Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter2
Chapter 2: Welcome to the Psychedelic – Little_Queen_Wonderland.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
The District 10 prison contained a maximum-security cell in its greatest depths.
That cell acted as New Board Chairman Accelerator’s headquarters.
“You say you have information on Alice Anotherbible?”
“I do.”
The big screen TV embedded in the wall displayed Mina Mathers…apparently.
She was the self-proclaimed black cat witch he had encountered in the Academy City night once.
“As Academy City’s new king, you must be at least a little aware of the world outside your city’s walls. I won’t ask that you refine your own life force into magic power and construct spells, but you should know there is a mystical power other than Academy City’s espers.”
“So it’s about that side of things, is it?”
“Half the world is covered by something you could never find even when searching using your full authority. It’s simple really. When investigating the science side doesn’t turn up any answers, you should assume you are looking at a product of the magic side.”
Accelerator clicked his tongue.
Maybe it was a problem that he only had the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 to assist his decisions regarding these things.
As useful as she was, there was only one of her. Which made her an Achilles’ heel.
He needed at least two. Preferably three.
He doubted Qliphah Puzzle 545 would let it go to her head or be corrupted by it, but the greater her importance, the greater the risk of an enemy attacking her. Increasing his options wouldn’t decrease that risk to zero, but reducing the risk to more comfortable levels would be a task for later.
But for now…
“Tell me what you know. I can decide for myself if I believe you.”
“I never said I was handing over this information for free.”
“You’re trying to negotiate at this point?”
An icy mood set in.
The rioters flooding the streets were even now gradually destroying Academy City.
Anti-Skill and Judgment had been issued live ammunition, but even with high-level espers among the rioters, city residents firing on other city residents would only expand the damage to the city.
The only people to benefit from that were Alice and the Transcendents, outsiders who were distorting the city. That would let them destroy the city, and the world along with it, for free.
They needed to be swiftly attacked to shut off that deadly tap.
As soon as possible.
If Mina Mathers was using that crisis to jack up the price for her information, she had some nerve.
Accelerator was the new Board Chairman.
It was up to him what kind of city Academy City grew to be.
“I am not exactly on Academy City’s side. I am not even a pure member of the science side anymore. Thus, I am sharing what information I believe will benefit me to share. I lose all reason to share it if that condition is not met.”
“…”
“Go to Aleister Crowley. You can place me on your blacklist if you like, but not that human. He has already died once in the UK and died a second time to atone for his sins. No sin is greater than death and that human accepted his death of his own free will. I know you are the successor he directly gave his code list to, but you have no reason to treat your predecessor so harshly. In times of crisis, why not go to him for advice?”
“What’s this?”
Out of nowhere, a new voice interrupted the call without Accelerator’s authorization.
A wholly unknown line had managed to access this maximum security prison.
This was the work of a human who, in a way, knew Academy City even more thoroughly than Accelerator did.
He looked a lot different than he had when Accelerator had received the code list, however.
“It looks like the processor I built is troubling you for no good reason. She might act all wicked, but her thought processes were designed to never do anything truly bad. Whatever happens, she will hand over the information regarding Alice Anotherbible in the end. She isn’t like you or me, so rest easy.”
“Aleister. I am currently using what information I have to hold an official negotiation from an Academy City general contact point. I will be fair, so would you kindly back off and stop interrupting?”
“What has you so upset? This isn’t like you at all. People might not like me very much, but everyone can tell how skilled you are. If you prove your skill as Mina Mathers and establish an official channel with Academy City, I’m sure they will hear you out.”
“(Do you not get that my name alone isn’t enough to manage that, you lonely idiot?)”
“Leave me out of this, dumbasses,” grumbled Accelerator.
That inhuman tsundere was a pain in the ass.
“So are you giving me your information or not?” he said.
“Ahem. Fine, I will. But do remember that this is repaying a debt owed by a certain human, not me. This gives me a bargaining chip to use with the new Board Chairman.”
“Mina. I hate to interrupt when you’re trying to sound threatening by lowering your voice like that, but I can hear a baby crying from off camera. You can leave this web meeting and go comfort her if you like.”
“And who’s child do you think that is? Did you think shoving your baby onto a babysitter counted as doing your duty as a parent, you neglectful moron?”
Even as she said this, Mina Mathers was doing something off camera that produced delighted giggles.
And she got back on topic.
“The oldest instance of the term Anotherbible I found was during the early 20th century in the outskirts of London, England. Aleister, you wouldn’t have been there at the time because you had left on your world trip with your wife Rose.”
“You mean something happened in England while I was away?”
“A new trend began at the time. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became recognized as a grimoire and a theory was formed that you could understand and manipulate the structure of the world if you understood all the hidden meaning written in that book. Of course this goes beyond the surface text and whatever Lewis Carroll was seeing and imagining at the time. This included ‘decoding’ the text by replacing it with numbers and rearranging or reordering them.”
“I see. Hence ‘another bible’.”
“Yes. Plenty of magic cabals attempted to forcibly decode the bible based on their own independent rules, but here people were doing this with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland instead.”
It was obvious what the unseen magician at the time would have wanted.
A medium that faithfully reproduced Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Magic in the form of a human.
“If you wanted the details to be as precise as possible, there would have been only one starting point you would want to use.”
Needless to say, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was fiction.
Wonderland and Alice did not actually exist.
But with all that in mind, Mina Mathers had an answer.
“Alice Pleasance Liddell.”
Silence followed.
Mina Mathers continued speaking like a machine.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not originally written as a story to be published for a general audience. It is based on Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, a story the mathematician Lewis Carroll told a girl named Alice and a few others on July 4, 1862. So while the children’s story itself is complete fiction, the heroine was modeled after someone who did exist.”
“Are you saying some magician abducted her and thoroughly modified her, creating the current Alice Anotherbible?”
“If so, it makes sense why the regular Transcendents respect Alice as their prototype or model. They have not actually seen Alice’s skeleton or the arrangement of her organs. They have extracted and duplicated something else – the actual spell that thoroughly modified the girl called Alice and turned her into ‘Another Bible’ – and they have applied it to themselves. That is how they developed their divine cosplay spell that allows them to wear the appearances and abilities of gods.”
That was Alice Anotherbible’s identity.
She had once been a perfectly ordinary girl.
The person who had been the model for a children’s story had been remade into a fairy tale heroine.
From reality to story and from story to reality – the link between truth and fiction had become twisted like a Möbius strip.
And a single spell had made this possible.
“Honestly. Fairy tales and children’s stories are extremely useful for creating the mental images needed to focus the mind and enter a meditative state, but how did people get it in their heads that a children’s story points to the truth of the world? I can’t believe someone took it so far they actually kind of succeeded. The very idea is giving me a headache.”
“Don’t act so innocent, Aleister.”
“?”
“I’m sure you’ve already suspected, but you, Aleister Crowley, were the one who strongly recommended people read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for its magical correspondences. Or do I need to cite the exact grimoire and page number in which you said so?”
“…”
“You said an expert in Kabbalah would see the true value of the book, but I suspect you were just saying things. On the same page, you also recommend Dracula, a popular book at the time. You also recommended Maugham’s The Magician, which painted you in a rather unkind light. You went as far as calling it a must-read and introduced it to all your friends. For your own amusement. It is well-known you wrote these things deep in your grimoires, but I am sure you were verbally publicizing them well before that.”
…Accelerator sighed.
It wasn’t exactly unusual for your past to come back and bite you long after you thought you’d left it behind.
But not even the #1 had guided the world to destruction based on jokes and pranks.
