Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament

Volume 3, 1: A Scab Torn Away – City_Warfare.(2/4)

Hamazura’s focus fell on the man’s notepad.

But it did not actually function as a notepad like the ones in old police dramas. It was a symbolic thing that proved one’s identity as law enforcement.

(We’re in south District 7, so they’ll take us to that station.)

This was not his first run in with the law. He had been thrown in holding cells plenty of times after stealing a car or getting into a street fight during his Skill Out days.

And if he knew the location, there was something he could do.

He pulled out the tablet, removed Hatsuoka’s glove, and pressed the man’s thumb against the fingerprint reader.

He did not have the skill to pull this off.

So he had to make up for the difference by putting his own life at risk.

Part 4

“That was a yes to a bag? Oh, paying by card? Then just hold it next to the register until you hear the beep. How many chopsticks and hand towels would you like?”

“Oh, I’ll take two.”

“Two? Coming right up.”

Inside a perfectly ordinary convenience store, Shirai Kuroko stared at the middle-aged man’s stooping back in disbelief.

“They really should have thanked you. And that’s a stingy habit you have.”

“Y-you don’t understand, Shirai-san. An old man like me can’t ask for just one pair of chopsticks because that’s like admitting to being single and lonely. And it’s even worse on Christmas!”

“Also, this is your job, not school committee work, so are you charging that as a business expense?”

“Are you insane! I can’t get try to charge this!! Am I going to arrest a criminal with my bento!? Or defuse a complex time bomb with the chopsticks or a toothpick!?”

“Workaholic.”

“Umm, I am technically a teacher, so my work is a public service.”

He muttered to himself for a bit. Just like with an ascetic monk, the old traditions about someone’s profession could make it hard for them to notice how modern people viewed them.

“By the way, um, why do you say they should have thanked me?”

“Sigh. It seems like the appropriate reception for one of our regulars.”

“Eh? Shirai..White Spring..a-are you serious? The entire holding company!? You’re even richer than I thought!!”

The glasses man gave a start after checking the name on the bag, but the girl in the Tokiwadai uniform wondered why he was making such a big deal about it. The unusual was the usual at that school.

(There are a lot of mysteries about Onee-sama’s family too.)

“Ah, but I do love the convenience store at Christmas. Ha ha. Seeing the people at the register tells me I’m not the only one alone on this holy night. Ah ha ha. Eh heh heh.”

“(Uh, oh. I probably shouldn’t tell him we’re running tests toward automated convenience stores.)”

The twintails middle school girl returned to the logistics vehicle while her kindness toward the man left her feeling a little gloomy.

Even fire trucks and ambulances used convenience stores and gas stations. It might seem rare, but it was common enough to still blend into the city background.

All of the large vehicle’s windows were covered, so once the automatic rectangular door shut, she could no longer tell where in the city she was.

The vehicle slowly began to move.

She stuck her hand in her skirt pocket in order to see where they were going on her phone’s map.

But she was interrupted by a dull crash like something had fallen from heaven to earth.

Something had landed on the roof.

It must have been a significant impact because the special vehicle swerved in an S-shape and slammed on its breaks. Shirai was thrown from her feet, but someone held her in place. She looked over to see it was that skinny but greasy man. She grimaced and then shouted a question.

“What just happened!?”

The operators did not reply. No surprise there.

She clicked her tongue and vanished into thin air. After teleporting outside the stopped logistics vehicle, she found the flat roof dented in at the center and the red lights broken. She appeared just in time to see something roll off from there to the asphalt.

It was a person.

“Wait!”

She ran over in a hurry to find a brown-haired boy. She guessed he was high school aged. Given the situation, he must have fallen from a considerable height. She started to look up on reflex, but then she froze.

She had seen his right hand.

That arm was limply sprawled out at his side, but it held something that appeared to be plastic but was no toy.

It was a real handgun.

(Is he part of the dark side too?)

“Suspect detained. He is in violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law. Someone look him up on Outrank!!”

She gulped and faced him again.

She also kicked the handgun aside.

“I will not let this one die! Someone call an ambul-”

Just as she shouted that, the boy gathered some strength from somewhere and grabbed at her while lying on the road still covered in some hard snow.

“Shh!!”

She elbowed him in the jaw on reflex.

The delinquent boy rolled along the ground and struggled even though he lacked the strength to get up.

