Volume 8, Chapter 1: Preparations in the Background of Peace. A_Terrestial_Globe.

Part 1

Let us go over a certain fact one more time.

Kamijou Touma was surrounded by misfortune.

When he properly finished his homework printout, the mischievous wind would blow it away. When he got on an elevator, it would trap him at one of the highest floors for no reason. When his stomach started hurting, no nearby convenience store would have a bathroom. When he walked five minutes down the road, he would run smack into a girl needing help. And of course, he would be chased around by magicians surrounded by a deadly aura and espers deeply dyed in the colors of bizarre science.

historical

There was a baseless urban legend saying a human’s luck evened out over their lifetime. Those who met with misfortune were simply “building up” their luck and they would have so much good fortune later that it would weigh them down. However, Kamijou did not believe in that. For those with true misfortune, not even that evening out process would work properly. There was a place that god would tilt his head and wonder “Ahh, ahh. Free will is great and all, but why did you have to get yourself stuck down there?” Those with true misfortune were stuck in that place from the moment they were born and they would not leave until the day they died. That was what Kamijou believed.

And thanks to this, Kamijou Touma was absurdly good at adlibbing.

He was used to having absolutely nothing go according to plan, so the only way to reach the success before his eyes was to make his way there by adlibbing. Several times in the past...no, about a dozen times in the past...no, no, several dozen times in the past, he had made his way through unthinkable deadly battles like that. No battle had ever followed his expectations from beginning to end. Whenever he was perfectly surrounded, he would destroy it all at the root by using an unexpected method that would only work in that specific instance.

Now.

Keep all of that in mind.

It was possible a survivor of so many battles would find the current issue to be no big deal. It was possible he could clench his right fist as usual, maintain his warm humanity in an extreme situation that would make any normal person fall to their knees in tears, face an ultimate difficult problem head on with his shoulder cutting through the air, fight until his body was bruised and beaten to protect the kind of smile found anywhere, and protect everything as if it had been nothing.

And...

The stopped second hand of the clock began to move once more.

Kamijou Touma awoke in the bathroom’s bathtub he used in place of a bed.

For some reason, two girls had climbed into the blanket on either side of him and fallen asleep.

“......................................................................................................................................................Okay. Stay calm.”

As an unpleasant sweat flowed from his entire body and he trembled from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, Kamijou, that veteran of countless deadly battles(?), did not let out a shout.

He understood.

He understood all too well.

If he gave a common reaction like that, these mystery girls with their sleeping faces looking like the symbols of peace would immediately jump up and “Kyahh! What are you doing!?” Crash!! Wham!! And then his roommate, the white nun named Index, would come running when she heard the commotion. She would charge in and “What are you doing, Touma!?” Chomp, chomp, crunch!!

It might be a bit hard to understand with all the sound effects, but a more detailed description would sound like something from a depressing snuff film. There was a good reason to keep it mild. It was possible the mincemeat-like remains would be eaten by the calico cat named Sphinx.

(No. Please no!! If you represent my remaining life with a thick candle, this kind of terribly pathetic mission is sure to wear down over half of the candle!! And I get the feeling the accumulated damage from this sort of thing is more than I’ve taken while seriously fighting magicians!!)

Kamijou’s mind was in such chaos that his speech grew oddly effeminate.

However, looking away from a harsh truth would not end the danger.

There was something he had to do if he wished to survive.

“...”

He decided to begin by determining who these girls were.

He could not decide if it was a small piece of fortune or if it only made the situation worse, but he recognized the girls curled up and sleeping on either side of him.

The first was Leivinia Birdway.

She had slightly fluffy blonde hair and white skin. She looked as if every pore and drop of blood was special made. It was as if she had been designed according to the golden ratio. If she had been introduced as some legitimate noble girl, he would have believed it. However, she was actually the boss of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, the largest magic cabal in the great magic nation of England. She could grab a magician’s hair as if pulling a large radish from the ground and swing them around, and she could make her wand sparkle and cause a highway junction to come crashing down.

The second was Lessar.

She was an imp-like girl whose waist-length black hair was braided at the end. She was an official member of a group called New Light which had even fewer ties of obligation than a magic cabal. She had grinned while taking part in a great commotion concerning the usurpation of the British crown, and she had enough skill to make her way unassisted throughout Russia while it was the main battlefield of World War Three.

