This work is based (mostly) on the work of Kazuma Kamachi and other writers. A translation from Baka Tsuki was used in its creation and I claim no ownership over their work. Please Read, Review, and Enjoy.


Ugh… What in the world has happened to me? It feels like I was hit by a truck or something…

In the briskness of the early nighttime, a time of day when the sun had completely disappeared from the sky, a girl opened her eyes.

The girl briefly looked around herself to take in her surroundings, and found that she was inside of a small park in the shadow of several tall buildings. Due to the closeness of the buildings, the park wasn't that large and the size only allowed for a slide, a rather small jungle gym, and a set of swings that the girl currently inhabited. Strewn about the area were a few lampposts that were shining in the early darkness of the night.

The girl could only sit there in silence as she looked around at her surroundings, a confused and dazed look on her face as she did so. After a few moments of silence, the girl reached up with her right hand and scratched her head.

"…Where… Where in the world am I-…!"

The girl grabbed ahold of her head as a brain splitting pain raced through her head. The pain in the girl's head came on so suddenly and with such force that the girl could do nothing but close her eyes and watch as flashes of color began to play across her vision.

After a few moments of intense and mind numbing pain, the flashes of color and the felling of her head splitting open disappeared. The girl slowly opened her eyes to get a good look at her own state.

The girl's clothes were not in the best situation they could be in, torn in a variety of places revealing various bits of normally hidden skin. On that skin were varying degrees of cut, bruises and scratches that were in the process of healing, though due to the state of them the girl could only summarize that it hadn't been long since she had received them.

The girl reached out with two trembling, nervous hands and began to feel the damaged skin and get better looks at the damage to her clothes. As she saw more and more of her state, a single question formed in the girl's mind, a question that she did not hesitate to ask aloud.

"What… What in the world has happened to me… I wonder…?"

Almost exactly the moment after the girl stated the question aloud, the girl tilted her head, another, more serious, question forming in her head. This one the girl did not voice aloud, whether intentionally or not, she did not know.

Who… Who exactly am 'I' anyway?

The girl knew that if she had asked the question aloud and to any person who would listen to her, the girl instantly knew that she would be given a strange look. However, despite that thought the girl could still not help but wonder that question, considering the fact that of all the things to know, that was the most basic and important of them.

The girl, at a complete loss as to what she should do the girl turned to looking through the scarce few belongings that she had on her body, which amounted to a cell phone and a wallet. Going with the most obvious and sure fire thing to give herself a clue, the girl began to look through 'her' wallet and quickly found identification. With the card in her hands, the girl began to read the information on it in silence.

Kamijou… Touka… So that's my name, huh? Age 15… Student of ***** High School… Residence in *****… Well… At the very least I have a name for myself now… Now… What should I do with this information?

Kamijou sighed to herself as she then turned to direct her attention to her phone, and she began to navigate her way through the various applications on her phone, searching for any more information about herself. Kamijou opened her messaging app and looked through the various chat, searching for some idea on how in the world she had ended up here.

However, as she looked through the various headings, Kamijou could only find that the last time any of the headings had been active was at least a month ago, giving the girl no hope at finding any clues as to how she lost her memories. She wondered if the fact that not having any messaging was because she had not been using her phone for a month, but a quick look at her phone call logs found that the phone had been used within the day.

Kamijou sighed to herself as she pocketed both her wallet and phone and sighed, resting her chin on her right fist, and pondered her next step.

Well… I still have no idea on how I lost my memories… As one would expect when they have lost their memories… but I would really like to get this stuff sorted out quickly enough so I don't have to deal with this… Perhaps I could go head towards the address on my ID, but I would have to figure out a way to get directions to it, and considering the time of day… It might not be the safest thing to approach a random person for anything… Really now… What in the world should I-…!?

Before Kamijou could finish her thoughts, the girl heard a slight groan directly to her side, which caused the girl's racing thoughts to silence.