(That was a clean hit. Wh-where did he get this abnormal endurance..or persistence, maybe? I hope he isn’t high on something or other.)

“Sh-Shirai-saaan.”

The middle-aged man hesitantly called out to her from the large vehicle’s door.

He was awkwardly moving his hands every which way on a tablet while walking over.

“I-is that how it works? Oh, no! The camera started up! Shirai-san, oh, it just found a match in Outrank. He is indeed part of the dark side. His name is Hamazura Shiage!! He’s flagged for extra caution needed!”

“Is that so?”

“A normal medical stretcher wouldn’t be enough to restrain him. We have a special one with belts to strap him down in the truck, so we can use that.”

“Whatever works!! Just hurry!!”

Part 5

This had been his only option.

Every criminal arrested in a certain area was taken to the same station.

(I-I really thought I was dead.)

So he could not let them take him to the hospital. He felt terribly dizzy, but he had to stay conscious and struggle. He had to make sure this was an emergency arrest.

This way, powerless Hamazura Shiage could be reunited with arrested Takitsubo Rikou.

He was willing to jump out a building window if it would save his girlfriend.

Part 6

“Phase 1 is officially complete. The final work was delayed, but please follow your instructions from central and redistribute your personnel for Phase 2. The real fight is about to begin.”

“Shifting to Phase 2 now. The individual dark side targets have now left their territories and are on the run. We will set up ambushes on the routes suspects are most likely to use and capture them all at once. We can make up for the previous delays here.”

Hamazura Shiage caught bits and pieces of those words while struggling to remain conscious.

He had been thrown into a small room surrounded by chain link fence. This area was divided into several such rooms. These were the station’s holding cells that he had become well acquainted with in the past.

He felt a tugging sensation on his forehead’s skin. There was no mirror here, but feeling with his fingers told him he had some hemostatic tape attached there. That meant he had at least been given the bare minimum of a medical examination and care.

Nevertheless, he did not feel remotely thankful. He did not sense any actual benevolence from the adults there. It was like the fish tank at a sushi shop. They did not want anything ruining his freshness before he was placed on the chopping block.

“So we meet again,” said a voice in the adjacent chain link fence room.

It was a girl in a gawdy and spangled dress with her blonde hair done up in a complex fashion.

“Y-you?”

“I’m not giving you my name. You can just call me the girl in a dress.” The slender and gorgeous girl laughed while seated on the bed by the wall with her legs crossed. “Are you beneficial or harmful? Not that it matters. Those are just some stupid categories invented by people outside the dark side. Did you choose the easy path to survival too?”

“?”

“Let yourself get arrested and you don’t have to worry about being caught in the gunfire, right? Of course, one wrong move here could get you invited to a secret torture party that violates all the transparency rules.”

(Takitsubo..isn’t in here. Was she given special treatment?)

His possessions had of course been confiscated. His phone in particular had to be a mouthwatering treat for the people pursuing the dark side. What was called stalking when an amateur did it was instead called a stakeout when civil servants did it. Those guardians of justice had no concept of personal information or privacy.

However..

“Okay.”

Anti-Skill would be satisfied after taking his wallet and phone, so he dragged his aching body to its feet and reached out through the familiar barred window.

He gave a quick wave.

“I’m in, so bring me my things, Aneri.”

With a sound like an electric razor, a multicopter drone shaped like a giant crane fly approached the window. That was the surveillance toy the Anti-Skill officer named Hatsuoka had been carrying around. Its cargo claws were gripping the small sling bag and Hamazura pulled that in through the bars.

It contained someone else’s fake passport, a charm, the man on the phone’s phone, a first aid kit, and some cash balled up with some rubber bands.

It also contained Hamazura’s own Coin of Nicholas.

He hated that he had needed to have the gun confiscated as “evidence” in order to get taken in here, but he still had the mysterious spiritual item.

He first grabbed the man’s phone, turned it on, and whispered to his support AI.

“Aneri, unlock this thing and take over. Also erase everything on my confiscated phone. Just brick it. Don’t let Anti-Skill get anything from it. Oh, but transfer over as many of the addresses and photos as you can first. For the mobile game save data..I just need two-factor authentication with my social media account, right!?”

The door made from a chain link fence was locked tight, but the light on the lock turned from red to green when he held the phone nearby. A buzzer would normally sound whenever it was locked or unlocked, but that was silenced as the delinquent boy left the holding cell. Same for the camera in the corner of the room, of course.

