Prologue (1/2)

A Certain Magical Index

In a world split between a science side and a magic side, the fight over Index, a nun who has memorized 103,000 grimoires, begins for a normal high school boy named Kamijou Touma!

When Kamijou Touma thought back, he realized that day had been awful from the very beginning.

For some strange reason, the high school boy named Kamijou Touma lived in a one-room student dorm with a silver-haired, green-eyed nun. He normally slept in the locked bathroom. After wiping all moisture from the bathtub, he would grab a blanket and sleep inside it, but on this day, he was visited by misfortune from the moment he woke.

To get right to the point, it went something like this.

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!? Wh-why is the toilet acting like a park fountain!?”

As soon as he opened his eyes, he was reminded in the worst possible way that j.a.pan was a country of plentiful water.

He pulled out the tool box he rarely used, but he had no idea where to even begin. He decided to start by removing the lid of the boxy tank and peering inside.

“What even caused this? It was working just fine yesterday.”

He had no clue what to do or even what it was normally supposed to look like.

He was so confused that he gave up and threw back his head to look upwards.

Even at a time like this, the blue sky was perfectly clear and refres.h.i.+ng.

“Hm?”

He felt about ready to destroy the world, but he realized something was not quite right.

The blue sky?

He froze in place and hesitantly checked on his surroundings.

He found he was no longer in his dorm bathroom. Above, he saw the vast blue sky. Below, he saw a polished wood floor like that of a gym. The concept of walls did not apply here. He could see to the horizon for the full 180 degrees ahead of him. When he turned around, he finally saw what looked like neatly shaped mountains. He was not sure whether to call them triangles, rice b.a.l.l.s, or pyramids. They were the only visible objects in this “world”, but even they were two or three kilometers away.

The scenery was so simplistic that he was filled with an overwhelming sense of scale that left normal reality behind. A gentle breeze carried only the scent of the ocean. That scent alone allowed Kamijou to keep his mind from floating away.

Where was he?

How had he ended up here?

When had he wandered into this strange world?

He threw aside all those legitimate questions and let out a shout.

“Waaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttt!!!??? I can’t just leave the toilet like that!! Take me back!! If it floods the floor below, they’ll be really mad!! If it causes enough of a scene, it might even end up on the news sites!!”

He needed to hurry.

Every second mattered.

He did not know what kind of secrets this place held, but he had to hurry back to his dorm. He had to do whatever it took to ensure that.

(There are a few different problems. For example, the area I have to search is extremely large and yet there are almost no landmarks. I can search around if I want, but it won’t be easy getting back here or figuring out where I first appeared.)

He switched to a new train of thought. He worked through each issue, one at a time.

He did not know how, but it was possible his starting point had some special meaning compared to any other coordinate. To make sure he could return at any time, he needed to make a mark on the ground…or was it the floor?

Fortunately, the ground was polished wood, just like in a gym.

It hurt his thumbnail a little, but he was able to scratch an X into it without much difficulty.

(There, now I can move from here. But what am I supposed to search for in this giant floor of a world? Some strange machine? A person? And would they be someone who was here from the beginning or someone who appeared here from somewhere else like me?)

He had only seen a few perfectly triangular mountains when looking around earlier, but he could not help but look around again and again. It may have been a lot like someone searching for an oasis in the desert.

And he was careless.

He had appeared here “suddenly”, so he should have considered the possibility of someone else appearing here “suddenly”.

First, he spotted Index changing quite close by.

And second, he saw Misaka Mikoto watching the two of them from a short distance away.

“Are you kidding me?”

The air grew heavy at an accelerated rate while Kamijou muttered to himself.

He then gave a yell.

“Are you kidding me!? Really, are you kidding me!? From a probability perspective, this is just cruel! Isn’t this a lot like playing Russian roulette ten times in a row and blowing your brains out on the first shot each time!? I don’t care if this is a sudden overseas location shoot for a young comedian or if I’ve been summoned to another world, but at least go through the proper steps for that kind of thing!!”

Kamijou pleaded his case against this unreasonable world, but it fell on two pairs of deaf ears.

The girls spoke with horribly, horribly cold eyes.

“Touma, there are only two options for you now: a really, really long lecture or a chomp that puts you beyond recovery in one go.”

