Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3
Status: Incomplete
4/10 parts completed
Chapter 3: Prophecy – Last_Branch(of_Die).
Part 1
Late at night in District 7, Anna Kingsford stood at the very top of an enormous crane.
She stood tall and simply directed her gaze overhead.
The night sky seemed blotted out by the lights of the city, but viewing the clear stars in the sky gave this expert access to more information than searching the world linked together by fiber optics.
And she only used this for just causes.
Which was what made her an expert.
(The ⭐s are in place. That boy should become aware of the branch he passed by now.)
She sighed.
That was a complete side issue.
For one, Kingsford had never directly met Kamijou Touma. Which made him no more than a stranger in the same city as her.
(But awareness does ❌ allow him to change it. It may be his life, but he can ❌ change the decision he made on a branch he has already passed. Just like CRC passed a crucial branch and was defeated in a ⚔️ he should have won easily. The greatest enemy in an individual’s life is their own karma.)
“Not that he can ignore it now that he knows.”
But she would not just abandon him.
That expert did not consider her own interests, the state of the battle, or even whether or not she knew the boy.
He was a complete stranger?
So what?
If anyone was troubled, uncertain, or suffering, she was already taking action.
Anna Kingsford had perfected that way of life.
A fool who had yet to reach that point spoke to her.
It was the human named Aleister.
“Where are you going, Kingsford?”
“To serve others.”
“That’s my job. There’s no reason for you to continue fighting!!”
Even her battle against Rosencreutz had essentially been a miracle.
She had not actually won the battle. CRC could instantly search for any information about the world, but he had just so happened to overlook the fact that Anna Kingsford was a preserved corpse. If not for that, he would have destroyed her more thoroughly and she couldn’t have recovered.
She was reliant on unpredictable miracles.
Even a magician who mastered the field to the point of being known as an expert would lose eventually.
She had to know that.
Alice Anotherbible had easily crushed and killed CRC and so thoroughly eliminated him from the world that he could never recover. She was a true monster.
Kingsford had not reached that point.
She had to understand that. She wielded great power using the correspondence between the microcosm within a person and the macrocosm of the physical world around them, so she would have thoroughly analyzed herself in that way.
But the woman with a proper understanding of magic’s essence smiled as she responded.
She was accurately viewing her own fate, but she didn’t hesitate to speak.
“This is 👋.”
“But!!”
Contact with the new Board Chairman had been lost.
They couldn’t hope for anymore cooperation, so they had to settle this on their own.
The situation was clearly worsening and Alice was even more powerful than CRC. Certain death awaited Kingsford. Alice waited in a land that brought death to all who set foot there.
“Aleister. You must have understood from the beginning that I am ❌ more than a preserved corpse. You are only using ⚙️s to move an already ☠️ body around, so I never was alive. I escaped the previous ⚔️ intact by pure luck, but ❌ even that can save me next time. This ☠️ body will find only ☠️.”
“…”
As an expert who understood the secrets of the world of the living and the world of the dead, she was not too attached to her own life.
The only ones who clung to life with such ugly desperation were the half-baked magicians who remained fixated on this one life.
Still, he understood in his own inexpert way.
Anna Kingsford was an expert through and through. She didn’t even think of clinging to life or staying in this world forever.
She was only interested in eliminating the unknown threat making someone suffer before her eyes.
She didn’t even consider whether or not she had ever met that person.
She had no intention of returning. Her win condition didn’t even take that into account.
She was an example of how far people could go if they mastered their field.
“What was my role meant to be? I was supposed to be a trump 🃏 for use against the unbeatable Anna Sprengel. Now that Miss Sprengel has been freed from her wicked ⛓️ and that ⚔️ need ❌ be fought, my purpose is complete.”
Aleister had no response to that.
Because she was exactly right.
This goodbye could not be avoided. This was Aleister Crowley’s reward for wielding superhuman knowledge, doing what no one else could do, and enduring trials normal people would never even know existed. Kingsford was correct that the greatest enemy in an individual’s life was their own karma.
He was already in checkmate.
And yet…
“That just means I have to do the work myself.”
He understood it intellectually but he still tried to fight it. Was that because Aleister was an inexpert and ugly human?