Sitting in another swing directly to the side of Kamijou was another girl who was slowly stirring out of her unconsciousness.

Somehow, almost as if she had been told it instinctually, Kamijou guessed that the girl on the swing next to her was just a bit younger than her, however the girl was about the student's size, probably due to the fact that the girl might have had been a foreigner. The sleeping girl had waist length flaming red hair, with a bar code like tattoo underneath her right eye, along with various piercings on her ears to complete the delinquent look. She was dressed in what Kamijou thought was an all-black version of a classic nun's outfit, and had a distinctly sweet smell wafting off of her and flowing directly over to Kamijou.

Kamijou could only blankly stare at the red haired girl who was somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, the absurdity of the situation causing all form of conscious thinking to cease in the girl's head.

Kamijou briefly looked around her direct vicinity, hoping beyond hope that she would see something, anything, that would give her a clue as to how she had ended up in her current situation. Finding none, the black haired girl sighed to herself and returned her attention to the red haired girl next to her.

Hmmm… Well of all the possible options I could have… the simplest one would be to wake her up and talk to her… though I have no idea what in the world will happen once I do… I have no other reason not to wake her up and talk to her… So…

Shaking her head in defeat, Kamijou resigned herself to waking the girl up with a sigh. Reaching out with her right hand, Kamijou briefly shook the red haired girl's shoulder and waited for any movement.

The girl smiled in her sleep as Kamijou shook her, and she quietly began to whisper something in a language that Kamijou could not place. Kamijou tilted her head in confusion and shook the red haired girl's shoulder again, this time with a tiny amount of force added.

"Ummm… Are you… Are you awake at all?"

There was a slight jolt in the red haired girl's body, indicating that the girl was now at the very least semi-conscious. Slowly, as if coming out of a daze, the red haired girl opened her eyes to take in the world. With a blink the girl turned to the side where Kamijou was not located, and with another blink turned to rest her eyes on the black haired girl. The girl silently stared at Kamijou, making the latter extremely uncomfortable.

"Oh…Uhhhh…. Well… I… I see that you're awake… That's… That's wonderful. So… Uh… Do you mind-…?"

Before Kamijou could even finish speaking, the red haired girl stood up without a word to the black haired girl, and, in what seemed to be a quiet panic, began to run away from Kamijou.

The red haired girl barely got three steps forward before catching her foot on the hem of her robes, and falling face first into the rubber material that made up the floor of the park.

Kamijou, who was once again shocked into silence, did not know what to do in the face of this development. Slowly, almost as if she was forcing herself to, Kamijou reached up and began rubbing the back of her head with her right hand.

"Ummmm… Are… Are you okay? That… That did not look good from where I'm sitting…"

Kamijou waited patiently for an answer from the red haired girl, but after a few moments of silence, a single drop of sweat began to form on the girl's forhead.

You have to be kidding me… You couldn't have knocked yourself out with that… could you?

Kamijou slowly stood up from the swing seat and carefully walked over to motionless form of the red haired girl, the first girl looking down at second girl's form with a questioning look on her face.

After standing over the red haired girl for a moment and still not getting any response, Kamijou sighed to herself, kneeled down, and flipped the red haired girl over as genteelly as the she could manage.

What awaited Kamijou was a sight that she had fully expected to see.

The red haired girl was now lying on her back, both her eyes and her mouth open in what could only be an expression of shocked daze. The girl's eyes did not even seem to register Kamijou's form until a good half a minute after Kamijou flipped her over. When they did, they settled on the black haired girl's face with the same dazed expression.

Kamijou, now feeling massively awkward with the red haired girl's gaze on her, simply raised her hand up with what she hoped to be a welcoming grin.

"H-Hey… I-I was pretty worried about you after you hit the ground so hard… But it looks like I was worrying for noth-…?"

Before Kamijou could finish talking, a fist collided with the very front of Kamijou's face at a force that sent the black haired girl tumbling on to her back.

