Kamisato Rescue Arc

The Kamisato Rescue Arc is a story arc in Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index, covered in Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Volume 17.

In the aftermath of the Elements and the abnormal heat wave, Academy City has entered into a restoration period. Following a battle under the Windowless Building, Kamisato Kakeru was exiled by the World Rejecter and Kihara Yuiitsu used the possibility of losing the only way to save him to bind the Kamisato Faction, sending them to kill Kamijou Touma. With only Karasuma Fran not turning on him, Touma seeks a way to rescue Kamisato and break Yuiitsu's hold on the girls.

Kamisato Faction and Kihara Yuiitsu
Due to the mortal injuries inflicted to Kihara Noukan on the night of December 3rd, Kihara Yuiitsu sought revenge on Kamisato Kakeru. After devising a plan of action and gathering the necessary materials, Yuiitsu posed as Keshouin Asuka to get close to him and on the night of December 5th, severed his right hand in a sneak attack. Seizing control of World Rejecter, Yuiitsu fought against Kamijou Touma, Salome, Misaka Mikoto and several members of the Kamisato Faction, while others tended to Kamisato. This battle ended when Mikoto accidentally came into contact with Noukan's Anti-Art Attachment and seeing Touma in danger, used it against Yuiitsu.

After being blown away and repairing herself with Sample Shoggoth, Yuiitsu turned her hand towards the Windowless Building and was subsequently confronted by Aleister Crowley. With the contact between Mikoto and the Anti-Art Attachment creating a new threat in addition to Kamisato Kakeru, Aleister told Yuiitsu that she would deal with one of the two and he would deal with the other.

Following this initial confrontation, the Kamisato Faction went underground while planning their counterattack. In order to lure them out, Yuiitsu unleashed the Elements on the city. On learning that they were slowed by high temperatures, Karasuma Fran used her space station, the Bunny Grey Messenger, to flood the city in microwaves and create an artificial heat wave. During the heat wave, the Kamisato Faction occupied the White Springs Shopping Center. On December 9th, the Kamisato Faction, accompanied by Touma, marched to the Windowless Building and confronted Yuiitsu below it. They eventually defeated Yuiitsu but her last gambit with the building's rocket boosters forced Kamisato to use World Rejecter with conflicting desires in order to protect the others, resulting in him being exiled by it.

Afterwards, Yuiitsu reclaimed the World Rejecter and dangled the possibility of the World Rejecter being the only means to recover Kamisato in front of the distraught Kamisato Faction. Using the threat of this possibility being lost should they act against her, Yuiitsu forced the Kamisato Faction to follow her commands and ordered them to kill Touma. At same time, Yuiitsu intended to use the Kamisato Faction in an experiment to transplant and spread her thought patterns to society, as part of her promise to surpass Noukan and become a truly unique Kihara.

While reluctant to follow Yuiitsu's commands, the Kamisato Faction didn't want to risk losing what they thought was the one hope of saving Kamisato, and pursued Touma with intent to kill. The only one not to do so was Karasuma Fran. Presenting herself as a Gemstone who got her powers as the result of an implant from a UFO, Fran was actually a Magician from the Anglican Church, planted in the Kamisato Faction in order to manipulate Kamisato Kakeru on behalf of Laura Stuart, though she had come to love the boy as much as the rest of them.

Academy City
Academy City was heavily damaged by the combination of the Elements and the intense heat wave exceeding 55 degrees. The heat knocked out the city's infrastructure; power, water, gas and information, as well as most of the electronics. With the internet, phones and other information infrastructures offline, communication was severely limited. Due to the heat knocking out electronics, most vehicles within the city were immobilized and with surfaces in the open heated up, together with the threat of the Elements lurking in the cooler area, travel was also heavily restricted.

During an expedition to destroy the Crystal Tower on December 8th, believed to be the control point for the Elements but actually a lure to identify threats, Tokiwadai Middle and  Garden suffered severe damage from an Element assault led by Yuiitsu, with particular focus on the hangar housing Misaka Mikoto's Anti-Art Attachment. In the aftermath, people came in from outside Garden and took advantage of the defenders' injuries and exhaustion to loot the school. The student body was subsequently moved to Heaven Canceller's Hospital, designated shelter Hospital.

Following the final confrontation beneath the Windowless Building, Yuiitsu had the Elements self-destruct, leaving piles of white sand-like particles across the city. With the end of the heat wave and the Elements on the morning of December 9th, Useful Spider mobilized from their base under an observatory in School District 21 in order to rebuild the city - beginning 48 Hours to Restore Order (秩序回復の四八時間).

During the heat wave and Element infestation, many shelters were set up by residents and refugees across Academy City. Many of the shelters developed their own set of rules, and a number of these shelters received names, consisting of a term relating to their location or how they were run, which they were referred to during the crisis and the recovery period afterwards. These named shelters included:

New World
After being exiled to the spare regions of the timeline by the World Rejecter, the Magic Gods of the true Gremlin, though not pleased at being done in by a human, found that the new world was not a bad home for them. In particular, the fact that actions in the new world have no effect on the regular world and all damage to it is undone when it is updated at midnight to match with the regular world, allowed the Magic Gods to act freely, which they hadn't been able to do before due to concern about the damage they could cause to the world and its inhabitants.