Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth6 (section)

===Part 9===

This was playing out as expected.

The Imperial Air Force’s F/A-18E smirked as she pursued the strange white aircraft. The enemy was unwilling to begin fighting above a city, so they were forced to focus on defense.

That prevented them from protecting the runaway car rushing toward the sea, but…

“Hm?”

Something drew her attention.

It wasn’t just the one.

There were around a dozen fleeing aircraft in all, but they had all scattered something behind them.

It looked like confetti but wasn’t. The substance reflecting the sunlight to glitter bright was in fact pieces of aluminum foil.

Was that all supposed to be chaff?

Chaff was emergency evasive equipment meant to help you escape from a radar-guided missile. It reflected the guidance signal to obstruct it.

The F/A-18E short-sleeve shirt and athletic bloomers girls and the F-117A bikini and raincoat girls had been ordered to perform a precision bombing of the city. They belonged to Imperial military. They needed to attack Shokuhou’s fleeing car, but they could not afford to have one of their guided missiles mistakenly blow away part of the capital.

(I don’t know how well that would actually confuse the guidance, but we can’t act until we check.)

However.

The F-117A, an early stealth fighter, spoke in a whisper.

“Shadow 01 to Toxin 01. Wh-what…do we do?”

“The aircraft are our top priority. The car is slow, so we can worry about it later. First, let’s shut off the tap on that chaff.”

Chaff was only a temporary evasive measure. Even when scattered at maximum density, the odds of it fooling a radar-guided missile were only about 50/50.

“My signal is reaching you, right? A minute after they stop scattering that stuff, the interference will fully clear. So we’ll have plenty of time to target that car once we shut off the tap and the radar clears!”

“Toxin 02 to 01. We’re going to attack them above the city?”

“They outnumber us, so we either shoot them down when we can, or they’ll shoot us down. If we say they attacked first, then we can blame them if anyone ends up getting hurt.”

The enemy’s white stealth fighter was juking side to side, but it wasn’t willing to make a counterattack, which made it a sitting duck.

The F/A-18E placed the cursor box over the fighter like the facial recognition box on a camera app and the lock on seeker began to pursue it. Once the two aligned, they lock would be complete. After dumping all that chaff, the enemy probably had no way to avoid a missile.

The F/A-18E’s young face displayed the sadism of someone tormenting a stranger.

“Hee hee hee, heh heh heh. C’mon, c’mon. If you don’t hurry up, I’ll fire this missile!!”

Then the giant girl frowned.

Because of her nose.

She smelled sea salt.

She had passed the concrete boundary line.

Which meant she was past the harbor and fully outside Frustburg.

Over the sea.

“Ah.”

The F-2A and YF-22A following her both launched missiles that instantly shot her down.



Mikoto breathed a long sigh after using her Shinshin as bait.

The plan had worked.

After being “lucky” enough to visually detect the Shinshin despite its high stealth capabilities keeping it off radar, the enemy would of course want to make sure to attack and shoot it down before losing sight of it.

Once the enemy group had been lured out over the ocean, there was nothing to stop Mikoto’s group.

(This is our one and only chance! We can’t let them get back over the city!!)

Mikoto’s Shinshin turned sharply around. It directed its nose toward the F/A-18Es and F-117As that had been leisurely following after it.

From head on.

Given their relative speed, they would pass each other in an instant.

But Mikoto launched two missiles and fired her autocannon.

After a short delay, multiple explosions erupted behind her.

“Railgun 01, three down!!”

“Brat 04, one down for me.”

“I missed.”

“Leave it to me, Teleport 02. I’ll finish them off!”

While flying a crescent moon style evasive maneuver to escape an air-to-air missile, it was hard to rapidly switch to a new direction. Mikoto locked on and shot down the F-117A while it was restricted by its powerful inertial gs.

This all took less than two minutes. But the chaff scattered over the city would have already been swept away by the wind.

The enemy fighters were gone, but clearing the sky wasn’t enough.

This was all meaningless if they couldn’t get Shokuhou and Hokaze back aboard the motorboat that would carry them back to the camouflaged carrier and landing ship.

Mikoto made a sharp turn back toward the city.

Multiple black bulletproof cars were approaching the harbor.

“Railgun 01 to all squadrons, prepare for ground attack. Any car without a strobe light in the back seat is hostile. Commence attack!!”