“So are you saying an apprentice of mine is behind this?”
“It happened too long ago for that. There are traces of them already being active at the time of your arrival. So calling them your teacher might be more accurate.”
“Heh heh,” someone laughed.
It appeared to be Aleister.
“My teacher, huh?”
“Who would that be?” asked Accelerator.
“Beats me.”
“You expect me to believe you’ve never met this person? Give me a break. We’re talking about whoever taught you magic.”
“There are simply too many candidates for a supposed ‘Teacher of Crowley’. Because I’m just that famous. Be it my parents, my relatives, my schoolteachers, or anyone at the different magic cabals I belonged to, everyone with even the slightest connection to me falls into two general categories: those who want to act like they have nothing to do with me and those who want to take credit for teaching me everything I know. Needless to say, the later category is much larger. The people who knew me directly tend to dislike me, but the people with more indirect connections tend to worship me.”
“…”
“And so, ever since my official death in 1947, there has been no shortage of magicians the world over who claim to be my teacher. Including modern ones, even though that makes no chronological sense whatsoever. But if this person contacted Alice Pleasance Liddell when she was alive, and not just her preserved corpse, they wouldn’t have been too far off from my time. Still, I have no clue who they might be. The most I can say is they were one of the many skilled magician found all over the world.”
The accumulation of history had its pros and cons.
Accelerator was the new Board Chairman and the #1 Level 5, but this was a different kind of distortion.
“Now, the standard assumption on the magic side is that every magician that came about after I received the Book of the Law from Aiwass in 1904 has been influenced by me to some extent. In the modern era, the concept of the occult has already been remade by me. Of course, there are probably some cowards hiding in the depths of the world who would disagree out of sour grapes. But at the very least, it is impossible to learn magic today without being even slightly influenced by me.”
“Don’t forget that you also rewrote the definition of science,” said Mina Mathers. “To be scientific does not mean to be superior or more realistic. Before you were born, there was no clear division between science and magic. There was only the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world. For example, during the 19th century, the Golden cabal was seen as a secret salon where academics, poets, actresses, and intellectuals from a variety of industries gathered. Magic was seen as a proper study of the world, not the pursuit of eccentrics who refuse to face reality. Aleister, you so loathed the cabals, you changed those definitions so ‘scientific’ refers to a belief in reality and you spread that new definition around the world to create the foundation of the today’s science-centric worldview. This in turn reduced magic and the occult to toys for stubborn freaks.”
There was such a thing as being too influential. This was the perfect example of how charisma could be a harmful thing.
Did this mean you could not escape Aleister Crowley’s influence unless you hid on the dark side of the moon?
“Hey, I don’t know exactly what they used, but this Teacher of Crowley, whoever they might be, got carried away and screwed it up, right?” said Accelerator. “Can’t you clean up this mess? If you know how they do things, you can’t tell me there’s nothing you can do.”
“There are different kinds of failure,” replied Aleister with a hint of exasperation. Probably because he had seen the fate of the Golden cabal with his own eyes. “If an experiment is a dud, there’s no problem, but that isn’t the only kind of failure. For example, what if someone built an experimental reactor without the appropriate knowledge and they screwed up operating it, triggering uncontrolled nuclear fission?”
“…”
“Alice exists. And she was definitely too great a success. But the magician who created her is nowhere to be found. A magic user capable of creating her would stand out for better or for worse, but there hasn’t been any hint of them. Do you still not get it? This Teacher of Crowley may have been a Golden member I met at some point, or they could be a butcher or pub drunk with no connection to me at all, but whoever they are, they’re long since dead. My guess is, shortly after they completed Alice Anotherbible, they became their own greatest accomplishment’s first victim. They would have been annihilated to the point you could search the world with a fine-toothed comb and never find their remains or even a shred of their thoughts.”
He snorted with laughter.
With the cynical look of seeing a craftsman fall victim to the very torture device they had invented.
That human could see the humor in such things.
Aleister had developed such violent Level 5s in Academy City, but he had avoided having them directly threaten him. If the seven of them had worked together, they likely could have reduced the city to rubble, but despite nearly all of them having some kind of gripe with or grudge against Academy City, they had strangely never done that. The Level 5s might briefly join forces by random chance, but this never lasted long. But who did this benefit most? Had they been well managed in a way Alice’s creator had failed to do?
At any rate, Alice Anotherbible’s foundation was deeply rooted in the Crowley-style magic known as Magick.
Since the magician who had abducted Alice Pleasance Liddell was not an actual acquaintance of his, he wouldn’t directly understand the spell used, but as the creator of the framework behind Modern Western Magic, Aleister might be able to determine how it worked based on fragmentary knowledge.
There was hope.
That human had abandoned Academy City, so Accelerator was extremely reluctant to place him in a central position that could influence the city’s future, but since this had to do with magic, he would just have to let Qliphah Puzzle 545 keep an eye on things.
But just as he made that decision, Accelerator suddenly looked up.
“Who’s there?”
Several straight lines ran through the thick, explosion-resistant prison wall as it was was sliced through, the pieces crumbling away once gravity took over.
That wall was made of the same stuff as the Windowless Building which could theoretically withstand a vector attack by the #1, but it was so easily sliced through from the outside, which was in fact the back side.
“Hey.”
Accelerator stayed where he was.
He let out a growling voice while seated on the bed.
“I asked who the hell you are. If you aren’t answering, it means you’ve got a deficiency of either brains or manners. I’m not going to leave this cell, but if anyone’s stupid enough to come in here with me, I can’t guarantee they’ll leave alive.”
He heard a quiet metallic click. It was the sound of a thin blade returning to its sheath disguised as a cane.
And a black-haired young butler bowed politely beyond the rubble.
“H.T. Trismegistus,” he said.
“…”
“How you run your city is none of my concern. Except if it will anger my Alice and send her on a rampage. That would be rather troublesome. ...As for you two outsiders, common sense says this is the difficulty level you should be considering.”
Part 2[edit]
Little Anna Sprengel was miffed.
She had been left behind.
And to add insult to injury, Kamijou Touma had not disappeared on his own.
In their eyes, was she no different from the calico cat curled up in a corner of the room?
In a hurry to leave the dorm, she threw open the front door, hesitated, and realized it was meaningless. She had no idea where Kamijou or Alice would be.
(Alice Anotherbible’s irregular behavior isn’t that fool’s responsibility alone. He could have blamed me for intentionally derailing her from her position as an ordinary Transcendent.)
Alice Anotherbible was certainly extraordinary.
Even a thorough understanding of the hidden Rosicrucian arts wasn’t enough to defeat her head on.
But there was a way to deal with her.
And sneaking around doing the dirty work needed to make the impossible possible was a villain’s specialty. Had he forgotten Anna had already successfully gained access to Alice while the Bridge Builders Cabal protected her and given the girl an interest in Kamijou Touma like he was a picture book protagonist?
(That fool had better not be so stupid he snuck out because he didn’t want to pressure me to do that kind of dirty work.)
“Argh!! I guess I have to start with narrowing down the possible locations with some divination. Breaking the rules is more my style anyway. And I doubt anyone other than Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible could come up with the correct answer anyway.”
Of course, she didn’t think she could just divine the answer with tarot cards or a crystal ball.
Nothing was that easy when it came to Alice Anotherbible.
But she was a Secret Chief’s priestess and magical knowledge was a rarity in Academy City. What would it mean if something in this city forcibly repelled her search?
That would be where those two were.
Real scrying did not require a crystal ball. Anna used a thick permanent marker to color a magnifying glass black.
“Okay, you had better not get yourself killed before I arrive, fool!!”
