Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter1

And thinking back, his Christmas Eve had been pretty awful. His body below the covers was so wrapped in bandages that his movements were as stiff and awkward as an ancient civilization’s clay robot. He did not want to know how many injuries he had in all and he definitely did not want to see them. Counting just the ones he was aware of, he had been stabbed in the side with a knife, lacerated by metal and glass shards, blown away by a few blasts of next-generation magic, and punched square in the cheek by a rich, sexy, macho former rescue squad member.

“That looks pretty awful. I mean, you can’t do much of anything without using your fingers. What do you do about food?”

Different sorts of nerds could never see eye to eye. That sad history of conflict played out again here as the world’s most meaningless battle began. Those two pill bugs simply could not remain rolled up below the same stone together in peace. However, one of them was a rocket boy with his hands covered up and the other was a clay robot with bandages around his entire body. Neither one could bend their joints very much, so despite announcing their intent to kill, their scuffle ended up more like a fight between old-fashioned tokusatsu kaiju. None of it looked very impressive.

In the mayhem, something slipped from Aogami Pierce’s pocket: a notebook-sized tablet.

For better or for worse, modern voice commands checked for the user’s voiceprint, so Aogami Pierce escaped that one alive.

Kamijou’s voice did not reach him. That bastard was probably wearing wireless headphones or something.

She was dressed up like the nurses of this hospital.

And Kamijou was immediately disturbed by his analysis here.

(H-have I been in the hospital so much I’ve become an expert on nurses? I hadn’t noticed it before, but maybe I’m past the point of no return here.)

“I checked inside a few people’s minds and it turns out they intentionally gave you an excessive amount of bandages to scare you. Because otherwise you’d run off and tear your half-healed wounds back open. Your injuries aren’t actually all that bad.”

“Your resilience is a constant reminder that the human body is a mysterious thing.” She sat her shapely butt down on the bed next to him. “I went to the trouble of using Mental Out, the strongest psychological power, to sneak into the hospital, so I wish you would show the appropriate appreciation ability. Also, I came here for revenge.”

“I sincerely hope you did stop before doing the deed, but I’m still not touching you until you’ve been sterilized with the hospital’s most harsh disinfectant spray.”

“What are you doing, Kami-yan? And should you remove your bandages like that?”

“Ih's nuffing.”

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_055.jpg|thumb]]

“I, but, wait, really?”

The professional high-class girl waved her hands in a fluster and her thoughts seemed to have ground to a halt. She must have been hoping very dearly that she had misinterpreted what he had said, but her attempt to clear up the misunderstanding had instead planted her foot on the landmine.

Mikoto, a high-class girl who contradictorily had a better understanding of the commoner life, joined the conversation with exasperation in her voice.

“This is Japanese-style, so it’s not even on the bone. Christmas fried chicken is normally the Western-style, you know?”

“Don’t be absurd!! I couldn’t eat that kind right now if I had it! Besides, there’s no way I can afford anything as fancy as meat on the bone!!!!!!”

When he was that upfront about it, even Mikoto could only stammer without finding the words.

A high schooler was simply too much for middle schoolers to handle.

As mentioned earlier, hospitals paid careful attention to seasonal events. The menu had a lot of special Christmas items available, but Kamijou Touma’s mind had apparently skipped right past them. He seemed physically unable to see any single item on the menu that cost more than 1000 yen.

Index alone remained cheerful.

“All that matters is that it’s edible!! Because you need food to stay alive!!”

“Exactly right, Index. Someone has taught you well.”

“So I want the extra-large three-meat grill combo that comes with ginger pork, fried shrimp, and a hamburger steak!!”

“Why do they even offer something so unhealthy at a hospital? And ''you'' are stuck with that apple cake you bought with our precious money. That thing has to have enough sugar to keep you alive if you got lost on a snowy mountain.”

The other two girls could only sigh as they watched Kamijou and Index divide up their prizes on small paper plates to share.

They exchanged a glance and then silently communicated by reading each other’s lips.

“(Looks like there aren’t any lasting effects.)”

“(I could have sworn that black pill was meant as an attack on him, though. What purpose ability did it even have?)”

Just as they arrived at that conclusion, some sticky red blood dripped from Kamijou Touma’s nose.

Two small triangles appeared.

They were created by the mouths of the two Level 5 girls.

A voice seemed to crawl up from the pit of hell.

