It was the crack of dawn.
Like any other normal human being, Haru was deep in slumber within his comfortable futon. Today was his lucky day as he usually slept on the hard floor most of the time. For some reason, the other two occupants of the dorm room were strangely absent.
VVVVWWWWOOOOOOOOORRRRPPP!
"Umf..."
Right now one thing he wanted more than anything was more time to sleep. He wished to savor the comfort of the bed when he had the chance; but the phone continued to ring without mercy, without hesitation. Stretching his hands he groped around the hard, cold floor for his phone. Flipping his device open, Haru leaned in toward the speaker.
"Hello?" Haru yawned.
"Hey, Haru." It was Touma. "I'm in ramen shop right now—I need your help."
"I see." Haru paused for a bit, letting the grogginess pass. "Is it urgent?"
"Well, it kinda involves the fate of the entire world."
"So not that urgent than. Well, continue anyway."
"Where should I start... well, yesterday, I came across a wind turbine with some sort of magical symbols upon it, and when I destroyed it with my right hand, I triggered a trap set up by Stiyl. Do you know Stiyl Magnus?"
"... Let's see, that red-haired guy from 0th Parish? Come to think of it, I thought I saw Index hanging around with him a year ago."
"Yeah, that's him. Well, he set up that spell on the wind turbine in order to trap a group of magicians called 'Tenjō Yori Kitaru Kamigami no Mon'. They were planning to use Agni's Festival Fire to basically scorch the Academy City. Have you ever heard of that cabal?"
"That Hindu Cabal? I sabotaged one of their operations three or four years ago. They made fun of my jacket. No one makes fun of my jacket."
"I see. So today after school I decided to track down the organization myself since I didn't exactly trust Stiyl to actually ask me for help. Index told me where the center of the entire spell was, and as soon as we reached the building, it exploded for some reason. But we still decided to head inside, anyway."
"So you headed inside a burning building with Index."
"Yes?"
"While it was burning."
"Yes."
"With all the smoke and ashes and stuff."
"Yes."
"... Carry on."
"Well, long story short, we found a room inside that was somehow unaffected by the fire, but the moment I entered the protection set up around the room was broken and the chamber itself began to burn as well. The room had very little furniture in it, only few chairs, one table, and a safe. After destroying the center of the spell itself, I decided to push the safe out of the window in order to see what was inside. Carrying it with me was a bit unrealistic as it was heavy and because of fire and whatnot."
"Okay, so this safe, how big was it?"
"Um, about the size of a washing machine?"
"So you basically dragged something that big out to the window while fire was all around you."
"Yes?"
"Please, continue. I'm fascinated."
"Well, we got out of the building, and managed to retrieve the contents of the safe. But the Agni's Festival Fire was still ongoing, the most likely reason being that they had backup centers just in case. Because we were afraid that the magicians would prematurely activate the Festival Fire due to their main center being destroyed, we hurriedly went to the direction of the explosion that occurred after the burning of the building after analyzing the files in the safe. And then we were targeted by series of fire attacks, and when we tracked down the source, we found a girl."
"Isn't that fact given when you are around?"
"Um, she seems like a middle schooler with weird clothing which she claims to be Japanese. Her name is Sozty Exica. Anyway, us and Stiyl began to chase her down to a subway tunnel, and turns out that since she uses wind to target people using Shiva based communication method, she had poor accuracy on the streets where there were more wind interference. But within straight, narrow tunnels she had the advantage. But even so we managed to subdue her and then decided to restrain her at my apartment—"
"Ah, yes, brilliant plan, openly announcing your place of solitude for the entire underworld of darkness to see. We'll be bombarded by magical attacks sooner or later. But the girl that is currently headed toward here right now might make it all up for it." Haru continued. "Tell me, how does she look like? Do I need to prepare the place for our guest?"
"Well, my plan didn't exactly work out. One of the members of her cabal decided to silence her with a magical attack, but she managed to survive by being brought to a hospital. We still needed to get out from the hospital before the Anti Skill arrived since she was injured in what they saw as a terrorist attack. So we went outside of the hospital using the window."
"How high were you?"
"The room we were in was about three stories high."
"I would be surprised, but this is our life on daily basis."
"While we were walking around the city trying not to attract attention, Stiyl contacted us, informing that the Magic Cabal itself was destroyed from the inside. After some discussion we reached to the conclusion that Ureapaddy, her sister was the one who destroyed all the members of the cabal. The weapon we think she uses is Brahma Astra."
"Whoa, hold on, the Brahma Astra? I thought the project to make that Astra a reality resulted in a failure. The weapon itself rivals Gungnir."
"Well, her sister was apparently powerful enough the kill the powerful members of the Cabal. One of the requirements to use the Brahma Astra is having three shooting stars within the sky. With that weapon—"
"I've seen what it can do." Haru interrupted. "I hung around their experimental sites for quite a bit, and the results were not pretty."
"So, we thought about that, and asked this question: what would constitute a shooting star? Would space debris flying into the atmosphere count?"
"Possibly." Haru said. "The requirements for fulfilling magical conditions makes you think outside of the box quite a bit."
"We think that Ureapaddy would have some sort of plan at the rocket launch facility in order to use her Brahma. Academy City has only one, which is District 23. We decided to head toward there, but here is the thing: one of the components for the rocket, the capsule for the fuel, is at District 10. And since the capsule itself is quite large, the transportation would take the shortest route. We headed toward the possible roads and waited for her. After we caught her, long story short, she pierced the tank filled with that fuel with her Astra. Did I mention that the fuel itself was highly flammable and toxic?"
"Ah. I take it that you survived safely?"
"Well, Index somehow helped Stiyl blow it all up without any negative consequences."
"Hmm, hold on." Haru sat up. "Do you remember the exact instructions Index gave to that magician?"
"Um, something about adding purification and some instructions about initials and looping."
"Neutralizing the harmful effects using purification." Haru realized. "Genius. Well, do go on."
"We wondered why Ureapaddy abandoned the rocket fuel so readily and we realized that she used the Venus Probe Contest to sabotage other rockets from parts of the world before heading to Academy City. According to Sozty every single country the cabal took to reach Academy City was involved within the contest."
"Well, snap. Can't do much about that." Haru responded in a languid voice. "So our only option is to destroy her Astra."
"Yeah. The rocket she was trying to manipulate was scheduled to be launched at 9 PM three days from now, so we speculated that other rockets she sabotaged were also planned to launch at that time. As we weren't able to find her after an extensive search, we decided to regroup and think up a plan to destroy her Astra. We are currently at 24 hour ramen shop in order to get some sleep."
"Why not at our home?"
"The Anti-Skill would be keeping an eye at my dorms after our disappearance from the hospital. So Haru, I need you to go out there and see if you can track down Ureapaddy."
Touma described the physical aspects of the magician in question.
"Oh, and Stiyl is planning to leave multiple signs only magicians can recognize around the city, so don't fall for them. Also, you have to leave our dorm discreetly."
"Got it." Haru replied, standing up and taking care not to be visible from windows. "I'll see what I can do."
Touma snapped his phone shut.
"Who were you talking to?" Sozty looked over, curious. Her head was still lying down upon the sticky table.
"Someone who can help us." He replied.