“My, my. How sad,” said the girl in a dress. “You’re a lot more capable than last time I saw you. But this also means you aren’t just an opportunistic beneficial.”

“What about you? Care for a ticket out of here?”

She shook her head. She was going to trust in this safe zone she had found for herself. Maybe interrogation with specialized equipment was no concern to her since her Measure Heart power could forcibly set her emotional distance with the interrogator.

Takitsubo, on the other hand, had no such convenient power. And Hamazura could not trust Anti-Skill right now. She was his one and only girlfriend, so he was not going to let them go “oops, got carried away” after stopping her heart.

“Aneri, help me out here. Where is Takitsubo?”

The request took less than a second.

A map of the station (only available to those in the department) was displayed on the 6-inch screen and one point was highlighted with a flashing red dot.

Part 7

Shirai Kuroko was constantly wondering if they really had to take this so far.

“Sigh.”

(Onee-sama.)

She was inside the South District 7 General Anti-Skill Station. The floor used for data management was built just like a corporate office. There were no impressively large monitors or white boards covered in photos with arrows drawn between them.

The twintails girl was covering her face with her hands and taking deep breaths, so the combover and glasses Anti-Skill man seemed hesitant to speak to her.

“U-um, are you okay?”

“Did you report your return to the station?”

“Eh? If I did that, they wouldn’t let me work overtime.”

His workaholic side was showing again, but that meant he intended to continue working.

Maybe he thought his mind could not take it if he did not continue with his usual routine.

“What is this dark side nonsense?” muttered Shirai like it was some kind of curse.

She felt a weight in her gut and that man offered her a paper cup of cheap coffee of all things. It was a harsh black coffee with no benefit other than waking you up.

“We’re slapping that label on people without even knowing if it really means anything and then forcibly closing our cases on them using enough violence that people keep ending up dead. Almost makes it look like law enforcement are the real criminals.”

“The dark side does exist.”

Shirai looked up at that. The combover and glasses Anti-Skill man spoke earnestly while pulling his octopus and rice bento and salted chicken skewers from the plastic bag.

That did not go with hot coffee at all and he had not even bought a salad to go with it.

“Judgment only mediates conflicts between students in your schools, but Anti-Skill deals with a lot of cases outside the schools. That gives us a chance to see inside the labs and research institutes, so we have seen the vague outlines of the undefinable thing we call the dark side.”

“..”

She silently accepted the paper cup while he took a sip of his own.

“I do agree that our definition of the dark side is vague. It does not refer to a specific company or industry. The division between beneficial and harmful may not even be accurate.” The skinny man’s words had an odd weight to them. “Academy City’s darkness contains all forms of illegal work, from professional assassins to researchers deviating from their approved field of work. I think the ‘dark side’ name is accurate. It is like the shadows that inevitably appear when you shine light on a city full of skyscrapers. People might be led there to an extent, but I think that world is something that develops naturally.”

“Have you seen it for yourself?” asked the twintails middle school girl.

He did not provide a yes or no answer, but she still persistently asked more.

“What do you think of this abnormal situation we find ourselves in?”

He remained silent for a while.

He took three sips of his coffee before finally responding.

“I..approve of it. There have been several unexpected accidents on the way, it’s true, but Operation Handcuffs has still brought the outlines of the elusive dark side into clearer focus. I think this is our one and only chance to protect the city’s children.”

He finally made his real point.

“But we still aren’t doing enough. This farce is not enough to defeat the dark side.”

Just then, the entire floor was wrapped in darkness. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling and even the computers on the desks all went dark. A second later, Shirai realized the backup power and emergency exit signs had not come on.

It was currently just past 5 in the evening. A blackout now would not normally mean complete darkness, but this was the same as a department store or electronics store. The windows were all covered by thick sheets, so a power outage would mean complete darkness at any time of day, just like a movie theater or planetarium.

(An attack!? Who would be crazy enough!?)

Shirai immediately pulled out her phone and used its small light to see.

“Break the windows!! We can see if we let in the outside lights!!”

“This was not to blind us,” said the man.

His phone’s light shined up on his face and then he turned the screen toward her to show her the “no signal” indicator in the corner.

“The surface-level communication network is out!?”

