Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Prologue
Anna Sprengel was a wicked woman.
There was no getting around that fact. She was not following the events from a broader perspective and she had not been forced to do what she had to save even more people when viewed from the correct point of view. There was no tearjerking truth here.
What had R&C Occultics caused?
What about St. Germain who she had doomed to die whether Kamijou won or not?
Hadn’t she played a role in Academy City’s dark side as well?
What did you see in sandy Los Angeles?
Who had changed Alice Anotherbible?
…And had any of that been truly necessary and unavoidable?
She had countless options, she was free to choose whatever she wanted, and she had so much power she didn’t even need to consider the possibility of failure. Yet Miss Sprengel had still constantly chosen the cruelest card.
That was undoubtedly an issue of her personality and couldn’t be explained away with logic or efficiency. Also, Anna herself had no intention of making an argument to defend her case.
However.
When she regained her body from Madame Horos, she had found a world gone mad.
That was her honest impression.
She had finally regained use of her body and could once more produce an endless expanse of thoughts and imagination in her mind. She had been planning to travel the world as she saw fit. But…
What is this diseased world?
Why does no one realize how sick they are?
It all came down to that. Anna Sprengel was undoubtedly wicked. She was a bewitching wicked woman who desired stability and thus sought out a king who could act as her umbrella. She wanted to do as she pleased without accepting any responsibility whatsoever. She was a glutton. But that was exactly why that demon lord refused to let the world shrivel away before she could devour all the enjoyment she desired.
That plan was out of the question.
She could not let the Bridge Builders Cabal succeed.
Prologue: Attacked from Three Sides – Proclaim_ML.[edit]
The Bridge Builders Cabal of Transcendents led by Alice Anotherbible.
Academy City led by Board Chairman Accelerator.
Aleister Crowley and his band of irregulars.
They were all enemies.
Anna Sprengel had spent the past while spreading malice on a global scale, but Kamijou Touma had still been unable to bear the treatment she received and reached out to help. So he had to accept the consequences of that action.
January 3, District 12.
That district was notable as the only one in Academy City with a large number of religious facilities built from a scientific perspective. The consulate used as the Bridge Builders Cabal base was also there.
Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
The blue sky erupted with a low, deep noise that rumbled in the gut more than the ear. It was a strange noise that a modern high schooler would only hear during a summer baseball tournament.
In other words…
“A-a siren?”
A beeping noise joined in.
That alarm was playing from the old folks’ smartphone in Kamijou’s pocket. First Delivery Go Round and now this – modern phones had so many different alerts it was confusing.
“Damn, what’s happened now!?’
The little wicked woman by his side had her strawberry blonde hair swept back in several fried shrimps and held a baggy dress in place at her flat chest.
Anna Sprengel provided an ominous prophecy.
“Either an emergency alert or declaration of martial law. Either way, this city is about to become a battlefield.”
“…”
“Since you decided to get involved, you need to prepare yourself, fool. Although it isn’t too late to hand me over and end all this.”
That could indeed end it.
When Anna Sprengel was arrested by Anti-Skill, she had easily escaped her cell and caused a major incident in Los Angeles. New Board Chairman Accelerator would know arresting Anna would not mean a peaceful ending.
If arresting her wouldn’t work, then stopping her would mean killing her.
The same was probably true of Aleister’s group who had turned her into a human film canister and kept her with them.
The Bridge Builders Cabal went without saying. They had openly announced their intention of executing her and even prepared the Shrink Drink, a specialized spiritual item shaped like a spear.
Kamijou Touma let out a long sigh before speaking.
He had made his decision.
“I’m still not abandoning you.”
“…”
“Dammit, so who’s the biggest threat!? Where can we go that’ll be safe!?”
“They’re all too dangerous to ignore. And the first threat is already here. In the form of Academy City’s bizarre tech!!”
Aradia, goddess of witches, the night, and the moon, was a Transcendent recognizable by her giant wimple and unusual bikini. Her long silver hair spread out as she gave her warning.
Several tires loudly skidded long the asphalt.
In no time, they were surrounded by more than 10 vehicles, but these were not Anti-Skill vehicles with flashing lights on top. They sounded a lot deeper and heavier.
Anna Sprengel grinned while holding her baggy red dress to her flat chest.
“Not bad, new board chairman.”
They looked like 8-wheel armored vehicles with a tank gun attached on top. Needless to say, these were mobile combat vehicles designed to move quickly without damaging Academy City’s roads and to use tank-class firepower to swiftly eliminate any dangerous elements in the city. They had more antennae than the ordinary model, so these could likely be controlled remotely, effectively making them ground-based drones.
