Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2
Status: Incomplete
1/8 parts completed
Chapter 2: Goddess of the Night, the Moon, and Witches – “ARADIA”x03.
Part 1
Kamijou Touma was dead.
If that hadn’t been a dream, then he must have died from having that bare hand pierce right through his torso.
Yet he still heard a voice.
“Really!? Good, Old Mary, I need to borrow two lives. I’ll pay you back with interest later. I just cut off the boy’s right arm, so if you resurrect him now, I can take him back!!”
All of a sudden, he felt the pull of gravity again.
No, that wasn’t it. Something was pulling him in a different direction. Which direction? Into the sky. He suddenly found himself looking down from 10 or 20 stories up. His sense of height honestly vanished once he was high enough. It was still scary, though. He heard a loud sound like whipping bedsheets next to him.
They came from giant, thin batlike wings.
They were colored a light pink and looked horribly organic and lifelike.
A woman with a pair of goatlike pink horns sticking through her fluffy blonde hair was carrying him under one arm. If he had to guess her age, he would have gone with college aged. She had the curvy silhouette of a fully-grown woman. He was so close he had failed to notice at first, but on closer inspection, the only thing covering the bright skin of her torso was a lacy pink one-piece corset similar to what a bunny girl would wear. In other words, this was lingerie with rose thorn decorations. She also wore stockings and arm covers, but they did nothing to cover up her underwear.
“Wh-wh-what the hell!?”
“Oh, dear. Are you afraid of heights? Once we escape that scary woman, I’ll let you down on a rooftop, so just hold on tight until then.”
“Why do you sound like an old lady!? That’s a Japanese monster thing, but you look like a Western demon to me!!”
“Hm, is my common tone creation not working right? Japanese is a tricky language, so combining the Far Eastern Ocean version and the Altaic Language Family version might not be enough. Brlbrlgrlgrlbeeep!! Ahem, is this how y’all talk in this part o’ the world, dearie?”
“No, it isn’t!! But I am used to people talking weird thanks to Tsuchimikado and Tatemiya!!”
“Vrbbrjr! Then I’ll stick with the initial version since it introduces less lag into the real time speech synthesis. As long as you know what I mean, the details don’t really matter.”
She called this common tone creation.
Did that mean she was combining a few standard sounds to speak, much like mechanically synthesized voices? Kamijou had heard that the voices heard on the phone weren’t actually identical to the real person’s voice and his brain was simply interpreting it as if it were a human voice. It was a chilling thought.
And magical people didn’t use machines, so he could actually see when the voice coming from her mouth changed. That made it all the more frightening. But when he thought about it, he realized all the Western magicians he had met had been weirdly familiar with different world languages. Did they study them to travel the world and read grimoires?
He had a lot of questions. Like why he didn’t seem injured despite all the blood on his clothes, what had happened to Index and Kumokawa Seria, if Othinus was down on the ground since she wasn’t on his shoulder now, and who the woman attacker had been.
But all those questions were erased from his mind by a woman’s voice shouting up from the ground.
“Bologna Succubus!!”
The woman had white skin and long silver hair.
She wore a wimple so long it fell to her ankles and something like a modified bikini that left her navel exposed. The contradictory outfit made it hard to tell if she was a holy woman or a dancer. But she wasn’t like the ghost at the train station plaza who had clearly been cosplaying. It didn’t look artificial on her. She wore the skimpy outfit as comfortably as a sweater or coat and gave off an atmosphere all her own that easily pushed back the great pressure of the Shibuya shopping district around her. It was like she made no attempt to make herself a part of the ordinary world.
That was his attacker.
She was the woman who had shattered Kamijou Touma’s spine and destroyed his torso more than once.
“Oh, god. I can just tell she’s some monster from the magic side.”
“Ding, ding, ding! Correct☆ She’s Aradia, goddess of all witches, who rules over the night and the moon. You should probably keep that name in mind, laddie.”
The demon woman grinned (even though there was still an occasional issue with her language).
The long-haired woman remained on the ground, but she didn’t look particularly worried. That seemed to hint that flying in the sky wasn’t enough to escape a magician who could surpass the laws of physics.
Fortunately, it looked like the woman was so focused on her midair target she wasn’t paying any attention to Index and Kumokawa who were still on the ground. She spoke toward the flying demon with pure anger in her voice.
