Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter1

Status: Incomplete

2/5 parts completed

   

Chapter 1: A Year Ending, a Wallet Emptying, a Struggle Ensuing – Winter_Vacation.

Part 1

The girl wore a white apron over a blue dress.

She wore short sleeves even in late December. She wore white tights over her skinny legs and she wore black patent leather shoes even though this was Japan and she was indoors. Her long blonde hair was decorated with a pair of pointy curls that resembled animal ears. The round white fluffball on the back of her apron may have been meant as a rabbit tail.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What I’m getting from this is it’s time for some Toumacide.”

“Index-san, you already chomped me on the back of the head a few times, so could you not invent an ugly new word right now?”

Kamijou Touma was so far past his limit he only smiled gently while making his suggestion.

“This is yummy!!”

The Western girl understood Japanese yet refused to remove her shoes no matter how many times she was asked. Presently, she was kicking her little feet below the glass table. She was already in a good mood and she smiled innocently when her eyes met Kamijou’s. She looked like a perfect little doll, but when she spoke, she demonstrated a warmth that swept aside that cold image.

Index glared over at her.

“How did this small child get in our room?”

“Pff. Says a girl who looks like she would land on the balcony after collapsing from hunger.”

“Shut up!! L-l-l-l-like I would ever do that!!”

“Now, now. You both seem about the same to me,” said Kamijou, hoping to mediate the situation. He ended up rolling on the floor from an Index bite.

The mug the blonde girl held in her little hands contained the Kamijou Touma Special Blend – a dark sludge brewed from black tea leaves reused well past their limit with a drop of caramel and the little bit of potato starch leftover at the bottom of the bag. If classy Misaka Mikoto had seen this, she might just have fainted (both from the horrific contents and the fact that he just dumped the tea in a mug), but this was a trick he had learned during his New Year’s Tokyo survival life. From a cabbage core to a fish head, even the toughest and bitterest ingredient could be made edible if you softened it up in a pressure cooker and added something sweet or spicy! Humanity, now is the time to praise honey-flavored ultra-sweet syrup (flavored with god knows what) and discount curry powder (containing a mystery blend of spices)!! Kamijou Touma would be dead right now if not for them!!!!!

It was eight in the morning.

He would need to leave soon for Komoe-sensei’s rundown apartment for a winter break supplementary lesson. But he needed to deal with this girl first. After all, this was a matter of life or death for him.

In fact, he was a little afraid to make a hasty decision here.

Eh? Where did this girl even come from?

And wait. Does this mean we have to look after her now? He was starting to act so unusual that Anti-Skill would have taken him in for questioning if he were outside. See, it was December 29 and he only had 1580 yen left. That was all he had to keep himself, Index, Othinus, and the cat alive until the ATMs started back up on January 4, so why did he have to have a mystery guest now!? Wasn’t this as much of a threat as looking down and finding a colorful snake sinking its fangs into his foot!?

“So who even is this extreme lost girl?”

“The girl’s name is Alice.”

“Index, explain.”

“With only that to go on? That’s probably the 1st or 2nd most popular girl’s name in the UK. I think it’s even used as a sample name on government forms.”

So it was like Tarou or Hanako. Which meant it wasn’t much of a hint.

Alice referred to herself as “the girl”.

Almost like she was talking about someone else. She had an otherworldly quality to her and she showed no caution around strangers like Kamijou and Index. It was like she alone was weirdly detached from reality. Yes, she felt like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, or another character from a fairy tale where no real danger existed.

Kamijou Touma held a hand to his chin and groaned with a serious look on his face.

“None of this makes sense. This is Academy City in Japan. My room smells like soy sauce. Why would I wake up and randomly find a British girl here?”

“Touma, I’m feeling kind of attacked over here.”

Come to think of it, he had no actual proof that Alice was British. Kamijou Touma, you gave her that sorry excuse for black tea yourself, so don’t let it influence your impression of her.

(What do I even do? We don’t have a gentle and beautiful dorm manger here, so should I call Anti-Skill? But I want to avoid trouble if I can. Oh, but if they take me in for questioning, they might serve me katsudon?)

Whatever he was going to do, he had a supplementary lesson to get to.

But before that, he had to prepare some breakfast or Index would starve while he was out.

“I don’t have much of a choice. I’ll figure out what to do with Alice later, so for now I’ll break out the bread I was keeping in reserve. So the time has come to open our final loaf. These six slices are the last real food we have left. Our path forward gets a lot worse at lunch today, so prepare yourself, Inde-”

He trailed off.

It was gone.

The bag had been right there next to the rice cooker that was dead weight now that they were out of rice. Well, the plastic bag was technically still there. The problem was how it was balled up and shoved into a small gap with the crucial six slices of bread nowhere to be found!

When he turned to look at Index, she refused to look him in the eye.

Come to think of it, Index had spent the night tending to an empty stomach just like he had, so where had she found the excess energy for all that anger?

15cm Othinus was lying face down on a shelf nearby and she used the strawberry jam on her index finger to write out a message on the shelf: Index.

“H-how…how could you do this? You got up in the middle of the night and ate all six slices of bread while I was in the bathroom and wouldn’t notiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!???”