They were known as the HsMCV-08 Predator Octopus.
A human like Kamijou would be blown to bits by the giant gun on top or even by its smallest machinegun.
“!!”
“Get back, fool!! This way!!”
He lost his balance surprisingly easily from an impact low on his body. Anna’s small body had practically tackled him to get him around a corner with her and Aradia.
The air was compressed and something exploded nearby.
He realized only a moment later the building wall right there had been blown away. A cloud of gray dust swelled out after a short delay. He could only just barely make out Aradia because she was right in front of him. She was shouting something into the fallen boy’s ear, but he couldn’t hear her over the sharp ringing in his ears. His vision and hearing were so confused he had trouble telling which way was which – including up from down.
“My, my.”
And yet.
This he heard clearly.
The strange voice seemed to enter his mind directly instead of by vibrating his eardrums.
A magician in glasses gave herself a witchy silhouette by wearing a large hat and a racing swimsuit plus sleeves and a paleo. But she was something else entirely from Witch Goddess Aradia. The Transcendent was the one who was trembling.
Reality returned to Kamijou in a way that put immense stress on his heart.
Aradia was supposedly a goddess for any and all witches, but here she spoke the name of a woman to whom that did not apply.
“Anna…Kingsford.”
“My, my, my. Are you alright, 👦? You must ❌ drag ordinary people into your problems, Miss Sprengel.”
“Aiwass!!!”
Anna’s small body shook and she raised her voice as if to shake off the terror.
Something burst from her young body. The glasses woman frowned only slightly when she saw the colorless and formless torrent rushing toward her.
He was known as a Holy Guardian Angel, a Secret Chief, and an extraterrestrial lifeform, but no one know exactly what he was.
And he was the source of the limitless power Anna Sprengel drew on like a priestess.
Playing a trump card against a trump card.
…But Kamijou was too preoccupied to look at the site of the explosion or at the magician woman. The chill down his spine led him to look up into the sky before even getting up.
A small figure floated there.
She was a brown-skinned girl with long, wavy blonde hair. The binder she carried over her shoulder was made from several spears bundled together in an X-shape. Each one of those spears had a glass container at the tip and had the words “Drink Me” written on the shaft.
That was the Shrink Drink, a spiritual item developed specifically for executing Transcendents. It contained Alice’s power to kill with a single blow.
And Kamijou’s side had already played their trump card.
Kamijou Touma shouted her name on instinct.
He shouted the name of a heavenly oddity – of a Transcendent from the Bridge Builders Cabal who specialized in punishment.
“Mut Thebes!!?”
With a series of deep booms, the spears dropped down like pouring rain.
The way the weapons flew out to the sides before taking aim at their target created a shape some might have likened to a bird’s wings.
They collided with the asphalt, sent orange sparks flying from the armor of the 8-wheel Predator Octopuses, and covered the entire area with enough destruction to keep even a Transcendent from escaping. When the transparent tips shattered against the ground, they created glass shards and a chemical smoke produced by the toxic pink liquid contained inside. That smoke quickly swelled out like a cumulonimbus cloud.
(Odd.)
One second, two seconds, three seconds.
The brown girl floating in the sky silently tilted her head.
(That timing seemed off.)
“I didn’t sense it capturing the center of her life. Did she escape somewhere?”
The Shrink Drink was a spiritual item specialized for use against Transcendents. That meant it didn’t do all that much damage to any other target. That was why it failed to pierce the armored vehicles’ defenses and why the asphalt was unharmed.
Puzzled, Mut Thebes slowly descended to the ground and set foot on the asphalt covered in small glass shards.
There was a shockwave of expanding air. Several even. Anna Kingsford and Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass appeared to be engaged in an intense confrontation a short distance away, but Mut Thebes wasn’t interested.
She crouched where she was and peeked below a heavy 8-wheel vehicle that had gone silent as soon as its remote antennae were broken.
(Target: Anna Sprengel did not survive by hiding below the vehicle. Then did she leave the area under cover of the chemical smoke and glass shards created when the Shrink Drink hit the ground?)
Then Mut Thebes noticed something.
The 8-wheel vehicles were spread out a good bit. Also, the main gun of a Predator Octopus a decent distance from the Transcendent had rotated to aim directly at her face.
The explosive boom happened at just about the same moment she raised her palm.
A 120mm tank shell broke the sound barrier and Mut Thebes did not bat an eye as she snatched it from the air with a single hand.
But the tank shell was more than a hunk of lead. It had a fuse and it was set to detonate all of the explosives within when it sensed contact. That way it could pierce the armor and injure or destroy the crew and engine within the vehicle.