“You have strange tastes yourself. The Bridge Builders Cabal does not wish to derail Alice Anotherbible. Bologna Succubus, you and Good, Old Mary are only pretending to be peaceful and reasonable. You are only wasting what little chance you still have left. You belong to the Bridge Builders Cabal too, so you must know that killing that threat is the quickest way of correcting Alice’s condition!”
This came as a shock.
Kamijou was held high in the sky below that demon woman’s arm, so he knew breaking free of her grasp would mean plunging to his death.
But now he knew this Bologna Succubus was from some group called the Bridge Builders Cabal and the woman trying to kill him was as well. There was also someone called Good, Old Mary. They had even mentioned Alice Anotherbible. He was hit by a flood of new questions, most directly related to his own survival.
Meanwhile, the Bologna Succubus was undeterred and stuck out her tongue.
“Aradia? It goes without saying that this boy only has the one life. Even if Good, Old Mary fills in the gaps with her ability to control miracles using note compilation techniques. Killing him would be easy. Easier than bringing him back, anyway. But do that and you won’t have anything left to stop Alice if she goes completely berserk. I agree we need to stop her current deviation, but I oppose killing Kamijou Touma and simply hoping that works. I can’t agree to those methods.”
“You foolish Rescuers!!”
“I’ll take that title over Killer any day of the week.”
The woman apparently named Aradia gained a new tone to her anger: exasperation.
“Alice is a problem, but don’t you find it odd that our Bridge Builders Cabal has split into two factions like this? And that never would have happened if not for him!!”
“Are you sure about that? The real problem isn’t him or Alice. All the blame falls on Anna Sprengel if you- vwoovhsfa- ask me- vwoorl.”
“Also, all those weird noises are making you hard to understand! Is it supposed to be some kind of psychological warfare?”
“Sigh. How about a brief truce so I can borrow your common tones?”
The line went dead there.
Kamijou Touma shouted aggressively at the woman holding him under her arm.
“Anna Sprengel!? What is she up to this time!?”
“I can fill you in on all the dull details once we lose Aradia, so could you please keep your mouth shut for now?”
“But I need to know how Anna and Alice are involved in all this!!”
“I’ll drop you if you keep struggling!! If you won’t shut your trap, I’ll silence you myself by jamming my pointy tail right up your asshole, boy.”
The way she smiled told him that wasn’t an idle threat, so he obediently clamped his mouth shut.
At the same time, the scenery around them melted into flowing lines.
He managed to follow the first two and a half rotations, but his eyes couldn’t keep up with the rest.
But why was she performing these acrobatics?
Two and then three blinding beams of light shot from the ground and tore through sky, slicing off a corner of a nearby building rooftop. The skyscraper’s basic structure must have been damaged because all the windows shattered at once.
Kamijou had forgotten they were being targeted, so his throat dried up.
It was New Year’s Eve in Shibuya. He couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many people were walking around below, but now they were all going to be shredded by the shards of glass. It was so horrific Kamijou shouted out loud, entirely forgetting how close to death he was himself.
“Hey!!”
“Oh, dearie me,” said an exasperated Bologna Succubus after coming to a stop in midair.
Then all the sharp shards stopped in place. Now they wouldn’t reach the people below and injure them. Kamijou wasn’t sure what kind of magic the Bologna Succubus had used, but he was seriously impressed.
“Bloody hell. That wasn’t me.”
“…”
Kamijou had a very, very bad feeling about this, so he clung tightly to the demoness’s hips as a tremor ran through the thousands or tens of thousands of glass shards. Someone’s willpower entered them and then they all rushed toward him.
The transparent blades attacked from all sides with the speed of bullets, but their guided routes actually gave the Bologna Succubus an opportunity. She flew to the right, pulling the many shards with her, and then flapped her wings to launch herself the other way, slipping herself into the gap created when they gathered on the right. She just barely managed to fit through the opening in the surrounding glass.
She escaped the 100% fatal downpour of razor sharp death.
Like some kind of joker that could manipulate the numbers themselves.
But she didn’t linger on her impressive feat and kept a casual tone.
“This could be a problem. Aradia’s Rule of Three spell is supposed to be hard to use in practice, but she isn’t having any trouble at all.”
“Rule of what?”
“It’s about time I landed over there. There’s nowhere to hide in the open air and my strength won’t last in an aerial battle against a real witch.”
