Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item Chapter2 (section)

===Part 9===

Frenda Seivelun and Kinuhata Saiai. Ibotanokikouji Kaede and Waniguchi Nokoba.

Two against two.

“Oh?”

The first to speak was the small girl in a ring costume.

“You let your ace leave while your two substitute fighters deal with the Chief and me? You must be confident.”

“Waniguchi-san, should we do the usual?”

“Yes, please.”

They weren’t even given time to prepare.

Something blew across the room and all four walls were blown down. Even the wall behind Kinuhata and Frenda.

That meant the spaces divided by the walls were now connected.

This was now part of the Colosseum arena which was boiling with excitement after a shocking accident.

The crowd fell silent from panic, but it wasn’t long before a booming cheer erupted. All their voices joined to form a single powerful mass of noise. The leader girl tensed her brow in slight concentration.

Waniguchi casually grabbed a microphone ''that flew over to her on its own''.

“Yeehaw!! I know you’re upset about having your fight taken from you, but we have a much more exciting event for you. Get hyped because it’s time for a purge. Hey, hey, yo, yo! A round of applause for the executioner! This livestream is about to get a hell of a lot bloodierrrrrrrrrr!!!

“Outta the way, newbie!!” shouted Frenda.

Some objects fell from her skirt and ruptured. She wanted a vibration. Libraries contained a lot of paper, so they were made to be especially sensitive when detecting earthquakes and electrical fires.

Ibotanokikouji Kaede stuck out her tongue a bit.

“Tch, trying to trip the breaker? How boring. You did manage to stop the livestream, though. And unfortunately, we took up the audience’s phones to keep them from recording the valuable match and uploading it to a video site.”

“In the end, those are professional cameras on wheels, so they’re going to use a wired connection. And in a real TV studio, they’ll have some junior staff member in charge of cable management!”

Having a video of your killings revealed worldwide was about the worst case scenario for people who worked underground jobs, but they had just barely avoided that here. However, this had only triggered an emergency system meant to respond to an earthquake, so the room’s power would be back on in about 10 minutes if no further problems were detected.

“But we’ll still kill you.”

Waniguchi pounded her fists together in front of her flat chest.

The 12-year-old girl gave a belligerent smile as she announced her opponents’ deaths.

“It’ll be an on-site exclusive event now, but that just means we have to make it even more exciting!!”

Waniguchi didn’t hesitate to step forward.

This was probably her role on the team. While the vanguard kept the enemy busy with direct combat, the rear guard would keep their distance and do something else. That rear guard claimed to be the #6. Anything she did was bound to be deadly.

(I super don’t know what that will be, but we can’t give her time to use it!!)

Kinuhata took a powerful step forward of her own.

The two girls both broke into a run. They took the shortest route to close in on each other.

Waniguchi spread her arms.

“No tricks? I like your style. You’re no better than some hunk of rotting meat in the garbage, but you’re at least meat worthy of some respect!!”

Just then, mere moments before they clashed, Kinuhata flew unnaturally to the right. It was fortunate she had Offense Armor. An ordinary human could have been mangled by the blast that hit her.

That wasn’t Waniguchi’s doing and it wasn’t Ibotanokikouji’s power either.

''Her ally Frenda'' had used a bomb to knock her to the side.

A moment later, Waniguchi’s small hand tore through the air. It was less a straight punch and more of a spiraling motion to pull in everything around her hand. The attack missed its target and instead hit a bookcase, tearing it to pieces. She had to be using some kind of esper power. From the looks of that, she could tear a car in two with just the one arm.

“Are you stupid!? In the end, you need to fix your habit of relying on your tough shield to charge in and learn what you can about the enemy’s abilities! You’ll get yourself killed right away doing that on the dark side!!”

Frenda started to say more, but a large form loomed over her.

“Super watch out!!”

Kinuhata had fallen to the floor, but she threw over the heavy metal stand to some stage lighting, hitting Frenda hard enough to knock her away from ''something''.

“I’m pretty sure I can survive longer than someone who stands super still to give a lengthy explanation in the middle of a deadly battle!!”

“You, bgh. I save your life and this is how you repay me? In the end, are you in one hell of a rebellious phase?”

This was no time to be complaining.

A tremor ran through the floor.

Frenda was being targeted by a grizzly bear that stood more than 3 meters tall when up on its hind legs.

“The Colosseum is usually about espers, but this was our insurance in case the white tiger was too powerful and mauled all of today’s contestants. We hoped to distract the audience from the lack of a winner by pitting the two beasts against each other and having people bet on the outcome.”