“Hold it. Are you putting mayo on your chicken, Mr. High Calorie?”

“Eh? What else would you put on it? Please don’t say something like ‘matcha salt’! And you’re gonna act like you’re better than me for it when all you’re doing is adding a pinch of some fancy salt to your food!!”

Kamijou Touma took offense, but that was not the real reason Mikoto had spoken up.

“I don’t really care about your topping choice – and I prefer lemon juice, for the record. Now, what was going through your head just now? Were you thinking about that kiss? That romantic smooch you had on Christmas Eve!?”

“And why didn’t you tell me you were okay with some random person walking up and kissing you!?” cut in Shokuhou. “Argh, ''I'' could have been the mysterious and sexy stranger who swept you off your feet on Christmas Eve!”

===Part 4===

Shokuhou Misaki pouted her lips.

She was not in a special hospital room or examining room. In fact, she was out in a perfectly ordinary hallway. The people walking down the hall passed by without even focusing on that blonde girl in a nurse uniform.

She was not at all concerned about being discovered as an intruder.

There was only one thing on her mind: regret. She hated that some strange woman had appeared out of nowhere and stolen what could have been her own special memory for that holy night, but

what did that really matter? That woman may have stolen a small lead, but Shokuhou was not so pure that she would give up over that.

(What I have to do now could not be more obvious: I have to steal him back. Heh heh heh. Now, what costume would be best?)

“Hm, hm. Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

She was actually humming when she came to a stop in a small waiting room in the hallway. A few vending machines and a sofa were tucked over out of the way, but there was no wall or other partition dividing it off from the hallway. She was still in full view of all the nurses and patients walking by. It was not meant to hide anything, so it was not built to do so.

And yet the honey-blonde girl suddenly unbuttoned her nurse uniform and opened up the front, revealing her soft skin in broad daylight. Something jiggled in the process.

She did not care about all the eyes around her.

Or rather, ''none of them were looking at her. Because she had manipulated them so they would not.

(Locker rooms tend to be physically locked, so I can’t get inside. And each department has its own keys, so finding a nurse with the key I need can be a real pain.)

“Now, what should I go with next? Wait, why am I even asking? How can I choose anything but Santa today?”

“Hey,” someone called out to her.

Shokuhou Misaki was the type to change her underwear to match her overall outfit, so she was currently 100% naked and holding her new costume up in both hands. She looked over in slight surprise to find Academy City’s ill-mannered #3 glaring at her.

“What in the world are you doing? How long have you been an exhibitionist?”

“Just changing clothes real quick☆”

Tokiwadai’s Queen belatedly recalled that the #3 could deflect her Mental Out when that girl did not “allow it in”.

“But I do understand the concept is probably new to you, Misaka-san. You can change out of your uniform during winter break, just FYI.”

“Shut up. I was asking what you’re hoping to accomplish by dressing up like that.”

“Because I want to make the most of my Christmas. In ways beyond your wildest fantasies, Misaka-san.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you would say. That idiot is in the hospital, so you need to let him rest!! If you mess with him now, his wounds could reopen!”

“And that’s what ''I'' thought ''you'' would say☆ By the way, here’s what I had in mind for keeping you from interfering.”

Mikoto’s eardrums were assaulted by an ear-splitting scream, like someone had stumbled across a murder scene.

A real nurse in the hallway was looking their way with her face bright red and a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates and she must have been too panicked to even find the words to express herself.

The nurse appeared to be new to the job and she had the look of someone with a baseball-sized lump of air caught in her throat.

“Wh-wh-wh-wha-?”

“See, Shokuhou? Someone finally noticed your perverted-”

“What are you doing walking around without any clothes on!? I don’t know what led you to do this, but get over here right now! Yes, you! ''The short-haired girl''!”

“What?” said Mikoto with her eyes wide.

But the pajama girl with a bob cut, the female doctor, and the other people in the hall had in fact come to a stop with blushes on their faces while they glanced over ''at Misaka Mikoto, not at Shokuhou Misaki.

The grinning Queen spun a TV remote around with all her bright skin still on display.

“W-wait, don’t tell me…”

“I’m the one wearing clothes while you’re the one who stripped down in public, Misaka-san☆”

That was how the scene looked to all those people.

A trick like this was a piece of cake for the #5.