That was a shock.
Kamijou glanced back from under her arm, but he didn’t see Aradia there.
“An aerial battle with a witch? Wait, wait, wait, wait!! Are you telling me that Aradia woman is going to wave a wand around and fly in the sky with lots of heart and star effects like Kanamin does!?”
“Witches can fly thanks to the ointment they coat their broom with, not the broom itself. Also, wands are like staffs and clubs – they’re a symbol of patriarchal power, so female witches don’t really use them.”
Kamijou’s thoughtless comment earned him a serious critique from an expert(?). It made him feel like an uneducated dimwit, so he really wished she would stop.
With a flutter of her wings, the Bologna Succubus landed on a large shopping mall’s roof. She gave Kamijou a squeeze before releasing him from under her arm.
The carefree (underwear) woman raised her arms and stretched.
“Nhh, so this the Miyashita Ark?”
“That’s supposed to be near Shibuya Station, isn’t it? So did we circle around back there!?”
“Ah ha ha. Indubitably! It’s the last place she’ll think to look☆”
The Bologna Succubus gave a smile she never could have gotten away with without her good looks and then snatched a windblown pamphlet out of the air between two fingers.
“Let’s see. This says the Miyashita Ark is a large shopping facility created from a park that used to be a major landmark in its own right. It has everything from restaurants and boutiques to hotels. It has several entrances and a lot of foot traffic and I bet the small stores crammed inside will give it lots of blind spots.”
“Um, why does that matter?”
“Wherever we end up going, I thought it would be best to hide here until she loses our trail☆”
She might sound like an excessively kind tutorial navigator, but she was in fact a demon with no common sense. For one, she had pink horns and wings. Just like with Alice, he couldn’t simply follow her instructions. He was afraid he would find himself in Antarctica or something if he did that.
He reminded himself to stand up for himself.
“Wait, you can read Japanese? I thought you could only speak it because you were combining different tones into a false voice.”
“These kanji, hiragana, and katakana are either pictograms or derived from them. I can estimate the general meaning based on the dot pattern.”
She snapped her fingers proudly, but he had no idea what she was talking about. He knew phone cameras recognize text nowadays, so was it something like that?
That was when he felt a tremor run down his spine. Having his feet on solid ground caused the fear to fade, so maybe the reality of the situation was finally catching up to him.
“Y-you have got to be kidding me. We were flying around all over the place, but you never set up a people clearing field, did you? I’m not going to worry about the magic side’s secrets, but this is Shibuya! Do you have any idea how many phone cameras there are here!?”
“I don’t care about the magic side’s secrets either. But the crazier we make it, the less real it will seem to them. Humans will refuse to accept that someone was murdered by a yeti. Even if they glimpsed a furry shape in the blizzard, their rational mind will tell them it can’t be true, so they seal away the memory all on their own.”
“Maybe, but they’ll have camera footage of this.”
“So what?”
The Bologna Succubus folded up the pamphlet and stuffed it in Kamijou’s pocket. As sexy and alluring as she was, she must have been staunchly opposed to littering.
“No one knows what’s going to happen in Shibuya when everyone is waiting for the countdown. In fact, they would find it unusual if nothing ended up happening. Most people will assume this was either a phone company’s PR stunt or some kind of video prank. Videos can be altered in real time these days, after all. It’s true R&C Occultics briefly brought magic to the general public, but how many of the youths here will connect that to this? Plus, Japan has a shame culture. People will be too afraid of embarrassing themselves by falling for something so obviously fake, so there’s nothing at all to worry about.”
She was very blunt about it. Although she may just not have particularly cared if the general public started freaking out or not.
Kamijou was worried about Index, Kumokawa, and Othinus who he had left down on the ground. He could only pray that Aradia didn’t turn her attention toward them.
But why was he so reluctant to say so out loud? He wasn’t sure how much he could really trust this demoness.
The Bologna Succubus herself bent over, raised a finger, and gave the boy a bewitching smile.
“The first and greatest barrier clouding your vision is the common sense you don’t even remember being taught. That’s a lesson any magician will have heard ad nauseum.”
“Magician?”
Were these people really and truly magicians?
Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the unseen Good, Old Mary used magic but didn’t seem like magicians to Kamijou. It was obvious at a glance how great their powers were. In fact, Aradia’s was so great she had to kill him more than once before he was even properly aware of it. He wasn’t sure how Good, Old Mary’s resurrection worked, but he was afraid to touch his chest and check. His caution was only natural when the bits and pieces of conversation he had overhead told him they were from the same group as Alice and Anna Sprengel.
“I’d really like an explanation now,” he said in a daze.
“And you’ll get one.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing where learning the truth makes me a target, is it?”
“Sigh. Now I see how even Alice was affected by you. I really need you to get it into your head that Aradia has already mercilessly killed you more than once and stepping peacefully down from the stage is not an option for you. Think of yourself as stuck up in a mountain mansion with a rockslide blocking the only road, a storm making hiking impossible, and the only bridge collapsed.”
She used a bewitching finger to gesture for him to follow her. As far as he could tell from behind, her wings and tail were entirely biological and moved all on their own. She did nothing at all to hide those unusual body parts or the rest of her lingerie body. She acted so superhuman that it felt strange she was leading him through an ordinary stainless-steel door into the building.
He watched her tail swishing side to side, wondering how it worked.
“Oh, you naughty boy. Do you mind not leering at my butt quite so much?”
“(What do I even say? This isn’t exactly what I would call an admirable way to live your life. They say you’re supposed to find something no one else can do, but I don’t think they meant things like showing up at the park at night in only a coat.)”
“I can hear every word of that.”
She didn’t turn around, but she did gently wrap her pink arrowhead tail around his neck. That may have been a demonic sign of affection, but it made him feel like she was leading him around on a leash. She was superhuman in more ways than one, but she appeared to enjoy being a target of attraction for the younger boy.
“Ooh, now you’re really staring something fierce. I take it you’re more of an arse man, then?”
“This is, ugh, only because, bleh, you’re pulling my head forward with your tail!”
The way she occasionally slipped into a variety of dialects continued to weird him out.
(Come to think of it, wasn’t Alice kind of similar? It was more her tone of voice, but she did seem to talk in different ways sometimes.)
Once through the door, she released him from his collar. The indoor heating warmed his entire body, reminding him just how cold it had been outside.
Customers weren’t supposed to enter from the roof, so they found themselves in a staff only passageway. A pushcart resembling a giant cage on tiny wheels was sitting by the wall.
This was the Miyashita Ark.
Kumokawa had mentioned it earlier, but what kind of shops did they have here?
The Bologna Succubus opened a random stainless steel door to reveal a women’s boutique. Some quiet screams followed. Yes, that mysterious demon still had her wings and tail out and she only wore a pink one-piece corset, stockings, and arm covers. To repeat, she was in her underwear.
But the Bologna Succubus actually posed with her hands behind her head.
“Yes, yes. If you’re going to snap some photos, just get it over with. This was all the boy’s idea, FYI. Sigh, why was I cursed to love younger boys so much I just can’t say no to anything they ask?”
“What the-!? Don’t even joke about that! They’re going to believe you! And Hell City Shibuya has so many phone cameras this kind of information spreads at the speed of light!”
Kamijou shoved on her back with both hands to get her out of there before the commotion grew to the point a security guard showed up. Although in this case, he was less afraid of getting arrested than he was of having the guard killed by this monster. Like a cat playing with a toy.
“Oh, dear. And where are you taking me for your next scandalous request I can’t ever seem to say no to? Eh heh. To the relative privacy of a dressing room, mayhap?”
“I can’t take any more of this! If you put any more pressure on me, I’ll start longing for a slow life in another world!”
The succubus let him push her through the hallway while everyone stared at them. She didn’t fight it, so she must not have had a destination in mind. While he hadn’t done it on purpose, pushing on her back with his palms caused her to arch her back and push out her chest, so every step she took caused her extra-large boobs to jiggle wildly. He was shielded from seeing them directly since he was behind her, but the glimpses he caught reflected in the show windows was enough to make him blush bright.
But no one made any real fuss about it since she didn’t protest or struggle. People must have been more willing to accept bizarre sights during a Shibuya New Year’s Eve because they were becoming no more than another piece of the background. (Did people think she was a lingerie model for a luxury boutique, or perhaps a model hired for part of a corporate event?)
The Bologna Succubus herself leaned back into his hands and let him lead her from behind while she talked.
“First of all, you can’t ask Good, Old Mary for any more help. I can understand your confusion after she brought you back from the dead a couple of times, but the next time you die, it’s for good. Keep that in mind.”