“There really are those true idiots who have the ridiculous ability to stop time or change the world, but only ever think to use it to flip up girls’ skirts.”

Kamijou stared blankly into the distance.

But then he realized he really would die if he tried to escape reality here.

“I don’t think you should do this! That really would be overkill!! Wait! A single boke deserves a single tsukkomi! If you both do it at once, I’ll be destroyed!! W-wait, you idiot!! Don’t start preparing your Railgun like it’s nothing!!”

His appeal was rejected.

The two girls began a nasty combination play in which Mikoto fired her arcade coin in the instant Index latched her jaws onto Kamijou’s right hand.

But just before they did so, an even greater impact shook the entire floor of that world.

The entire earth felt like it was going to capsize like a boat. Kamijou and Index rolled along the ground together, the boy’s face ended up pressed against the nun’s chest, and the young lady who saw it kicked the spiky soccer ball that was his head. Meanwhile, something else happened.

It began with a low rumble.

It sounded like thick thunder clouds approaching from the distance.

“What is that?” groaned Kamijou as he rolled along with Index.

It was a metal sphere measuring fifty meters across. Its entire surface was packed full of the kind of cannons found on a wars.h.i.+p. Especially impressive were the seven main cannons attached to the seven arms extending from its back. They had reached a point where they looked more like towers or bridges than cannons.

It had an upside-down Y-shaped propulsion device at the bottom, but it did not seem to use tires or treads. It was floating, even if just a bit. It was either using an air cus.h.i.+on or static electricity. A ridiculous level of technology had gone into it and that technology had clearly been used solely to make it more deadly. It looked like an entire war packed into a single spot or a crystallization of every negative piece of human technology.

Like a game of air hockey, the mountain of metal slid freely along the polished wooden ground without damaging it. The sight blasted all sense of reality from Kamijou’s mind.

Misaka Mikoto rubbed her leather shoe against his pointy head and spoke in utter shock.

“That wasn’t there before, was it? Something that huge would stand out as much as a domed stadium. We would’ve seen it if it had been there.”

“It must have suddenly appeared just like us.”

That “synonym for war” was firing its many cannons. Each time, a great tremor ran through the earth and knocked the three of them around even though it was not directly targeting them.

But if it was firing, it had to have a target.

That monster was fighting.

But with what?

Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winch.e.l.l were known as delinquent soldiers and the pair had just slammed their radios to their feet.

“Dammit!! All of a sudden, the radio won’t connect! And where are we anyway!? There’s a blue sky above but wooden flooring below? Did we wander into some messed-up artist’s painting!?”

“Let’s just pray this isn’t some stupid near-death experience after being blown away by a stray Object sh.e.l.l. Besides!! What is that that’s picked a fight with the Princess!? Is it some biological weapon the Faith Organization developed!?”

Their guardian deity, the Baby Magnum, was making quick movements forward, back, left, and right like a mixed martial artist while also firing its one hundred or so cannons. When its opponent was too close, it would fire its smaller cannons while prepared for some shots to ricochet back. When its opponent was frightened back, it would repeatedly fire its ma.s.sive main cannons.

But despite all that, this opponent would not go down.

Their knowledge as soldiers told them nothing could fight on the same level as an Object.

So what was this opponent?

A word did come to mind if they left the realm of military jargon and checked in a safe country picture book.

Dragon.

A two hundred meter pitch-black dragon flew through the heavens and bit at the Object.

“This is insane.”

Quenser was about ready to throw his hands in the air and give up.

“This is completely insane!! Is that a dragon!? Wait, the d.a.m.n thing just about picked up the Princess’s Object! We can just throw common sense out the window once something that huge is picked up like a mouse or a squirrel!!”

The giant mysterious creature was not as quick as the Object. As the two boys watched, the Object fired several shots of its main cannons into the dragon’s spread wings and exposed torso. But its durability must have been astronomical because it continued to fight even as it bled. A situation where the Baby Magnum was not powerful enough surpa.s.sed anything they had imagined.

“Hey, student. I don’t care what we have to do, but we’ll be completely isolated if that thing takes the Princess away like some colossal crane game. We’re in trouble if we don’t do something, right?”

“What the h.e.l.l are we supposed to do against that!?”