To put it simply, if these girls who were cutely breathing in their sleep woke up, their “Kyah! Pervert!” could easily lead to someone no longer being recognizable as human.

(For one thing, it isn’t normal for Birdway and Lessar to be together. Are the outlaw members of the already secret magic side joining forces!? I can think of them as special versions of the mafia or gangs. I don’t know why they’re in Japan, in Academy City, and in my bathroom, but it can’t be good news! I bet they’ll grab the nape of my neck and drag me overseas!)

These questions would never be answered if he was smashed to a pulp. Kamijou Touma’s top priority was finding a way to ensure his own safety. Everything else had to come later.

(I need to tread carefully here.)

War involved more than just firing missiles and shells at each other. Accurately detecting the threat, learning what enemy had to be defeated, and determining the conditions for victory were all part of the intelligence gathering stage of war.

And so...

Kamijou Touma gently grabbed the thin blanket covering him (and the two girls). He lifted the blanket bit by bit while paying very close attention to make sure his actions did not wake up the girls.

Make no mistake. Kamijou Touma was not a complete pervert who wanted to check on the pajamas of these defenseless sleeping girls or wanted to experience the aroma of the pearl-like drops of sweat that had appeared on their skin.

What mattered was whether those two girls held anything in their hands.

In other words, were they armed?

In general, it could seem like magicians could do anything, but the scale of their destructive power changed greatly between being empty handed and carrying plenty of spiritual items. To properly understand the threat and properly put together a means of escape, Kamijou wanted to know whether they held any deadly weapons.

Fortunately, he could not see any unrefined swords or any wands that looked like they would curse anyone who picked them up.

Incidentally, Birdway was wearing a chic blouse, a miniskirt, and thick black stockings (meaning her panties were very nearly visible) and Lessar was wearing an outfit similar to a blue and white lacrosse uniform with bike shorts (meaning he could likely see her panties if he stood up). It was possible they were hiding a weapon behind their back or in their skirt, but Kamijou did not even consider carelessly checking on that.

The instant he stuck his hand around their neck and down their back, he was sure it would end with “Kyah! Pervert!” Crack, crack, crunch!

To repeat, Kamijou Touma was surrounded by misfortune.

He had to act based on the assumption that anything and everything would happen at the worst possible time to invite misunderstandings.

(Okay, okay! They either don’t have any fearsome spiritual items or they have to take some time to pull them out. I won’t search any further than this. Anyway, anyway. I don’t have a perfect grasp of the situation, but I need to get out of this blanket and leave the bathtub before they wake up. That’s the only way to escape this threat!!)

The skill needed for a battlefield sniper was not the swift movements of a roach. It was the slow but certain movements of a slug.

Kamijou desperately suppressed his urge to shout at the top of his lungs and tackle his way through the bathroom door. With the delicacy of someone working with the colorful cords of a time bomb, he kept the blanket lifted up and slowly folded his extended legs like springs. By bending his knees, he could pull himself out of the warm tunnel created between the bottom of the bathtub and the blanket. Partway through, his big toe caught on a cloth thinner than the blanket. He prayed it was not Birdway or Lessar’s miniskirt. That would ruin everything with a “Kyah! Pervert!”

Kamijou spent over 45 seconds moving from his lying position to a sitting position with his knees in front of his chest.

“P-pant... Pant, pant...”

Sweat dripped from his cheeks and down to his chin and he was breathing so heavily he could never explain it away if someone heard him. But this was what the situation demanded. Given how destructive these girls’ magic was, it was no exaggeration to say this was similar to having stepped on a landmine that had yet to detonate because he had not lifted his foot up. It would have been more unusual had he remained calm in this situation.

(I need to place the bottom of my feet on the bottom of the bathtub. If I picture myself standing straight up and try to move accordingly, I’m sure to fail. What I need to do is lean my back up against the wall and lift myself up ever so slowly.)

He could do this.

Unless a large amount of pepper blew in from the ventilation fan and made him sneeze repeatedly, he could stand up without Birdway or Lessar noticing. Once he managed that, there was nothing left to be afraid of. He could step out of the bathtub, open the bathroom door, and say good morning to Index and the calico cat. It would all be over. He could safely overcome this!

But then...

“Garbage collection! Do you have any unwanted bicycles, unicycles, skateboards, or anything else!!!!!?”

Suddenly, a middle-aged male voice played through a speaker at high volume blasted in from outside.

Kamijou Touma distinctly felt a thin string in his mind snap.