“Oh.”
A loud boom became a shockwave that shattered all the nearby windows.
But it did not end there.
The brown girl parted the gray cloud of dust, revealing herself unscathed form.
“I see.”
Then a change came over her. With a dull sound, a tank shell emerged from the outside edge of her right arm. More and more followed. Like a bizarre bird wing.
The weapons were colored a strange white and the brown girl smiled thinly at their appearance.
She even licked her lips.
“Interesting.”
Boom, boom kaboom!!!
The main gun of the 8-wheel mobile combat vehicle was blasted straight up by an explosion within the vehicle, its armor ruptured, and its axles broke, sending the giant tires rolling away with the wheels still attached.
Generally, those were land-based drones which could be operated remotely or run via a program. That was easy to forget given the way the Predator Octopuses broke ranks and fled in a panic. Which may have been why no one questioned it when one of those mobile combat vehicles departed a lot more calmly than the others.
And eventually…
“Pwah.”
Kamijou Touma took a deep breath inside that extra-thick tin can.
He hadn’t been able to breathe before now because Miss Aradia had been hugging him to her large chest. Face-first. And quite firmly.
The 8-wheel vehicle was large enough you had to tilt your head back to look up at it from the outside, but it was dark and cramped on the inside. Frankly, it felt smaller than a boxy light vehicle. There were three separate seats within, so it was an awfully tight fit. Kamijou figured that was because the base of the rotating main gun stabbed down into vehicle, taking up a large cylindrical space.
The witch goddess didn’t seem to care as she held Kamijou’s head to her chest like a stuffed animal and looked up at the hatch overhead.
The eerie siren had stopped at some point.
Kamijou was starting to think the siren had been the grim reaper’s approaching footsteps.
In other words…
“A-are we safe now?”
“Not yet, fool. If we flee without a plan, we will quickly run out of time,” said Anna Sprengel, sounding exasperated.
She directly poked at the flat-screen monitor in her seemingly 10-year-old body. Controlling a vehicle like this had to be complicated – driving the vehicle itself, aiming and firing the main gun, loading shells, general command and communication, etc. – but Academy City’s modern military vehicle did it all by swiping at a flat computer. Controlling the rotating gun and driving the vehicle at the same time seemed like it would be disorienting, but Anna did not look remotely bothered.
Kamijou felt lost, so he widened his eyes in the witch woman’s arms.
“So what did you even do? Why did this thing take our side?”
He wasn’t just talking about how it hadn’t run them over when they approached.
Before Mut Thebes had launched her downpour of spears, it had activated its smoke emitter to obscure her vision. That might not seem like much since it had only been a few seconds before the spears created their own chemical smoke, but Kamijou’s group couldn’t have snuck inside here without it.
“Hee hee. R&C Occultics was a world-famous IT company at the end of the year, remember?”
Anna put on a nasty grin.
She didn’t even look his way, keeping her focus on the flat screen console monitor.
“And if any IT company – not just the search engines – wants to call itself a global power, it needs to be linking and compiling data from every part of the world. Acquiring the Academy City format required spending Christmas spying on the contents of quite a few phones and tablets to analyze the code within.”
R&C Occultics.
Their official site had spread knowledge of magic to Academy City and the rest of the world.
Had that been for more than just distorting the world by revealing so much secret data?
“…Are you serious? You mean that entire site existed to suck data from the Academy City phones and computers that accessed it?”
“I know your technology is supposed to be 20 or 30 years ahead of the outside world, but you need to understand that future technology isn’t as flawless or safe as you might like.”
Kamijou was speechless, but she definitely wasn’t.
Anna covered her mouth to hide a wicked grin as she laughed.
“These vehicles can be controlled remotely and it isn’t that hard to hijack a military vehicle that’s fully reliant on the network. Of course, if I show off too much, Academy City will notice the vulnerability and patch it. Still…hee hee. I know it’s convenient to reuse the same components, but it seems awfully postapocalyptic for phones and ground-based combat drones to use the same basic OS and firmware. They’re too reliant on their strategic firewalls and dangerous behavior detection algorithms.”
“If you say so,” was Aradia’s exasperated response.
The witch goddess must not have been too fond of cutting-edge technology. She had blended in well enough back in the fashion space of Shibuya, but she had screamed quite loudly after seeing the religious(?) facilities in Academy City’s District 12.
“Let’s ignore all that creepy tech-bragging that could be all made up for all I can tell. You did this instead of using magic because you’re afraid of the Transcendents, right? If you use too much of your magic power, they can track you down using the traces of your magic. So no matter how many fantastic spells you might have, you can’t use them. And the same is going to apply from here on. For now, Anna can’t use her magic.”
