Prologue: Chaos after a Storm - Still_Normal
"Oh no….oh-no-oh-no-oh-no! Come on, why do I have to be so misfortunate!"
Kamijou Touma cried out as he hurriedly pressed on the power button of the laptop. The blue screen filled with white text disappeared, meaning that the computer was shut off.
He sighed, pressing on the power button a second time to boot the computer up once again, but now had to wait for a long reload period.
This had happened more than six times that morning already.
Considering that it was in a package left outside of his apartment door last night, caught in a terrific thunderstorm that gave way to the beautiful and less humid weather of the current day, the laptop from the outside world was pretty resilient.
The word "Outside" is used because Kamijou Touma lives in a place called Academy City, the home of 2,300,000 "students" living in one area. Replete Research facilities and Universities funding projects of all kinds involving technology and science, Academy City is said to be 20-30 years ahead in technological advancement compared with anything in the current market outside of the city's walls, namely Japan where Academy City is located, but even more so elsewhere in the world.
Even if it was the most recent model, and thusly quite expensive, within Academy City this computer that the parents of Kamijou Touma had sent to him was already obsolete, if not at least absolutely ancient. Not only can a student purchase a computer that had a minimum triple the computing power and quadruple storage capacity of this laptop, they could get it for an equal or lesser price than it.
That is the technological prowess of Academy City.
The laptop, finally finished its recovery and booting up process, displays the "Macrosmooth" logo and loads the operating system's desktop up. The space is Spartan in terms of icons, but the background is a customized one. It is an image of a man and woman smiling, holding the very same laptop in view of a camera, posing with soft smiles on their faces. The words "Happy Birthday" are in the bottom right corner of the image.
It is obviously Kamijou's parents that are presented in the image, especially since that the package was sent by Kamijou Touya and Shiina, and on the image each at least looks very similar to Touma.
It's a sad thought to learn that Kamijou Touma has no memory of being raised by these two people, especially since they were earnest enough to send their son such an expensive gift for his birthday. That is because he had lost his memory of them.
Not just them, but anything about his life prior to a certain incident. Though to his benefit, Kamijou had managed to meet them on several occasions, as well as tell them of his situation after the Daihaseisai sports festival just recently.
"Touma." Accompanied by a soft mew, the pathetic moan of a girl failed to catch Kamijou's attention from the laptop.
As a safety function, the word processing program on the computer can automatically place an unsaved file into a temporary folder should it be shut down without the proper procedure. Taking advantage of this trait, Kamijou only had to open up the program and the message he was reading earlier immediately popped up before his eyes.
"Touuuumaaaa…"
Rather than send him an email, which was already accessible on his cell phone, his parents had sent a card along with the laptop within the box that read "Find our birthday message to you and you'll find out about something great, love your parents".
It was redundant, but after some grumbling, Kamijou realized that that was obviously the best way to get him to even touch the laptop instead of letting it set around in his apartment.
As his eyes settled on the third paragraph of the message when he last left off before the computer crashed for the sixth time, a sudden weight and heavy feeling of dread dropped onto his shoulders.
"Touuuuuuuuumaaaaaaaaaaa…."
"What is it, Index?" Kamijou strained against the girl that had plopped on top of him, using his arms to fight against his forward leaning momentum that would result to him dropping onto the computer.
The girl wearing a white nun's habit grumbled in response, before shifting more of her weight onto his shoulders and sighed out.
"Touma" she began, "It has already been a day since you had received that present from your parents. You said that they were the kind of parents that would send their son an extra allowance or food since you're a student, did you not?"
Thinking back to yesterday, when the two of them had just rushed back in to his dorm room apartment from the sudden rain without an umbrella, Kamijou remembered he had brought a soppy crumbled package—that he had tripped on because he had slipped—and immediately acted on saving the contents when he saw that the senders were his parents.
They were only supposed to stop by his apartment for a bit to take shelter from the rain before heading to eat outside, but the rain became a large enough lightening storm to garner warnings against going outside. The only thing was that there was no food in the refrigerator, that being the very reason for Kamijou and the small freeloader currently on his back to try to go out to eat in the first place.
The small cat resting atop Index's head mewed, to the consternation of the listless nun slowly tightening her grip onto Kamijou.
"Touma, hasn't the storm the television warned about already left? Haven't you proved that there was no food or money for food in that package?"
Though not looking at her expression, Kamijou was sure that Index's pout would slowly turn into a frown, and anything past that only turned into pain for him. Instead he chose to read on through the update and non sequitors strewn throughout the message his parents had put into the computer, almost like a letter of updates and events of things that happened at where they lived.
"Index, I'm almost done." He tried to assure her, "I just need to finish reading this last part, and I'll definitely let you eat, ok?"
"Touma!" she tightened her arm around his neck ever more so with that sudden stern outburst. "Did I ever mention that I was hungry? When did I ever give you the impression that I would tear you away from keeping close relations with your parents, whom you are commanded to honor, just to eat?"