And for a while after that, the boy saw nothing but a pure white expanse stretching to the horizon in all 360 degrees. This calm and gentle mental scenery severed the link between time and space. It may have been what would be seen in the very, very end by a hermit who spent all 100 years of his life training and meditating.

It was a perfect trance.

Reality gradually returned as if it were eating into the edges of his vision.

Kamijou’s tear glands burst.

“Nn...”

“What is it? Keep it down...”

Kamijou clearly saw Birdway and Lessar’s lips moving while they rubbed their eyes.

The gates of hell had opened!!

The boy’s rational mind finally crumbled.

“No!! It’s over. I’m done for!! This just isn’t fair. What did I do to deserve thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss!?”

Kamijou’s intense fear brought his voice into a falsetto as he returned to the panicked effeminate speech from before.

But the situation veered in a direction he had not expected.

With a look of annoyance, Birdway and Lessar pulled the blanket back over themselves. The reaction that could break through a concrete anti-explosive bunker never came.

In fact, they only gave the following casual comments.

“Mh... Quiet down. Do you have any idea what time it is? Mumble mumble...”

“I’m really jetlagged right now... Ugh, I’m tired. So very tired...”

Kamijou still could not believe it.

The sensitive heart of an injured boy would not recover so easily. Then again, if he used the secret technique of rubbing their heads or letting them use his lap as a pillow, their affection values would have exceeded the max value all at once.

Kamijou managed to escape that effeminate mode, but he was still trembling like a fawn.

“N-no, I get. I get it now!! You want me to say ‘Oh, is that all? You scared me. Eh heh heh.’ Then, when my guard is down and I turn my back, you send some amazing attack at the back of my head! That has to be it!! You shouldn’t target the medulla oblongata!!”

“...I don’t care what you think. Just let me sleep. I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“U-uuhh.... You can touch my breasts as long as it’s over the clothes, so just let me sleep...”

Their reaction seemed more like that of someone with a hangover than sleep deprivation.

Feeling like a criminal when the guillotine blade continually refused to drop, Kamijou nervously checked on his situation.

(Am I safe? Am I in the clear?)

“No!! I can’t relax yet. I can’t!! For one thing, I don’t know how or why you two are here in my bathroom!! I won’t let my guard down until everything is clear!!”

“How...?”

As Lessar tried to steal the blanket from Birdway, she somehow answered Kamijou’s question in a low and truly annoyed voice.

“The wall...”

“There’s another concerning statement!! What does ‘the wall’ have to do with sneaking into here!? Are you saying you opened a giant hole in the wall and sealed it up afterwards!?”

Lessar seemed to have completely given up. She rolled herself up in the blanket like a cigar. Having lost the blanket, Birdway began jabbing her small knee into the cigar to reclaim the blanket.

(What in the world is going on?)

With the risk of instant death growing more distant, Kamijou was finally calm enough to arrive at the obvious question.

But...

He had forgotten something.

Namely, the risk of instant death due to a commotion in the bathroom did not only come from those two. Kamijou Touma had left a much closer and much greater danger unattended.

He heard it coming from outside the bathroom door.

“Touma? Are you up? I’m really hungry!”

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!???”

Kamijou’s entire body began twitching oddly.

This was bad. Very, very bad. Two girls were sleeping in the bathtub he used as a bed. There was only one blanket. How great a misunderstanding would this cause and how much destruction would it lead to? He did the calculations and it was obvious it would become a horrifically gory scene that would need to be censored.

(No!! The bathroom door is locked. I don’t need to panic!! ...But wait. Birdway and Lessar snuck in here, right? Did these sleepy girls really lock the door before climbing into the blanket? Hypothetically speaking, what if they got in bed with the door unlocked?)

“Fhnn!!”

Like a scene from a Hollywood movie, Kamijou leaped over the edge of the bathtub, rolled along the bathroom floor, and slammed his foot into the center of the door as if trying to kick it with the bottom of his foot. This all-out defense came just as the doorknob began to turn.

Surprised by the loud noise of Kamijou’s foot slamming into the door, Index spoke up.

“Hyah!? Wh-what is it, Touma!?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry! Kamijou-san is in the middle of washing off his sweat from the night, so don’t come in right now.”

Just as he made up that excuse on the spot, Kamijou heard a creaking sound.

Kamijou felt an odd sensation in the bottom of his foot that was pressed against the door. Specifically, all resistance disappeared. A perfect rectangle in the wall one size bigger than the door collapsed outward.