“Of course, they’re only seeing what I imagine that would look like, so it’s not like they’re really seeing you naked. It’s like having your head edited onto a nude photo, so why even worry about it?”

“~ ~ ~ ~ ~!!!???”

“I even gave you a small boost in the chest department, so you should thank me really.”

“Go to hell!!”

Mikoto was not under physical attack, but she had hit her limit as a girl. She could not bear to have those people looking at her any longer.

With her face beet red, she opened the window, stepped up onto the windowsill, and shouted back at Shokuhou.

“Don’t think you’ve won yet, you moron!! You’ve altered what they can see, but the mechanical security cameras all have footage of you naked now!!”

“Oh, dear. I should probably take care of that later.”

Shokuhou spun her remote around and did not sound at all worried.

Erasing that footage would be a piece of cake for the #5.

===Part 5===

Kamijou enjoyed some lively company as much as anyone, but his visitors today were taking it a bit far.

“I definitely didn’t expect them to wield the cutlery against me,” he complained while trudging down the hallway, wet-haired and alone.

It was still before noon, but he was on his way back to his hospital room. The girls were not with him because he needed his visitors to be outside to give him an excuse to leave his room again. It could be easy to forget, but he had been hospitalized and he was supposed to stay in his bed as much as possible except for the rehabilitation and exercise routines prepared by the doctors. However, that left him terribly bored. Especially for a teenage boy overflowing with adolescent energy!!

However, he had needed to grab something back in his room.

“Shoes, shoes, where are my shoes? I can’t head outside in my slippers.”

This happened a lot during a hospital stay.

His joints were aching after staying in bed for so long, so he wanted to go on a stroll through the courtyard. And if there was a soccer ball out there, he could probably chase it around all day long.

He poked his head inside the room and found Aogami Pierce had slipped from his bed.

“What’s wrong, Aogami? You’ve been acting weird today.”

“Eh heh heh. I don’t know where you got off to, Kami-yan, but you should count your blessings. This lovey-dovey couple has been flirting on and on and on in here. The barrier surrounding their world of happiness just about crushed me to death.”

Kamijou could not have been happier he had been in the restaurant for that.

“Why do people care so much about pressing their lips together?” said Aogami Pierce with a shadow over his face. “Who wants to see someone’s gross mouth the moment they wake up? Us non-kissers are the smart ones! Right, Kami-yan!?”

“…”

“Wait, what’s with the creepy silence? Why must you pique my curiosity like this???”

However, Kamijou Touma’s silence was not because he had remembered his kiss with that sexy woman on Christmas Eve.

Nor was he battling the harsh truth that his first kiss had tasted like St. Germain.

A honey-blonde miniskirt Santa girl was nestled up against his chest.

“(Hiii, Kamijou-san. You were taking a while, so I decided to come check up on you.)”

“Wait, eh, what!?”

“(Well, ''I’m sure you’ve already forgotten what happened just 10 minutes ago,'' but now that Misaka-san, that nun, and all the other annoyances are out of the way, I was hoping to take another stab at visiting you☆)”

And she was nestled up against his chest in such a way that her large chest, which felt very different from his own chest, was pressed against him. He was utterly flabbergasted. Had that kiss destroyed the world’s inhibitions or something!?

Kamijou was trying to figure out how to react to this sudden intruder, but Aogami Pierce only gave him a puzzled look.

Yes, he was looking at Kamijou, not at the younger (yet very curvy) Santa who clearly did not belong.

“''Why are you freaking out all on your own over there?'' Gasp!? K-Kami-yan, do you have an imaginary girlfriend now!? You’re entering the world of Advanced Moe now!”

“What, no! Can you not see…!?”

Kamijou trailed off.

How would it benefit him in any way to let his friend know there was an unbelievably sexy girl here?

The honey-blonde girl laughed.

“(Yes, yes. There’s no need to let anyone else know about this. Now, Kamijou-saaan, you wouldn’t want your Christmas to be boring, would you? Let’s make this the truly unforgettable day it deserves to be.)”

“(Did you use some kind of esper power?)”

“(It’s called Mental Out. Can you actually remember my esper name? Not that that would be much solace.)”

A hint of loneliness entered her voice there.

It really did look like Aogami Pierce ''could not see her''. But if the light was being physically bent to make her invisible, Kamijou would not be seeing her either. That meant she must have been affecting the other boy’s mind somehow.

Also…

“(Why are you dressed like that???)”