That… That stupid bitch…

Kamijou felt the rage speed through her entire body, pooling in every part of her body to the point where the black haired girl wondered that if she was made up of rage.

After lying down for a moment in her rage, Kamijou's upper body shot up, her eyes alight with the fire of her rage.

"You…! You ungrateful bitch!"

It only took a moment for Kamijou to locate the red haired girl.

Standing on the opposite side of one of the few street lights that provided light to the park, the red haired girl was almost comically leaning out from behind it to glare over at Kamijou, her eyes welling with tears, but a defiant glare in them.

That glare did nothing but fuel Kamijou's already roaring rage, causing the black haired girl to audibly grind her teeth in her anger.

"What the hell… What the fucking hell is your problem?! Is that how you treat a person who is trying to help you out?!"

The red haired girl cringed back at the force of Kamijou's rage, but defiantly gritted her teeth as she glared back at Kamijou.

"… Well… Miss Stranger… How in the world am I supposed to know if you truly mean me no harm?"

Kamijou tilted her head in an enraged confusion, her brain barely processing anything other than that which fueled her anger.

"What the hell are you talking about you stupid bitch?! So just because you don't know me, that automatically means that you can't trust me?!"

The red haired girl pointed at Kamijou with the air of authority, her expression becoming one of annoyed rage.

"Wrong Miss Stranger! It is not the fact that I do not know you, but rather the fact that you did not introduce yourself. 'Strangers who have yet to introduce themselves are always out to cause you trouble'. That is what my sister said!"

Kamijou felt one of the blood vessels in her neck bulge out in her rage, and she sadistically grinned over at the red haired girl while her left hand began to twitch unconsciously.

"Oh really now… So it's my fault is it? Well then… Allow me to introduce myself then. My name is apparently Kamijou Touka. And, since we are on the topic of introductions, how about you also give me one?"

The moment Kamijou had given her name, the red haired girl shriveled up behind the lamppost, her utter defiance quickly replaced with fear.

"M-My name is Styx Magnus… and though it might be a bit strange to say this now, but… sorry for hitting you!"

Styx as she was called then ducked down behind the lamppost completely and held her head in her hands as she began to shiver in fear. To see the sight of the red haired girl getting so scared at Kamijou's rage made the black haired girl instantly calm down, and feel awkward about her actions.

"H-Hey…It's… It's alright… Styx was it? You did have a reason to suspect me of being up to no good… and I don't feel right staying angry at a person who has already apologized… so…"

Styx slowly came out from her poor choice of a hiding spot, looking over at Kamijou with tears slowly starting to form in her eyes as she did so.

"Are… Are you certain that you aren't still angry at me… Kamijou? Even… Even if you've calmed down now, I did treat you fairly poorly. It wouldn't be surprising if you felt some sort of resentment towards me because of that."

Kamijou sighed to herself and placed her right hand over her face as if to hide herself away from what was going on in front of her.

"Listen… let's just calm down for a moment and try to figure out what the hell is going on before we worry about whether or not I hate you. So… could you possibly tell me how you got here?"

The red haired girl stopped being worried for a few moments, though she was still on the verge of crying as she looked around at her surroundings. Kamijou then realized that the girl had yet to do so, her fear of the black haired girl being greater than the need to check her surroundings. That singular thought made Kamijou even more depressed.

After a few more moments of looking around, the red haired girl looked over at Kamijou with a look of pure fear.

"Wh-Wh-Where in the world are we!? Are we… Are we somewhere in Japan? You're speaking in Japanese so that must mean that we are somewhere at least related to Japan."

Kamijou began to rub the bridge of her nose with her right hand and sighed.

"Well… Hopefully we are in a place called Academy City, which is said to be in Japan, though to be honest I don't really know if we are in Academy City…"

Kamijou voice trailed off as she looked back over at Styx, not because she was worried about the information she was giving Styx, but rather she was taken aback by the way the red haired girl was handling the information that had already been given to her.

The red haired girl was holding both sides of her head, her eyes practically wide as saucers as sweat poured down her face.

