Friday, July 1st, 2006. 8:32 PM.
ULTRAMARKET, School District Seven, Academy City, Japan.
The girl who'd memorized well over one hundred thousand accursed books, known to those of a magical orientation as 'Grimoires', found herself in a perpetual state of something, some feeling, somewhere between discomfort and euphoria. She couldn't quite figure out exactly what it was that was affecting her, she couldn't name it, and, therefore, she couldn't maintain even a semblance of control over it, but, it was there. Index experienced it, whatever it was.
Standing nearby her cart, upon which many grocery-related items were stacked, their final destination the nearby one of many shelves upon the great, metallic rack before her, given the fact that these items were mostly boxes of cereal, and miscellaneous breakfast materials, such as boxes of ready-made oatmeal and other foodstuffs commonly eaten in the early morning hours by businesspeople and students alike, Index found her gaze drifting away from the items which she was supposed to be tending to, and to another individual entirely.
Index had never seen this boy before.
He wasn't someone who she worked with, and he wasn't one of the regulars who often came in to browse.
He wasn't even among those who'd wait around in ULTRAMARKET's "ULTRACAFE", hoping to hear and rush to the relevant isle(s) upon the announcement of an "Emerging Deal", a suddenly-declared savings bonus on a particular item in the department/grocery store hybrid.
Whoever he was, whatever this individual's name was, no matter what this mysterious stranger's story was, he seemed to make the little nun's heart beat rapidly; even just looking at him seemed to stir up feelings and emotions within Index, none of which she could catalogue. She, just like her 'Keeper' had before, could practically feel her own blush forming upon her cheeks, and along her nose.
"Cupid's arrow strikes its target! His aim is true!"
The little nun suddenly jumped, her heart quickly and proverbially finding itself lodged in her throat; just as quickly as coloration had come to her face, it soon left, leaving Index's facial features to look as white as the sheets bound over a hotel's bed, or, alternatively, as the skin of some forlorn spirit bound forever to the mortal plane, entrapped by its own knowledge of its past life's unfinished business.
Spinning on her heel, in an attempt to identify the source of the phantom vocalization, Index's eyelids found themselves soon narrowing in irritation, as her vision's gaze found itself locking upon the form of Kazakiri Hyouka.
Being sneaked up on by the girl who could turn invisible, the girl who was a sentient collection of AIM Diffusion Fields was, by no means, something new, or even out of the ordinary.
If only Index could adapt, she could've likely found a way to eventually turn the tables on the troublemaking Kazakiri Hyouka.
"How many times have I told you not to do that to me, Hyouka, a thousand, maybe?"
"Sorry, sorry. It's too good. You're always so easily distracted; you kind of make yourself a target, Index. You really should start paying more attention to your surroundings; for all you know, I could've been a robber, or a predator of some sort."
The little nun with the silver hair pouted, as she returned to her duties; collecting from her cart two boxes of cereal, she rose upon her toes, and began to situate them, as best as she could, onto the shelves in which they belonged.
"You're such a good little worker," Hyouka complimented, with a wink and a nod. "I think you'd make a good wife. What do YOU think, wifey?"
"W-WIFE?! H-Hyouka, w-what are you babbling about?! I h-have work to do, h-here! I don't get paid to talk to people!"
Kazakiri Hyouka didn't seem like she was about to abandon her course of action. Giggling, she crossed either of her arms beneath her bosom, and tossed her head to one side.
Upon closer inspection, Index realized that her old friend, one of her closest, and one of her first in Academy City, in fact, had returned to wearing her Kirigaoka Girls' Academy uniform, despite the fact that, biologically speaking, at least, she should've graduated from the Academy some time ago.
Noticing the fact that she was being observed by the little nun, Hyouka quickly took to defending herself; repeatedly shaking her hands in front of her face, Hyouka tossed her head from side to side, as if she'd found herself in a state of exasperation.
"W-what are you staring for? I like the way this looks! The uniform is really comfortable, too, and it doesn't make me stand out! You don't think it's weird, do you?"
"N-no," Index clarified; she would've elaborated, but, her vision was focused upon the boy who seemed to be lingering in the isle.
