Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth1 (section)

===Part 12===

It had begun.

The plan was to burn away the air with thermobaric weapons to suffocate her, but if they flew straight toward her, they would be killed instantly.

The Ruler.

She was 1800 meters and 750 thousand tons.

But they weren’t safe just because they were beyond her arm’s reach. Moving a body of that size would shake the ground and stir up the air.

During the scouting mission, she had caused intense turbulence, created thunder clouds from pressure differences, dived from the sky in a belly flop, and even kicked a 300m piece of rock.

Mikoto doubted that was the extent of what she could do.

Either she was still hiding a few attacks, or she could come up with new ideas on the fly. Mikoto didn’t even want to imagine what those might be.

Whatever the case, she could easily tear apart a fighter even from a distance.



And in fact, it was the Ruler who made the first move.



She appeared to view them as an enemy.

She grabbed a random chunk out of a rubble pile and artlessly threw it into the air.

Fear froze time for Mikoto.

Each piece of rubble or stone in that was the size of a truck and there were at least more than 100 of them.

It was like a barrage balloon.

And fighters generally couldn’t move backwards. Despite the increasing risk of a head-on collision.

Mikoto shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Evasive maneuvers!!”

They couldn’t remain clumped together in formation. The Shinshin, F-2As, and YF-22A scattered apart, somehow managing to avoid the downpour of rubble and stone.

And a bit behind them…

“Tch! We’ll have to try again.”

She must have still been far enough back to avoid the downpour of rubble.

The F/A-18E short-sleeve shirt and athletic bloomers girl quickly rolled and took a sharp turn away from the Ruler.

The habit of moving toward safety made sense, but…

“Railgun 01 to Toxin 01. No, don’t let your guard down just because you’ve moved away!!”

“Whoa!?”

The F/A-18E frantically raised her nose just before an invisible blade sliced through empty air.

It came from quite far away. The giant naked girl had only slashed at the air with her nails to send a gust of wind and shockwave sweeping through the air before making the distant ocean explode.

A MiG-29 pointlessly scattered flares in a panic, but that worked against her in this case. The many fireworks-like lights dancing in the night sky must have drawn the Ruler’s attention because she reached her hand out toward them.

“Eek…”

“!!”

It happened so suddenly.

Mikoto scattered autocannon fire before those fingertips could reach. She didn’t think this would defeat her. But maybe it could draw her attention more than the flares.

The air was disturbed. Just before she could grab at the fleeing MiG-29, the Ruler twisted around and threw a horizontal flat-hand blow. With a height of 1800m, her arm had a range of 800-900m.

More than enough to reach Mikoto’s Shinshin.

“Onee-”

“Dammit!!?”

She gripped the control column with all her might.

A massive palm approached from dead ahead.

Time seemed to lose all meaning.

She may have passed out from terror for a few seconds.



And.



At first, she didn’t know what had happened.

She was still flying.

And she had a question in her head.

Did that mean…she was alive?

She had snagged a miracle with her own power, but she only stared wide-eyed.

(…? I dodged it? How!? Her aim must have been off.)

“Oh, I get it. Railgun 01 to all fighters. Focus on your speedometer. Make sure you don’t fall below Mach 1!”

“Onee-sama, we can’t fly along complex courses that fast!!”

“Just do it anyway!! She’s aiming using sonar, not radar. Like a bat or dolphin. But sonar is limited by the speed of sound, so her aim will be off for supersonic aircraft that can break the sound barrier. Getting scared and slowing down will actually let her hit you every time!”

The roars of jet engines erupted from all around.

By always flying at supersonic speeds, they could mess with the Ruler’s sonar targeting. And it didn’t matter how extraordinary her power was if her attacks couldn’t hit.

It was slight, but they finally had some hope.

At the very least, they wouldn’t be helplessly wiped out.

“Railgun 01 to all fighters. The Harriers and F-117As are most like attack aircraft, so we need to protect them most of all. And if you can’t get the speed, withdrawing is always an option!”

“Shadow 01. N-no. I’m going to bring peace to the world with the rest of you!!”

She had no real strategy or plan.

But her desperate cry strangely reinvigorated the core of Mikoto’s being.

She renewed her resolve to keep anyone from dying in this fight.

“Kh, this course will work. Teleport 02. Dropping bomb!!”

When the Ruler’s right hand rushed in, Shirai’s F-2A rolled, passed by with its belly directed toward her, and released the thermobaric explosive on its main wing.

Aiming for the center of her ample chest.