Part 3[edit]
Where was Kamijou’s school?
That was actually a tricky question because he had two schools: his original school that was destroyed by Magic God High Priest and the school he had been temporarily using after that destruction.
Neither answer was definitively correct. No one could work out a logical answer.
Kamijou himself just had to go with his gut.
Just like the storybook girl had wandered Wonderland as her whims led her.
He ended up choosing his original high school.
Academy City’s technology was 20-30 years ahead of the outside world. Magic God High Priest, the Elements, and so many other threats had smashed up the city, but it had been redeveloped or repaired back to its original form in an extremely short time.
Kamijou’s school was no exception.
No one who didn’t know it had been destroyed would think it had been rebuilt. The large school building, the dirt schoolyard, the pool, the gym, and the other additional structures were still covered in construction scaffolding and thick soundproofing sheets, but it was all already complete. It looked a bit like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The usual school was there like usual.
“That’s incredible,” muttered 15cm Othinus from his shoulder.
Kamijou frowned.
Sure, it was impressive, but it was nothing more than science. While she had lost her obvious powers, she was still a Magic God. Was Academy City’s construction technology really enough for her to gasp over?
“That isn’t what I meant at all. But I suppose it isn’t your fault you can’t sense ley line fluctuations and distortions. You will understand once you set foot inside. This is something you can’t avoid if you want to meet with Alice.”
“?”
They arrived at the school’s front gate.
It was getting late at night, but the sliding metal gate was open for some reason.
As soon as Kamijou stepped through, the world changed.
But this wasn’t a visible change in the color or light.
Still, he grimaced as soon as he stepped through.
It wasn’t quite like a bog.
This was much worse. To the point that trying to comprehend it by giving it a name would break his mind.
He had to focus on the costs and his stamina.
He couldn’t afford any wasted effort.
From here on, every step he took would put his life at risk.
He was only a high school boy and he could tell that.
“If Alice wanted, she could have changed the world you see before you in any way she liked,” said War God Othinus from his shoulder. “The consulate in District 12 is a good example of that.”
“I thought the other Transcendents made that.”
“You need to assume Alice can do anything the regular Transcendents can. In fact, her version is probably the original.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Did you really think the Bridge Builders Cabal members created that divine cosplay spell all on their own without any hints to work off of? Remember, these are the people who abandoned their magic names and relied on someone else because they knew they could never achieve their goals themselves. …You can think of the regular Transcendents as custom products created by taking the open-source Alice Anotherbible and tweaking the details to fit their preferences. Where Alice came from, I couldn’t tell you.”
Othinus spoke harshly, but she was that way about everyone on Earth.
In fact…
“Hm? I don’t sense much scorn in your voice there, god.”
“Because I have no real reason to feel scornful,” readily replied the real god.
This wasn’t about what was correct. They simply used different methods. She spoke like a living national treasure of a dancer appreciating the younger people in a phone video who were simply enjoying moving their bodies.
Apparently that was analogous to the one-eyed girl who had gathered faith and polished her skills until she became known as a god and the Transcendents who had chosen various gods and dressed up as them.
“Do not forget that magic itself is a way of breaking the rules. The world of magic is an absurd place where the kind of decent person who stops when the ordinary methods can take them no further are ridiculed as hardheaded. When a magician senses their power is insufficient, they do not run into the wall of reality and give up – they continue struggling to achieve their goal regardless and this comes entirely naturally to them. …Plus, the top Norse god is a god of deception. Have you forgotten that I became a Magic God by defeating Ollerus and stealing his future and possibilities?”
“…”
“Either way, I’m the person selfish enough to abandon the world of my birth to obtain an understander. Still, I wouldn’t consider throwing out everything I am inside and out to dress up as a different god.”
This was all on such a large scale Kamijou wasn’t sure what to make of it.
He had never imagined the day would come when the word “god” had any relevance to the real world.
Both as a reliable ally.
And as a very real threat.
“Basically, Alice is an extraordinary being who can build a bridge between reality and any proposed theory or concept, no matter how inaccurate or contradictory it might be. It could be the geocentric model, phlogiston, conspiracy theories about the moon landing being fake, that the Y2K problem would cause the world’s computers to run wild and destroy the world, that neutrinos travel faster than light, or anything else. The Anotherbible provides freedom on a level far beyond even the framework of magic. It might be faster to just say there is effectively nothing she can’t do.”
The 15cm eyepatch girl, who existed here like normal, sighed with exasperation and looked to the school once more.
“But despite all that, Alice decided this was the best shape for this place. That shows a fixation, doesn’t it? It implies that using her all-powerful crafting to alter even a single side path or building corner would cause her to lose all interest in the place.”
“…”
“But whatever shape it takes, this is already Alice’s castle. Human, this world will not be kind to you.”
The density of death was growing.
Kamijou always had to contend with misfortune, but tonight was different.
It was intentional.
This world was designed for someone.
It had been remade for that purpose. If everything, even the unseen probabilities, would bare their fangs against any intruders, what could Kamijou Touma hope to do?
“Prepare yourself, human,” whispered Magic God Othinus.
Had she sniffed this out as a god of war, or as a god of magic and deception?
“Something’s coming.”
Part 4[edit]
District 7 had a certain iron bridge.
While most main streets were aflood with costumed rioters, that bridge alone didn’t have even a single car driving on it. Although it may have been better to say they weren’t allowed to.
Only a few people occupied the bridge.
It was Transcendents vs. Transcendents.
Given what spells they had, they didn’t even need to cross the bridge on foot and there wasn’t just one route leading to “A Certain High School” that had become the center point of the world’s distortions.
Still, they had all chosen to gather here.
No one had told them to, but here they all were.
Perhaps making the conscious decision to cross a river acted as a sort of ritual.
“Well, we did decide to help him because we could easily predict this would happen.”
“So from the cabal’s perspective, are we traitors to Alice?”
“These opportunists scattered the instant Alice died and came back as soon as they learned she was alive again. Their word doesn’t carry enough weight to stop the goddess of witches.”
Seeing Aradia give a snort, Good, Old Mary shook her head in her large hat.
“You certainly have taken a liking to that boy.”
“Wha-buh-no- I have no idea what you mean by that.”
“That isn’t very convincing after the stammering.”
“Well, by any normal reckoning, I don’t see how any number of us regular Transcendents could hope to win against Alice Anotherbible herself.”
The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and held her hands behind her head.
That much was true.
But their actions didn’t seem to agree.
“Yet here we are. I’d like to take that as our real answer.”
“The fight against CRC actually helped us in a way, Aradia. We no longer need to argue over our stance as individual Transcendents concerning that boy.”
“And I’d like to know why you think I’d agree with you on this!”
“That seems self-evident, you naughty girl.”
“Aye. She’s like the naughty girl next door who tries and fails to put on an intellectual front.”
“Aradia is naughty?”
The final comment from the expressionless brown-skinned girl made Aradia hang her head in despair.
“That’s just too much. Why am I being mocked by the goddess who instantly fell in love with that boy so hard you could practically hear the ‘kyun☆’ sound effect?”
“The fact that the punishment expert isn’t doing anything should be enough to know we don’t deserve any punishment.”
“Hm?”
Aradia, Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and head-tilting Mut Thebes had gathered to travel toward a certain high school, but they all stopped speaking to look in the same direction.
Because they weren’t the only ones here.
“Which tells me they’re the ones who need a beating.”
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.
Vidhatri.
2nd Saga.