“Now no one can hear us scream. Unless we manage to escape this building alive.” The Anti-Skill officer had the look of someone recalling a failure from his distant past. “We were prioritizing the violent harmfuls and leaving the beneficials be since they are a necessary part of society, no matter how much we dislike them. But I doubt any of us will see it that way for much longer. Not once we see the true face of the darkness.”

Rakuoka Houfu said one last thing like he was making a prophecy.

“They have arrived.”

Part 8

The darkness took human form.

It was concentrated down into a pair of twin sisters of about 10 years old.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm.”

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm.”

They were humming an improvised tune, yet their breaths were in perfect sync.

The girls had unusually large chests for their age and height. Long black hair swayed down at their ankles. Their hair was that long even while done up at the back of their heads, so it was abnormally long. They wore the white coats of a doctor or researcher, but the front was kept closed and they wore a thick medical corset around their hips, making it all look vaguely like Japanese clothing.

Maybe a yukata.

Maybe burial garb.

Their only accessories looked something like the masks at a Shinto festival. Both twins had a humorous-looking gasmask worn on the side of their head. The white coats covered in colorful stains provided no defense against the cold. They stood out from the snowy late-December city, so it almost looked like an unnatural ghost photo. They were simply not the type to care what people thought of them.

They would never be attacked.

They could cover up their presence if need be.

That arrogance could be seen in the complete lack of self-preservation found in their clothing.

They walked right up to the station’s main entrance. Anti-Skill had announced their intent to make a complete sweep of the dark side, but the fully-equipped guards must not have put up their guard when they saw the young girls.

One of the officers guarding the entrance smiled and crouched down to their eye level.

“Are you lost? If you don’t need anything here, then hurry on home. There are some scary people out in the city.”

If you could not accurately recognize your enemy, you would not survive.

The disconcerting sound that followed was a lot like something being dissolved in sulfuric acid.

But this was something else.

“Huh?”

Inside his helmet, the officer looked puzzled by the odd sound reaching his eardrums. It took him a second to realize it was coming from his own body.

By then, his bulletproof and blade-resistant glove and the fingers within had already dissolved away. The mixture of organic and inorganic may not have given him time to perceive it as an injury.

“Nbh!? Gyah, what!? Hot..hot, hot, hot, wait, get it off, I can’t get it off!?”

He swung his right hand around to try to get the glove off, but his entire hand came off instead. And the changes did not end there. When he doubled over and turned toward his partner for help, he found the other guard and been fused to the wall.

Unable to even fall over, the man was plastered to the wall by a sticky goo the same color as his flesh.

“Hm, hm, hm.”

“Hm, hm, hm.”

The twins with their large breasts resting atop their thick medical corsets slowly walked between the two dissolving pieces of art. Their extremely long hair swayed side to side like a grandfather clock’s pendulum and they pulled several test tubes full of colorful liquids from their baggy sleeves.

The large door was made to resist explosions and stop a head-on collision from a large truck, but they did not even need to hold out their small hands for it to turn black, melt away, and become no more than another stain on the ground. As they continued on, the black stain actually altered how it spread to avoid their out-of-season beach sandals.

They entered a large lobby.

There were rows of benches and a long reception counter divided into several numbers, so it was reminiscent of a bank or city hall. Even armed Anti-Skill had ordinary administrative work to complete. They had plenty of less-serious departments, like for lost items and payment of traffic tickets.

The twins walked right into the center of the lobby.

This was an Anti-Skill station, yet they made no attempt to hide their faces with those gas masks decorated with toxic-colored paint.

“What should we do, Kaai?”

“Good question, Youen.”

Time had already stopped by then. Things may have played out differently if they were a violent criminal carrying a handgun or bomb, but no one knew how to process this surreal sight. They were faced with an undeniably deadly threat, but everyone just watched it happen without intervening.

“Pet Breeder was only at a shallow level, but we were still regular customers.”

“And we wouldn’t want to sit idly by after they challenge us like this.”

So.

It took five more seconds before the place grew as busy as a disturbed hornet’s nest.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Decomposer?”

“I think I am, Carrier.”

Kaai was the Decomposer and Youen was the Carrier. Both twins winked.

And they spoke in unison.

“The only appropriate punishment is a total slaughter, don’t you think?”

The lobby was soon filled with the bizarre sound of human flesh, metal, plastic, and all other materials rapidly breaking apart.

