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

===Part 17===

Ladybird was not the only one with their target in sight.

Hamazura Shiage accurately aimed his handgun.

“You didn’t like it when I fired on you from behind earlier, did you? Almost like you didn’t want a bullet getting inside that ‘mouth’ on your back.”

The weak were always observant.

The only way to make up for the difference in strength was to search out a weakness.

“And when you were engulfed in flames by that gasoline, you extinguished it with a swing of your machete. That was pretty scary at first glance, but if it really couldn’t harm you, you wouldn’t need to put out the flames, would you?”

He had not used the smokescreen to reduce the effectiveness of her sensors just to hit her with a few useless 9mm bullets.

But making that attack had convinced her that was all it was for.

This was the smokescreen’s true purpose.

The curtain of smoke had let her see the gym clothes without realizing they were on a metal drum and he had baited her into trying to eat that.

Plus, he had already proven that the handgun bullets were enough to ignite the contents of those metal drums.

He fired repeatedly toward her back.

Toward the centerline down her back that resembled the zipper on a costume. The oversized target prevented her from fully closing her back, so he only had to fire on that gap as if shoving the bullets on in there.

The metal drum she had taken into herself now expanded within her.

It exploded.

When the intense boom echoed out from her, he knew he had won. The blast and shockwave were enough to blow away the smokescreen.

He wished he had not seen what remained afterwards.

He was the one who had caused those remains to be strewn across the ground here.

“Hamazura!!”

“I’m fine.”

He bit his lip with the small revolver still in hand.

“Her head moved weirdly in the smokescreen there,” he said. “And then that scream. ''Something other than her mechanical thought process kicked in.'' Without that, I don’t think the metal drum would have tricked her.”

Her attack had been running off of a program, so maybe the parameters could be overwritten and the attributes could be switched on and off.

“She must have remembered something.”

He hung his head and looked down instead of at his girlfriend.

Something was lying on the ground there.

“So in that final moment, she did what she could to save those kids.”

The girl’s head had rolled over toward him and it looked to him like she was smiling.

Because now she would never have to kill again.