Several other shadowy figures were gathered on the opposite side of the bridge. They were all Transcendents. By abandoning the magic name which had acted as the pillar of their lives, those monsters had dressed up in their chosen god’s appearance and abilities, they wielded powerful spells, and they had gained enough strength to take on the entire magic side single-handedly.
The global power balance had shifted.
The balance just barely maintained by leaving the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the center of the science side had clearly grown unbalanced.
Then again, the distortion had reached a critical point from the moment Alice Anotherbible remained in this city.
The Bologna Succubus grimaced after seeing one member of the enemy group.
One of them was particularly unpleasant.
“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”
“Kyahah☆ Thanks for the shout-out!”
The girl with fluffy blonde hair (who looked around 16 if her outward appearance was to be believed) gave a flirty smile. Unnaturally so.
“What’s an old lady like you doing with twintails and double chignons?”
“You should really count the candles on your birthday cake before calling anyone old.”
She had a beautiful face.
And that was all you could see.
She looked like a teru-teru bozu, or like she was wearing one of the towels that used rubber bands to cover everything below the head during pool class. Her girly silhouette was obscured by a coat-like explosion-resistant suit made by attaching thick copper armor plates to a sturdy cloth.
Or maybe she looked more like an iron maiden.
The original Blodeuwedd was a flower goddess or fairy from Celtic mythology. When the goddess Arianrhod cursed a male god to never marry, an impossibly beautiful but clearly artificial woman was created from flowers and other plants to be his bride. The created woman boasted dazzling beauty, but her internal settings were altered, turning her into a wanton traitor who colluded with a lover to murder her husband. Horror stories of an artificial monster created with too-advanced technology rebelling or running wild were not exclusive to modern SF. That was in fact a historical and traditional genre dating back to BCE times.
This Transcendent had chosen to dress up as that goddess.
And her salvation condition was…
“Saving all the lonely and unloved, wasn’t it?”
“And what if it is?”
“You’re like an animal that inundates people with condescending love and leaves them no room for reprisal. I’ve always hated you because you’re more like a succubus than I am.”
The Bologna Succubus was answered by a smile.
Blodeuwedd may have agreed with her.
“Hwa ha ha☆ Love is meant to come from an outside source. And why shouldn’t I provide you with enough of that sweet nectar you could drown in it? And since one of us has to kill the other anyway, this seems better than sharing tear-jerking stories while we slug it out.”
“On that we agree.”
But that was only Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and the Bologna Succubus’s personal beef.
The other Transcendents had no reason to go along with it.
So…
“Alice has broken.”
She looked to be around 25. She had black hair, brown skin, and a model’s figure with a height of probably 180cm. Her red eyes bent.
Vidhatri.
In Indian mythology, that goddess lived underground and controlled fate in the form of weaving. She always accompanied the goddess of creation, freely controlled the path of the entire world, and just like the goddess she was paired with, ultimately became no more than an alternate name for the top level gods like Brahma and Vishnu due to her great ability. She was a symbol who had been rearranged for human purposes.
This performer had chosen to dress up in that role.
Her icy voice seemed to slice through the air with words alone.
“The first time, it was due to Anna Sprengel’s scheming, but the real damage was done by Kamijou Touma. His ignorance caused Alice to fully shatter. I will not allow him near Alice again. It is a miracle she managed to get back on her feet at all, so I will not let you cause even more damage.”
“In other words,” sighed Aradia.
In place of a broom, she was holding a black and yellow barrier she must have torn away from a railway crossing somewhere.
She rested that on her shoulder and sent over a look containing a generous helping of scorn.
“You’re siding with Alice?”
“Yes.”
“Liar. You’re just afraid of anything happening that could threaten or eliminate the foundation of your power as Transcendents.”
Silence followed.
Which was as good as confirmation.
One weakness of open-source programs was malicious third parties taking advantage of the ability to freely view the internal code to analyze it and develop viruses and malware specialized for that program.
So the Transcendents would be in serious trouble if a third party were to collect Alice, who was their original version. Especially if that third party was one of the despicable winners like Anna Sprengel or Aleister Crowley. Maybe it would be a poison and maybe it would be a curse, but there was a risk of Alice being used to develop a countermeasure capable of eradicating the entire Alice series of magicians.
Most likely, they were acting now to prevent Kamijou Touma from unwittingly causing such an occurrence.
That would mean the only Transcendent who actually cared about Alice Anotherbible was H.T. Trismegistus. That gloomy, inconspicuous believer in common sense had certainly found a way to make his presence felt. If only it weren’t by being a world-destroying pedophile.
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet did not deny her weakness.
“We have our own salvation conditions to worry about. Keh heh heh☆ And we cannot afford to lose our power as Transcendents. For their sakes.”
“And now you’re using them as an excuse, you slut.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“How about I trample this stubborn dandelion growing from the a crack in the ground and continue on to Alice?”
With a pop, the thick copper coat covering Blodeuwedd the Bouquet from neck to toe opened to the sides like double doors. The thick locks lined up vertically down the front noisily unlocked one by one.
A dazzling light emerged.
Along with a sweet aroma so powerful it was like a thick wall.
The inside of the coat had been turned into a terrarium full of colorful flowers. That garden of eternal spring was contained in a glass container and supported by appropriate amounts of water, nutrients, electric heaters, and UV LED lights.
She herself wore only a frilly apron over her dazzlingly pale skin.
The sleeves extending from the metal coat had only been remote-controlled arms.
“Quite the showy transformation she’s got there,” said the Bologna Succubus.
“She may see that as releasing her true power. We do need to display our divinity or devilishness in an obvious form to convince ourselves as much as anyone, but is this really her interpretation of superhuman beauty? Does she think the amount of exposed skin is the only thing that matters? How vulgar,” said Aradia, sounding icy.
In her pursuit of higher morals in knowledge and miracles, that young witch was not actually used to being viewed in a sexual light (by younger boys), so it didn’t occur to her to consider how her own outfit played into this discussion.
The girl – who looked unhealthily skinny rather than sexy – grinned.
And with all the appropriate pieces present in her appearance, that sweet-smelling person spoke.
“My, my. Have you forgotten what it is we do?”
“…”
It sounded a lot like a crashing wave.
“Ah ha ha☆ Alice isn’t the only one. The rest of us regular Transcendents also have enough charisma for our very presence to distort human society and create new trends. Maybe you could call it a flaw of dressing up as a god. However, I am exceptional in that regard. In this one field, my ability is even more obvious than Alice’s.”
That they were on a bridge over a large river wasn’t enough to explain it.
This noise was unusual.
The dark water of the January night was stirring with no connection to the water or wind current.
Stirring violently.
“I am loved by all living things. And not just people – birds, land animals, bugs, and fish too.”
Something crashed into the large bridge. They were the black bass, bluegills, and other troublemakers of the river environment. They were small and common creatures with nothing divine about them, but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands had gathered to form a giant wave.
These lives were so easily manipulated.
Red and silver.
They had enough force and mass to possibly break a bridge weighing more than ten thousand tons.
“What do you think of my Total Courtship?☆”
Using cries, pheromones, dances, and colors, she could seduce any living creature, including humans. Simply put, she was a courtship expert.
Was she already drunk on victory?
Euphoric, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet raised her voice.
“Ha ha☆ Love them, demon of the night. Love every last one of them. But there are plenty of environmentally destructive species that are hated just because there are too many of them!!!”
“Cold Mistress.”
“Agh!?”
Seeing that spell replace her euphoria with pain was quite satisfying.
Part 5[edit]
Everything set into motion all at once.
Like water and oil bursting from the surface of a heated frying pan.
