Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth4 (section)

===Part 1===

The sun blazed in the open sky above the blue sea.

Misaka Mikoto, now in her summer uniform, sounded like she could barely believe what she was saying as she looked out across the land visible from Camouflaged Cruiser Izanami’s deck.

“Sky Pirate Island?”

Now this was sounding like another world.

YF-22A, who had taken the large elevator up from the maintenance hangar to the landing runway, shrugged.

“It’s just a place not affiliated with any of the world powers where anyone who can pay the necessary fees can get their aircraft and ships refueled and maintained. It’s just that their clientele includes smugglers and sky pirates.”

YF-22A had guided them here.

This world’s continent was roughly shaped like a Y, so undersea cables allowed for the shortest distance when laying out hotlines between the countries. And with tens of thousands of kilometers, the maintenance was not cheap.

As the carrier and landing ship traveled along one of those undersea cables, they arrived at a small island in the otherwise empty ocean.

On the paper maps, it was a forgotten island without any markers for even a village or port.

Yet it had an awful lot of artificial structures.

It was in fact a relay base for the hotline that secretly linked the world powers. Joint security by a coalition force sounded nice, but it actually meant the place was a mixture of soldiers from all three world powers with none of them clearly in charge.

Which meant none of those countries’ laws really applied.

That created a lot of legal and surveillance loopholes that allowed illicit businesses to thrive. While handing generous quantities of cash to the soldiers under the table, of course.

And so the Izanami and Izanagi were making use of it too.

As far as Mikoto could tell from the deck, each individual shop was small. A lot of them reused military containers or metal tanks. Cylindrical tanks had been been sliced into rectangular walls with burners and then forcibly remade into shops. Many shops like that were crammed into not much space, creating a complex terrain.

It was a chaotic but lively scene. A lot of people were moving about and disarmed armored vehicle and tank girls were raising and lowering cargo containers like loaders or cranes. It was a mystery which military they had originally belonged to or who owned them now, but the (former?) Girlish Weapons had the satisfied looks of someone who had worked up a nice sweat.



“Chow time. Nothing like a good meal to reward yourself for a hard day of work.”

“Damn, they use better fuel here than they did in the military. Makes me want to work even harder.”



They appeared happy.

The Izanami was camouflaged as a cruise ship, but most of the crew still disembarked into the city. This underground city might have been a little much for some light window shopping, but the Tokiwadai girls were all at least Level 3. Even if they did run into some minor trouble, it was the criminals who would end up hurt.

For now, relieving their fatigue mattered most.

They could wait until later to work out all the mistakes highlighted by Shirai’s crash.

“What will you be doing now?” YF-22A asked Mikoto.

The digital counter aboard the landing ship had 18 days remaining.

They could not hide on this Sky Pirate Island forever. While there was a tacit understanding here, word of their presence could get out at any time. It didn’t even have to be done maliciously. A warship that wasn’t a colossal girl was an unusual sight in this world, so it would lead to rumors.

18 days was a long time.

They could rest and resupply here, but then what?

Misaka Mikoto had her answer.

“We bring down the Liheilstaut Empire.”