Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter1 (section)

===Part 2===

“Hm.”

“Queen?”

This was no longer about the pudding. Shokuhou Misaki knew that she would not be satisfied until she had settled things once and for all with that girl.

Without answering the question from Hokaze Junko (who had a vacant brainwashed look in her eyes thanks to the tearful and sulking Queen’s complete intolerance for NTR), Shokuhou twirled her TV remote.

She could not directly brainwash Misaka Mikoto with her Mental Out.

She tried aiming the remote at the ground but received no response. She could ordinarily read the residual thoughts from someone’s footprints on the ground, but something prevented her from doing that here.

(Does she burn some weak electricity into the ground too, destroying the residual thought? A lot like a novelty item that erases personal information from a letter by stamping it with a random assortment of alphanumeric characters☆)

After making some rough guesses, she aimed her remote at Hokaze.

''“''I know you must have eaten it, so you’d damn well better go and buy me a new ooooooooooooone''!!!”

The previous exchange played back in Shokuhou’s mind without issue.

The weird noise coming from Mikoto’s body and voice didn’t affect this.

“So I can’t brainwash or read anything from Misaka-san herself, but anything a third party saw or heard is untouched.”

“?”

Uncertain what this was about, Hokaze tilted her head,

It might seem basic, but knowing what your power could and couldn’t do was crucial. Shokuhou wanted to have that line clearly drawn before she was in a crisis. This took priority over pursuing Mikoto.

She could begin running at any time. ''Really, I can.

(Who else?)

What other pawns could she brainwash like Hokaze? She had plenty of girls in her clique, but giving them ordinary orders wouldn’t do much good if their morals or their basic fear of Mikoto got in the way.

Brainwashing them all would be more certain.

Shokuhou pressed the tip of the remote against her slender chin.

“Kobayashi-saaan.”

<nowiki><I</nowiki> am nearby.>

A voice sounded directly in her mind.

It belonged to Kobayashi Satori, a telepath and one of the Shokuhou Clique’s advisers.

However…

“Why are you hiding?”

<You seem on edge in this battle. Enough so to brainwash anyone you see “just in case”. Because our Queen does not believe in the goodness of basic human nature.>

The blonde girl clicked her tongue.

Kobayashi had seen right through her.

<nowiki><I</nowiki> will pursue Misaka-sama on my own and let you know once I locate her. Once I have linked with her, I can track her location. In military action, intelligence is more important than power. All the firepower in the world is meaningless if it can’t hit its target.>

“You do that☆”

<And if necessary, I will stay quiet on the link to spy on Misaka-sama’s thoughts. Being able to predict her actions should come in handy.>

“I would recommend against that. She lives in the world of binary where she converses with machines like it’s normal. Listening too deeply to her thought ability could fill your mind with unreadable data and noise, crashing your brain.”

Did Kobayashi’s silence mean that had scared her?

The basic rules were as follows:

Mental Out did not work against Misaka Mikoto, but witness information could be gathered from third parties.

Hokaze Junko would participate in the conversation, but she had been brainwashed into a mindless yes man.

Shokuhou would brainwash all of her allies. How well they got along was irrelevant.

“Okay, Hokaze-san, let’s get this chase started☆”

“Yes, Queen.”