His own vision's gaze was locked upon a section of the isle which was dedicated to breakfast substitutes, mostly in the form of liquid concoctions, which were intended to be mixed with milk, and blended. His form, his musculature, while not absurd, suggested that he was someone who, at least semi-regularly, engaged in physically active behavior.
All in all, Index's mental 'review' was a positive one. The boy wasn't a hunk of meat, nor was he a scrawny creature, appearing unable to defend himself. He was just right, in the looks department.
Index would've done away with the light layer of fuzz that dotted the boy's facial features, but, that wasn't her call to make; that boy's face wasn't her own. He was, by rights, as a citizen of a free land, able to do whatever he wanted with his body.
"Why don't you just talk to him, Index? If you don't, you're going to lose your opportunity, and then we're going to have to eat ice cream together, again. Don't make me remind you about Ricardo."
Growling, more to herself than to her friend, Index raised her right hand, and, turning her fingers and thumb downward, forming a clenched fist, she shook her head, from side to side.
"Ricardo was a total jerk, please don't even go on about that. Really, I don't like adulting, and that jerk was basically my introduction to adulting as a thing. I like my job, and I like the customers, but… boys are stupid. Feelings are stupid, too. I wish I could go back to laying around in Touma's dorm and being ignorant, sometimes, even if that's impossible. Maybe I could get a mental ability user to wipe my mind. Then I can go back to being a lazy mooch who doesn't have to worry about stupid boys."
Index abandoned her course and returned to her duties; she collected more boxes of cereal, and began to stack them, placing them upon the shelves before her, ensuring that they wound up where they needed to wind up; matching the labels and logos upon the boxes with the identifying, worded, picture-less labels upon the individual sections of the shelves, Index's dedication to her duties, no matter how insignificant, impressed and inspired awe in Hyouka.
"It's okay, Index," Hyouka remarked, placing a hand upon her friend's shoulder, an act of animal comfort, one which the little nun acknowledged with a warm and genuine smile, aimed in her friend's direction, "it's no rush! Want to know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think you're going to find Mister Right when you're not even looking for him. That's what I think."
"Hm… maybe, I don't even know if I'm looking for Mister Right, whoever he might be. Hyouka, if you're going to come around so often, you should apply for a position. Then you could help me, instead of just standing around and being a pest!"
Both girls exchanged glances, for a moment's time, before they broke down into a hysterical, shared fit of laughter; both girls knew there was no genuine malice to be found within Index's faux-insult.
Friday, July 1st, 2006. 8:46 PM
"Hero Zone" Arcade and Hobby, School District Seven, Academy City, Japan.
Kanzaki Kaori's eyelids widened, inspired by the awe she felt within the very core of her being; in truth, and in reality, she'd never seen anything quite like it before.
Just as Kamijou Touma had said, what had once been little more than a skeletal structure of metallic beams and loosely-soldered, overlapped sheets of metallic plating had become, through the wonders of the technology at the disposal of Academy City, something out of a fantasy land, or, alternatively, straight from a dream.
It was a marvel of modern engineering and architecture, just the sort of thing that Academy City would possess, in order to bolster its own internal infrastructure.
Entire stories tall, likely well over fifty feet in height, and likely three times that in its distance, the enormous, looming structure seemed to dwarf both the Saint and the Bearer of the Imagine Breaker. Bright red in coloration, and appearing to be constructed through the stacking of individual bricks (a mere effect; in truth the structure was entirely metallic, as were most structures in Academy City), mounted upon the very front of the structure was, surely, some sort of mascot character.
Enormous, with a head far too large for the rest of their body – Kaori in particular was noticing something a theme to be developing – the physical form of the mascot, if that, indeed, was what the mess of colorful tiles was supposed to be, happened to be a thing quite difficult to actually comprehend. It seemed to be a mess of shapes, interconnected squares, and multicolored tiles, forming a vaguely broken-looking image.
Kaori wouldn't have known it, given her own disconnect from modern culture, but, this was, in fact, a piece of pixel art, or, the physical equivalent of pixel art.
This monolithic mass of confusion, as perceived by the Saint, at least, 'stood' on nothing, as it was mounted above the many spinning, glass-bound doors designed to easily allow patrons and visitors alike to both enter and exit in a timely and efficient manner. There were likely a dozen individual spinning doors, most of which were being used by someone, for something.