Several Transcendents quickly moved back to reassess the distance between them, others moved in like arrows to prevent that, and several smaller battlefields formed within the overall group battle.
Part 6[edit]
A quake-like vibration disturbed the dark river.
Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could make a weapon out of the vast city full of pests and vermin, but she wasn’t the only one responsible.
As the fish rushed in as a great wave threatening to swallow up the bridge from the side, they were stopped by a three-legged object the size of a stadium.
“Tribikos,” whispered Good, Old Mary, manager of experimental tools.
She was facing Vidhatri, Indian goddess of fate. Their eyes happened to meet and she took a breath as their piece of time and space was cut away from the confused battlefield. At times, rhythm and timing meant everything in a chaotic battle. Good, Old Mary was bound by Vidhatri in the same way.
Their clash was inevitable now.
Good, Old Mary addressed the perfectly-proportioned model wearing a red sari.
“Vidhatri, mama is serious. Mama will crush you. So what will you do?”
“Are you sure you want me to take this seriously?”
“Feel free. Mama is a fount of mercy, after all. You decided to hold onto your Transcendent power even if it meant shamefully forgetting all about your salvation condition. Mama may be facing a despicable slut, but it would be downright cruel to kill you before you can even use the trump card you have been greedily holding in reserve.”
The brown beauty suddenly grew more arms.
No, it was more accurate to say she was standing back to back with had a doll of nearly 2m. It was even larger than Vidhatri’s model-like figure. While she was stiflingly captivating and sensual, this was a life-size ball-jointed doll made of a hard, smooth material.
Was she actually wearing it on her back with thick shoulder straps?
It had apparently been contained inside a rectangular bag.
White thread and black hair was tangled around its artificial fingers.
The Indian fate goddess Vidhatri did not exist on her own. She and the creation goddess Dhatri were always depicted as a pair.
By weaving white and black threads, those gods determined the fate of the entire world, making them extremely powerful.
Threads.
Weaving.
And a doll.
Good, Old Mary sighed as she rapidly analyzed these things to predict what her opponent could do.
“A supermodel figure and a red backpack? Those doesn’t fit together at all.”
“This is no more than a leather bag marketed for all ages.”
Good, Old Mary’s vision slanted.
She tasted blood.
Her chest was sticky and red.
“…?”
A bluegill was to blame.
It was one of the tens of thousands of fish Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had summoned half as a joke. Just as a speck of lead could be deadly when moving fast enough, the fish could embed itself in human flesh if it tore through the air with enough speed.
Good, Old Mary grabbed the intruder flopping around while embedded in her chest wound and pulled it out. This felt different from a sharp blade. The open gills and countless scales caught on the wound, spreading it and rubbing in deadly germs.
But something else bothered her more.
How had the fish even made it this far?
She looked up to see the great wall was missing.
The Tribikos.
In the brief time she had looked away, her stadium-sized trump card had completely vanished.
Like it had been nightmarishly spirited away.
“You must understand.”
With the sounds of springs operating, the ball-joint doll Dhatri’s arms split and lots of pulleys and latches emerged. It formed a loom.
Extremely thin pieces of white and black danced about.
They were threads.
No, was some of that her own black hair?
“Vidhatri controls fate and Dhatri creates all things. Those two goddesses determine all that happens through the weaving of the white and black. Good, Old Mary, you may be able to create anything with your alchemy, but I decide how many different options are included in that ‘anything’.”
“I see.”
“I am Vidhatri. When paired with my partner goddess, I control fate and creation. I am the Transcendent who classifies the world based on my preferences and saves all of those that meet my preferences.”
The threads of fate were woven together to create the warp and the weft of the world.
Was this what it meant to confront someone who had control over all things?
“You are the same as mama. You contain a portion of the mystical power you borrowed from Alice, but you have failed to make full use of it. You are no more than an imperfect performer.”
“Say what you like. In this field, Good, Old Mary, I can easily erase your very existence. I must only intentionally omit all mention of you.”
Good, Old Mary didn’t even have time to hear her out.
With the breakwater gone, the fish crashed into the bridge like a silver wave.
Part 7[edit]
A flapping sound echoed through the schoolyard night.
Something flitted by the right corner of Kamijou’s vision. It was a monster with the body of a lion and the head and wings of a bird of prey.
It was a deadly creature mixed in with the other characters in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
This was the Gryphon.
“!?”
That specialist in swift destruction and cleanup was only released when Alice Anotherbible was bored with the world. He was like switching life to double speed. He had in fact bitten off Kamijou’s right arm at the District 12 consulate.
Kamijou didn’t have time to do anything.
As soon as the great wings spread wide, the trauma surfaced from the depths of Kamijou’s mind. Reflexively holding his hands up to guard himself was an obvious mistake. By flapping his wings and converting the power of the air into forward momentum, the truck-sized Gryphon charged straight toward him.
Kamijou heard a deafening roar.
But he felt no pain.
A pink color sliced sharply through the night air.
It had appeared out of nowhere.
The flamingo bat held back the Gryphon’s massive beak and even slid the enemy’s attack to the side before delivering a powerful blow in return.
The Gryphon was noisily knocked to the ground.
“You?” said Kamijou in wonderment.
He reached out without thinking and the hovering pink bat slipped away from him. He felt like he was trying to grab a leaf in the water.
Maybe it wanted to avoid Imagine Breaker.
Even so, it flew slowly but playfully around Kamijou before clashing with the Gryphon’s talons when the creature attempted another attack. Orange sparks burst into the night air.
The flamingo bat wasn’t alone. Several hedgehogs much larger than real ones were bouncing around near Kamijou’s feet. Shortly after he noticed them, they exploded. More accurately, they formed long swords made of countless spines and they struck. They all rushed in to attack the emaciated multi-armed doll that had appeared. The enemy was made of bones. It was a full skeleton made of a transparent crystal-like material.
Kamijou had seen this during the clash with the dark side on December 29.
Wasn’t that the Executioner that took people’s heads off on the Queen of Heart’s command?
The distance between them was little comfort. That thing did not use its physical strength to decapitate. It took the heads off with an attack more like an invisible curse.
The battle was fought between different monsters found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Unlike with the Shrink Drink, these had not been converted into a tool by an outside magician – these were the pure and untouched toys. Most likely, a high school boy with nothing but a special right hand going for him wouldn’t have been able to stand up to even one of them. If he had directly clashed with these things, he would have been killed instantly before he could reach Alice herself.
But Kamijou still lived.
Beings controlled by Alice were battling with other beings controlled by Alice.
Maybe this meant she was conflicted.
Regardless, Kamijou wasn’t without allies.
Even if Alice herself was mercilessly attacking the intruder.
“Alice is waiting,” said Othinus, sounding exasperated.
“Yeah.”
“I wonder what the grimoire library is doing. Well, she was specially designed as an anti-magic combat specialist. Since she had her ability to fight directly intentionally stripped from her, I would hope she excels in other survival strategies.”
“Like what?”
“Negotiating herself a position in the enemy group, or making herself so adorable the enemy would prefer to protect her than exact violence on her.”
“…”
“What’s that silent look supposed to mean? Hey, did you just mouth ‘not a chance’? I was providing an optimistic viewpoint to assist with your mental health.”
He couldn’t picture it.
Index was the last person he could imagine doing something so Machiavellian.
Her perfect memory would let her memorize the position of every single playing card or mahjong tile, but he had a feeling she would still lose to a normal person in those games…
On the other hand, there were miracles that could occur because of her complete lack of scheming, but the same could be said of Alice.
Being unable to predict enemy or ally presented an extreme challenge. Especially when it came to rescuing a hostage.