“(Because it’s Christmas☆ But since you didn’t ask ''why I had changed into this'', I guess your memories really do vanish the instant I leave your sight.)”

“?”

“(That ''has nothing to do with'' Mental Out, to be clear. …But it’s okay if you don’t know who I am. Whether or not you remember it, the fact will remain that you had a very enjoyable Christmas. So let’s share some intimate loving, shall we?☆)”

That was apparently what she had planned.

He was very glad his blood pressure and heartrate were not being monitored. Even he could tell they had reached a point that the nurses would be rushing in. What was with this excessively mature and curvy middle schooler!?

Meanwhile, Aogami Pierce was muttering something more to himself than anything.

“Christmas is just another day. There’s nothing special about it. Some red jerk in a flying sleigh doesn’t have the stealth capability to slip past airport radar!! Heh…heh hee hee! Miniskirt Santas are just a fantasy!! I’m not crying!!”

“Hm?”

“How long are you gonna live in a fantasy world, Kami-yan? It’s time to face the facts! Busty blonde miniskirt Santas (who are somehow actually younger than you) aren’t real!! They’re as fake as Bigfoot!!”

“…”

Aogami Pierce apparently had no idea who was currently nestled up against Kamijou, running her gloved index finger along his chest, and giggling in a bewitching way. She then pulled a wrapped box smaller than a phone from a location he would have been hesitant to describe.

“(Here, this can mark the start of our day of fun.)”

“Eh? Eh?”

“(It honestly irritates me to no end that you forget me every single time, so I want to leave you with something more concrete. So here.)”

“A present?”

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_076.jpg|thumb]]

The box felt faintly warm.

Maybe Santa only visited the pure-hearted children.

Wondering what was inside, he removed the thin wrapping paper. Aogami Pierce looked over like Kamijou had just performed some kind of magic trick. But his fingers were not back at 100% dexterity yet, so he ended up tearing the wrapping paper more than he meant to.

Now.

Had he noticed the deeply kind way the honey-blonde girl was watching his childlike behavior?

He stared at the contents of the box in confusion.

“A flute?”

“(It’s a whistle. Not that I expect you to understand its significance.)”

===Part 6===

“…”

The silver-haired girl in a white nun’s habit smelled faintly of soap, perhaps because the hem of her habit had soaked up a bit of the bathwater spilled on the tile floor during her visit to the amenity room.

She would look conspicuous most anywhere in this city of science. Especially in a hospital packed full of the latest tech. But this was the one place no one would question Index even if she had snuck in for no real reason.

It was a chapel.

Since it was located in the basement area below the hospital, it felt as chilly as the midwinter air, but Index felt like the chill helped highlight the worldly thoughts in her head.

The image in her mind’s eye was from Christmas Eve.

Lips had contacted lips before her eyes.

With her perfect memory, she could never escape a memory she would prefer to forget.

In truth, she wanted to at least pout her lips over it.

(It doesn’t bother me.)

“Hey.”

A voice rudely interrupted her while she folded her hands in front of her chest in prayer.

It came from the 15cm god named Othinus who sat on her shoulder.

But not because she found the chapel awkward as a non-Christian god.

“Should you really be in here? Isn’t this room for terminal patients?”

For the most part, Academy City was a high-tech city where atheistic science worship prevailed and the stained glass in here was almost certainly lit up by LEDs on the other side, but freedom of worship was still guaranteed. A patient was free to find comfort however they liked in their final moments. Of course, instead of having an actual priest visit, they were more likely to get a teacher who specialized in that academic subject.

“It is.”

Index kept her hands folded in prayer.

She was not ashamed and in fact gave Othinus an earnest answer.

“And ''that’s why'' I’m praying for Touma here.”

“I see.”

Othinus did not ask anything more.

She knew that boy was forcing himself to smile. He was a worrier and made himself a part of other people’s business, which often resulted in him being injured. He felt other people’s pain more than anyone and he would not hesitate to rush toward certain death to alleviate that pain.

On the other hand, Kamijou Touma was not at all accustomed to having other people worry for him. It actually left him flustered when it happened. The more they worried for him and cared for him, the greater the burden he would feel. As his understander, that irritated Othinus to no end. That idiot did not know how to let other people take care of him when he had a cold.

Othinus pompously crossed her legs on the silver-haired girl’s shoulder but then jumped at the growl coming from the calico cat on Index’s head.