But you must never forget that, while that human had accumulated a lot of bad karma, he would never stop struggling for his own ends.
“Aleister Crowley officially died in 1947 and stubbornly clung to life until he actually died battling Great Demon Coronzon. I’m as dead as you are. If someone has to save that boy, I’ll do it. I can do it if necessary!! And I’m better suited for that role. The wickedest man in the world should be standing up to the world even after death, not a pure and proper holy woman!”
“But you are still fixated on this 🌍.”
She shot back.
A true expert did not bother arguing about secrets.
She had already seen into the depths of his mind that even he wasn’t consciously aware existed.
She did it naturally.
And kindly.
“Conscious or ❌, you hijacked that great 👿’s body to cling to life. Either you still have something you want to do in this 🌍, or there is something you are ❌ yet willing to give up here. Dying for him is not the same as living with him. It never can be. Either way, it is too soon for you. Everyone dies eventually, so there is no need to rush toward ☠️. Live out your life first, Aleister. You can prepare yourself for ☠️ once you have done that.”
Kingsford smiled as she said this.
Smiled faintly.
Aleister lightly clenched his empty right hand.
He felt the pressure of a staff so twisted his fingertips tingled at the mere sight of it.
Special numbers scattered from his hand like sparks.
“I’ve had enough. What if I said I would stop you by force?”
“I would knock you aside and continue on my way.”
“Kh.”
She didn’t even hesitate.
She said it gently, like it was a foregone conclusion.
Kingsford used no more than words to overpower the victor of the Battle of Blythe Road.
He couldn’t say she couldn’t do it. He was already well past his limit with Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel. He had only so insolently decided to make use of this preserved corpse because he couldn’t handle them.
Trickery, betrayal, surprise attacks, intrigue, and – when necessary – direct confrontation.
He had used every trick in the book to drive the world’s greatest magic cabal to destruction at the Battle of Blythe Road, but none of it would work here.
He could not win in a direct one-on-one confrontation.
If Anna Kingsford went all out, Aleister had no way of opposing her. He knew she would simply prove how inexpert he really was. He would never manage to get his hands on the switch hidden below her skin.
“I do ❌ want you to ☠️ here. No number of previous ☠️s is any reason to accept ☠️ next time. So I will use all of my power to defeat you here. Soundly enough that you do ❌ have enough strength left to go out and ☠️.”
That was contradictory.
Kingsford kept saying she would not let people die so easily, but she was about to head out for her own death.
She was saying she would use up all of the tickets provided for her as a thinking and moving preserved corpse.
But that gentle smile of hers made the contradictory premise and conclusion seem to fit together with no problem.
It was strange really.
Was this the essence of magic known only to the few true experts – a position Aleister had yet to reach? This was the human-made miracle of protecting everyone you encountered and spreading smiles everywhere you went.
He couldn’t stop her.
This wasn’t the divine cosplay spell that simply let one dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. Nor was it the reverse logic where one tried to divulge the workings of the world to rebel against the god they so hated.
With a quiet bump, the failure of a student buried his face in Anna Kingsford’s chest.
He sniffled like a child.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have to die.”
“That I met someone who feels that way and that I inspired these feelings in you, who felt betrayed by everything, tells me that I have won a victory against this 🌍.”
Clear drops spilled out.
Anna Kingsford held the lost child’s head to her chest and whispered gently to him.
She stroked the inexpert one’s blonde hair like a mother.
“I think you did have need of my preserved corpse. Especially on December 31. If no one had stopped Anna Sprengel, the 🌍 would have been thrown into chaos before CRC could even be reborn.”
One by one, the expert explained everything to the fool.
She taught him some terribly simple things that no one had ever before taught that human.
Not his parents who had thought meaningless strictness was a virtue, not his teachers who had failed to correct the social problem left in their care, and not the Golden magicians who had abandoned their pursuit of knowledge to spend their time on ugly internecine conflict.
Even though these should have been the first things he was taught.
“But you must ❌ toy with life. Because you are powerful enough to do so with ease, you have ❌ way to keep yourself focused other than using pure willpower to manage yourself. The ☠️ have their own dignity. Humans remain human even in ☠️. You ensured your own pain from the moment you disrespected the ☠️ for the sake of the living. Improve yourself, Aleister. If you do ❌ fear taking the long way around to avoid pain, there is much you can learn. Just like any magician.”