Aradia said it with a cynical tone and Anna smiled darkly in response.
“And they aren’t the only magical threat here.”
Yes.
Anna had summoned Aiwass(?) as a trump card, but not for use against Transcendent Mut Thebes.
There was another.
One who was, for Miss Sprengel anyway, a greater threat.
(Anna called her Kingsford, but who is that glasses witch?)
If they really were being attacked from three sides, she probably wasn’t with the Bridge Builders Cabal or Academy City.
So did that mean she was with Aleister?
Despite being combat vehicles, the interior did not stink of machine oil or smoke. If anything, it was more like a cold and sterile server room. Aradia had the look of someone trapped inside an industrial-size refrigerator as she asked a question.
“Wicked rose woman, I’m not opposed to running, but what’s your plan now? Driving to the city wall, blasting the gate with this thing’s gun, and escaping outside?”
“That would draw too much attention.” Anna Sprengel flatly rejected the idea. “Plus, I doubt we can escape the Transcendents’ pursuit by leaving the city. They have hideouts all around the world, after all. Really, they would probably have an easier time of it out there.”
Then what were they going to do?
Kamijou couldn’t even get the words out, but Anna sighed and answered it anyway.
“Only an imbecile stops thinking just because they have run out of options, fool. Although that might be better than the top-level geniuses who never started thinking in the first place and then get mad when you point it out.”
“But what exactly are we going to-”
“Interrupt me again and I will murder you, fool.”
The air froze.
Aradia’s bare toes audibly scraped against the floor. Anna’s shoulders relaxed some when she noticed the witch goddess had casually shifted in position to protect Kamijou.
“The correct choice is to stay here – in Academy City.”
This appeared to be an answer Anna had ready from the beginning.
She spoke smoothly, not like someone who was in trouble.
“Fool. If fleeing will not improve our situation, then going on the offensive is our best option. But not by challenging those powerful freaks to a direct battle.”
“?”
“The Anglicans, the Roman Catholics, and the Russian Orthodox – the so-called defenders of the magic side were bound to come after R&C Occultics, so I left a backup of its massive magic database right here, tucked away in a corner of Academy City’s servers. In the IT business, data is your greatest weapon. The best way to stop the Bridge Builders Cabal’s pursuit is to dig up some dirt on them.”
None of this sounded realistic to Kamijou.
Because…
“Y-you plan to threaten them? Threaten those Transcendents? Othinus would probably be upset with me if I said they seem more worse than Magic Gods, but they really don’t seem like the kind of people who will stop out of fear of you telling people something about them. How are you going to silence a group who I doubt keeps their promises or even obeys the law?”
“Now, now. Don’t let their vibes deceive you, fool. Stop opening your mouth and begging for answers like a baby bird. Try thinking for yourself first. That proactive attempt will help the knowledge stick in your head. Plus, your past experiences will show you the answer in this case – no advanced magic knowledge necessary.”
Young-looking Anna lifted one foot up onto the commander’s seat and rested her chin on the knee.
And she spoke with the wicked delight of tormenting someone.
“Remember, those Transcendents have some big plan in the works, they loathe the two of us for interfering with Alice Anotherbible who is the key to that plan, and they even split into Rescuers and Killers before deciding to eliminate us. Which means our choices have the possibility of unbalancing and ruining their plan. We should be able to threaten them with that possibility. Their panic regarding us is proof enough. If those arrogant and insolent Transcendents learn the switch we hold in our hands can ruin their plan, they should go pale in the face.”
“Huh, now that you mention it. If it really is so important that their plan succeeds, they should be focusing all their energy on that, but they’re dedicating valuable personnel to pursuing us instead.”
“Possessing the fearsome power of a Transcendent does not guarantee their personal maturity. They claim to be at the mercy of young and pure Alice Anotherbible, but are those serving her really what you would call mature adults?”
“…”
Aradia remained silent.
Was she simply considering Miss Sprengel’s opinion, or did she still have some dangerous pride left as a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal?
“So…if this database is something you typed in yourself, doesn’t that mean you have all the cabal’s secrets in your head already?”
“Fool. Are you trying to convince your teacher to step on you with these cute feet? But you do deserve some credit as a student for thinking up the question on your own.”
Anna rubbed her bare foot against the hard floor below her seat.
“But that would not work. Having the data in my head is insufficient proof. When threatening someone powerful, you need physical, visible evidence.”
“Physical…”
“Correct, fool. A document powerful enough that even those Transcendents will want to avoid fighting. We need the stopping power of a silver bullet – something that will take them out in a single shot, leaving no room for counterattack once we make our move.”