Othinus gave a disgusted look from his shoulder.
“Does she carry the infinite possibilities of a child? Damn her. She’s physically preventing herself from making a choice and limiting herself to one course of action. At this rate, there will be no obvious distinction between enemy and ally. A million organizations and plans will spring forth from Alice and a million armies will clash in a nonsensical battle. Humanity will be dragged into it and destroyed without any say in the matter.”
“We’ll settle this before that happens.”
Kamijou spoke quietly, but with great conviction.
“Alice is only being so aggressive because she can’t trust anyone around her, but that’s because people taught her that the future is something to be feared. I think I was one of those people. I hurt her. So I need to reach her and tell her directly that life isn’t all that bad.”
“But will she listen? Human, have you forgotten that she abducted the grimoire library? Not to mention that your right hand has burdened you with such an unreasonable amount of misfortune. Has your life really been a happy enough thing for you to argue for the goodness of the world?”
“What if I put it like this? Luck is all in how you look at it. Sure I’m an unfortunate guy, but I don’t have to feel inferior to special people like you and Alice. Just because I started a lot farther back from the starting line doesn’t mean I can’t reach the goal.”
That statement carried a lot more weight coming from the boy who had dealt with misfortune for so long.
Because he was the boy who had overcome millions or billions of deaths to slowly approach Othinus during his direct confrontation with that Magic God.
The flamingo bat swooshed through the air and stopped right in front of Kamijou’s face. The hedgehogs exhaled through their noses at his feet. There were also a large caterpillar and piglet he didn’t recognize. Where did they appear in the story and what did they do? He wished he had read more of that story.
They wordlessly told him they would watch his back.
But that must have been one of Alice’s opinions.
The gym noisily split apart from within. An enormous fluffy cat emerged. It gave a displeased growl and glared at Kamijou with open hostility. It was shaped like an adorably round pet, but it was the size of a kaiju. Kamijou felt something other than fear crawling along his spine. His pride and dignity as a person were gone if he was slowly tormented to death by that thing’s kitty punches.
Humor felt horribly out of place when combine with death.
This one was different. It was clearly far more powerful than the others.
Kamijou gulped.
“What is that? The cat in Alice is, um…what was it again?”
“Do not become the kind of person who needs his phone to know anything.” Othinus sounded exasperated. “That’s probably Dinah, Alice’s pet cat. Butterflies and birds talk like normal in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but Dinah is the one being who is nearly invincible and unbeatable. She only appears in the parts of the story that take place in the real world, but she possesses such deadly power that the other characters tremble in fear and run away at the mere mention of her name.”
This was another opinion.
It was a very real thing Alice thought.
There was definitely a part of Alice that wanted to kill Kamijou.
But there wasn’t time for fear.
Kamijou hadn’t been unfairly dragged down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. He had chosen for himself to set foot in this deadly world.
“Hm, so her coat is a mixture of black and white.”
“Is that important?”
“As much as Alice bragged about Dinah, she never mentions what type of cat she is. Since Dinah is caring for a white kitten and a black kitten in Through the Looking Glass, you can infer she is one color or the other, but this appears to be using the idea that Dinah provided both kittens’ colors without needing the father’s help.”
“Is that really so important when a giant cat is about to kill us!?”
Index was here too. And had been for far longer than Kamijou.
And more than that, was this really what Alice wanted to create and proliferate?
“This is no more than the dolls and toys controlled by mere fragments of thoughts. We have yet to see the real Alice Anotherbible, human!”
“Yeah, I know. Alice is waiting for me. That’s why I came here, so I’m not turning back now!!”
Part 8[edit]
Alice was inside the school building.
This high school had been destroyed, but no one could match the construction technology of Academy City, the city that once constructed a space elevator in almost no time at all. Once the soundproofing sheets were removed, the building would be ready for classes to begin.
This was the pointy-haired boy’s high school.
Did Alice have a reason for choosing this location?
Not even the young butler who had served her for so long could tell what she was thinking. She was a great individual. H.T. Trismegistus always pursued common sense, so perhaps she had always been beyond his ability to predict.
“This place will soon change into a place more suited for Alice.”
H.T. Trismegistus gave a rectangular protein bar a skeptical look before finally tossing it aside.
Grimoire Library Index was with him.
Alice apparently still wanted the hostage alive.
“At this point, I doubt it even matters if Alice wants it or not. She is the whole of the Bridge Builders Cabal. Alice’s presence appears to have put the people of this city into a sort of high. This will probably eventually spread beyond Academy City. And the resonance from person to person will spread Alice’s garden.”
The young butler wobbled a bit to the side.
A red liquid flowed from his tailcoat’s sleeve to his fingertips.
Where had he gone and who had he fought since Index last saw him?
Regardless, H.T. Trismegistus had a smile on his face.
“It shouldn’t take long for the world to be dyed in her color.”
“Are you saying the world will be flooded with the Gryphon and Executioner I saw before?”
“Maybe so, but that is a minor issue.”
He sounded confident.
“As long as CRC is reborn.”
There was a hint of intoxication in his voice.
“If I can only bring back Christian Rosencreutz properly this time, common sense says he will save the world. As hard as it is to accept, his identity and real name are a trivial matter. I only need to prepare myself to accept his true meaning.”
“You can’t complete that large scale rebirth ceremony on your own.”
“As long as I have Alice as the prototype, I can create as many regular Transcendents as necessary. But aside from that, once word of Alice’s survival gets out, the scattered Transcendents should regather. I can hold an audition to decide whether to reuse them or to train up new performers.”
“…”
No matter how you sliced it, the Bridge Builders Cabal was built around Alice. The Transcendents had scattered after learning of her death, so the return of their “Another Bible” would draw them back in like iron sand to a magnet.
Without any thought to what that would cause.
After all, Transcendents were the magicians who had been unable to make a decision under their own responsibility, so they carried no magic name and instead dressed up as gods while leaving the salvation of the world in someone else’s hands. They were a group with no self initiative. Which wouldn’t be too much of a problem if not for the great power each of them carried.
“But that won’t work,” insisted Index.
The young butler glared at her, but she glared right back.
“You must know that already.”
“Know what exactly?”
“You can bring CRC back with your own knowledge. That isn’t a reason to want or be afraid of losing the knowledge of the grimoires in my head.”
“…”
“You’re afraid of Alice,” stated the nun.
Wasn’t one of her duties to identify people’s inner worries from the things they said?
“You aren’t certain she is the same Alice Anotherbible as the one you used to serve. That’s why you keep leaning on your past successes. Because at least until you brought back CRC, your cabal was winning. You were in a position to make decisions for the entire world. So you’re trying to turn the clock back to that time so you can stay on the rails of success this time around. Even though that isn’t actually a real option.”
“Did no one ever tell you libraries are supposed to be quiet?”
“I don’t know the real reason you captured me. Maybe you want a spell to determine if Alice really is still Alice and maybe you know she’s broken and you want to use my grimoires to fix her.”
“I said shut up.”
Part 9[edit]
Several thick shockwave-like impacts rang out in quick succession and the flamingo bat crashed into the flower bed alongside the walking path.
It hadn’t even bought them a few minutes, but it was enough.
Kamijou thanked it and tackled his shoulder into the glass entranceway door.
It broke shockingly easily.
Unable to stop his momentum, he tumbled inside, where the world changed yet again.
The change wasn’t visible.
But all sound from outside was shut out.
The dark school building was so silent his ears ached. He had shattered the glass in the entrance door, but he doubted he could have returned to the visible schoolyard if he tried. He had a feeling he would be deflected or thrown back. Not that he had any interest in testing this theory.