“…”
“And do ❌ worry, lost child of the living. You will not be alone. As an expert, I will do whatever it takes to save the one you care for. Even if it requires every trick in the 📖. So there is ❌ chance you will be crushed by loneliness.”
Part 2
Kamijou Touma heard a wet sound.
It came from inside his body.
He thought he must have imagined it.
But the sound of rotting flesh falling away was so distinct.
“…”
He was dying.
He was certain of it in that brightly lit classroom.
It was an unavoidable fate. No one had cruelly pushed him to this point. There was a chance he could have survived had he given up on saving others, but he had chosen this path for himself while on the dark side.
He felt an odd scraping.
Was that the wound from Aradia he felt in his right side and spine? The odd feeling in his neck would be H.T. Trismegistus.
Everything felt normal-ish, but that lack of extreme pain only terrified him more.
Something was definitely happening to him.
He couldn’t tell what was happening inside him. He only felt a vague disgust. It was like his silent organs were changing color without sending out any kind of alert. Death. The end. An invisible pressure. A cruel time bomb with the LCD timer omitted.
“Human…”
Even Magic God Othinus only groaned that word before falling silent.
There was no recovering from this.
“You will die.”
“That doesn’t change my answer.”
Thinking back, he had made that fateful choice when that god wasn’t with him.
He had carelessly made such an important decision on his own.
Of course he had screwed it up.
Everything had been wrong from the beginning.
How many times had he availed himself of Good, Old Mary’s resurrection? In other words, how many times had he died on the way here? In just a few days’ time? Maybe you would survive certain death, as if by mistake, once over your long life. But he seriously doubted those bugs or errors would occur in his favor every single time like that. Not to mention that he was plagued by misfortune due to his right hand, so lady luck would never smile on him in that way.
The flaw wasn’t in Good, Old Mary.
Bringing him back to life even once was more than enough of a miracle.
The problem was him having her use it so many times in such a short period of time without considering the usage limits.
He couldn’t fool death any longer.
The corner of the mask was starting to peel away.
“Hey, teacher, why do you think the girl wanted the grimoire library?”
“…”
“Because the girl wanted to use the library’s knowledge to do something she couldn’t? To correct her broken head? No, the girl is already perfect and unbreakable. The answer is simple. The girl wanted to help you after you passed the final branch. The girl wanted to search through a library of all the world’s knowledge to find some method still remaining in this world. That was all.”
“…………………………………………………………………………………”
He had passed the fatal branch.
He had foolishly chosen to cross it and he had arrived at a mistaken destination.
Which one of them was really in need of help?
“If the girl found it, she would use it. If not, she would give up, deciding the world was just too shallow. There are billions of people in this wide world, so if not even one of them has a way to save you, it means they didn’t try hard enough and then the girl would have to punish them all with her power.”
H.T. Trismegistus had said he had always been one of the Killers.
He had said the swiftest and surest way to take Kamijou’s life was to have him meet Alice. He had been right.
It didn’t help the deathly ill to fear the doctor’s prognosis. Kamijou understood that. They had come down with the illness much earlier. The real problem may have been from their exercise, diet, or other life habits.
Nevertheless, that fear was real.
The tables had been turned.
The symbol of death had shifted from Alice Anotherbible to another girl Kamijou knew quite well.
White. Pure white. The all-knowing nun who was always by his side.
He felt no pain.
He wasn’t even given the right to writhe in agony as certain death approached.
The pressure mounted.
Like he was being slowly crushed by an incredibly thick invisible wall.
Which was more horrific: being turned to red and black spray by the world’s fastest linear motor train before you could even feel the fear, or having your body gradually drawn into the wheel of a local train as it pulled into the station?
With no malice, the girl spoke with an innocent smile.
“Well, teacher? Let’s go see the grimoire library! The girl can’t diagnose you, so we can have the all-knowing nun do that part☆”
Part 3
H.T. Trismegistus watched from a distance.
He had known Alice Anotherbible longer than any other member of the Bridge Builders Cabal. After all, he was the one who had discovered her in the modern day.