To say that Hero Zone had become a hotspot would be a grand understatement.
Both Kaori and Touma alike had quickly come to realize this; as they basked in the glory and the radiance betrayed by the structure, they also had to take into consideration the fact that, within, Hero Zone was obviously going to be packed. Both parties would likely find themselves stuffed, like so many sardines bound within a tin can.
"Looks busy," Touma remarked. "Still feeling like checking it out? Or pass it up? There're others things to do, other places that probably won't be so packed…"
For a moment, soon after he stepped out of the way, to the left and nearest one of the spinning entranceway doors, the Imagine Breaker's Bearer seemed to gaze off into what distance was visible to him, his concentration drifting; Kaori followed, not wishing to become separated from her host in an unfamiliar and vast urban jungle landscape of shining, silver metal and brown, cobbled roadways. Just about everything looked the same, from her point of view.
He looked directly at nothing, yet, at the same time, paradoxically enough, he looked at everything around him.
"You know, I remember a time when the streets used to be dead quiet at night. All the kids in school had curfew, right, so… yeah. Everything would just kind of die down at night."
"Would it? I wouldn't happen to know."
"Yeah, it all used to. The adults would go out, plus, sometimes, you'd hear the Skill Outs and whatnot, but… things are so different now. It's barely even been two years but it feels like ten years' worth of changes happened overnight. Am I making sense?"
"Plenty," Kaori stated, folding either of her arms across her chest. "You sound displeased, Kamijou-san. Maybe you'd like to talk about it."
"Just being nostalgic, we're all going to feel that way sometimes, I think."
"I need to be suave. How do I act suave? You happen to have any suggestions? I don't want to seem awkward. I remember reading in a book that Index got me, that, if you seem awkward while on a date, you're going to offend the girl you're with."
"Fine advice, indeed, Master; I'm humbled that you'd seek my council… human courtship is such a difficult thing for me to understand. Most animals are content to procreate without such complex ritualistic systems, after all. I, myself, cannot even begin to fathom the methods flesh and blood creatures employ in order to further their specie's existence."
"I didn't ask for a philosophy lesson, I asked for advice. She's going to be left hanging here, dude!"
"Very well, "dude"… I didn't realize my Master decided to take up a career in surfboarding."
"I bet you think that you're very funny."
"To a degree; place your arm around her waist, Master. Trust me. Instinctually speaking, your distant ancestors would search for women with curved and sumptuous forms. It was, and still is, a sign of health and of fertility."
With a shrug of his shoulders, Touma turned his gaze to Saint Kanzaki Kaori. It wasn't necessarily 'bad' advice, by any stretch of the imagination.
If only he could've felt a bit more confident about the whole thing. Kamijou Touma felt as if he was about to violently regurgitate his semi-digested dinner. Repeatedly, his stomach seemed to roll around, flopping and flipping whenever he performed even the slightest physical motion.
Despite this, Kamijou Touma did his best to appear confident.
"That doesn't matter though, it's not important. What's important to me, right now, the most important thing to me is making sure that your stay is as exciting and enjoyable for you as it can possibly be. You came all the way out here, set your own business aside, just to spend time with me, and I'm not going to throw that away."
"K-Kamijou-san…? That's… that's so…"
Before she could continue along her path, with her softly-spoken, half-swoon, half-spoken word, and only semi-coherent rambling, his arm found its way around her waist.
He felt as if he was about to vomit, so terrible, so cripplingly overwhelming was the nervousness within his gut.
She felt as if she was about to faint.
Regardless of this, Touma pushed himself forward, in an attempt to put forth a false front; he sought to have Kaori believe that he wasn't a nervous wreck about to lose consciousness and tumble to the floor, unceremoniously.
There, of course, was a chance that she could've easily felt his rapidly-beating heart pulsing against her side, but, Touma wagered (or, more or less, hoped dearly) that she couldn't.
Soon enough both parties stepped through the spinning door, making sure not to allow any part of their respective clothing to become caught within any section of the door – Touma was especially aware that this was possible, and actively went out of his in an attempt to avoid such a perilous fate – and found themselves standing within the gaping maw of the beast.