"H-How in the world did I end up in Japan!? The last thing I remember… I was with my sister in Rome under the care of the Vatican… There is absolutely no way that I would be in Japan… unless…"

Styx looked up at Kamijou with a worried, pleading look on her face.

"Kamijou… Do you happen to know if you have seen my sister? She's… about eight years older than me… Looks like me… is quite a bit taller than me… Oh and her name is Lethe!"

Kamijou was silent in the face of Styx's question, her mind focusing on a single facet of the red haired girl's personality.

... Screw it. Considering how everything is going, asking this won't set me back any more time then I have been wasting.

Kamijou sighed in preparation for asking her question, and finally swallowed her fear and asked the question.

"So… Styx… May I ask you how old do you think you are?"

Styx looked over at Kamijou with a confused tilt to her head.

"How… How old do I think I am? If… If my birthday hasn't happened recently… then I would be… eight years old."

Kamijou barely even blinked at this information, as it confirmed a hunch she had on Styx's behavior. Kamijou pointed at Styx with a completely emotionless face.

"Well then… to me you look like you are quite big for an eight year old. Is it perhaps due to the fact that that you are a foreigner?"

Styx again tilted her head in confusion and turned her head down to her body.

"What in the world are you talking about? I shouldn't be that much bigger than-…"

Styx's response to Kamijou instantly stopped as she began to take in the view of her own body. The red haired girl shakily reached down to feel her body, and then turned her hands to her face to feel the differences between her expected face and the face she had currently.

The next moment, the red haired girl collapsed to her knees, her eyes now becoming dead looking as she stared at the ground.

"How in the world… Why in the world… I'm so much bigger than when I last checked… What in the world is going on here?!"

Kamijou sighed as she watched the red haired girl's emotions collapsed into a confused anger. The black haired girl raised her right hand up as if she were trying to calm down the red head, while she moved her left hand towards the bridge of her nose in an attempt to calm herself down.

"Listen… Let's just calm down for a second and figure out what in the world is going on. We're both in the same boat, so if we put our heads together-…!?"

The moment that Kamijou's left hand barely touched the bridge of her nose, memories began to flow back into place, which caused the black haired girl to grow instantly become agitated.

"God…. God Damnit!"

Styx, who had been looking down at the ground with a look of complete and utter hopelessness on her face, turned her gaze upwards to Kamijou, concern quickly becoming the dominant expression on her face.

"Ka-Kamijou… Are you okay? Suddenly shouting out like that-…!?"

The red haired girl did not even get a chance to finish speaking as Kamijou ran up and grabbed her shoulders in a panicked rage.

"Styx! We have to … We have to hurry back to that school! I don't know how much time we have left before something horrible happens, but-…!?"

This time it was Kamijou's turn to be cut off in the middle of a sentence. Styx had broken out of the student's grasp, shoved the black haired girl away, and had once again retreated to her position behind the lamppost, the tearful look making a return.

"What in the world is wrong with you Kamijou? Are… Are you actually one of those people that have massive mood swings out of nowhere? What are they called? A Schizo-…. Schizophrenic?"

Kamijou might have come to her senses at that moment in a normal situation, but something in the back of her mind caused her to be completely senseless to the situation.

"Styx… This isn't a joke right now! If we don't do something… Terrible… Something terrible is going to happen!"

Styx tilted her head in confusion.

"Wha- What do you mean something terrible? What are you talking about all of a sudden? I just… I just want to find my sister and get back to my normal life."

Kamijou gritted her teeth at Styx and tried her best to remain calm in the face of Styx's strange behavior. However, there was still one thing that was keeping her from becoming completely calm.

That one thing was a single voice she had heard at the edge of her consciousness, a voice that she was so familiar with that she would recognize no matter where she was.

"Index… Styx… That woman has Index! That idiot followed us here and ended up getting captured! If we don't do anything… You know better than anyone what will happen!"