But there was a lot the young butler did not know.
Most notably, he did not know her origins.
Where was she born, where was she raised, where was she altered, and from where had she fled?
He didn’t have a single answer.
It had only been pure coincidence when he found her in a city abroad. She was in the shadows of a roofless shelter. She had tremendous value as an open-source spell, but he had not realized this until well after taking in the wandering girl.
At first, she had been like a wild animal.
She had gone so wild he had questioned what she had even eaten to survive.
It was nothing more than luck that Alice hadn’t known how to use her power. If she had chaotically wielded her power as Alice Anotherbible at that point, she probably would have destroyed the entire world.
Alice was smiling innocently next to someone else.
She wore an expression he had never seen before.
That much was fine.
The young man simply obeyed. Of course, this was for himself, not for Alice. H.T. Trismegistus was a Transcendent who had abandoned his magic name to dress up in the appearance and abilities of a god. He could only view the world and choose who to save based on the salvation condition he had set for himself. So the first person he had to save was not himself or Alice.
He was the guardian deity of common sense.
He protected the people against anything that altered people’s sense of normalcy: war, rioting, disaster, loneliness, disease, famine, financial panic.
He sought a master who would save the world.
Or to put it another way, the only person he would allow to distort common sense was the bearer of the paradigm shift that would guide all of humanity to the next stage. He could not leave this in the hands of just any old charismatic leader.
Was Christian Rosencreutz the one he sought?
Or was it Alice Anotherbible?
His objective was clear, but a question occurred to the young butler.
He knew his salvation condition.
But who exactly did he want to save?
Part 4
On the District 7 bridge, the Transcendents vs. Transcendents battle was trending in one direction.
“Tch! Good, Old Mary!?” shouted Aradia, holding onto the railroad crossing barrier she had borrowed as a broom and clinging to the side of a steel beam distributing the bridge’s weight.
But the woman collapsed on the cold asphalt did not respond.
That was a bad sign.
Good, Old Mary was the foundation of their recovery magic, but she had suddenly collapsed.
This was worse than simply losing one of their number.
Vidhatri, the brown-skinned woman with model-like proportions, shook the arms and legs of the Dhatri ball-joint doll she wore on her back, intricately manipulating white thread and black hair as she whispered to Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.
“Do you still need support?”
“Nope. Everyone can do their own thing. Instead of assigning as many Transcendents as we can to attacking a single point, it would help me if we increased the total number of attack points to fill up the processing power of their minds.”
Something hovered through the air.
Some teacups and saucers were slowly flying around
Those were symbols from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The Bologna Succubus noticed and groaned while breathing heavily with her hands down on the ground.
“Kssshhh, they’ve made it this far?”
“Ha ha☆ Of course they have.”
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet smiled calmly.
A single smile on that extremely lovable face summoned a great black dragon into the night sky. Was the twisting serpent actually tens of thousands of starlings? They were not venomous, but in great enough numbers, any creature was a threat to human life.
The instant the Bologna Succubus looked up at the black dragon filling the entire night sky, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet took a large step forward.
Without hesitation.
“Kh.”
Now was not the time to be overwhelmed by the intimidating numbers.
The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings to gather as much air as possible.
She launched herself straight to the side.
The coat-shaped blast-resistant suit covered in thick metal panels snapped shut like a ferocious beast’s jaws. It was a sweet-smelling iron maiden. The air inside that isolated space was compressed with no outlet, producing a strange sound much like a steam engine.
The Bologna Succubus had just barely avoided it.
If she had carelessly stayed in place, she would have been “devoured”.
Instead of feeling fear, she gathered offensive power between her brows.
(Argh. I can’t let this chaos be unleashed on the boy’s city.)
What were Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible doing right now?
She couldn’t predict how few seconds a regular Transcendent would last against Alice if she were serious about fighting, but it was still much too dangerous to let that boy stand defenselessly before Alice.
The alluring demon smiled bitterly at that thought and focused her feelings on the battle at hand.
“Oh, what’s this?”
Smiling, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet again spread her arms wide. Slowly.
Almost like a solid wall, a stifling nectar scent emerged from the blast-resistant suit and pushed toward the Bologna Succubus. Even at this distance, she had to stay focused to avoid getting dizzy.