The presence of Imagine Breaker suddenly felt a lot less significant.
It was a reference point for the world.
And so it could negate any and all illusions.
But that meant it had no effect on anything that could distort even that reference point.
For example, his right hand hadn’t been able to destroy the infinite worlds created by Othinus.
Alice could absorb the world to that extent.
She simply hadn’t done so before now.
“What...is this place?”
Everything looked normal, but that was no reason to relax.
Kamijou felt like something was lurking on the other side of an invisible barrier.
Something he couldn’t see and that spelled doom if he ever confirmed its presence.
He sensed that collection of terror.
Most likely, not even the pursuing Gryphon and Executioner could enter here.
Not to mention the flamingo bat and hedgehogs who had taken his side.
Had they been deflected or thrown back?
Again, he had no interest in testing that theory.
He sighed once, got up, and faced forward.
“Okay,” said Othinus from his shoulder. “This looks like a greater challenge than Crete’s Labyrinth containing a bull-headed monster, but what’s your plan?”
“I suppose there’s no point in trying to predict where in the school Index is being held… That wouldn’t be Index’s choice and Alice’s own preferences wouldn’t come into it. So our best bet is probably predicting Alice’s preferences and going where we think she would be.”
“And where exactly would that be?”
“My classroom,” replied Kamijou without delay.
This wasn’t logic – his own gut instinct was enough. Where would little Alice most want to go in a school she had never before visited? That question was enough to reach the answer. And this was a method only Kamijou could use.
Several female voices whispered from the ducts in the ceiling. A gaze which spoke volumes peered out from the gap in the metal door to the fire hose. When Kamijou turned to look at the janitorial locker or a gap in the wall he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, something small skittered out of view.
So much was making its presence known, but it was all strangely ephemeral.
He felt like his mind would break if he didn’t stay strong and tell himself those things really did exist. He had to accept it as is and not question it. Logic was an impediment here. Once he started wondering if something was a hallucination dreamt up by his mind, he would end up circling forever in the same place. He would be stranded in a 1m square.
Othinus spoke up in partial exasperation.
“This is just like the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. They were more obvious, but the presences and scenery around us are also being controlled by Alice’s inner conflict.”
“…”
“Human, if Alice wanted to invite you in, she would only need to come out herself. And if she wanted to reject you, she could have turned the doors and windows into monsters or just created a thick wall. She’s hidden and created several suspicious locations to get you lost, but there is a proper path, isn’t there? That proves she hasn’t settled on a plan. …That she can create all of her different plans at once shows how scarily powerful she is, though.”
Kamijou heard a solid thunk.
It came from the darkness.
This one was a footstep. His heart naturally raised the alarm. A black-haired young butler appeared. It was H.T. Trismegistus.
“Hey,” complained Othinus. “Stop lurking in the shadows. I know Alice leaves more of an impression, but we just about missed you. Anyway, are you the Trismegistus we saw at the consulate before? Or are you one of the understudies?”
“Common sense says I can leave that up to your imagination.”
With a creaking sound, the wallpaper peeled away.
Mice emerged.
They were the size of sports bags and there was an entire swarm of them.
What meaning did those characters have within Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Kamijou didn’t have time to think about it.
A pleasant “slap!” rang out.
It happened too fast for Kamijou to see.
He simply noticed a flash of light from the young butler’s hand and then the hunks of flesh split in two like some kind of joke. There was no blood. They lost all color, became dark shadows, and faded into nothingness.
It could be hard to tell how impressive that had been, but he had been attacked by dozens of beings on the same level as the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. He could probably kill Kamijou on the spot with ease.
“…”
“This way.”
The black-haired butler turned around.
Apparently he was leading Kamijou somewhere.
“Unlike during your battle against Rosencreutz, you should not expect any support from the upper levels of this scientific city this time. I had a feeling they would trouble Alice, so I attacked them at the very top.”
“Wait, but the Board Chairman right now is- you beat him!?”
“I did not need to win,” said H.T. Trismegistus. His presence here alive was enough to know how that had turned out. “I only needed to restrict his movements for the time being. Fortunately, I noticed he is receiving electronic support from his choker. Destroying the nearby communications equipment and other electronics to create signal noise and then burying him in rubble was enough to immobilize him.”
Kamijou gulped.
H.T. Trismegistus really was a Transcendent.
Anyone who knew the #1 knew that plan was much easier said than done.
The very ability to act on a plan when faced with him was unusual.
Was this H.T. Trismegistus’s true power?
Or had Alice Anotherbible linked to something that distorted the world?
While walking through a hallway with whisperings, mutterings, and rustlings beckoning toward the various gaps, a sharp light would occasionally flash from H.T. Trismegistus’s hand. The sword drawn from his cane easily sliced through the monsters wriggling out from the gaps in the walls and from behind posters, so Kamijou nervously followed after him.
Should he really have been killing those things?
After all, wasn’t everything here – enemy or ally – being subconsciously controlled by Alice? Those were the raw toys – no reasonable magician had remade them into proper tools like the Shrink Drink. They were on the same level as the “Drink Me”. Kamijou recalled a column in a corner of a textbook telling of an overstressed child causing the poltergeist phenomenon in the small territory of their home. What did it mean for Alice when a third party cut down and eliminated part of her inner conflict?
H.T. Trismegistus remained entirely composed as he spoke.
“Common sense says this should go without saying, but I am not your ally. I have always sided with the Killers when it comes to you and nothing has changed there. You do not fit my salvation condition and provoking Alice will only further distort the world.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
“Are you incapable of using common sense?”
The young butler sounded exasperated.
He smiled thinly as he continued.
“Common sense says the most logical way to swiftly and surely take your life is to have you meet Alice Anotherbible as soon as possible.”
“…”
“I see you do not deny this.”
His words were polite but as sharp as any blade.
What exactly was Alice to this butler?
“Common sense says you did this. And as a result, Alice was stupefied to the point she left herself undefended, allowing Rosencreutz to kill her. It all leads back to you. …What will happen when Alice sees you now? Nothing could be more obvious.”
They climbed the stairs.
They avoided the clear slime dripping from the ceiling and arrived in front of one of the many doors lining the hallway.
That door led to Kamijou’s classroom.
It was a perfectly ordinary door that would open when slid to the side.
But it carried more weight than an audience chamber where a king waited.
“Please enter,” was all H.T. Trismegistus said.
It felt like something from a dream.
Othinus had been calling everything into question before, but even she had gone quiet now.
Kamijou felt strangely compelled to continue.
This path was like a contradictory nightmare where he created the very thing he did not want to see.
Invisible rails had been laid out before him, so he could not leave this course.
And he didn’t even have a chance to find this strange.
He should have known opening this door would lead to grave danger. Not opening it was always an option, or he could wait to open it until he had worked up sufficient resolve and made ample preparations.
Nevertheless, Kamijou stood before the sliding door.
He grabbed the handle and opened it.
Like it was nothing.
Part 10[edit]
As soon as he slid the door open, he heard a sharp “pop!!” directly in front of him.
He immediately ducked down and froze up as something grazed his spiky hair.
He hesitantly grabbed some of it to find it was colorful streamers.
The scent of gunpowder came from the conical party popper in the little girl’s hands.
“Tah dah!!”
Alice Anotherbible stood there.
Her beaming smile was so unchanged Kamijou could scarcely believe it.
She was smiling.
Yes, Alice had a face.
That shouldn’t have been unusual, but it clashed with how he had last seen her.