“So you’ve noticed?” she finally asked.

“About St. Germain? Based on what I know, that probably won’t go away on its own.”

“There’s no probably about it.”

Othinus kept her arms crossed and breathed a snort from her shapely nose.

That girl was a library who had memorized at least 103,001 grimoires, so it was laughable for her to act uncertain about something magical. Turning a blind eye to an inconvenient truth would only allow things to get worse.

So Othinus would nip that meaningless wishful thinking in the bud.

Her coldhearted response here was meant to keep herself moving in the right direction as much as anything.

If the only way to retrieve that boy’s soul was to descend into the depths of hell, then what could they do but throw open hell’s gates?

“It ''will not'' go away on its own. No matter what.”

===Part 7===

Misaka Mikoto knew now was not the time for running away via window.

The clone girls were still sneaking around and they were sure to attack that hospital room again if not stopped. And once she noticed that, she had no choice but to drag them back to the hospital’s research area.

Those identical girls stared back at her with a complete lack of expression.

“But Misaka was hoping to enjoy her Christmas, says Misaka #10032 in a dejected way.”

“Ugh…n-no, you can’t fool me! What does being naked in the bath have to do with Christmas!?”

“The information we found says Christmas has more bare skin than most any other time of year. Just think of the miniskirt Santas or the girls wearing only a ribbon or some whipped cream, says-”

“Where in the world did you find that picture of Christmas? Don’t believe everything you see online and do something Christmasy!!”

Misaka Mikoto thought she was going to overheat.

She sighed after pushing away the identical girls.

As usual, she seemed to lose control of her life while around that boy. Her image of herself as the Ace of Tokiwadai always seemed to crumble away. She never knew how to deal with it, but it was not what she would call unpleasant either.

(There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him beyond the obvious injuries. That Anna Sprengel person sure seemed confident, but was her plan a dud?)

That was not impossible.

Misaka Mikoto had some of the best grades at the prestigious esper development school of Tokiwadai Middle School, but not even she had managed to analyze what exactly Kamijou Touma’s power was.

She just knew it was capable of negating Academy City’s #3 power.

In fact, it seemed to carry ''some greater mystery'' and it was the greatest black box of anything she had come across to date.

That meant it was even greater than the #1’s blatant sort of “strongest” power.

If he had something so powerful hidden within him, maybe it was not all that surprising that Anna Sprengel’s plans and predictions had fallen apart.

That was Misaka Mikoto’s conclusion.

But her thoughts were interrupted by the racket of some small wheels turning.

Several doctors and nurses were pushing an emergency patient to the operating room on a stretcher.

“Clear the way!! Please clear the way!!”

“Blood pressure is dropping. Check the Bank for their blood type and allergies!! Oh, no. They’ve gone into shock. For now, we need to get some saline in them to keep their blood pressure from falling any further!! We need to at least know their blood type ASAP! Hurry!!”

It was a like a storm blowing in.

Had there been an accident? Or was it an attack? It was Christmas, but trouble happened year round. With the snow and the events, the roads had to be packed with traffic, so the ambulances probably had a hard time getting around. Based on what the doctors were saying, this was a pretty bad case too.

(That can’t be fun.)

With that silent comment, Mikoto decided to return to Kamijou’s hospital room. Seeing that had helped cool her carefree anger and put her in a serious state of mind.

She rode the elevator to the 9th floor and walked down the hallway.

On the way, she spotted a blonde girl pressed against the wall. She must have stripped down and changed somewhere again because she was in her school uniform now.

Also, that was not the wall she was pressed against. It was an examining room door.

“Shokuhou?”

“Shh,” shushed the blonde girl with a finger to her lips.

Leave it to the strongest psychological esper to not respect other people’s privacy. Mikoto considered blasting her away with a lightning spear, but things changed on her way to grab the other girl by the collar.

She caught sight of a pointy-haired boy through the cracked door.

He was speaking with the frog-faced doctor.

“The tests have told me most everything I need to know.”

“And?”

Her heart leaped into her throat.

She realized she was no better than Shokuhou when she did not raise her voice and chase the other girl away.

If she stayed here, she could learn about the boy’s test results. She knew it was wrong, but her curiosity won out.

She wanted to rid herself of her lingering concern.

She clenched her teeth because she felt like this was no different from when she had been causing trouble night after night over those clone girls.