What was happening in that closed world?
The skinny girl(?) wearing an apron over her naked body giggled before speaking.
“This won’t hurt at all, so don’t worry. I’m more interested in creating a gentle world where even the unloved are loved equally. Did you really understand my salvation condition? Kee hee hee☆ I have love even for a filthy sex demon, so get over here and let me give you a hug!!”
“Killing with pleasure, huh?”
“Ah ha ha☆ This is Total Courtship! Welcome to the sweetest, most luxurious ending to a life♪”
Roaches could rapidly build up a resistance to deadly insecticides, so they couldn’t necessarily be killed by escalating the chemical suffering. Instead, there were products that tricked them into thinking ethanol, acetaldehyde, sotolon, or another chemical compound was delicious food, luring them into the trap where they would take a different chemical back to the colony to kill them all at once. Humans didn’t just use what their target disliked – they would also use whatever their target most liked.
This girl similarly used love to kill. She was a super sweet monster who had continually honed the emotion of love into a deadly weapon. If you simply increased your defenses to prevent pain and prepared ordinary attacks, she would slip past them all and kill you instantly.
She was a specialist in that.
This Transcendent was a different form of strongest, whose trump card was the complete opposite of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress which converted all forms of pleasure into pain.
Her victims were robbed of even the right to feel fear as they were filled with no more than happiness until they lost their life. In a trippy world were everything was vague, they would cross the final line without intent or resolve.
They were stranded.
She had complete control over them, not even giving them a chance to speak their final words.
She brought a death more certain than a .44 caliber bullet and its name was love.
“Yeah, I don’t think we could ever get along.”
“Kya ha ha☆ You’re only saying that because that makes it more exciting, aren’t you!?”
This must have been her combat form.
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her enormous blast-resistant suit spread wide to display the terrarium trapped within. The skinny naked-apron girl pushed out a nectar scent so powerful it caused heartburn. And she took a casual step forward.
“You didn’t find it remotely odd? We’re all regular Transcendents here. A clash between our two groups shouldn’t end so easily. Yet you’re being easily defeated in a one-sided game. Is it a bad matchup between the individual Transcendents? Do our spells combine so well it’s like we were dealt a royal flush? No, that could never happen.”
“…”
“No one can defeat Alice Anotherbible.”
For this alone, she took on a respectful tone.
Almost like she was reading off the handwritten creed only she believed in.
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet thought only of her own blessings as she spoke euphorically.
“You underestimated the meaning of that statement. And that optimism has brought you certain death. It doesn’t just mean you won’t survive a direct physical fight against Alice. There’s no getting around it. We control all of the coincidences and all of our baseless hunches and inspirations will work out in our favor. We have the trends of the world on our side. That is what it means to ‘resonate’ with Alice and take the winning side. To be clear, we are only firing blindly from the hip. You’re the ones ensuring we hit you.”
Vidhatri.
2nd Saga.
And Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.
The Bologna Succubus’s side was being worn down, but all three of them were unharmed. She had gotten a few clean hits in on them, so had they managed to shrug off the damage?
And she was slipping past their expectations and landing an attack they failed to dodge or defend against, so it made no sense for them to be changing their stance to reduce the damage with 100% accuracy.
That wasn’t their individual abilities.
It was their “resonance” with Alice Anotherbible.
“Defying her means death. You had lost from the moment you bet on there being an exception to that, like that you could move beyond her reach, hide where she couldn’t find you, or escape punishment if your defiance was indirect. Not that she would let you get away with this even if you had been correct.”
“How are you on Alice’s side when you only love yourself?”
“Isn’t it cruel to expect such a small child to judge everything so accurately? They say to let your child make mistakes to learn from them, but do you think that kind of harsh parental love will work on that girl? Alice is simpler than that. Which is what makes her so frightening. At her mental age, she probably sees anyone who praises her and spoils her as her ally.”
And it didn’t end there.
“Heyyy.”
Something enormous was parting the large river to approach.
It was a special warship measuring around 100m long.
That was small compared to a nuclear aircraft carrier of more than 300m long, but it was undoubtedly a warship.
Plus, this was not the ship itself.
It was made out of smooth white shadow.
