Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

The death game rules had changed.

The poor bastard who went bust by dropping below zero would be punished in some way.

“Hey, wait! I can’t!! This is a reindeer costume, isn’t it!? There’s no way I can throw darts in this thing! I mean, look! The hands are like potholders!!”

“Then would you prefer to be the sleigh, Touma?”

“That’s not even a costume!! It’s just a rectangular box!!”

A player would only go bust just before checking out. Even if they screwed up, they would return to being only 16 or 32 points away from winning, so they might just finish it up next round. Thus, it was unsurprising that local rules showed up to trip up whoever was winning.

Fortunately, there were plenty of party goods here.

That gave them plenty of tools to mess with whoever was doing well.

“Heh heh heh.” Wicked laughter left a middle school girl. Misaka Mikoto was entering a slight demon king mode. “Keep tripping each other up this Christmas Eve, you fools. Yes, continue struggling while I throw three 10s in a row to check out!! It’s the exact same course each time, so nothing could be easi-”

“Oops, did these bulky reindeer antlers just hit something?”

“Ahee!?”

When the strange stimulus rubbed up along her back, Mikoto jumped straight up.

But something was odd.

She blushed bright, flapped her mouth, and turned back toward him.

“Y-y-y-you. M-m-my b-b-bra…my b-b-b-bra hook.”

“Eh, what!? I swear I didn’t mean to do that!”

Her dart flew off course and actually stabbed right in the center of the bull’s eye. With 50 points taken from her remaining 30 points, she went bust.

Oblivious to what had gone on below the surface, Index checked inside the plastic costume box.

“Okay, short hair, you have to wear this one. It’s Santa Claus!”

“Ugh, really!? Well, that’s not so bad. A red coat and pants shouldn’t affect my movements too much.”

“Australian version!!”

“That’s just a red bikini and miniskirt!! The worst part is I don’t think you’re being intentionally cruel!!”

Mikoto grew somewhat tearful as that costume set was shoved into her arms, but these punishments were nonnegotiable. It helped that Kamijou Touma had already transformed into a reindeer. After forcing him to do it, she could not back out herself. “Dammit,” she grumbled while disappearing into the back. Kamijou had told her where to go – a handmade dressing room seemingly made using curtain rails bought at a home improvement store.

“My turn now. It’s Kamijou-san’s time to shine!!”

“Ooh, what should I have Touma do if he goes bust again?”

Then he noticed something.

“Why is this dart all sticky?” He squeezed the dart in his hand. “Index, did you use it after touching the snacks?”

“Eh? I don’t think so.”

That sounded simple enough, but with her perfect memory, an “I don’t think so” meant she really had not done so. The white nun tilted her head and touched the dart herself.

“It doesn’t feel sticky to me.”

“No way. It’s definitely catching on my fingers. None of the other darts did this.”

He pouted his lips while opening and closing his right hand. However, both his hands were covered by the potholder-like gloves of the reindeer costume.

“Hey, Index. Is there anything on this costume’s hand?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Then are the two materials a bad match? This is really weird.”

Wiping them off with a dry handkerchief and tissues did nothing to solve the problem. He recalled seeing some wet tissues in the bathroom and he could not think of any other option, so he called timeout and made his way to the back of the darts bar.

After turning the corner, he saw the small space surrounded by a curtain.

That was the dressing room.

Something suddenly occurred to him.

(Oh, yeah. Misaka hasn’t come back yet. What’s taking her so long?)

He was not about to approach that curtain that was shut tight and fluttering slightly from the movement within. After all, it scared him. A lot. With his misfortune, that makeshift dressing room was a serious threat. What would happen if the curtain rails fell from the ceiling and exposed the person changing within? He could not hope to nimbly dodge out of the way in this reindeer costume and his right hand was covered by that mitten-like glove. Plus, this was Academy City’s #3, aka the Railgun. There was no surviving a “kyah, pervert!” attack when it packed the same punch as a battleship’s gun.

(Yeah, best to give this one a wide berth.)

With that, he safely slipped past the dressing room and opened the door to the unisex bathroom.

His memories vanished after that.

All he could remember was the color red.

The next thing he knew, he was lying in the hallway.

“???”

He truly had no idea what had happened.

There were clear gaps in the film of his memories.

He had simply found himself lying on his back while Misaka Mikoto mounted him with her face blushing bright red. Instead of her blazer uniform, she was dressed in red for some reason. Yes, she had transformed into that Southern Hemisphere Santa Claus. But…

“What was that? I think I opened the door and someone was chang-”

“Stop, no!! Don’t try to remember!! Forget it all!!”

She hit him with her clenched fists, but that was not enough to remove the memories from his head.

Then his eyes opened wide.

[[Image:GT_Index_v01_100.jpg|thumb]]

“Now I remember! Why were you changing in there!?”

“Because you told me to go change ‘in the back’.”

“There was an obvious dressing room set up right there!!”

“I was supposed to use that!? But it looked like a staff only thing!”

Hadn’t that shut curtain been fluttering from movement inside? But if she hadn’t been in there, then why!? Kamijou grew more and more confused by how unfair the world could be, but then he heard a rumbling sound from the ceiling. It was the air conditioning. That goddamn warm air had been blowing on the curtain.

“Hey, Misaka-san? Wow, wow. Thinking back on it now…wow, wow, wow.”

“No, I said forget everything!!!!!!!”

Santa shouted loudly while riding a reindeer.

Except there was no sleigh here.