Oblivious to her presence, the conversation in the examination room continued.

“You said you saw a pill, yes? Whatever it is, I believe it will be difficult for your right hand’s power to negate.”

“Kh.”

“Let me rephrase that. Your right hand is destroying it, but it is multiplying inside your body at an even faster rate. It’s much like a situation where the body can’t heal itself fast enough.”

If Index had been here, she might have been reminded of the Innocentius spell.

But Shokuhou Misaki and Misaka Mikoto were the ones hearing it.

They were unfamiliar with the rules of magic.

“You said you had been bleeding, yes? Was it a nosebleed?” asked the frog-faced doctor to be sure.

He sounded serious. At the very least, it did not sound like this was a case of a teenage boy getting a nosebleed due to arousal.

“There are cases where someone can burst their capillaries through extreme mental focus, but we need to take a more pessimistic view here. More and more of your body is being infected as we speak. I do not know of a vaccine or antidote for this and I doubt a stomach pump or dialysis can forcibly eliminate it.”

“…”

“Your Imagine Breaker is successfully slowing the advance of ''this disease that science alone cannot explain'', but it is not working quickly enough to fully eliminate it. The microbes are even now gradually spreading through your body, so they will destroy all your body tissue at an accelerated rate if nothing is done to stop them. I do not know how long you have. This looks similar to deadly bacteria, but I believe it is different on a fundamental level.”

“Then…”

The boy’s voice was barely audible.

Mikoto could not see his face from her position, but his voice was that of a lost child who felt left behind.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“It would probably be fastest to speak with whoever caused this. I have never seen a microbe like this before, but since it is being used as a weapon, they must have some way of preventing it from infecting and killing them, right? So they almost certainly have some way of stopping or fighting it.”

“Do you have any idea at all how much time I have?”

“Two days at the most, but it’s frankly a miracle you’re still up and moving now. I do hate how I feel like I am pushing a child toward danger, though.”

“So…I’m going to die if this continues?”

“You are a minor, so I am not allowed to answer that question. Unless you have your parents sign a consent form.”

A monotone electronic beeping sounded.

The frog-faced doctor pulled an outdated mobile device from his pocket, but it was part of the unique communication infrastructure that was still in use at certain workplaces. Hospitals were one such workplace.

“Hm, we are receiving an awful lot of emergency patients today.”

“Um…”

“Oh, don’t worry about them, Kamijou-kun. Their symptoms are different than yours. Fortunately, we have yet to see those microbes spread from person to person. Much like yeast cells and rice koji, they only infect you if you directly ingest something containing them. …Then again, you could say this has the same cause.”

The frog-faced doctor seemed to have stood from his seat.

The emergency patients were a major problem, but he must have also decided there was no more advice he could provide here.

“R&C Occultics, I mean. I hear a lot of the children have been babbling about what seems like nonsense. It makes you wonder what kind of non-scientific hocus pocus they have been dabbling in.”

The boy was not his usual self.

He looked so tiny while seated with his back to the door.

His head was hanging as he quietly muttered something.

However, ''this was the normal reaction.

He had been given a strange pill, he had coughed up blood and collapsed, and he had been taken the hospital. How could he be his usual self after that? He would understand better than anyone that now was not the time for smiling.

“Doctor.”

“Yes?”

''Don’t listen,'' thought Mikoto with a grimace.

She knew she had to avoid listening to this. She realized now he had been forcing a smile because he did not want anyone to see him like this. And by eavesdropping, she was rudely trampling on those efforts.

Yet she could not make herself leave.

So she heard it.

She heard the difference.

She realized just how hard he had been working to stay so cheerful in order to avoid worrying the others.

''The'' Kamijou Touma curled up his back and spoke his honest thoughts in a vanishingly quiet voice.

Those two simple words seemed to shatter her world.

“I’m scared.”

“I know you are. Everyone is at times like this.”

There was only one exit.

But when the frog-faced doctor opened the door to go see to the new emergency patient, there was no one there.

The two girls were hiding behind a nearby corner in the hallway and exchanging a glance.

The air seemed on fire around them.

“Misaka-san, you heard that, didn’t you?”

She just about clicked her tongue.

She wanted to punch herself in the face more than provide such obvious confirmation.

And since Mikoto only clenched her teeth, Shokuhou kept talking.

