Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

After being taken the hospital, the magician girl was given first aid.

Naturally, they hid the fact that she was a magician. The doctors would not have understood if they had tried to explain and it would have caused problems if they did understand, so there was no point in mentioning it.

Kamijou and Index rode along in the ambulance while Stiyl pursued the main force of the magic cabal. That girl had merely been a decoy meant to buy time, so they did not have any time to spare if the main force was working to gain control of the center of Agni’s Festival Fire.

Kamijou spoke to Index in the waiting room.

“They say her condition is not as bad as it looked at first glance. She suffered light blood loss and a concussion. If she rests, she should be back to normal in a few hours.”

“Touma, what do we do now?”

“We don’t have time,” he said quickly. “When a patient with injuries that appear to be from some sort of incident comes in, the hospital will contact Anti-Skill. They should be here before long. We need to speak with her before that happens.”

They headed for the girl’s hospital room.

The magician girl had been provided with a private room. She lay on the single bed in the room and she was not wearing a hospital gown. It may have been that her treatment had not required her clothes to be cut away or it may have been that Stiyl’s restraining runes had prevented the clothes from being removed.

When Kamijou and Index entered, the girl glanced over and spoke with an emotionless voice.

“What do you want?”

“We’re going to get you out of here.” Kamijou cut to the chase. “The hospital will have called Anti-Skill, so they should be here soon. But Stiyl does not want you to be captured by them. He said the odds are good your magic cabal would notice. I don’t want to think about the possibility, but is there a chance you will be attacked again if we hand you over to them?”

“What if there is?” The girl tried to sit up but then sank back into the bed. “That is what I hope happens. They failed to kill me before, but they will succeed next time. That is all there is to it. At the very least, it is 100 times better than handing more information than necessary over to Academy City or the Anglican Church.”

“I see.”

Suddenly, they heard multiple sets of footsteps in the hallway.

“Touma!”

“Tch, so Anti-Skill’s already here. We can talk later. We can’t use the hallway, so we’ll use the window.”

“Hey, wait a second. What are you doing!?”

“We’re getting you out of here!”

The magician girl frowned.

“I never said I would go.”

“Sorry, but you have no say in the matter. I’ll carry you if need be.”

Kamijou approached the window and opened it. He looked down to find a height of about three stories. The eaves stuck out and the drain pipes for gutters continued vertically down, so there were plenty of points for handholds and footholds.

“Let’s go. They said you had no broken bones, so you can use your arms and legs, right?”

“You can shelter me if you like, but don’t your city’s rules put you at a disadvantage here?”

“Even if they do, it’s no reason to abandon you.”

“Even if I am refusing your help? You gain nothing from this.”

“That’s no reason either,” replied Kamijou as he checked to make sure there was no one on the ground directly below. “It was the same when you tried to save your sister, right? No one forced it onto you.”

The girl clicked her tongue.

With her head hanging down, she said, “You said the cabal might attack me if you leave me with this city’s Anti-Skill.”

“Y-yeah. What about it?”

“In that case, you could have threatened to hand me over to them if I did not cooperate. You could have said I had to tell you everything I knew about the cabal or you would not let me escape. Why didn’t you?”

Kamijou’s response was simple.

“The thought never occurred to me.”

“…You idiot.” As soon as she muttered that, the girl brought her feet out of the bed and to the ground. “It’s Sozty.”

“What?”

“My name is Sozty Exica. What’s yours?”

Kamijou smiled slightly.

“Kamijou Touma. And she’s Index.”



By the time Anti-Skill entered the room, no one was left inside.

They immediately began a search, but never found anyone.