Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Chapter1 (section)

===Part 2===

School was out for the week.

Shirai Kuroko left the School Garden and walked through the evening city. With the weekend coming up, the boys and girls headed for the shopping district had a spring in their steps.

Shirai wished she could join them. Oh how badly she wished it.

(If I skip out on it, she would only contact the dorm manager. Then my sealed room of love and desire would be completely wasted. I just know that terrifying dorm manager would kick down the door in her anger. Kh, I shouldn’t have done it at home!!)

Preventing Konori Mii from calling would mean fighting that busty glasses girl anyway. And trying to physically stop the non-busty glasses dorm manager was a fool’s errand. Strategize all she liked, she would never find a solution to that one. Why did her daily school life have to include impossible problems like that?

That meant the best case scenario was defeating Konori Mii in a single blow today and gaining her freedom right away. If absolutely necessary, she could treat Saturday as a spare day and use that to finish the battle. Then she could finally begin her death game of love with her beloved Onee-sama on Sunday!!

“Sigh.”

(Really, a Tokiwadai student shouldn’t be walking along the streets like this at all. It’s just so easy to forget that when Onee-sama, Shokuhou Misaki, and others at the top ignore the school buses and move around however they like.)

Konori was apparently waiting at a Judgment training facility in District 7. Shirai just knew the blazer glasses girl was standing tall at the center of the dojo with her arms crossed. With a snort of excitement about the coming fight, of course. Even Shirai Kuroko was a little scared of thoughtlessly challenging her to a fair fight. So what else could she do? She had time before she arrived, so she wanted to work out a strategy now.

She started with the basic information.

(Konori-''senpai''. The problem is she really is skilled enough to warrant that honorific from me.)

Konori Mii was a high school girl who also worked for Judgment.

They went to different schools, but they still saw each other often enough since they both worked in District 7. She had a slim build and big boobs that seemed to show how much more mature she was, but her glossy, shoulder-length black hair and intellectual glasses gave her the appearance of the diligent honor student. She did just as good at school as that impression would suggest, so the teachers had to like her.

But Shirai Kuroko was most interested in her esper power.

Level 3 Clairvoyance.

That was lower level than Shirai’s Level 4 Teleportation, but the numerical value didn’t mean much with such different genres of power. Academy City preferred not to lump all esper powers into the two general categories of ESP and PK, but such a plain example of ESP could be a pain to deal with.

Her power let her see through objects. A very simple description.

But what did that really mean?

How exactly did she see through things? Did the material or thickness matter? Was a liquid or solid easier to see through than the other? Did she have an easier time seeing through a concrete wall a meter in front of her or a single piece of paper 100 meters away? When she saw through something, did the thing completely vanish from her view, or did she still see it as translucent? What happened if something else moved in front of something she was looking through? Etc., etc.

Shirai didn’t know any of those specific conditions. She worked with Konori on a regular basis, where they watched each other’s backs as they captured and arrested criminals. Konori had directly told her a fair amount about her power. But was that really everything? Couldn’t she have forgotten to mention something because she knew it all so well herself?

The rules were easy to grasp and share with something physical like the Railgun. You could see it happen, you could measure its effects with precision equipment, and you could analyze the footage in super slow motion to determine its range, its power, and how far you needed to escape to be safe. But with precognition, telepathy, and other ESP powers that only activated in the esper’s head, it was really hard to tell how incredible the power was at a glance. But it was definitely there.

Think of it like chess.

When lining up all the pieces and staring at the board, you would want to analyze the situation 100 moves in advance and choose the best possible piece, but what if your opponent placed a piece you had never seen before on the board? What if they explained how that Sentai-style rubber monster moved, but you didn’t understand what that meant? Could you really come up with a winning strategy? What if you thought you had the perfect defense in place and then one piece suddenly warped to the other side of the board? That one unexpected move would cause your entire strategy to fall apart.

“Yes.”

After some thought, Shirai Kuroko nodded all on her own.

She had arrived at the Judgment training facility, a boxy building that looked like a somewhat fancier city gym. She was pretty sure it was also used for naginata and aikido tournaments. She showed her armband to the adult gate guard, walked in, and saw a sign saying to take a left and walk 150m to reach Martial Arts Dojo 1.

(Since the presence of an uncertain piece prevents me from using the standard moves, the margin of error will grow the longer the battle lasts and that will ultimately lead to disaster.)

In that case…

She slowly breathed in, out, stopped, and focused her mind.

She Teleported into thin air.

She was limited to distances within 81.5m and weights less than 130.7kg.

''So 50m was already within her movement range.

“Sharahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

She moved to the very center of the tatami-covered Martial Arts Dojo 1 where Konori Mii awaited. The black-haired glasses girl really was standing tall in her uniform with her arms crossed. Shirai Kuroko appeared 4m above and behind her and sent a dropkick toward the back of her head.

If she feared the unpredictable margin of error, then her best bet was to end this before it went on too long.

She needed to launch a speedy strike.

“How dare you interrupt my weekend death game of love with Onee-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

Dffdfaiuerbwlkgvbah!?

The resultant impact was so loud the young woman with a crew cut and a model’s figure doing indoor weight training and the Yamato Nadeshikos engaged in a fierce aikido battle with their hakamas rubbing together gasped and looked to the center of the martial arts dojo.

The girl there had shoulder-length black hair and intellectual glasses.

Without a single wrinkle or stain on her blazer uniform, Konori Mii smiled and pushed down with her heel. That was of course a lovely gift for the back of defeated Shirai Kuroko’s head.

Thus spoke the smiling busty glasses girl: “''I could see you''☆”

“U-ugh? O-of course you could.”

To turn the uncertain into the certain, Shirai made a mental note of what she had learned.

Konori Mii’s Clairvoyance could accurately see through reinforced concrete walls to detect an assassin silently approaching from 50m away.