Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter1

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“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!”

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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.

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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.

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.