The classroom looked normal too. The desks were lined up in orderly rows and there was no graffiti on the chalkboard. Had she been politely waiting for him here? While wondering which of the desks was Kamijou’s?
“Teacher, the girl is glad you made it!!”
On that signal, the lights came on.
That wasn’t limited to the classroom. Lights filled every window in the building, the gym that had supposedly collapsed when enormous Dinah made her appearance was enveloped in light, and the outdoor lights illuminated the schoolyard and pool.
The school had returned to life.
No, the new term had yet to start, so it was more accurate to say it breathed its first breath.
Dammit, Anna. I thought you said Alice would be asleep. But here she is wide awake like an excited kid on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.
Or had the Miss Sprengel’s prediction been so wrong because of Alice’s power?
Yes…
“Al...ice?”
“That’s right.”
The little girl responded with a volleyball-sized hole in the center of her face.
The classroom behind her was visible through the hole and it was impossible to tell where her eyes or mouth were, but she still spoke the same as always.
“Ah ha ha! Is something the matter, teacher?”
“…”
Yes.
Come to think of it, why had they been so sure Alice had broken after having her head fatally crushed?
Because she killed Christian Rosencreutz?
Because the headless girl had cackled?
Had everyone forgotten that Rosencreutz killed her first? Was it that strange and incomprehensible for someone to consider taking revenge on the person who killed them if he was walking around free and unpunished? And forget niceties about the emptiness of revenge. In the moment someone achieved their vengeance, wouldn’t anyone laugh at being freed from all that pressure?
Alice was normal.
She had simply done some physically unusual things like getting up after being killed and tearing through someone with her hands. But the thought processes leading to those extraordinary actions were entirely ordinary.
Kamijou did still have a question.
(But why is Alice here?)
“The girl could have gone home and sulked, but she couldn’t just leave you, teacher. So she came to give you a piece of advice!”
“Advice...for me?”
“Yes!”
When the grotesque girl nodded, her adorable face had returned.
Kamijou didn’t know which version was correct.
It was possible he had never actually seen her real face.
“Teacher, the time has come.”
“?”
“The predetermined limit is approaching. Do you not remember what we said? The girl already told you what would happen.”
“…Wait.”
He had been wrong.
He had misread this.
Alice Anotherbible was the same as always. In fact, why had it seemed strange for her to do bizarre things? Had he ever once been able to determine the true meaning behind any of her whims?
It was normal for her to be unpredictable.
If Alice wasn’t behaving normally, it wasn’t something inside her that was responsible. Something in the world outside her was making her behave that way.
She was concerned.
Uncharacteristically so.
Then what was causing it? She knew what was rushing her and making her act this way. That meant this wasn’t an unknown phenomenon – the answer already existed in the past.
Kamijou had stepped on a landmine.
But when?
“Did something happen when I was fighting Rosencreutz?”
“Nope.”
Yes, it wouldn’t have been when he fought Christian Rosencreutz. Alice was already dead by then, so for better or for worse, nothing could have occurred between her and Kamijou then.
Because he hadn’t arrived in time.
Because he hadn’t saved her.
If Alice wasn’t going to accuse him for that, then it wasn’t that either.
“Then was it when we stole the Predator Octopus and-”
“Nope. What even is that?”
For the same reason, it couldn’t have been when he was fleeing through Academy City with Anna Sprengel and Aradia. Mut Thebes and the Shrink Drink that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power had been a threat, but Alice had already been in a daze by then. In all likelihood, she had been far away working with H.T. Trismegistus, Good, Old Mary, and the rest of the Bridge Builders Cabal to complete the ceremony to resurrect CRC.
Alice had filled the Shrink Drink spear with her power before all of that.
In that case…
“If it was before that, was it at the consulate?”
“Not even close.”
The Bridge Builders Cabal creating their consulate in District 12 had been a major turning point.
Alice had cried there.
Because she and Kamijou had definitively parted ways.
But Alice had been hurt there, not Kamijou. Since she had so readily forgiven him here, that wouldn’t be the root of the problem.
The current problem came from elsewhere.
“Then does it go all the way back to Shibuya?”
“Buzz. Wrong. The girl really wanted to visit Japan’s Shibuya.”
Before that would mean Shibuya on December 31, but that was meaningless. Only regular Transcendents like the Bologna Succubus, Aradia, and Good, Old Mary had appeared there. As the only person (supposedly) capable of controlling Alice, the Rescuers and Killers had fought over what to do with him, but Alice herself hadn’t been present.
Then.
Was it even earlier?
“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”
“It was when we first met.”
December 29.
A series of incidents had started with an accident involving Overhunting, a prisoner transport train carrying several dark side criminals.
That was when Alice had first wielded her power in Academy City.
What had happened between her and Kamijou then?
“The girl asked to make sure. She didn’t do this against your will. You told the girl to do it and she told you it was a bad idea, but you made the final decision. Which is why the girl asked you if that was what you really wanted.”
On that day, at that time, Alice had tried to forcibly alter the structure of the incident. To create a resolution with no deaths despite several dark side monsters being on the run, she had forcibly created a false truth in which the original culprit was Frillsand #G.
“Now.”
“Please guide the girl, teacher. She wants to go on an adventure inside you.”
Kamijou had rejected it.
He had told her to bring back the real truth, no matter how harsh it might be.
“Then return everything to the way it was, Alice. If I use your power like this, I can never truly reach the end.”
“Umm, are you sure you want that?”
That was when he had said it.
“Do you remember now?”
Some future decision wasn’t going to determine the ending.
He had long since passed the final branch.
Yes.
“You will die.”
“That doesn’t change my answer.”
He had said it.
There was no denying it.
On the very first day he met Alice Anotherbible, Kamijou Touma had said it himself. He had known Alice was dangerous, but he had rejected her idea and changed course. He had ignored her advice and demanded it.
When that horrific incident had ended, he had assumed he had gotten through safely.
But he had been wrong.
Alice had never said when he would die.
It was a prophecy.
Like Nostradamus, astrology, a dream that comes true, letting a spirit possess you to answer questions, or having an aquarium octopus predict the results of soccer matches.
It didn’t really matter what.
It could be scientific or not and it could even violate the rules of magic. If the theory had been proposed at any time throughout history, Alice could build the bridge to make it real. Once a ridiculous theory began to operate, she could toy with it until it was hers.
It may have been less concerning if she had said she simply knew it to be true with no reason behind it. Because no matter how often someone’s intuition was correct, it could always be wrong.
But that excuse didn’t exist here.
The logic behind it was nonsensical, but it did exist.
If Alice said it would happen, then it was guaranteed to happen.
Why had he let himself relax?
She had never said a single word about what hour, minute, second, or rotation of the Earth it would happen on.
Now was still an available option.
Alice’s prophecy was not over yet. The predetermined outcome was still coming.
“…”
Then there was nothing more he could do.
Struggle all he wanted, he couldn’t recover from taking the wrong turn so long ago.
Kamijou Touma’s life had been over from the day he first met Alice.
Their difference in power was just that great.
Of course, Alice hadn’t intended to harm him.
He had chosen it himself. She had warned him not to, but he hadn’t believed in the absoluteness of her prophecy, he hadn’t given much thought at all to his own life, and he had simply assumed everything would work out the way it always did. Even though things were different this time. If he had known then how extraordinary Alice was, he never would have seen it that way.
But a choice was a choice.
He had already used up his one and only ticket.
He had walked through the crossroads, so there was no way left to avoid his predetermined death.
Part 11[edit]
Did you think that statement didn’t mean much?
It meant more than anything.
Alice Anotherbible’s power is absolute. That does not apply only to direct violence.
