Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 14===

Yomikawa Aiho clicked her tongue.

The equipment in the Central Boiler’s general steam control room had survived, but none of the six remaining boilers responded to anything they did in that room lined with the CRT monitors only found in this district.

One of the workers explained.

“The equipment here is all working. It isn’t malfunctioning, but the steam isn’t reaching the condensers… My guess is the distribution board is to blame. We need to head there and fix it.”

“Distribution board?”

Even as Yomikawa asked, she realized it had to be like a fuse box but for steam instead of electricity.

“Where is it? Tell me and I’ll go check it!”

“But…”

“There’s no time! Which is going to take more work: a small distribution board on the wall or this entire giant general steam control room? And to be blunt, it doesn’t look like there’s much for me to do here!!”

The worker nodded a few times at that.

“I’ll sketch you a simple map. Thanks. The boilers can’t stand this much pressure for long. We’ll have a chain reaction of ruptures in the surviving ones soon!”

Yomikawa Aiho grabbed her radio and stepped out the door.

There was so much white steam.

Had the damage to the facility progressed since she arrived in the room?

The 400-degree steam burst from the walls and ceiling as sharp as blades. Even if it didn’t directly hit her, it made the entire space as hot as a sauna. She wouldn’t be killed right away, but it was sapping her stamina.

The spraying steam made it hard to hear the voice from the radio. But then a loud voice came from the facility’s speakers.

“I’m amazed you decided to rush in here with everything going on. Personally, I have half a mind to run away.”

“But you haven’t run away, have you? So we’re not that different. You see, I have some ''freeloaders'' living with me and I want to protect their home. With people’s lives in my care, I can’t half-ass it.”

(Can’t go this way either.)

Even on the way to the general steam control room, they had encountered a few unopenable metal doors. Instead of the force of the explosion bending the doors, it seemed like they were automatic doors that used steam rather than electricity to open. That meant all the steam erupting from the pipes worked against her. Without sufficient pressure supplied to the doors, they couldn’t open. It was actually an adaption of a 2000-year-old invention known as Heron’s steam turbine.

She broke the hinges with her gun and kicked down the door.

That was a convenient tool for opening any door in here, but firing too recklessly could break a thin pipe and trigger a steam explosion nearby.

Something the size of a rugby ball – probably some kind of drone – was ejecting steam to weave across the floor.

The steam-powered lift was unusable. Yomikawa grabbed some rags from the ground and used them like potholders to grab the metal ladder. Several things exploded as she climbed. Sharp shards flew like flying disks and stabbed into the wall much too close for comfort.

The steam obscured her vision more than she had expected.

She had a hastily sketched map, but she felt like she would get lost even with it.

And she wasn’t looking for a special room. It was only a thin metal box attached to a corridor wall.

Finally, she found it.

“That must be the distribution board!!”

“It’s simple enough to operate. Open the cover and you should see 16 levers. Since our commands aren’t getting through, something must have moved some of the levers. Maybe one of the explosions and maybe the vibration of the steam hitting the wall. The levers have two options: up or down. The pattern we want is YNYNYYYNYNNYYYNY. Look for any that are wrong and flip them to the correct position. That should give us back control! And if you can, use tape or something to fix them in place!!”

She found them.

Three of the levers were in the wrong position.

“If I fix these…”

The ceiling exploded.

Yomikawa jumped back as the white steam passed sharply in front of her. Like a dropping guillotine or shutter. She could feel the 400-degree ferocity raising the air temperature in the corridor.

A voice practically screamed out of the speakers.

“Yomikawa-san! Please respond! Boiler #5 isn’t going to last much longer! You need to hurry!”

The worker couldn’t see the situation here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that.

400-degree steam was blocking the way right in front of her. A human would be boiled to the bone by that. She couldn’t even entertain silly ideas about slipping through a gap in the erupting steam.

But if someone didn’t do it, the boiler would rupture. Then the reinforced concrete barrier surrounding them at 3 kilometers would be destroyed by the steam pressure. And everyone working so hard to prevent that would be obliterated along with it.

Could she really let that happen?

(I think this really might be the end for me.)

Yomikawa Aiho honestly accepted that.

But the distribution board was within arm’s reach. Operate that and she could save everyone.

So she had to act.

Misaka Worst, Last Order…and Accelerator.

Academy City was far from a peaceful utopia. It had plenty of flaws. But this was the city that had raised those children. They deserved to smile after everything that had been taken from them. She couldn’t just go, ‘Welp, the city’s destroyed, so that’s that. Bye.” and leave the debt unpaid.

She was afraid to die. Which was why Yomikawa Aiho reminded herself she wanted to be the kind of person who could look those kids in the eye.

So move. Do it.

She was Anti-Skill. She had to focus only on protecting the city.