Part 9

Screams echoed up from the floor below.

Something like gunshots rang out a moment later and those continued on and on without end. That meant whatever was wrong remained wrong even after concentrated fire from the professional Anti-Skill officers.

“Wh-what in the world is happening!?”

“Shirai-san!!”

Someone grabbed the girl’s hand as she reflexively started in that direction. It was that middle-aged man who had been working at his heated bento until a moment ago. The light in the eyes behind his glasses was much stronger than before.

“If you are going to make a choice here, do so with care. You only have one life. We are now in a world where a single wrong choice can mean death for anyone. That Teleportation is yours. You have the right to escape the building to seek help and safe shelter. No one will blame you for whatever choice you make here.”

“What are you-?”

“This is how the dark side works. These are probably harmfuls. You can’t assume one of the seven Level 5s would survive here or that children or the elderly will be spared. There are no safe zones here. This is already dark side territory. It doesn’t matter if we move in on them or they come to us. Once we are in their territory, any of us can lose our lives at any time!! And when I say any of us, I mean no exceptions!!”

What had he seen in the past? It may have been something so shocking it had broken his spirit and entirely changed his value system. Shirai Kuroko shook her head while he still held her slender wrist.

She looked that experienced one in the eye to give her answer.

“I still choose to fight!!”

Her Teleportation allowed her to break free of the three-dimensional restrictions, so she leaped to the floor below. She could move more than 80 meters at a time with her power, so moving straight down to the first floor was a simple task.

But that may have been a mistake.

“!?”

Her vision blurred.

Something was wrong with her eyes and nose. A powerful stench was physically wearing down her mind.

(Is this..a gas!?)

The floor was dark from the blackout, but what she could see was badly distorted. She assumed the unidentified odor was messing with her senses, but she finally realized that was wrong.

The walls were rotting.

The ceiling was bowing down. Rats were running around on the floor, which was full of holes like in an abandoned building. The modern reinforced concrete building looked like an abandoned home that had soaked up plenty of moisture at the bottom of a dam.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

She heard laughter from further in, but it was the fake and wooden laughter you might find in a bad stage play. That actually made it hard to tell what emotion it carried.

The figures Shirai could see were twin sisters of elementary school age.

That itself was not malicious, but they were as badly out of place here as small mascot sandals lined up on the edge of a rooftop or a stuffed animal floating down a muddy river.

“This is Judgment!!” shouted Shirai to shake off her dizziness. “Who are you!?”

They were not listening. Their world was so closed off they may not have even seen her as human.

The young girls pulled each other close, pushing together their large breasts which were horribly imbalanced with their height, and they spoke in a singsong voice.

“Hey, Kaai. Someone’s still alive.”

“Oh, dear, Youen. But don’t worry. She’ll be dead soon enough. I don’t feel like waiting, so how about we ignite this floor and move on to the next one?”

“Do you think she’s familiar with the dark side etiquette to survive our initial attack? I wonder how deep in she is. A corrupt Judgment member, maybe?”

“Even if she is on the dark side, she’ll only be one of those opportunist beneficials. We can’t expect much from her.”

Ignite.

Shirai still did not know what these twins were up to, but that word was bad news. She focused her mind so she could send in a metal dart the instant they pulled out a lighter, a match, or anything of that nature.

“I mean, it’s not like we can even count the bodies when they all rotted away like that.”

Shirai Kuroko’s soul was pinned in place by words that should have had no physical power whatsoever.

“And even if someone did survive somewhere on this floor, we can blow them away easily enough now that the others have rotted enough for methane to fill every nook and cranny.”

Bodies, rotted, blow them away, methane.

Only then did Shirai realize the source and identity of the odor entering through her nose and mouth, passing through her windpipe, and filling her lungs. It was not just the walls, ceiling, and floor that were falling apart. What was that the squeaking rats were stepping on? What had happened to all the Anti-Skill officers who should have been here? What were those dark and sticky stains splattered everywhere? The answers to all those questions hit her at once.

Those twins had caused the people here to rot away while still alive.

Shirai Kuroko had been breathing in the flammable gas that caused corpses to swell out from within.

“Ugh!?”

Efficiency and logic did not come into play. When she held a hand over her mouth and doubled over, the twin sisters grinned sweetly while holding each other close and squishing the-->>

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