“There are no rules in the life-or-death struggle of our New Year’s Tokyo survival life, Touma. And if you’re that keen on being honorable, then what ever happened to lady’s first?”

Part 2

Real name unknown. Commonly known as Accelerator.

He has been found guilty of 36,025 charges including killing more than 10 thousand people, organized crime such as aiding and abetting the creation of clone humans for experimental purposes, assault, bodily harm, property damage, and violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law. Altogether, he has been sentenced to 12 thousand years. The Juvenile Act provides some hope for a minor defendant’s future, but there is no chance of overturning a sentence that large.

The time limit for filing an appeal has passed, so the sentence will stand.

A hard, cold sound echoed out.

It was followed by more of the same, but too irregularly to call a rhythm.

This was District 10’s Special Criminal Adult Correctional Facility.

80% of Academy City’s residents were students, but it still needed a prison to hold adults. It was also a giant cage for secretly holding the monsters the ordinary juvenile hall couldn’t manage. Although that second part was a system secretly created specifically for Accelerator.

The sound traveled down an underground passageway not found on the official plans.

“…”

“…”

An androgynous monster walked down the passageway flanked by strict uniformed prison guards. But the two guards did not exchange any words – only the occasional sidelong glance. Their orderly footsteps were disturbed by the third set between them. It threw them off their tempo and took control of the space.

The clacking of a cane was joined by the jangling of thick chains.

The monster had white hair and red eyes.

The passageway was long and straight. The place was known as a correctional facility, but letting a criminal see this floor, which wasn’t even supposed to exist, was as good as saying they would never see the light of day again. And if the people who went in here never left, the thick metal doors lining the walls might as well have been a sterile graveyard.

(They’re ready to put some others in here as planned. But the official juvenile hall would have sufficed if not for me.)

At the very end of the passageway was a thick circular door, much like a bank vault. And it had two layers just like at a semiconductor plant.

“D-door open.”

“Bringing in Prisoner #1890. E-enter. R-right nyow!”

He almost felt bad hearing the guard’s voice cracking like that.

Quiet metallic sounds continued for a while afterwards. It took 20 full seconds for the guard to get the key in the keyhole on the handcuffs. Unlike a cell with ordinary metal bars, the prisoner couldn’t be put in and then stick out just their hands to have the cuffs removed. Instead, they used that massive door which felt like it would cause security problems of its own.

The space inside was about the size of a school classroom. It had no windows, so it could be immediately rendered pitch black if the power was shut off, robbing its occupant of all forms of freedom.

Accelerator took a look around and sighed in exasperation.

“The hell is this?”

He saw some things that shouldn’t be here.

In fact, the place was flooded with stuff.

A home theater’s big screen TV and vacuum tube audio system, a microwave, a fridge, a leather chair, a large ebony desk with a computer and tablet sitting on it, bookshelves covered in specialty books, and strange artwork. The phone on the wall suggested he could order room service 24/7. He even had an ornate tea set and a selection of tea leaves from around the world. He didn’t even want to consider how much clothing there was in the closet.

It looked like the jailors had outdone themselves in welcoming their new Board Chairman.

(God, it feels like I wanted to go meditate in the mountains and they leveled an entire forest to build an Olympic Village for me.)

Disgusted, Accelerator threw himself onto the king size bed without even removing his shoes. He stared up at the ceiling and snapped his fingers.

Several loud and distorted sounds mixed together like space itself was straining under some kind of pressure. That was his vector control. Academy City’s #1 Level 5 had redirected the sound waves in a single direction and the result finally earned a satisfied nod from him.

His disgust would have grown if that had blown open the wall or door, but it had all held.

“I suppose it meets my minimum specifications.”

Board Chairman Aleister had worked from deep inside the Windowless Building. Accelerator had once used the earth’s rotational energy to attack that building, but he had failed to bring down the skyscraper.

That meant Academy City had the technology needed to forcibly suppress and counteract the #1’s power.

This was all meaningless if he was granted exceptions and could come and go if the situation demanded it. At the very least, he needed this to function as a cage.

Massive inward-facing armor surrounded him in all directions.

This was his life now. He had accepted his sentence and cast out his own freedom, but he had not turned in his authority as the city’s ruler.

It was time to get started on his work as the new Board Chairman.

Still lying in the king size bed, he grabbed the TV remote and twirled it in his hand. He didn’t even need to press the button. His vector control power could redirect just the IR wavelength of the overhead fluorescent lights to send a simple signal to switch on the TV hanging on the wall.

“There is admittedly no material evidence like bloodstains, but Accelerator himself admitted to killing the clones and he was found guilty in a court of law. This will inevitably dampen the sensitive students’ desire to learn.”

“It is late December, the final stretch for students preparing for entrance exams. This distrust in not just one of Academy City’s Level 5s but the #1 is worrying.”

“Due to the time of year, these demonstrations are being spread under the hashtag ‘Winter Cleaning’ and dedicated communities are popping up all over the internet. In fact, if you look at Academy City’s shopping district right now…”

(Another peaceful day.)

He snorted in laughter, but he realized he wasn’t much better since he was using his power for trivialities without worrying about his electrode battery. Noting that being surrounded by thick walls has its pros and its cons, the white monster growled a name. The door had opened, so he knew she would have entered with him.

“Show yourself, Qliphah Puzzle 545.”