“?”
His sigh must have been enough for her to understand his confusion. She also happily let him push her around (they had to look like a lovey-dovey couple) and even smiled and waved to a small child staring at her, earning her a sharp glare from the boy’s mother.
“Hm, a detailed explanation of the alchemical formula lost in the 1st or 3rd century would probably just confuse you more. Simply put, Good, Old Mary can only repair your body’s injuries, but sealing up a wound doesn’t return the lost blood. Do you see where I’m going with this? If you’ve lost too much blood, healing your body doesn’t restart your mind. That would be meaningless.”
“Oh.”
Even if they intervened immediately after his death, it would be his third death in short succession.
And Aradia had already shattered his spine and torn a huge chunk out of his side. He had probably died of shock from the pain, but he would have lost a lot of blood too.
What happened to a human who had lost too much blood?
The Bologna Succubus spotted a rest area with a few chairs and tables near a shop with a seal mascot plastered on all their products. The lingerie woman stopped leaning against Kamijou and instead sat on a round table. Squishing her tail must have been painful or at least felt weird because she lifted her shapely butt a few times to subtly adjust its position.
“Good, Old Mary’s resurrection spell essentially repairs a dead human’s body to a clean, uninjured state at the moment of cardiac arrest. It might look like a miracle, but it is a purely medical phenomenon affecting only the physical body. She cannot directly bring back the soul itself. They will still need CPR afterwards. But repairing a body with all the blood missing is meaningless since their heart will not beat and they cannot breathe on their own. The great cost of the spell would be entirely wasted and all you would have is an intact hunk of flesh that would begin to slowly rot.”
“Seriously?”
She must have been restless because she pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and made a doglike animal out of it.
“If you’re going to die, I would recommend a bloodless method such as suffocation or poisoning, but with homicide, you don’t exactly get to choose the method. And in your case, that right hand has to be severed each time so it doesn’t interfere with Good, Old Mary’s magic. That requires some blood loss no matter how you die. It would be best to just assume you can’t die again.” Kamijou knew it had been to save him, but he still shuddered at the thought of such a dangerous choice being made without his knowledge.
Anyway, the Bologna Succubus sitting on the small table meant some part of her feast of a body would be right in his face no matter which seat he chose, so he remained standing.
“Hey, wait a second.”
“Yes?”
“So the blood I lost doesn’t come back. I get that, but what about my clothes? I didn’t have any blood on my clothes after the first time I was killed. For some reason, they were brand new and even had a price tag attached. Does that mean what I think it does?”
She didn’t answer him.
The sexy succubus seated on the round table with her long legs crossed looked the other way and whistled instead. She was so tense she crushed the dog in her hand, transforming it into a crocodile.
“Eek! Officer, this woman is a necrophile freak who loves stripping brutally murdered corpses and making them into her personal dress-up doll!!”
“Now hold on!!”
She sprang down from the table.
The superhuman didn’t care what society thought of her, but she liked to be in control of the conversation.
“B-but you would have been confuzzled if you woke up healed and found your clothes all bloody. And District 11 is a land route distribution base, so it wasn’t hard to search through the containers and find clothes from the same company. Think of it as a kindness from your all-knowing benefactor.”
“Then why do you look so flustered!?”
“I ain’t flustered!”
“There must have been a lot of blood after being pierced through the middle, so I honestly doubt it was limited to my shirt. Wait, wait. Don’t tell me you had to change my pants too.”
“…”
She silently refused to look him in the eye with a tinge of pink in her cheeks. She muttered to herself and awkwardly poked her index fingers together in front of her large chest.
Kamijou Touma’s adolescence finally exploded.
“Wahhhhhh!! You mean you saw everything from top to bottom!? And out in the bright morning sun!?”
“No, I- glrwrwr- I only- kshhh- you don’t under- hdfhliwrcw- verily I say- xcyq!?”
“Oh, shut up! All these weird noises are proof enough you’re badly shaken!! Just try and tell me you did nothing wrong while I record a video with this old persons smartphone!!”
“Ksshh!! But, wait, why would you want to record such a meaningless conversation!?”
As expected, the woman with a guilty heart covered her eyes with a hand and tried her hardest to stop him. She was willing to fight a fierce aerial battle with countless cameras aimed her way and she would walk through a crowded mall in nothing but her underwear, but she actually got flustered once it was one-on-one. And as much of a pervert as she was, she was still crazy strong. She had Kamijou Touma pinned to the floor in no time. With a very soft and squishy pinning technique.