If not for the light fixtures above, beaming down rays of illuminated red, green, blue, yellow, and pink, strobing, multicolored, a result of the proverbial interbreeding of different colorations of soft light upon the balconies and the sections of grounded flooring below them, everyone within the structure's walls would've found themselves meandering about hopelessly and aimlessly, consumed by inky blackness.
There seemed to be no windows at all, no portals to the outside world, and no sources of natural light; such a reality made both parties alike feel less like they'd stepped into a casual entertainment venue, and more into some kind of seedy meeting place for undesirables.
Another quickly-realized factoid was that the ceiling itself, from where the light fixtures beamed their multicolored rays, seemed to be nonexistent; in truth, it was simply hidden from view.
Nearly drowning both Touma and Kaori's own thoughts was a piece of music, played over many, many speaker systems situated throughout the structure's halls, balconies and open-concept areas, practically demanding exploration; this music would've been categorized by some as "techno" and by others as "electronica", depending on each individual's level of awareness regarding the 'proper' naming conventions of musical genres.
Immediately stepping aside, in order to avoid being trampled, or, otherwise, to avoid acting as biological obstacles for others around them, Kamijou Touma and Kanzaki Kaori took to a small section of Hero Zone's expansive, tiled ground floor, a walled-off section in which which numerous 'gun games' were held; such games required two or more players to wield plastic representations of firearms, and fire at on-screen targets, in order to achieve victory, and, subsequently, bragging rights.
It was beneath 'pew pew' sound effects, the excited, and frustrated cries of victorious and defeated gamers alike that both the Saint and the Imagine Breaker's Bearer had to exchange hushed words, whispering into one another's ears, in order to ensure that their points were not only made, but comprehended.
"This place is enormous," Kaori stated, casting her gaze about after she'd whispered her piece, "do you have any idea how we're supposed to go about… anything? I'm quite out of my element."
"I remember reading that everything is free… they sent out flyers a while ago, back when this place first opened proper."
Kanzaki Kaori tilted her head to one side.
"Everything?"
"Everything 'cept for drinks, and this one big hoopla they've got," Touma responded. "Supposedly this game, Begotten, is the only game where you actually have to pay. It's AR, sort of."
"AR?"
That figured; of course, how could Kanzaki Kaori, a Saint and a magician generally disconnected from the modern world and all of its technological wonders be expected to understand every obscure abbreviation? For a moment, a twang of remorse shot throughout Kamijou Touma; he hoped to a God whose miracles he'd never experienced that she hadn't taken offense.
"Augmented reality," Touma elaborated, a herd of rowdy young people passing both him and the Saint by, on their way out of Hero Zone, "I read about it last week; you sit in this chair, and they stick this funny, boomerang-looking thing on your face. That's where the game is sort of 'beamed' into the real world. It's pretty cool."
Though she appeared to be half-listening, Kaori's attention had been ensnared by something else. She had become distracted; she'd continued to nod her head, even as Touma didn't speak a single word.
He couldn't help but allow a smirk to etch itself on his facial features; the sight of the Saint, with her lips parted in awe, her big, beautiful eyes sparkling, as she observed, dazzled, happened to be more than enough to spur him to take her hand into his own, subsequently 'freeing' her waist from his hold.
Though the Saint did seem to notice, she wasn't perturbed; she didn't even blush, not to an extent which Touma could identify, at least.
Kaori's gaze had turned, her vision focused on a gun game which had, evidently, been abandoned by its previous occupants; a large, dome-like structure, a dark shade of blue in coloration, with sections of its outer shell dotted with sparkling, dust-like particles, a small set of stairs lead into the dome, which was lit brightly by bright, crimson light, beaming down from the ceiling and onto the platform within. Mounted within various sections of the enormous, semicircular cabinet that laid inside of the dome were the butts of two, bright orange 'rifles', attached to the cabinet's darkened, outer shell with equally dark-toned tendrils of rubber.
While such things as domes that contained enormous, semicircular arcade cabinets were certainly an unfamiliar sight to the Saint, what had caught her attention, in particular, was the gameplay demo broadcasted on the cabinet's enormous, rectangular screen.