There was a brief silence between Kamijou and Styx as the students stared at the magician who had lost her mind. The next moment, the red head tilted her head with a look of confusion on her face.

"Who… Who in the world is Index?"

At that one question, Kamijou was instantly calmed to the point of being able to hear the sound of her heart beating in her chest. Kamijou desperately began to gesture in the air towards Styx.

"Styx… Index… how in the world could you have forgotten about Index! You of all people… You of all people should be able to remember him no matter what!"

Styx continued to look at Kamijou with a confused look on her face and she took a single step back in fear of the black haired girl.

"Uhmmm… Kamijou… I don't really know what you are talking about… but… I don't know anyone named Index… assuming Index is a person's name."

Kamijou felt a cold sense of dread fill the pit of her stomach, causing her to shiver in fear and confusion. The girl brought her left hand up to grasp the side of her face in an effort to calm herself down.

The second she touched her face with her left hand, however, Kamijou looked down at it with a look of desperate realization. Slowly, she began to slightly flex the left hand that had reacted to something that had been happening to her head, something that had caused her to forget everything.

So it must have been a supernatural ability that caused me to lose my memories… Which means… that the same thing is what is causing Styx to act weird right now… So if I could just touch her head with my hand, will she regain her memories?

Kamijou continued to stare at her own left hand for a few more silent moments before clenching it into a fist with a sigh.

"Well… it's not really like I have any other choice in what to do anyway…"

Sighing to herself yet again, Kamijou put a resolute look on her face and took one step towards Styx. In response to this, the red headed magician took three giant strides back from Kamijou, once again visibly scared.

"Uh… O-On second thought Kamijou… I think it would be better if I looked for my sister by myself… You… don't seem to have any real connection to what is going on with me."

Kamijou did not feel at all surprised at the reaction from the crazed magician, since that when the situation had been reversed; Kamijou had been acting in a similar fashion. The black haired student raised her hand in a gesture to calm the red head's nerves.

"Hold on there Styx… I'm not going to do anything bad to you. I'm just… I'm just going to perform a little bit of a charm on you… One that will help us find your much faster than if we went without it."

Briefly, a long stretch of silence ruled over the scene between Kamijou and Styx, the two girls staring at each other mouths closed. After that brief moment, Styx tilted her head and looked at Kamijou, a cynical, questioning gaze on her face.

"A… charm? Like… some sort of magic trick that those street performers do for spare change? I'm sorry… but… I doubt that something like that will be useful in anyway."

Kamijou could not even begin to contain her shock at what Styx just said, considering her stance on magic when she was in her right mind. Regardless of how the student felt at the moment, Kamijou put on what she hoped to be a trust winning smile.

"Come on now. It's not going to hurt you in anyway. If what you say is true, then wouldn't it mean that anything I do will have no effect on you?"

Styx silently looked over at Kamijou with a questioning glare, as if she were debating her options slowly in her mind. For that moment Kamijou could see a bit of the true Styx in the expression the girl wore at that moment. After that moment, Styx sighed to herself, and nodded in a conceding gesture.

"Well… I guess the amount of things you could do to me would be pretty small… and I don't really have a plan for finding my sister other than wander around…

Kamijou, not waiting for the red head to even finish, quickly closed the gap between the two of them and placed her left hand on the side of the girl's head, smiling at the red haired girl.

"Well… We can still look for your sister still if you want to… though do you really want to continue along with this now?"

Kamijou put her hands on her hips as she stared at Styx, who's eyes had suddenly widened in shock, sweat forming on her brow as she looked as if she was remembering something particularly horrible.

Kamijou sighed, her hand still on Styx's face after several moments of silence.

"Come on now Styx! You are back to us now right? Shouldn't you be worried about… Oh I don't know… Index's life!?"

Even though Kamijou had mentioned the boy priest's name, it didn't even make Styx react in the slightest, causing the student to put on a concerned expression.

"Uhh… Styx? Styx? Are you with us right now? Hello-…!?"