After straddling a boy in her underwear at only 2 or 3 in the afternoon and stealing his phone, the woman worked to catch her breath.
“Pant, pant!! A-anyway, we need to stop Aradia now. We don’t have time for this poppycock. You do understand that, don’t you!?”
“I’m a little short on understanding at the moment, actually! For starters, who are you people and why is one of you trying to kill me!?”
That caught her by surprise.
Still straddling him, she placed a hand on her cheek and peered down at him.
“Really? This world never ceases to surprise me. But I guess it would take a natural to pull off such a feat.”
“What feat?”
“Alice Anotherbible.”
That name made him gasp.
The demon woman flapped her wings behind her and sighed in exasperation.
“I suppose I should ask: how much do you know about her?”
“She’s a weird, invincible girl who’s working with Anna Sprengel in some way.”
He heard the quiet slap of the Bologna Succubus smacking her palm against her forehead while still straddling him. Perhaps making such an extraordinary monster facepalm was worth a reward in and of itself.
“Cripes, you mean I have to tell you about the Bridge Builders Cabal and the Transcendents too?”
“In as much detail as possible please.”
She granted the request asked from beneath her.
Maybe she liked to talk and maybe she liked to help out those in need, but the demoness stretched on top of him and answered.
“Nhhh, okay! You don’t really have to understand what that girl is as long as you’re aware she possesses an extremely dangerous power. Alice is a step above the other Transcendents in the Bridge Builders Cabal. But I hear you’re her ‘teacher’. That makes you the only person in the world who Alice Anotherbible respects and will listen to. Do you really think the rest of us Transcendents in the cabal are going to sit idly by with someone that dangerous out there?”
Teacher.
Come to think of it, hadn’t she called him that all throughout the incident on the 29th?
And thinking back, why had someone so powerful been so fond of him and done everything he asked? He didn’t have a clear answer there.
But that aside…
“Alice directly rejected me. She said I didn’t need her.”
“The people who need her and the people who she respects are two very different things. Really, she only feels exasperation for the people who refuse to face reality, withdraw into a fairy tale world, and reveal their bright, selfish colors.”
“…”
This still left the fundamental question of what exactly Alice Anotherbible was.
The Bologna Succubus knew the answer, but she considered the imminent threat more important. And that threat was of course to Kamijou Touma’s life since he was weak this demon could pin him down with ease.
“This sent shockwaves through out cabal. We couldn’t decide on how to deal with Alice’s ‘teacher’.”
“So you split between the Rescuers and the Killers?”
“Right. The Killers want to kill the source of the change forthwith to return Alice to normal. It’s certainly a simple plan, but also a risky one since it leaves no way to influence Alice if killing you doesn’t return her to normal. Then there’s the Rescuers like Good, Old Mary and me. We want to leave you alive and monitor the situation because we don’t know how your death would influence Alice.”
“So you’re-”
“Not so fast.” She cut him off and placed a bewitching finger on his lips while still seated on him. “To be clear, that does not make us your allies. That is our plan for now. If we run the numbers and discover that killing you wouldn’t influence Alice at all or that allowing her ‘teacher’ to live would exacerbate the situation, then that plan changes. The threat is Alice, so we have no reason to protect you personally or any obligation to never betray you.”
“…”
The Bridge Builders Cabal was their own side. The Transcendents (is that what she called them?) were acting in their own interests.
This was a group Anna Sprengel had chosen to join, so he shouldn’t have expected them to be decent people.
The Bologna Succubus returned his phone to him and finally lifted her hips from his stomach.
“We are using you to influence Alice who controls the future of our cabal, so you use me to protect your own life. Do you understand the rules now?”
“No.” He looked up at the ceiling in thought before continuing. “I’ll be doing this for Alice too. It doesn’t matter to me what you and your cabal think.”
“I see. So this is her ‘teacher’.”
She breathed an exasperated sigh and extended a slender hand. He took it and she pulled him to his feet.
“You and Alice certainly are incompatible. Fundamentally so. You might have as much desire as the next person, but you lack the openings she needs to get at you. But that may be why she sees something in you she lacks herself.”
“What are you talking about?”