Kamijou recalled Lessar’s sleepy words: the wall.

Index frantically escaped to the side while holding the calico cat. She just barely avoided the falling wall at the last second. While trembling on the floor in his rolling kick position, Kamijou exchanged a silent glance with Index who was curled up like a pill bug.

And finally, something happened.

Index’s beautiful green eyes gained a beast-like ferocity.

“Touma, how did you leave two girls so exhausted this early in the morning? And you tried to take me out of the picture and use the confusion to make it look like an accident...”

“What...? Why is this misunderstanding so much more like something from an extreme soap opera!? But Kamijou Touma has overcome the battlefields of World War Three, clashed with Gremlin, and survived fighting with the Freshmen and the rest of Academy City’s dark side. I am not going to be taken out as easily as before. Today, I will get in at least one attack of my-...”

Kamijou Touma would later describe the rest of the scene as being dyed in bright colors.

Part 2

New York, United States of America.

For better or for worse and wanted or not, a large part of the world was constantly influenced in some way by this leading city. It was both the symbol of and the center of the financial world. It was not as technologically advanced as Japan’s Academy City, but Wall Street was still the heart of financial activity.

Of the five boroughs making up New York, Manhattan had the strongest image of money. But despite being the center of the financial world, it was a fairly special location. Because it was an island located between two large rivers, the buildings were tall and the population was dense. Transportation was almost completely dependent on countless bridges and underground tunnels. If all of the bridges and tunnels collapsed for some reason, the population density would mean the residents had a great risk of drying up. (Ironically, Hollywood had made several films involving Manhattan being isolated by a natural disaster, accident, or attack.)

Finances, theatre, music, fashion... Manhattan was the prominent place for many different fields. However, there was one other building there with important meaning:

The UN Headquarters.

“What? Wouldn’t it have been safer to hold it at the White House?”

It was the middle of the night.

While it was not at the level of Las Vegas, the streets were filled with an unnatural level of artificial lights. On one of those streets was a muscular man in his forties who looked like he could flex his muscles and rip apart the expensive suit he had been given by a group backing him. He was Roberto Katze. A plaza exited in front of the UN Headquarters building and Roberto was sitting on a shallow stone staircase there, eating a hot dog he had bought at a nearby stand. This did not seem like something the president of the United States would do, but the one responsible for security was not this unprecedented president. That responsibility lay with the skilled secret service members filling the area.

Standing tall next to Roberto while flipping through a memo pad was Roseline Krackhart. With her blonde-hair, blue-eyes, and tight skirt suit, she looked like the perfect skilled secretary. However, the unfairness of the world could be seen in the fact that she was the one people thought looked out of place when she stood next to the president.

Incidentally, she worked as the president’s aide, so it would have been stranger if she was not with him.

“The residence of the president has too much political pressure. Those that do not want America leading the solution to this issue would refuse to gather there. And more importantly, DC has too many journalists wishing to get rich quick. It will be easier to resolve this in secret if it is done in New York. How many times have I explained this to you now?”

“Isn’t this place overflowing with journalists, too? Y’know, like the paparazzi who spend all year chasing after Hollywood actresses’ asses nonstop.”

“I get it, so stop pointing that disgusting pin-up magazine this way. I will sue you for sexual harassment. Anyway, it is an issue of quality. There is so much information here, that the truth is easily buried. The third-rate paparazzi of the entertainment world and the political reporters of the journalism world will grab different types of information from the same scene. And even if this does get out, much fewer people would believe the paparazzi.”

“An emergency financial meeting of the G14, hm?”

“To prevent this gathering of heads of state from looking unnatural, we secretly intervened in the stock market.”

“Did the folks on Wall Street scream when the stock prices fluctuated so wildly?”

“Everyone would be better off if they are taken down a peg or two. And we kept the losses at a low enough level to keep anyone from hanging themselves or jumping in front of a train at the end of the week.”

In an incarnation of capitalism like the United States, those comments would have been enough to destroy their administration, but Roberto and Roseline showed no sign of caring. They knew that the value of information was always judged by the price tag of credibility. The president and his aide would never talk about state secrets in a place like this. Anyone with that common knowledge would ignore those comments as a joke.

The human brain would selectively accept the information before one’s eyes according to one’s own tastes.

