappearing!?”

This could not be explained by the placebo effect or by light and sound stimulation.

This was touching on something related to a human’s…no, to the world’s laws.

A strange chill crawled across his skin.

Yes.

For one thing…

(I was using the Material Analyze like it’s normal, but it’s the same. It claims to be scanning the material, but how exactly does it do that?)

He tried checking through the rest of the data, but the further down the list he got, the less related the data was and he felt like the answers were vanishing before his eyes. This may have been a problem unique to the internet.

But most of the data he saw was far from reassuring.

Some were short-message SNS posts, some were requests for advice on a message board, and some were gameplay videos.

Due to the disparate formats, he felt like it was spreading to every corner of the city and it made his skin crawl. It was like flipping up the rug and finding tiny bugs covering the floor.

“No, no, no! I can’t even run 5 km anymore!?”

“I can’t see anything in my head when I read. The text doesn’t lead to any kind of image. What’s happening to me? Can I get back what was taken from me???”

“This is game, right? It’s a competition. So it’s like gambling: there’s no way to keep winning forever! Even when you’re playing fair and square, you sometimes get called on a rough play. You’ll eventually hit a slump somewhere and you can’t recover if that means something critical is taken from you. I bet they’ve only been thinking about taking everything from us from the beginning!”

Strengths, special skills, talents. It was a dance of sorrowful voices from those who had had the central pillar of their being stripped away.

Virtual-On was primarily a Next Generation Game in which one enjoyed battling others. And the Material Analyze feature allowed the players to adjust it as they saw fit. There was no single strongest Virtuaroid and people could put together their own specialized unit if they did not like who was currently at the top.

There was no way of guaranteeing victory.

There was no safe zone.

Even if a temporary one was found, the latest tactics would always be crushed by even newer tactics. From the lowest rookie to the top player, everyone would lose eventually. Even if someone tried to play fair, it was common for them to make a rough play when provoked enough. The problem was that the occasional rough play was weighted more heavily than all the times one played fairly.

Wasn’t it time to stop complaining about inconvenience?

Wasn’t it time to turn off the portable device’s wireless…no, to switch it off altogether?

Kamijou started to think so, but then some more unconfirmed information shook him to the core.

“Come to think of it, I’ve heard that some people disappeared after Defecting even when they switched off the power. Does that mean the penalties keep piling up just because you’re refusing to play? That’ll piss off the people who have switched off their wireless because they don’t want to lose another battle. Well, the Reverse Convert itself is fake, so maybe it’s all nothing more than rumors.”

There was no escape.

If there was, a search for their “fate” would not have turned up anything.

Or so it seemed after reading through this data from the past.