He gave her a puzzled look and she bowed before rubbing his stomach with her mystery pink horns.
“Ugh, really?”
“Ow!! Those horns kind of hurt!? Enough with the cow attack!”
“Having big boobs doesn’t make a cow, you know? Demons traditionally have goat horns. And I’m not explaining any more of this because Alice would kill me if I ruined it for her.”
He only had more questions than when he had started, but something unrelated to him caught his attention.
Why were the supposedly transcendent Bologna Succubus and Aradia so afraid of Alice? Yes, she had fearsome power, but she had the personality of a cheerful girl and that didn’t seem so dangerous to him.
He asked and she reacted with utter disbelief.
After giving him the look Academy City residents gave the PR posters claiming Academy City was a clean and superb educational institute where you would know your child was safe and in good hands, Transcendent Bologna Succubus leaned her face in front of his and replied.
“You don’t actually believe Alice must be safe because she’s an innocent child, do you?”
“Eh? But she doesn’t seem to be hiding anything.”
“That’s not the point.” The demon woman shrugged. “I’m asking if you believe there is no danger in a young heart too innocent to even hold any interests or beliefs. To be blunt, I think children are a violent and cruel lot. They flood anthills and laugh about it. So what happens if you give one of those tyrant tots enough power to destroy the universe?”
“…”
Was that part of being childish?
Had it just never shown itself with him because she was willing to do anything he asked?
“Alice is frightening,” said the Transcendent. She even held her own bare shoulders and shrank down like a lost child. “Shit-your-pants terrifying even. Around her, her mood trumps everything else in the world. There is no surefire method or guaranteed strategy. The same exact thing could get a different reaction each and every time. She might have smiled about it yesterday, but what if she happens to be in a bad mod today? Speaking with her is like trying to dig up all the randomly-distributed mines in a minefield where the layout changes every day.”
“Seriously? I find it hard to believe we’re talking about the same Alice here.”
“That’s the thing. She seems entirely different to you because you didn’t even realize what you were doing. Getting through an off-the-cuff conversation with Alice Anotherbible and living to tell the tale is a miraculous tightrope walk. And you even scolded her when she did the wrong thing. That I’ve never seen before.”
She was innocent and pure
For better or for worse, Kamijou Touma was her favorite, but this was an interpretation of those traits he hadn’t considered.
He shook his heavy head and the Bologna Succubus continued while coiling her tail around her index finger.
“You might have a hard time believing it after we dragged you into this mess and killed you twice, but the Bridge Builders Cabal is a gathering of people who want to fulfill a selfless dream. And that includes Aradia.”
“Eh?”
“Over the long span of history, she has fought to save the persecuted witches, protect them from prejudice and discrimination, and give them a safe place to live. So she will do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. The scary part is she won’t compromise with anyone fighting for a different goal. Because she doesn’t care what happens to anyone other than the witches she has dedicated her life to.”
“Persecuted witches? But that’s ancient history. Why is she still fighting for that?”
“How would you respond if the goth girl who moved in next door came up to you, smiled, and introduced herself as a real witch?”
“…”
“You wouldn’t know how to respond, would you? And yet you wouldn’t mind at all if she was a shrine maiden, a nun, or any other identity that society has decided is legitimate, no matter how outdated and unscientific it is. From that very first moment, you’ve built a big old wall in your head. You might not even be consciously aware of it, but the old prejudices still exist there on the subconscious level. It doesn’t matter how many smartphones, drones, and scientific espers the world has created.”
“Then…” Kamijou gulped before asking. “You have a goal like that too?”
“That’s a question for after the sun sets, boy. My hot and steamy secrets are a little too spicy for the daytime crowd☆”
She refused to answer him while holding her hands to her cheeks, twisting her body restlessly, and smiling like this was all a big joke.
Could he track down what it was she wanted to protect if he learned where the name “Bologna Succubus” came from?
“The point is we all have our reasons to want to change the world.”
“…”
“That would be fine on its own, but the problem is we all have to agree how the world needs to change. You see, each and every one of us Transcendents is powerful enough to rival the entire magic side on our own.”
That casual revelation left Kamijou speechless.
The claim was absurd, but the way she looked weirdly proud of it made it sound real, which scared him.