But if they didn’t end it so cleanly, they would be in the cabal’s reach.
No matter how badly damaged those Transcendents were, they were still Transcendents. If they got desperate, Kamijou’s group had no chance.
In Kamijou’s case, he had never escaped a battle with a Transcendent without losing his life.
“Also, as great a magician as I am, I do not have a perfect memory. Since we have a database, it would be best to find the relevant data and save it in a different medium. When threatening an enemy more powerful than yourself, you need to be strategic about the image you present.”
Small Anna found a flare gun next to her seat and twirled it like a character in a Western.
“At the very least, having some digital evidence on hand will be safer than trying to escape emptyhanded. Only then can we bring the fight to the Bridge Builders Cabal. Moving around with martial law in place won’t be easy, but we need to reach the backup facility I set up in secret.”
The Bridge Builders Cabal weren’t the only people after them. New Board Chairman Accelerator and Aleister’s group were as well.
But the most unusual and most frightening of the groups did have to be the Transcendents.
(And the fact that she’s the only one capable of stopping the cabal’s ambitions could be used to protect Anna from the other groups.)
Call it the enemy of your enemy is your friend, or call it a plea bargain.
It would be a dangerous balancing act, but you couldn’t just wish away a powerful foe. So when there was not just one but three enemies, they needed to find a way of using that to their advantage.
Kamijou Touma cautiously asked another question.
“You say you kept a full backup of R&C Occultics’s magic database, but where is it?”
“A decent question for a fool. It is in District 15, Academy City’s largest shopping district.”
Between the Lines 1[edit]
District 12, the Bridge Builders Cabal Consulate.
Time had frozen.
In her sinister leather outfit, Alice Anotherbible’s bare skin was exposed to the January air as she stared at a single point. She didn’t seem to have any interest in the outside world.
Even the powerful Transcendents were hesitant to speak to her.
They all knew a single careless word would be enough for an “ordinary” Transcendent to be pulverized.
“A-”
So it wasn’t that H. T. Trismegistus was careless.
He was willing to be pulverized in the attempt to bring the flow of time back to his beloved master. The action was the butler’s way of showing his loyalty.
“Alice?”
The following silence was deafening.
It carried so much tension.
Any Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal knew firsthand that Alice Anotherbible’s mood trumped the world itself. So they all assumed this was a landmine. They assumed a storm of destruction was imminent.
But nothing happened.
She had stopped. The small girl did not collapse or slump to the ground. She simply stood there, frozen. Not a single hair on her head moved, like she was a stone statue.
She reminded H. T. Trismegistus of a stopped clock.
It had been that great a shock to her.
Maybe Kamijou Touma being her “teacher” was something imprinted on her after the fact.
But his rejection had still hit her just as hard.
The butler bit his lip until it produced an unpleasant tearing sound.
“Ohhhhhh!”
But it wasn’t just his lip.
The tearing sound continued. On and on. His entire silhouette collapsed.
He split right down the middle.
And even as he split himself apart, H. T. Trismegistus roared toward the sky above.
Using the giant fissure as his new jaws.
As a Transcendent, he could provide the ultimate cutting edge to any object or phenomenon.
“Mut Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebes!!!”
And so the punisher Transcendent was released.
Once dispatched, Mut Thebes would not stop until she had completed her mission.
“H. T. Trismegistus.”
An exasperated voice spoke to the butler who had been driven to such great emotion he had split himself down the center. The demon girl placed a hand on her hip, spread her batlike wings, and sighed at the butler who had gotten a little too inhuman.
The Bologna Succubus removed the red transfusion tube from her arm as she spoke.
“I’m free to do what I want now, but don’t get into a fight with Good, Old Mary just because I’ve skedaddled. Try to be chums. Mama is in extremely upset with you, so you need to make the first move to patch things up between y’all.”
“…”
With a series of wet sounds, the butler grabbed his head in his hands and pushed his split body back together. The unharmed Transcendent wordlessly fixed himself up again before responding.
“Understood. Now that Mut Thebes’s role is complete, common sense would indeed dictate that you are free again. With that in mind, I would like for you to support her punishment mission.”
“Then what will you be doing?”
“Calling in some members from outside the city. Common sense says the battle has already begun.”
H. T. Trismegistus bit his lip after that.
He said nothing more.
The Bologna Succubus was with the Rescuers who supported Kamijou Touma.
(And that will likely be the greatest attack against Kamijou Touma who harmed our Alice.)
It wasn’t just Anna Sprengel and her information on the cabal.
Kamijou Touma also needed to die.