“I’m sure you’ll be heading out to search for Anna Sprengel now that you know what’s going on, so how about we make this easier for both of us? If we work together, we can use both people and machines to search more easily. We ''will'' find her no matter where in the city she is hiding. Right?”

“…”

Anna Sprengel had already explained how they could give up. If they could not do anything on their own, they only had to contact R&C Occultics.

But then what would happen?

They had no bargaining chip of their own to use in exchange for receiving Anna’s help when they gave up. Anna was sure to mock them if they gave up without any kind of plan whatsoever. At this rate, Anna would call their bluff and it was that boy who would suffer for it.

So they had to defeat Anna and directly steal whatever antidote or vaccine she had.

That was their best bet.

[[Image:GT_Index_v02_091.jpg|thumb]]

Mikoto made herself take a deep breath.

And she asked a question.

“Where should we start?”

“With every single idea you have in mind. I’ll do the same.”

The two girls stepped out into the biting cold of the outdoors.

That boy had already taken a beating in order to crush Academy City’s dark side, so now it was their turn.

The 24th was over and they would make sure the 25th was different. It was time that boy was saved by someone else for a change.

===Between the Lines 1===

R&C Occultics was an enormous IT company that had appeared online out of the blue.

It was a monstrous site that gathered people from all around the world, but it also provided all sorts of magical secrets that were meant to remain hidden.

“A plan to divulge modern Western magic? Is this supposed to be the return of Israel Regardie? Utter nonsense.”

The time difference with Japan was about 9 hours.

The excitement from the countdown had finally worn off and the raucous partying had settled down to normal levels.

The darkness of the night was burning orange.

The damp wind blowing in from the Thames was scattered, leaving only hot and dry air reminiscent of a kiln to sizzle at the skin.

With a height of two meters, long hair dyed red, a barcode tattoo under the eye, and a cigarette in the mouth, Stiyl Magnus did not at all look like a holy man, but he was in fact an Anglican priest. However, he belonged to a secret part of the church: the 0th Parish known as Necessarius.

His job was to combat magicians.

The magical crime scene this time was in the City of London. And of all locations, a toxic magical flower blossomed in the center of the high-tech London Stock Exchange where deals were made at the rapid rate of 10,000 per second.

The roar of oxygen being consumed by a fire echoed through the polished financial district. The starlight and even the bright decorations and fireworks paled in comparison.

But this fire ''was not Stiyl’s doing.

It had been there when he got here. Some amateur had learned the spell while searching online late at night and tried to do something ill-advised with it, but he had accidentally set himself on fire instead. The intensity of the flames made it obvious at a glance he was not going to make it.

The tall priest grimaced.

With an intricate plan, you had a chance of secretly nipping it in the bud by preventing the carefully laid out dominoes from falling, but there was nothing you could do with ''a lone wolf who screwed it up all on their own.'' Screams and shouts echoed through the night and small bottles of beer were scattered across the otherwise pristine sidewalk outside of a fancy little pub’s takeout window.

There were an awful lot of people around for past midnight in the financial district. That it was early morning on Christmas probably didn’t help. A lot of couples had gathered to watch the colorful fireworks being shot off across the river.

And so they had all seen it.

Seen the mystical, the supernatural, ''the terror.

(I can’t possibly clean up after all this. Is their plan to cause small incidents all over the world to overload Necessarius’s ability to handle it all!?)

After all, there were 7 billion suspects.

Their traditional method was to find everyone who posed a large, medium, or even small threat and “deal with” them, but that would not work here. Just like an elite group of special forces could not suppress a riot large enough to shake the entire nation.

“Hey!!”

The best Stiyl could do for the moment was scatter around his laminated cards and construct a people-clearing spell that would prevent the chaos from spreading any further, but then someone called out to him.

It was a young voice.

The girl could not have been more than 12.

But the priest did not let his guard down. Especially when he turned toward the voice and found no one there. Just like a sniper, this person had found a position where she could observe him without him observing her. And on such a ridiculous level that she could talk without giving away her position.

“Since you Anglicans seem to think you’re cops, how do you plan to deal with this one? That guy on fire there is named George Close. Based on what our Dawn-Colored Sunlight has turned up, he appears to be enormous piece of trash who was so blinded by greed he rewrote the documents to get R&C Occultics listed here in the City. Without him, a paper company controlled by a sketchy cyber cult without a known headquarters could never have made it onto the London Stock Exchange!”

