Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 7===

Dion Fortune.

Moina Mathers.

Their fight in District 7 had passed the bounds of human ability. They had simply been fighting too long. No human could run a full marathon at the speed of a 50-meter dash. But a battle on that level had been going on for hours now. A Saint who could break the sound barrier in an instant and then instantly run out of gas would have died well before this. This was only possible for a magician created using a tarot deck as a grimoire.

That was the strength of someone who could absorb massive power from the ley lines and wield that instead of having to refine magic power from their own life force.

(I certainly don’t want to be killed right away, but this kind of endless quagmire isn’t fun either.)

One reason for the stalemate was Moina Mathers’s spiritual item.

Her tattva cards were certainly powerful, but using the visual stimuli of the bright colors drawn on the cards to guide her mind created a weakness as well. Visual stimuli. …That meant a third party could peek at the card and know the element of the next attack.

“Responding after seeing the card always puts me one step behind, though. But if I could predict what was coming next before you drew the card, I would be a step ahead and beat you.”

“…”

“But I’ll have gathered all the data I need soon. You shouldn’t have been throwing those tattva cards around like that. It’s like the scorebook written up by the cute manager of the baseball team. You’ve thrown too many pitches. How many until it’s enough? I will kill you before you can act.”

Moina Mathers said nothing.

But instead of a tattva card, she suddenly waved her palette knife through the air in an orderly pattern.

This was different.

“?”

Something rose up.

From the red snowy ground. And more followed it. A lot more. Like sinister flowers blossoming all around her.

They were colorful silhouettes seemingly made of a mixture of yellow, blue, white, red, and other colors of paint.

Except their heads were giant red roses.

“Ah, ahh, ah…”

Dion Fortune stood stock still and her voice escaped her like air from a deflating balloon.

Because she knew what her teacher and nemesis was doing.

“Wh-why do you look so proud of yourself? You didn’t think this was one of your successes, did you? How airheaded a wife can you be!?”

As his wife, Moina had devoted herself to supporting that uncontrollable genius magician named Mathers, but not everything had gone perfectly and she had made a few major mistakes after her husband’s death: her unproductive conflict with her student Fortune, her failure to silence some baseless rumors (on the level of a murder), and – as the most extreme example – this. The Mass Production of Low Quality Magicians Debacle in which she used a correspondence class to grant entrance to the secret magic cabal she managed for the faceless strangers who would pay for the privilege.

Dion Fortune was cautious of course. Even if they were of low quality, a magician was still a magician. She didn’t know if they refined their own magic power or if they absorbed it from the ley lines, but she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever attacks they used. If she didn’t switch her mindset from one-on-one to a group battle, she would be crushed by the group even if she defeated one of them. Or so she thought.

But even that was a fatal mistake.

“Eh?”

Moina Mathers’s face was right in front of her.

She had hopped down from the giant black cat and approached within 100 centimeters.

This was immediately after she switched tactics from a single destructive attack to a numbers game. She had slipped through Dion Fortune’s blind spot.

It didn’t matter how Dion Fortune twisted her body.

Here.

At this one spot, she couldn’t respond right away!?

(Damn!!)

Moina Mathers held a black blade. The utterly twisted object looked like it was made from a large quantity of oil paint or something that had been forcibly dried and hardened. This was probably a self-defensive strike – a jab – with a saber that she had learned from her husband Mathers who enjoyed fencing. The sharp tip was clearly aimed at her opponent’s throat.

Dion Fortune had misread this.

The biggest threat was not the giant cat, not the tattva cards, and not the group of rose-faced mass-produced magicians. ''She should have been most cautious of Moina Mathers herself''. She should have known that from the start, but the countless tricks had distracted her.

The saber was coming.

It was more deadly than a long spear, a hammer, or the knife of an enemy who had snuck up on her.

(Oh, god. Am I actually dead this time?)

Even if she did have a single second left to move, she would have used it to kill Moina too. She gritted her teeth and focused all her attention on the black box. And…



Sparks flew.

The orange sparks of two blades clashing.



Another piece of metal intersected Moina’s black saber to form a cross.

Instead of blocking the sharp jab, this struck the side of the blade to divert it away. Orange sparks decorated the darkness like remnants of the attack’s deadly power.

A palette knife was responsible.

That was the weapon of a certain magician who specialized in art and had completed many ceremonial grounds and spiritual items by giving real form to the many ideas the other magicians couldn’t bring out of their heads.

“Honestly,” said a calm voice. “It’s sad you’re struggling this much to defeat such a defective version of me. You’re the one who researched all the nutrients in different foods and who insisted Kabbalah was Western yoga, so I would have thought you could boost your physical abilities somewhat.”

By the time she said this, a dull sound had left the palette knife. Followed by another. They were mechanical sounds like might come from a sewing machine. She swept the saber aside and sent accurately jabs right toward the now-defenseless Moina’s throat and chest, but Moina used the guard and pommel to forcibly defend herself.

The same techniques.

The same skill.

The same ability.

Wasn’t there just one magician who could do that?

Yes, and ''despite being the kind of person who would casually rescue the frog-faced doctor who was nearly a stranger to her after happening across him'', she was always so harsh with the student she had known for so long.

Dion Fortune gulped and spoke.

“Mis…tress?”

There was only one person she addressed that way.

And it wasn’t the Moina who Coronzon had created.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers stood beside her student.