Having a secret strategy meeting in a hidden place and constantly looking over your shoulder with a serious expression would add a lot more credibility to what you said.

“Oh? Speak of the devil. The London market has arrived.”

“If you noticed, then wipe that ketchup off your face, you bandit.”

The president meaninglessly tried to make himself look good by licking it off of his thumb but ended up almost writhing around when he put a large amount of mustard in his mouth. The beautiful aide seriously contemplated stomping on him with her high heels. A black luxury car with a small flag on it silently came to a stop in front of them. The bodyguard that stepped out of the car first was not a well-built man in black. It was an Asian woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail and an extremely long Japanese sword at her waist.

When the bodyguard opened the door to the backseat, an elderly woman wearing a gorgeous dress stepped out with motions so smooth she did not seem to have a center of gravity.

This woman was Queen Regnant Elizard.

With the Curtana Second, sword of succession, she stood at the center of an entire nation.

She looked down at the bearded man sitting on the stairs while eating a hot dog and reading a pin-up magazine.

“What’s this? An American welcome certainly has become casual. Even an old man hosting a weekend party at least stands up to welcome his guests.”

“Do you happen to transform into an intensely beautiful girl during the full moon? If so, I’ll think about it.”

“Also, that looks good. Where was the stand you bought it at?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me where you hired that bodyguard girl. I want some beauty to add to my security team.”

“Despite her appearance, Kanzaki Kaori is one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints. At the very least, that is not something you can buy at a street-side stand.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t have one already. I could see her on the cover of this thing. My secret service is all so muscular.”

When she finally remembered England’s leader was fairly ridiculous too, Roseline Krackhart felt faint. The look of pity from the British bodyguard woman was the worst part.

However, the suffering for Roseline and her common sense was far from over.

Another group arrived, weaving through the crowded sidewalk in another direction. The short child who visually could have been a boy or a girl was the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch. And on either side of him was...Roseline was not sure what. On one side was a woman in a red nun’s habit carrying a bucket-sized soft drink container. On the other side was a blonde girl wearing chains and binding clothing and armed with saws, pliers, and other torture tools.

They spoke as they walked.

“When you come to America, you’ve gotta search around for some grotesque zombie games that haven’t been released overseas, right, Sasha-chan? My faith normally lies solely in Japanimation, but you can’t forget that their modern works are based in American culture! We can use our diplomatic rights to bring back the ones too gory to get past customs. Gahah gahah!!”

“A question: What if I pointed out that you should not be declaring faith in things such as that when you are a member of the Russian Orthodox Church? A supplementary comment: Aren’t you afraid of falling victim to the inquisition for saying such things in front of the Patriarch who rules the church?”

“I-I wouldn’t do that.”

Anyone would have said the Patriarch was the most powerful one of the three, but the bodyguards on either side had such strong characters that he was completely buried.

(Ahh, does having common sense put you at a disadvantage and mean your entire life will be spent cleaning up after others?)

A distant look entered Roseline Krackhart’s eyes.

Despite being in front of the representatives of several nations, Roberto Katze was openly reading a pin-up magazine with a special feature entitled “Top 100 Bunny Girls in Las Vegas”. He spoke to his beautiful aide who was trying and failing to suppress her headache.

“Where are the others?”

“The French are already inside. The Roman Catholic Church’s new pope should arrive soon along with the Italian Foreign Minister. The meeting should begin on time.”

“A general offensive against Gremlin, hm?” muttered Roberto as he held the pin-up magazine in one hand as if waiting for a shaky washing machine to finish in a coin laundry. He then added, “Why does it have to be a time like this that we can’t reach that bastard Aleister at the top of Academy City.”

America claimed to be the world police, but they had been left out of the loop during World War Three.

After receiving direct damage during the disturbance in Hawaii, they would take severe political damage if leadership of the attack on Gremlin was taken by Academy City.

But on the other hand...

Receiving no cooperation at all was disturbing in its own way.

Just because they could not contact the chairman of Academy City’s board of directors did not mean the city would not take action. Academy City could always do something on their own. If that happened, not only could America have the prize snatched from them, a failure in teamwork could lead to Academy City and America’s forces clashing instead of targeting Gremlin.

While Academy City was a single city rather than an entire nation, their advanced technology and massive amounts of next generation weapons and unmanned weapons allowed them to compete in a worldwide war. When making such careful planning, having such a major factor as a complete black box was not good for the heart.

(Well, this isn’t the-->>

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