Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

For Index, Quenser Barbotage, Jinnai Shinobu (Status Effect: Freeze), the Yuki Onna, Anzai Kyousuke, and the Killer Queen of the standby team, it was obvious what they had to do first.

Quenser pointed at the colossal weapon known as an Object that towered over fifty meters tall in the distance.

“Let’s think of a way to contact our Princess. If that dragon thing shows up again, it makes a huge difference whether we can use the Baby Magnum or not.”

“You say that.” Anzai Kyousuke frowned. “But the only person here who would know about radios and transmissions would be you. I’m just a college student, so I don’t know much about the hardware or the software.”

“Not to worry, not to worry. If you’re a student, you’re the same as me. In fact, you’re above me if you’re in college. Things like the relationship that radio waves and reflected waves have with a vertical rod are required material for just about any major these days, right? So help me out here.”

“This is hopeless. There’s something wrong with your standards.”

“Eh? But it’s no different from the TV antennae you see on the roofs of houses.”

“Either way, that isn’t something you do ‘while you’re at it’ like getting a teaching license. Can anyone else help?”

Anzai looked around, but the Yuki Onna was rubbing her cheek against Cold Sleep Shinobu’s ice coffin with a look of ecstasy, Index was dangerously muttering “shaved ice”, and Satsuki raised the danger to 120% by saying “I don’t have much detailed knowledge outside of human anatomy.” The situation was tragic enough to make Anzai wonder if anyone here was any help at all. He felt like he was in a nursery.

“My radio seems to be working without issue.”

Quenser messed with his device while approaching the Baby Magnum, so the other members decided to follow him.

“Which means the problem is probably on the Baby Magnum’s end.”

“How are we supposed to check on that?” asked Anzai Kyousuke while tilting back his head as far as it would go.

The machine was fifty meters tall, the spherical main body had an upside-down Y-shaped static electricity propulsion device attached to the bottom, and seven arms with seven main cannons extended from the rear joint. To a puny human standing less than two meters tall, even climbing up it would be difficult.

It was a massive and dense collection of steel. On that scale, it could have easily used up an entire mine’s worth.

The Killer Queen turned her gaze from the spherical main body and to the one hundred or so various cannons pointing in every direction.

“Where are its antennae?”

“It has a few specialized ones, but the armor panels and cannon barrels also function as auxiliary antennae. Just assume each cannon has multiple targeting cameras, sensors, and radars.”

Faced with that legitimate tool of war, that killer from a peaceful country concluded it would be best to give up on trying to understand that monster’s specs.

She then asked another question.

“Is there anything specific we can help with?”

“I’d like some advice on how to climb up.”

He heard a sound much like a whip cracking at the air. It came from Satsuki. Something like a black belt had appeared in her hand at some point. It was a ring of rubber that worked far better than a bicycle tire. One end was wrapped around the bridge-like main cannon passing by overhead.

Before anyone could say a word, the Killer Queen moved her hand again.

More rubber belts wrapped around the bodies of Quenser, Anzai Kyousuke, and the others on the ground.

“Wha-…?”

There was no time to protest.

After a short lag of only a few moments, the tightly stretched rubber released all of the gathered force so it could return to normal. The six people (one of them in ice) flew up into the air.

They ascended the fifty meters in about 1.3 seconds.

Quenser felt an unpleasant sensation like his ears were clogged.

“Ugweh!!”

The next thing he knew, he was standing on top of one of the seven main cannons.

He looked around in confusion, but Satsuki spoke to him with calm eyes.

“Now, do your investigation.”

“It isn’t often I meet a woman more dangerous than our commander,” he muttered while jogging along the metal bridge that was the cannon.

He was making his way toward the base. His simple handheld toolbox was something like a multi-tool knife, so he could not exactly use it to take apart and investigate sensitive military equipment.

But after touching and investigating the main cannon’s targeting sensors by hand, he was able to reach a conclusion.

“The cameras and sensors themselves are working. They’re focusing on my movements.”

“What does that mean?”

“We don’t have time to check all of the antennae and sensors. If I did that alone, it would seriously take over a month. But if the ones here are working, it probably isn’t a hardware issue. You could say the wiring inside is like a spider web or built to work in parallel or whatever, but it means severing a wire somewhere isn’t going to keep the signal from getting through. In that case, is it an internal problem? In other words, a software issue?”

“You still haven’t answered what all that means.”

“I can’t determine the cause or find a way to fix it. With my handheld device, it would take days to search through the massive amount of control scripts in the Object. Plus, I’m not a programming specialist.”

“So there’s nothing we can do?” asked an annoyed Anzai Kyousuke.

Satsuki tilted her head.

“Can you open the hatch from the outside?”

Quenser shrugged at that.

“An official maintenance soldier would know how, but the method is top secret. They wouldn’t tell a battlefield student that.”

It was obvious if you thought about it, but having a weapon that could withstand a nuke would be meaningless if just anyone could open it up. It would be a problem if it could be kicked open like a bike lock.

“So what does that mean? Are we stuck?”

Anzai placed a hand over his eyes and stared into the distance. He was probably worried that the dragon might come back. Several mountains cut off their view of the horizon, but they were all perfectly shaped pyramids.

Index must have been hungry already because she had lost her energy, but she spoke up now.

“Can’t you wave your hands at it instead of using that ‘radio’ thing?”

“Wave my hands?”

Quenser frowned, so Index extended her arms perfectly straight and then methodically bent them at right angles.

He finally realized what she meant.

“Semaphore?”