Stiyl loudly clicked his tongue while working to lock down all the information here.

He was not naïve enough to think the enemy of his enemy was his friend.

This required the utmost caution.

(This must be Leivinia Birdway, the boss of the largest surviving Golden magic cabal. Never thought I’d see the day I was receiving tips from the top of our wanted list.)

“God, this isn’t worth the pay at all! I’m sending the Dawn-Colored Sunlight a request for extra pay later on!” shouted another voice. “This at least deserves a Christmas bonus and hazard pay!!”

“Try getting the job done before you try to discuss your pay, subcontractor. The contract says you don’t get the second half of your payment if you screw this up.”

“I have a name, you know!? It’s Lessar of New Light! And we’ve met, so you should know that!”

“If you want me to remember your name, then show me some results here and now.”

There were apparently more people stuck out here working too.

Stiyl and Necessarius had already learned that George Close had been buried in debt despite looking like an intellectual working in a brokerage firm. And he was currently on fire because he had tried to use that magical fire to eliminate all the data pointing to his corruption.

Of course…

“Did you plan it all out so your cooperators would self-destruct, Anna Sprengel?”

“I imagine her (so-called) cooperators in New York and Frankfurt aren’t doing too hot right now either. This is going to make it hard to track down which server that monstrous site is located on. You need to be ready. If we can’t cut this off at the source, we’re going to see more cases like this.”

Something fell from high in the sky.

A golden glitter bounced at Stiyl’s feet. He knew he would only see the night sky if he looked up. It was unclear where this had fallen from, but a more devout person might have viewed it as the return of St. Nicholas’s miracle.

“I know you Anglicans are incompetent, but I can’t have you getting stuck here. So here’s a farewell gift. That’s the money Anna seems to have been spreading around to construct her formless company. She was making deals in old rubies and pure gold metalwork.”

“So the inheritance of the Rosicrucians?”

“They have treasure buried all across the globe. This is barely scratching the surface. Let’s say you can create an unlimited supply of gold bars in a flask or beaker. You’d only cause the gold market to collapse, and the world economy with it, before the year was out.”

The girl had a jocular tone to her voice, but Stiyl had no doubt in his mind that there was no smile on her unseen face.

(Antiques. If she’s moving large sums around without the use of bank accounts or electronic transfers, the science side might not be able to fully track the flow of money. Damn, how does Academy City hope to track down and crush their headquarters!? Do they even see this for the threat it is!?)

Meanwhile, ordinary people were contacting magic.

They could do so from PCs, phones, tablets, handheld game systems, car navigation systems, mobile watches, smart TVs, intercoms, home theater systems, humanoid guide robots, pedometers, emergency buzzers, the monitors at passenger plane and bullet train seats, handheld translation devices, and any number of IoT appliances including ovens, fridges, rice cookers, induction cooktops, washing machines, juicers, and dryers.

In other words, from anywhere in the world.

But just handing people magic out of the blue would not necessary fulfill everyone’s wishes and bring them happiness. Guns were powerful and you might be able to strong-arm your way through most any problem with one, but without an understanding of how dangerous they were or how to use them, you could easily just shoot yourself in the head instead. Like someone leaving a round in the chamber and not applying the safety while they walked around with the gun holstered, or like someone carelessly looking down the barrel after it failed to fire.

And magic was an invisible power, so its danger was harder to see, ''making that requisite initial step much easier to miss.'' Professional magicians would do that by deciding on a magic name, completing an initiation ritual, and gaining the proper state of mind by artificially experiencing the judgment they would face after death.

But what would happen with someone who did not go through that?

What if they reached for magic as no more than a convenient tool? Stiyl was reminded of dirty salesman tactics where they talked up all the advantages of a risky investment to convince an elderly person to use their life savings on it.

(It’s causing so much chaos out here.)

Stiyl knew who their enemy was.

And he continued his thoughts while making sure none of it showed on his face.

(But things must be so much worse in Academy City. They have to contend with their special rule against espers using magic. Because when they do use magic, it causes their blood vessels and nerves to burst.)

Needless to say, magic was risky.

But at the same time, it was the final trump card people would reach for when the world had abandoned them. No matter how reckless an act that was or how hopeless a dream they carried in their heart.

It was not meant to be spread around for the purpose of trapping people like this.

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