“Hence, the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics can’t stop us in their usual ways. Well, some of us may be closer to what the Russian Orthodoxes are used to dealing with. But anyway.” She threw out that topic like it wasn’t important. “If one of us forces what we want on the rest, another one won’t be happy and they might just obliterate the ideal world we had spent so much time and effort creating. Because destroying a world is so much easier than creating or protecting one. So whatever we end up doing with the world, the entire cabal needs to be onboard before we can start working on it.”
Was it similar to two countries with fundamentally different religions and economies discussing their plans for the future with massive armies staring each other down?
If either side got fed up and left the negotiating table, the world could be torn to shreds.
The button triggering war sat within reach of them all.
“Which is why Aradia isn’t the biggest threat in the cabal. Her goal of protecting the witches gives you a carrot you can dangle in front of her to control her. Maybe you can’t fully control her that way, but you at least know what landmine to avoid stepping on at all costs with her. In other words, she might be hard to bring to your side, but you can challenge her any number of times without her causing too much trouble. The more we talk, the better my chances with her. Because once I know the trick to avoiding that landmine, I can avoid it no matter what.”
In that sense, there was one joker who couldn’t be controlled and didn’t even have a clearly-marked minefield.
“And then there’s Alice, huh?”
“She is innocent, capricious, and endlessly cruel and merciless toward anything she doesn’t like. The rules with her are poorly defined in both directions, so it’s hard to work out how to handle her. And the going rate is so absurdly high that a single mistake could mean losing your life. But no matter how hopeless it looks, we have to speak with her. Because without everyone’s approval – even hers – any world we make will fail and be destroyed.” The Bologna Succubus’s tail swayed side to side. “That is why we have decided to have Alice create the new world herself. Because no matter what complaints she might have, we can press her to look after her own creation.”
“She’ll be doing it herself?”
“Who makes it doesn’t really matter. As long as the new world gives us all what we want.”’
Was that similar to how everyone just let America take the lead at international conferences as long as it helped create a peaceful world?
“Once god creates a world, he won’t give up on it and create a second one next door just because the humans living there keep screwing up and polluting the land. He might wash it clean with a massive flood or something, but that’s just god making some adjustments. He’s still sticking with the world he created in the first place. That’s basically the cabal’s plan for crossing the verbal tightrope walk that is the Alice problem. Or it was.”
But it hadn’t worked out.
Anna Sprengel had barged into the Bridge Builders Cabal and done something to Alice. Something that made her unnaturally attached to Kamijou Touma despite having never met him before.
This was on a completely different dimension from the cold military and financial calculations.
Kamijou Touma’s importance had skyrocketed like the first lady whispering in the president’s ear to take control of the international conference.
This was why she scared them.
Alice’s unpredictable innocence truly terrified them.
They could have everything 99.9% settled in their discussions and then some last-second emotion could send it all tumbling down, shattering the world they were trying to build. So even if they inspired some short term anger in Alice Anotherbible, those transcendent beings had decided it was worth taking the long view and killing this source of instability before he caused any real problems.
Actions born of a grudge or desire might eventually fade away on their own.
But actions fueled by fear would never spontaneously disappear.
They were two very different things. Just like the exact same number in a bankbook would mean very different things if it was in the savings column or the debts column.
“Do you see how ridiculously important you are now, boy? Think of it like you hold a big button in your hand. You can whisper in Tyrant Alice’s ear to manipulate her actions, so you are capable of obliterating the entire world along with our cabal. Of course, that would mean absolute extinction where no one wins.”
“You can’t be serious. Alice was basically dragging me around everywhere. And what makes you think I can just control her like that? I’m not that #5 I’ve heard rumors about.”
“Oh, it would be very possible for you. And frankly, it doesn’t matter if you personally intend to do so nor not. Whether we’ve sided with the Killers or the Rescuers, every single Transcendent in the Bridge Builders Cabal is prepared to pull out all the stops over how we should deal with the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere.”
“You must be joking.”
“Now, we need to come up with a plan. Aradia is coming and I remind you she is one of the Transcendents who singlehandedly rivals the entire magic side. Losing her for the time being isn’t enough to declare yourself safe. She can search us out and make another attack.”
“How can you be so sure she’s coming? What can she even do when she doesn’t know where we are?”
“I reckon she’s already workin’ on that.” The Bologna Succubus shrugged in apparent unconcern and spoke in a tone that didn’t hint at her true feelings. “She’s already preparing her attack using a Wiccan spell named Triple Reload.”