A girl’s lazy voice played from the speakers probably meant for giving warnings or making threats.
Come to think of it, hadn’t one of them seemingly vanished?
“This took some time to prepare, but I’m back.”
The ship’s bridge stood taller than the iron bridge.
She must have torn down all the other bridges spanning the river to clear a path here. It made you wonder which side was doing more damage to Academy City.
Aradia’s eyes really did bug out as she shouted.
“Mut Thebes!? What is that thing!?”
“You don’t know? It’s the Academy City drone carrier Kagenui.”
An aircraft carrier had to carry multiple large aircraft, necessitating a great size. Submersible and aerial aircraft carriers could not be made because the size and weight affected their balance too much. ...But that accepted principle had been overturned by shrinking the aircraft down by eliminating the cockpit and turning them into drones. Even the maintenance work could be carried out by an unmanned maintenance factory within the ship.
As usual, Academy City loved making bizarre things.
But now wasn’t the time for exasperation.
That was a carrier.
“Go, everyone.”
A series of explosions rang out. The boxy canisters on the flat deck rose up and opened fire. There were electrically ignited guns that could fire at a rate of a million rounds a minute. It looked like a programmed fireworks show. In truth, the honeycomb-like holes on the front of the canisters were releasing a large number of flying objects. By spreading their movable wings in air, they gathered in orderly teams and flew in formation. Now both sides had a flying swarm. The drones clashed directly with the tens of thousands of starlings ruling the night sky.
The assumptions and superiority had been overturned.
One side was alive and the other was machine.
When they were both controlled remotely and were equal in number, it went without saying whether the small birds or the man-made meter-long aerial weapons would win.
Perhaps the counterattack was necessary.
But as the drones pursued the fleeing starlings, their machinegun fire stabbed into the skyscrapers built along the river and sent sparks exploding from walls as thick power cables were ruptured.
“Mut Theeeebes!!!”
Aradia roared in anger, but then she stopped.
The brown girl was acting weird.
“Yayyy. Who wants to take a killer selfie? Just tell me when and I’ll get the timing right for you. Yippee! Let’s keep this Alice Parade Party going☆”
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet giggled.
She clearly welcomed this turn of events.
Mut Thebes wasn’t enemy or ally – she was losing all awareness that she was participating in the battle at all. She was throwing that aside to enjoy herself. And her actions were clearly working against the Bologna Succubus’s side.
They sensed a trend in the series of unpleasant coincidences.
“I believe it’s called Acute Kotatsu Syndrome. Basically, Alice affects the group psychology of an area when she stays there long enough. Did you think you were immune for some reason? Even magicians and Transcendents will be engulfed by Alice sooner or later.”
“…”
“That includes all of us. Yes, you are no exception, Bologna Succubus. And most likely, neither are we. We will all lose our sense of who is on whose side in this mad tea party. The world that people across the globe have worked so hard to create could end today, but in a way that could mean the arrival of an age of peace. If everything is engulfed and everyone is a victim, then the distinction between enemy and ally loses all meaning.”
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet made it sound so obvious.
But it didn’t add up.
They were using their all-important salvation conditions as an excuse to love themselves and preserve their power by protecting Alice, so they wouldn’t want an ending where they were engulfed by Alice’s madness and lost sight of who they were. Narcissists who cared about themselves more than anything else in the world would never seek out a form of satisfaction created by having their internal aesthetic sense altered.
“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”
“Ha ha☆ What? Are you saying I’ve already broken too?”
It didn’t sound like she cared.
Someone on her level had lost the right to feel fear and disgust, or even detect that anything was amiss.
This space was going mad.
It had started at a single point, but the entire world would be this way eventually.
Whether or not Alice Anotherbible wanted it.
This was ominous enough to make that prediction.
“It doesn’t really matter. No one can defy Alice whether they put up a resistance or not.”
“Are you shoving responsibility for the world onto Alice’s shoulders while you alone abandon the effort of living, like you’re just a tree, grass, or flower, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!?”
“Hee hee☆ Total Courtship – ready for dissemination. Now, I think I’ll pack you so full of super-sweet love that all your veins burst. Alice hates it when you try to lecture people like that, which is why she’s striking back at you, you know?”