The soft grumble that followed was something to be ignored. Even as an unlucky, bored looking, dense, clumsy, make-up student with no sense of tact, Kamijou Touma was not stupid enough to say anything.
So instead, he resigned to continuing through the message, now managing into a sentence that begun with "Now here's some great news!"
"Toumaaaaaa!"
Index flops about atop Touma's choice to ignore her, which though technically a lack of reaction to her growling stomach, was in itself a reaction in her mind.
"You didn't hear that just now, did you?"
She draws closer to him and the young teen can sense the feeling of dread becoming heavier with every passing second. Trying to pay no mind, his eyes gloss over the message mentioning something happening on the 29th, two days from today.
"You should answer, Touma! It would be worse if you lied, so if just you admit it, I'll forgive you because of my churchly duties…"
A friend of their parents had business in Academy City and he was expected to meet them and help them find a place to stay for the time being.
"…." Ever closer now, the tips of Index's bared teeth brush against his ear, causing a shiver to run down Kamijou's spine.
The ears themselves, made up of nerves and cartilage, are naturally sensitive. The reaction that raced through Kamijou's body however, was more along the lines of Pavlov's conditional reflex, or even closer to reliving past trauma.
"N-no, Index, I don't know what you're talking about!"
Kamijou Touma jumped slightly forward, giving slack to his arms for a half second and coming ever closer to falling on top of the computer.
"You shouldn't lie to me, Toooooouuuuuuuumaaaaaaaaaaa…." The small nun resting on his shoulders breathed out ominously, letting him feel her grasping closer like a boa constrictor around a mouse. "Did you or did you not hear it?"
"I didn't hear what happened, Index! I swear!"
The weight of the girl on top of him was nothing when compared to his own, nor was it any difficult to carry her in past times. But those were times when he had the strength of his lower body to push up and his back to support the strength in his arms.
In the awkward position of sitting cross legged against the computer, leaning forward and relying on his arms to carry not only his upper body but that of Index—and Sphinx—Kamijou was in a perilous position in this yoga-like pose.
"Their name is…" the message continues before he hears a frustrated growl coming from his right shoulder.
"What do you mean 'you didn't hear what happened'? Why do you think it's good to lie so boldly like that?"
Her voice, no longer straining to be calm but already showing signs of being irritated, scares Touma. Though it's happened many times before, and it only lasts a moment, trauma is still trauma.
"Do you want me to say I didn't or not!"
Careful to balance the weight, Kamijou quickly brings up his left hand to block her first strike with his palm, pushing her face so her teeth only barely graze his earlobe. However, this change in his position causes a wobble as he strains his right arm and leans toward his right to compensate. He chokes a little as Index's small arm grabs tighter to keep on top of him as well as make her next attack.
Unable to recover from Index's movements influencing his own posture, Kamijou Touma's left palm slams against the keyboard, immediately bringing up an "error" window from the erroneous key-punching that it detected. A loud beep causes him to jump away to release his hand from pressing down on the laptop, which upon the sudden jerk, Index pulled her arms tight to hold on like reining a runaway horse.
This new change in momentum overcomes the strength in Kamijou's core to stay strong and he tumbles backward.
He feels the soft linen and a warmth pressing against his cheek. When he opens his eyes, Kamijou is greeted with white cloth covering his eyes and on the sides of his face, two pale skinned legs suddenly kicked him backward.
Kamijou didn't want to know what he saw when he glanced upward for the faintest second when he traced where those two legs originated from. Even so, his mind was prevented from processing that thought when in a fit, Index leaped onto him and her teeth clamped onto his scalp like a bear trap.
In a flurry of chaotic movements, bite marks adorned Touma's face and neck, arms and shoulders.
He could only sigh in pain as he glanced over toward the computer and where the small cat Sphinx had found a landing pad when Touma and Index tumbled over. With a soft mew, it adjusted its paws and a prompt appeared on the screen.
"Delete?"
"Hold on!" Touma scrambled forward to grab the cat off of the computer, ignoring the small girl's demands that he not bully Sphinx.
Suddenly, a pair of hands pulled against his rear leg, bringing him short of scooping the cat with his left hand. His lunge however was enough to cause the cat to leap off and rush back to Index, activating the prompt and the message disappeared from the screen.
Using his arms, Touma pulled himself forward to move the cursor over the recycling bin just as the computer screen turned to blue with white text.
It seemed that when the computer crashed like that, any memory that was outside of the regular drive was dumped, according to the blue text. On this computer model, the recycling bin was one of those programs that stores outside of the regular drive. So anything in the recycling bin was immediately dumped out of the whole computer's cache.
That's how the 27th started for Kamijou Touma.
Author's Notes: Please give me you thoughts
To Aru Majutsu no Index written by Kazama Kamachi and I'll worry about further copywrites when I get to those properties
This fic will eventually become a crossover, but it's in the general section because I'm against segregation (really, FFnet? You don't allow crossovers to update in the host story threads? Sheesh...)
Edit (2/18/11): found a To Aru timeline on the Wiki so I changed the date of the "Event" from the 23rd to the 29th, since the North Italy Arc finishes on the 26th