Ibotanokikouji held a hand to her mouth and laughed with no cage or anything else between her and the enormous bear.

She wasn’t even using the circus tricks of keeping it back with a whip or with fire or making herself look big.

“In the end, does this mean her power is controlling animals!?”

“No, that super doesn’t make sense. How would that explain when she destroyed the ceiling or the walls!? And it was easy to overlook, but she made the microphone fly over super on its own.”

That was true.

However, Ibotanokikouji was in fact demonstrating multiple strange phenomena. She held her palm out toward the grizzly without even glancing its way and it came to a stop. That unpredictable ferocious beast could attack anyone if it was in a bad mood, but she controlled it like she had a remote control.

The agitated beast was freed from whatever bound it and it swung its forelegs toward Frenda since she was closest.

Waniguchi ignored that as she walked forward.

A soft crunching sound followed.

That beast could stand to a height of 3 meters and its muscles would stop a .45 caliber handgun shot, but the 12-year-old girl had grabbed it with her slender arms and crushed it.

Even the bloodthirsty audience was briefly ''shocked into silence.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………In the end, did that really just happen?”

She hadn’t used a physical blow. That had looked more like a joint lock.

Waniguchi smiled sweetly while drenched in bear blood. That smile contained the perfect combination of innocence and intimidation, making it extremely popular for some.

“Ugh, really? Chief, I know playing with animals is fun and all, but try not to interrupt my fight.”

“Hee hee. Sorry about that. Please do forgive me. I messed up my control a little.”

Frenda was stunned.

An explosive danced meaninglessly in her hand after she froze in her throwing stance.

Would this even affect that girl?

Explosives were a symbol of humanity’s technology and violence, but it felt so inadequate against that smile.

“Leverage Struggle.”

Waniguchi smiled belligerently as she pulled a thick pair of pliers from her pocket.

''She grabbed the wall with them and tore it right off with only one arm.

Just like a piece of heavy machinery demolishing a building.

“I’m not trying to hide my power. I’ve shown it off in the execution videos when someone violates the rules, after all. Scissors, crowbars, seesaws, and joint locks – if it uses leverage, I can use it as a weapon. Yeah, I can grab a concrete pillar as big around as your torso and bend it with my bare hands. Hell, I could do the same with one twice as thick.”

“Is this super idiot serious?”

With a splash, Kinuhata grabbed a bucket of machine oil and dumped it over her head. That was an odd thing to find in a library, but it was probably meant for the wheels of the heavy camera equipment. Or maybe it was a flammable weapon meant for use in the Colosseum.

“If super all you can do is amplify the power of joint locks that use leverage, then you can’t do a thing against a straight punch or kick. Simply put, ''you’re nothing to worry about as long as you don’t grab me.'' Why would you go out of your way to tell us that? There are super tons of ways of killing you.”

After hearing all that, Waniguchi’s face scrunched up.

She was trying very hard to hold back the tears. All of a sudden, she looked like a normal 12-year-old girl.

“Now, now, Waniguchi-chan. Don’t cry. This is why I told you not to reveal your power like that.”

“Sob. Chief.”

“And even if she is too slippery to grab with your bare hands, you can still hit and tear at her with those pliers. You can also try something trickier by using a seesaw to launch projectiles or yourself. It isn’t very smart to limit your options by focusing solely on barehanded joint locks.”

“You don’t need to attack me tooooooooo!!”

“There, there.”

The sadistic girl (who had made the 12-year-old cry for real) pulled Waniguchi into a comforting hug.

Concentration gathered in Kinuhata’s brow.

“You sure are confident. Do you think you can super win while protecting that idiot and fighting us essentially one-against-two? Let’s super hope you aren’t a meathead too.”

“Hee hee. Yes, ''you have a point.''”

Ibotanokikouji laughed like it had happened to slip out.

It was the amused laugh of a mother who had finally secured a house for her family with a 35-year loan and then learned her daughter was myopically planning to run away from home and live independently.

“But I will still emerge victorious. Can I fight while protecting the weak? Can I win one-against-two? ''Of course I can.'' When you are powerful, you can fight back against this unfair world. But I can’t blame you for being too weak to know that.”

“?”

The #6 held a finger to her lips and whispered sweetly.

“You are in luck. You are about to receive a special demonstration of what the Dark Side’s Bane can really do.”

She only needed a single instant to end the fight.