Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Cold Game (section)

===Part 12===

[[Image:Railgun_Cold_Game_83.jpg|thumb]]
'''(the_hanged_man)

Mikoto manipulated magnetism to move from building to building while Shirai intermittently teleported after her.

They were jumping around Academy City in pursuit of a fleeing work van. Once they had their target, it had not been difficult to use facial recognition and other methods to determine the individual’s location. And their suspicions were all but confirmed when the van started ignoring all of the traffic lights and racing through the streets with its tires screeching and its tail end swinging side to side.

“Uiharu! Are you really guiding us in the right direction!? That work van is most likely a serial arsonist’s mobile lab! Ah, ahh!! It’s driving right into a hydrogen plant of all things!!”

“If we hadn’t lured him in that direction, he would have crashed into the lithium ion battery plant he uses as a home base! And a facility that specializes in explosives will be designed for damage control in case of a fire.”

“Meaning?”

“Fire Bug, aka Matsuoka Raita, can use his Ion Trade on batteries to trigger all sorts of fires and explosions here. Please stop him before the fire can spread!!”

Mikoto’s group had the advantage here.

The biggest threat was his ability to directly touch someone and mess with their body’s cells. But since Shirai and Mikoto could fight from midair or long distance, they could avoid a struggle on the ground.

There were a few boxy reinforced concrete buildings and countless metal pipes running between them like walkways. Hydrogen fuel was said to be more eco-friendly than gasoline, but its production was not exactly a non-polluting process. Using electrolysis to separate ordinary water into oxygen and hydrogen sounded simple enough, but what would happen if you did that with river water? The answer was simple: the impurities that were neither oxygen nor hydrogen would be concentrated down into something a lot like consommé soup stock. Seawater would leave you with salt, sand, and fish poop while tap water would leave you with calcium buildup, dead microbes, and things you are better off not knowing about. And factories would grow larger as they installed the various facilities needed to handle those pollutants.

The girls were pursuing the van in the air, but there was no truly safe area on this battlefield.

Several dry popping sounds came from the fleeing vehicle.

“!? Are those pencil missiles or something!?”

“Those are a diversion. Watch out for the light plane drones sent out along a wide circle at the same time! If they’re set to self-destruct by blowing up their batteries and have short-range fuses, they can shower shrapnel on us without actually getting close!!”

Fortunately, they were controlled using EM waves.

It was unthinkable for Misaka Mikoto to overlook a signal like that. She launched lightning spears from her bangs to shoot them down one after another.

“Kuroko! Where do you think he’s going to make his last stand!?”

“Everywhere here is full of oxygen and hydrogen, so it’s a huge problem no matter where he does it!!”

“Then let’s hit him with something that isn’t oxygen or hydrogen.”

Some small sparks burst from Mikoto’s bangs.

The work van was racing past a cylindrical tank, but that tank’s pressure control malfunctioned and it suddenly exploded. An incredibly thick brown substance erupted out. That was the extremely condensed waste product that was neither clean oxygen nor hydrogen.

The substance hit the work van like a flashflood, the van slid to the side, and it could not regain its balance. The sludge slipped between the tires and the ground, robbing them of friction, and the tires simply spun. It was pushed off the road, toppled onto its side, and rolled along while a metal fence wrapped around it. It finally stopped after crashing into a thick car barrier shaped like an upside-down U at the entrance of a park.

Mikoto made an announcement while hanging upside like a bat from a group of thick pipes running above the road.

“Come out and do not attempt to resist!! You can try to use your special battery fires, but if this sludge burns, it will produce the dioxin used in herbicides. Don’t try anything unless you want to be caught in the middle of some toxic smoke of your own making!!”

“Urp, uehhh… N-no response.”

“Is he being stubborn and holing up inside the van?”

“Um, couldn’t he have simply passed out from this horrific stench?”

“…”

“…”

Mikoto and Shirai exchanged a glance.

An unpleasant atmosphere hung over them.

What did it mean if he could not leave the van…?

“Onee-sama, one of us is going to have to wade into that scrapped van covered in what looks and smells like a pile of crap and drag Fire Bug out of there…”

“Ho, ho ho ho. Let’s decide who with rock-paper-scissors. Yes, a nice fair game of rock-paper-scissors. C’mon, c’mon. Don’t look away. Let’s play on the count of three…ah!? Don’t teleport away!!”