Kamijou's voice was cut off halfway through as a force slammed into her stomach, launching the student backwards into one of the many lampposts around the park. After sitting on the ground in a daze for a few moments, Kamijou slowly blinked and looked back over at Styx with an enraged expression.

"Oi… Styx… Would you kindly explain what the hell that was?! I can understand that you dislike me, but there are limits to how you can-…!?"

Before Kamijou could finish speaking, what her eyes saw when she looked back at Styx reached her brain shocking the student into silence.

"That… Bitch…"

Styx was looking at the ground in what Kamijou could only call a single minded rage, steam literally coming off of her head as her anger became words.

"That… Bitch…That… Stupid… Insufferable… Bitch!"

As if it was responding to Styx's emotions, the very floor underneath Kamijou began to shake in a slight tremor. A mighty gust of wind blew by the student, causing Kamijou's hair to blow over her vision, heading in the direction of Styx.

Once Kamijou had freed her vision up from her vision, she was almost blinded by the light that was now coming off of the various lampposts in the park, which were now shining like spotlights in the night. Just as her vision was getting used to the light, she saw that the token drinking fountain in the park had burst open, water spewing out in a spout.

Meanwhile, despite all of the things that were happening around her, Styx kept her gaze turned to the ground in her single minded rage. Kamijou could hear the audible sound of the girls teeth grinding against each other, and the pop of the magician's muscles as she clenched her fists in her anger.

Kamijou, who had been struggling to find her voice in the past few seconds this was going on, finally found it and attempted to use it to the best of her ability.

"St-Styx! I… I don't exactly understand what's going on now… but could you calm down for a moment and listen to me for a second!? That woman back there… That woman has capture In-…"

Kamijou could not bring herself to finish speaking, for at that moment Styx turned her gaze away from the ground and directed it toward the sky, and the brief glance the student caught of the magician's expression shocked her into silence

It was a look of complete and total disconnection with the real world that was on the magician's face. Dull vacant eyes seemed to look past anything in their path, as if it didn't even exist in the magician's world. Her mouth was twisted in a grin of in, what Kamijou could only call, despair, and the magician's hands slowly rose to the sky as if she were reaching out to embrace it.

"So… She wants to play around with what shouldn't be messed with? Fine…"

Kamijou saw the expression on the magician's face shift from despair to what could only be described as surrender. The red head lowered her arms but continued to stare up into the sky with her vacant eyes.

"How about I just destroy everything them?"

It was then that another terrifying change came over the scene, one that Kamijou thought she would never forget as long as she lived.

As soon as the words left the magician's mouth, the wind, which had been still gusting through the area at insane speeds, began to pick up again, now blowing around the red head so hard that it was visible to the student's eyes. The ground beneath Styx's feet began to buckle and bend, slowly cracking and shifting. The spouts of water and their resulting puddles slowly began to move towards the magician, the closer it got the more the liquid defied the rules of gravity.

Kamijou, who had only the basest understanding of what was going on, quickly understood that whatever was going on was due to Styx's state of mind at that time, and that the only real way to stop what was going on was to and calm Styx down. However, the student was completely and totally frozen in place, her voice lost to her to the point where all she could do was whisper a one word plea.

"St…Styx…"

Of course the magician did not even bat an eyelash at Kamijou's plea, her arms being raised higher and higher once again, and her smile began to widen as she did so. The red headed magician slowly began to chant in a foreign language, obviously channeling a spell that would unleash the power that had gathered around her.

However, before the spell could even get a chance to be completely put into effect, something happened that caused the situation to stop dead in its tracks.

Without even a single word of surprise, reaction, or acknowledgement of what was going to happen, the red headed magician silently jumped backwards as if she was escaping from something.

The next moment, there was a massive explosion that sent chunks of the ground flying around the spot where Styx had been standing only a moment before.

It took Kamijou a moment to throw her arms up to protect herself from the shrapnel that was flying around due to the explosion, however nothing hit her except for pieces that were about the size of small pebbles.

