Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 14===

She had found them.

Ladybird planted her hands and feet on the cold concrete ground while she located her target again.

She did not know how this would help her. If she captured them, her horrific feast would begin. But she could not stop herself.

She could not change this about herself. She could not escape her fate, just like a drowning person would subconsciously swim toward the surface.

…Even though she had wanted to protect the humans.

She would eat them.

This suffering would never end unless she consumed a human brain.

…Even though she was supposed to free those children from the darkness by lying on the dissection table herself.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Her vision blurred.

But even her tears were scattered by the blowing wind of her great speed.

Even during unstable bipedal movement, she could rival a V12 engine at max RPMs, so her top speed had increased even further now that she had abandoned her dignity as a girl and gained the efficiency of a machine.

It did not matter if they were an adult or a child.

Puny human legs could never escape her.

She pursued her target as accurately as a precision-guided weapon. She charged toward those distinctive gym clothes.

Handgun bullets attacked her from the side. Even after all this, she had not let go of the thick machete. And without any obstacles in the way, firing on her was suicide. She could accurately kill the shooter with the ricochet by adjusting the angle of her weapon.

Or so she thought.

Instead, the reaction speed of her right hand had slowed by 0.5 seconds.

“?”

That was a devastating delay.

The storm of lead hit her and she tumbled along the ground. A 9mm round was not enough to destroy her bones or muscles—the problem was her speed. The impact from the side easily knocked her off balance and she broke through two or three concrete columns along the way.

But what was this?

What had happened? She had been moving on all fours, but that had not affected her right arm’s movable range. When she checked, she found no report of her movement performance having dropped.

The problem must have come before that.

She finally realized there had been an error in her targeting.

A whitish smoke was filling the entire circular space.

It was a smokescreen.

(It can’t be.)

More gunfire. She immediately readied her machete, but that did not work when she could only respond after the fact. She could not protect herself and the bullets slipped past the weapon to slam into her body.

“Gahhh!!”