She swept her colossal arm out.

The thermobaric explosive was crushed and thrown off somewhere before it could detonate.

But then an F-117A flew over the giant girl’s head on a course perpendicular to Shirai’s. She dropped a thermobaric explosive down at a sharp angle, striking the Ruler square on the nose.

It ignited.

A massive explosion followed.

The air screamed and Mikoto’s fighter was shaken despite its distance.

The bomb produced a 300m ball of explosive fire. That was devastating when used on the surface, but for the 1800m Ruler, it only looked like a bucket placed over her head. But even so.

They had finally…

“Hit her!!”

The tides were turning.

Mikoto could sense it.

“Mental 00 to all fighters! One hit isn’t enough. You burned away the air once, but the fresh oxygen will rush in from all around. So you nee to keep it up to fully rob her of oxygen ability and suffocate her. Prioritize the larger fighters with a lot of bombs but less maneuverability and the slower attack aircraft!!”

The three MiG-31s answered this request by charging straight in.

Ordinarily, that course would put them at severe risk of being hit by the Ruler’s 800-900m arm, but not right now.

It wouldn’t last long, but she had been stopped and they had a chance to keep up the attack!!

“Uryahhh!!”

“U-um, I’ll go next. Shadow 03. Preparing to drop!!”

“Keep it up! Keep firing!!”

It all came down to this.

The thermobaric explosives burned over an incredibly wide area, but the burn time wasn’t all that long. To continue preventing her from getting a breath, they had to constantly stop more bombs to burn away the air.

“Even so…”

“Mental 00. Yes, I can only describe it as a magnificent ability.”

For a normal army, dropping one of these would be a trump card causing tremendous amounts of damage.

Yet dozens of them failed to destroy the Ruler’s body. She only turned her face away in protest, bent her hips, and tried to cover her face with her hands.

She was suffocating.

Without that, they would have been completely out of ideas. The missile silos were already gone, but ballistic missiles probably couldn’t have defeated her either.

“Maid 01 to all fighters. The Rafales will go next!!”

“404 Squadron, stay in formation and charge in!!”

Enormous explosions overlapped each other.

A thermobaric explosive was a tactical weapon that scattered a special aerosolized explosive over a wide area and ignited it to envelop the lethal area with intense heat and shockwaves. It also stole away the oxygen and rapidly changed the air pressure, which would damage a human’s internal organs. The size of the lethal area depended on the size of the bomb, but even a small one that fit on a fighter could turn a diameter of several hundred meters into hell. That meant dropping one could damage a small base or airfield enough to keep it from functioning.



And yet.



YF-22A sent over a scream of a report.

“We’ve done all this…and she can still move!?”

“Mama 01 to Railgun 01. This is a problem. We’re out of thermobaric explosives, aren’t we?”

The F-15C leggings mama sounded troubled.

And she was right.

The Ruler wouldn’t fall.

She remained upright past all the explosive flames. Mikoto could tell the giant girl was radiating a thick wall of invisible frustration.

(What do we do?)

Something wasn’t right.

She felt like one of their assumptions had been wrong.

But with their return time limit approaching fast, there wasn’t time to turn back and work out a new strategy. Giving up now would mean abandoning this entire world.

They had launched all their thermobaric explosives, so the flames would clear up eventually.

The Ruler would be free once more.

Once she took a deep breath, all of their efforts would have been for nothing.

(What do we do now!?)



Something exploded.



In an unbelievable act for a fighter pilot, Mikoto briefly shut her eyes.

She thought she was dead.

But she wasn’t.

That hadn’t been a counterattack from the restored Ruler.

“Ksh, ksshh.”

Her radio picked something up.

The signal was extremely weak, but…

“Carrier Izanami here. Cleaning up the signal.”

“Ksh, ksh. This is T-90A. I’m not sure what exactly you’re up to, but let us know what we can do.”

That wasn’t an aircraft’s numbering.

It was a tank’s.

In this world, they were probably girls too.

“We just need to keep firing thermobarics at her face, right? Hey, go wake up that TOS-1 sleeping over there. Last time, we were abandoned out here before we could show what we can do, so we’ve got tons of ammo leftover!!”

These were unfamiliar tanks and armored vehicles.

Most likely, they were United States Girlish Weapons that had been defeated by the Ruler before and never retrieved.

No.

It wasn’t just the United States ones.

“This is Destroyer Sheffield of the Cutalularia Republic Coast Guard. I’d like to defeat her before she crosses our border, but you don’t mind if we fire across the border, do you?”