The student slowly lowered her arms once she had confirmed that it was safe to do so, and was greeted with an utterly strange and jarring sight.

Positioned directly in the spot where Styx had been standing only moments before was a large silver spear that was easily a good head taller that the student even with its head completely buried into the ground.

Of all the things that had happened to the student that day, this shouldn't have surprised her as much as it was at that point. However, Kamiou struggled at that point to even come up with a logical question.

"What… What in the world… Why did that…?"

Kamijou placed her hand over her face, sighing about everything that had been going on to her these past few hours. The moment after she had sighed, she received an answer to her poorly worded question.

"You don't have to worry about that. Consider it a sign that one of our problems… or perhaps maybe one of our burdens have disappeared. If I were you, I wouldn't pay it much mind."

Kamijou spun her head around to look at the source of the voice, and saw Styx, who now looked to be in perfect control of herself, though she was still looking slightly irritated. The end of the freshly lit cigarette that was in her mouth was in the process of being chewed through due to the magician annoyance.

For a brief moment Kamijou was exceedingly glad to see Styx back to her normal self and, overcome with emotion, through her arms around the magician's legs and almost wept for joy.

The magician looked down at Kamijou with an even deeper glare of annoyance than what she had been wearing, and slowly began to struggle to get out of Kamijou's grasp.

"… And just how long are you going to hold me down like an idiot?"

That single question made the joy that Kamijou had felt disappeared, being replaced by curiosity about the situation as she began to stand up.

"So… what in the world is this spear supposed to be? You said it was some sort of sign that one of our problems?... But… What sort of problem was it?"

Styx sighed to herself and placed a hand over her face, a solitary blood vessel in her forehead began to bulge out in anger.

"I'm sorry… but didn't you have some other piece of important information to give me? Something to do with a person who is close to the two of us?"

It only took that vaguely worded question to make Kamijou remember the one thing that had desperately wanted to tell Styx before all of the craziness she had just experienced.

"Index…! Styx… Index followed us here and ended up getting captured by that woman in the entryway! We've got to do something quick to save him before-…"

The magician raised one of her hands up to cut off Kamijou's panicked explanation, using her other hand to pull the cigarette out of her mouth to blow a huge cloud of smoke into the air. After that was done, a somewhat sarcastic smile appeared on her face.

"Oh… So he was captured by her huh? Well… on a list of things that could have happened it's not the worst possible thing that could have occurred. I feel better thinking that Index is in her hands than sitting somewhere completely unprotected."

Kamijou stared at Styx in complete surprise, and in that moment, a single question formed in the student's mind, one that she instantly asked without even taking a moment to think about it.

"Styx… Do you… Do you happen to know that woman in there? Who in the world is she?"

While Styx's expression did not undergo any sort of change that would tip off an observer that anything was wrong, Kamijou could clearly see something in the magician's eyes that clearly showed that the red head was hesitating. However, that hesitation only lasted a moment before the magician sighed in a conceding way.

"Well… considering that the next thing we are going to do is going to put us in direct contact with that woman… It would be wrong to say that there is no connection between me and her… and you as well come to think about it…"

Styx took another deep draw of her cigarette, blowing out a large cloud of smoke before tossing the spent cigarette aside.

"That woman, as you so kindly refer to her as… She… You… and I… We all share one very important thing in common. Something that has shaped all of us in its own way."

Kamijou swallowed in fear, holding her breath waiting for the conclusion of the magician's explanation. Styx looked up to the sky and sighed once again before she looked back at Kamijou.

"That one thing… the one thing that connects us… Is Index."

Kamijou briefly looked over at Styx with a confused look on her face, but in only a moment the student realized what it was that Styx was talking about.

"You… You can't possibly mean… "

Styx nodded her head a small, sad frown crossed her lips.

"Yeah… That is exactly what I mean. Index… He used to know that woman before I erased all memory of her from his mind."