“T-90A here. As a Girlish Weapon, I don’t have any political authority, but if you ask me, just start firing, you dumbass!!”

“So you got permission, mademoiselle? We’re not interested in having a Miss Cutal. Are you ready, my adorable corvettes? We’ve got ourselves a competition with Destroyer Sheffield. Use thermobaric warheads and target her face. All ships, fire!!”

The air was compressed.

The barrage of huge explosions lit up the night.

These were still thermobaric weapons, but the ones fired by ground-based weapons and ship guns were on another level.

(But their ammunition isn’t unlimited. At this rate, they’ll run out and allow her to counterattack.)

“Railgun 01 to all forces. Someone fire on the Ruler’s lower body!! From behind if possible!!”

“Hm? We have a few Uragan-1M and TOS-1 multiple rocket launchers back that way, but why?”

“She’s receiving a ferocious attack to her face, which is at the top front of her body. If we fire on her lower body from behind now, it’ll twist her around had make her trip!!”

Several deafening explosions followed.

The naked girl drew out a circle as she flipped backwards to an amusing degree. Like someone stepping on a bar of soap in the bath.

At 1800m, her center of gravity was located too high up.

She fell.

The intense quake this cause silenced the ground forces. They had their hands full keeping down and enduring the winds and shockwaves.

But the Cutalularia Republic had their naval forces.

“Destroyer Sheffield and affiliated ships,” roared Mikoto. “Roll her right on into the sea!!”

The ship guns continued to fire.

The shells flew over her in a parabolic arc and then struck the 1800m colossus with more intense blasts. Unable to get back up, the Ruler rolled to the side and picked up speed. She tumbled down a gentle slope leading to the coast.

“Are the grounds forces who fired on her from behind alright!? We didn’t blow up friendly forces just now, did we!?”

“Uragan-1M. It looks like we got lucky this time. Even I can’t believe it.”

A white wave splashed straight up.

The Ruler was now face down in the water.

“Destroyer Sheffield to all ships. Cease firing! I said stop, little girls!!”

“Okay, my adorable corvettes. Rolling her any more would flip her onto her back and ruin all our efforts.”

Silence fell.

The tension made the seconds feel like hours.

Even on the coast, the colossal naked girl looked like she simply had her face in a puddle, but she should still be able to suffocate. Mikoto cautiously circled the collapsed Ruler so that she could immediately launch an attack on the back of her head if she tried to lift it up, but…

“…?”

“Rampage 03 to Railgun 01. There’s…no reaction, is there?”

She wasn’t raising her head.

The giant naked girl remained entirely motionless with her face down in the ocean.

What was this?

What had happened?

Had she already passed out from lack of oxygen due to the attack when she was standing? If so, she would simply drown here without suffering, but…

“No,” said Mikoto.

She had noticed something around where the Ruler’s face was submerged.

More than 5 minutes had passed, but the air bubbles rising to the surface still showed no sign of abating!?

“No!! She’s breathing underwater!!”

An arm began to move.

But without the desperation of grasping at straws. The motion showed the annoyance of someone crawling out of bed in the morning.

“Teleport 02. What is happening!? Was she hiding fish gills!?”

Gills wouldn’t produce air bubbles.

She was indeed taking in air through her mouth or nose and exchanging the oxygen gas for carbon dioxide.

Which meant…

“She’s breaking down the water.”

Maybe only Mikoto could have figured it out so quickly.

Because she was a Level 5 with control over electricity.

“She’s using the seawater to procure oxygen and hydrogen for herself. She could stay submerged for years and never drown!!”

Should they have kept on firing thermobarics at her face without trying to get clever?

No.

The Ruler could compress the air with a swing of her arm and she could use the resultant pressure difference to create thick thunderclouds from the moisture in the air.

That meant it didn’t really matter if she was by the water or not. If she wanted to, she could create a cumulonimbus cloud from the moisture in the air and break that down to produce oxygen and hydrogen.

Kobayashi must have realized the same thing because she gave a shout, sounding like she was in a nightmare.

“The Ruler can’t suffocate? We moved all our pieces into position and it turns out our base assumption was wrong!?”

If so, things could hardly be worse.

The Ruler could not be defeated this way. Operation Giant Scramble’s thermobaric strategy had been fundamentally flawed.

And the return time limit was approaching. They had known all too well when they left that this was their last chance. There just wasn’t time to return to the Izanami and try again later!!