Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth8 (section)

===Part 3===

It was a lot like a roller coaster.

As soon as it was released from the guide rail at more than 250km/h, the fuselage shook. It was thrown out into empty air without even the bare minimum of safety assurance. The blue ocean raced by just 7m below.

If it contacted those rolling waves, it would be torn to pieces.

(Whoa!?)

Mikoto quickly adjusted her grip on the control column.

But while it wobbled at first, everything was fine after she lifted the nose just a bit and began a slow climb. The shaking settled down after the landing gear was stored away. The ground effect and extra air resistance must have been the problem.

“That was scary… But huh. So this is the mysterious Japanese stealth fighter? It isn’t hard to control at all.”

“Misaka-saaan.”

A voice arrived on the radio.

The solid footsteps joining the voice suggested the girl was walking with a small radio in hand.

“Oops. We didn’t decide on a call sign, so I used your real name over the air.”

“You can’t convince me that wasn’t intentional, Shokuhou.”

“What was that – payback? Anyway, the enemy is about 100km northwest. I’m on my way to the CIC, but with the Shinshin’s top speed, you might be done before I even settle down in the command chair. …Wait, um, Misaka-saaan? Wait!!”

“The enemy’s to the northwest! Then I’ll just make a quick turn in that direc–––––!?”

Mikoto’s vision whited out.

Everything sounded like it was coming from a great distance.

She couldn’t seem to remember where she was or what she was doing. Like some gear in her head had slipped out of place…?

(H…………u…………h…………?)

She had a feeling not doing anything would be very bad, but she couldn’t seem to conjure up any idea of why that was.

“…ne……………sa………”

She heard something from somewhere.

While just barely clinging to consciousness, she focused her mind in that direction.

It immediately transformed into a voice.

“Onee-sama!! You need to grab onto the control column immediately! Do you want to stall out and die!?”

“Oh, whoa!?”

Oh, right. She was piloting a fighter craft!

It probably hadn’t taken even 5 seconds. But in a supersonic fighter, that was enough for her surroundings to entirely change. She took a hurried look around and checked her coordinates on the small monitor.

Thoughtlessly swinging the craft around had pulled the blood down from her brain and nearly knocked her out. Yes, Misaka Mikoto was wearing her usual summer uniform. She had left in a hurry, so she wasn’t wearing a thick anti-g suit!

(Oxygen. Where’s the mask? Is this it? Urp, it’s gotta be this small tube hanging from my ear like a hands-free mic!!)

“I-I was wrong. This isn’t easy… What genius built a machine with no care for how the human body works?”

And that wasn’t the only source of surprise.

Something was flying alongside her.

The single-engine fighter was smaller than the Shinshin. It looked a bit like an F-16, but the details were a little different. Was that a Japanese-made F-2A?

And that was her underclassman seated in the cockpit.

“K-Kuroko? Why are you up here too!?”

“I am here as well!”

“Whoa!?” shouted Mikoto.

Another F-2A flew on her other side. Piloted by Hokaze Junko. They were only a few meters apart, making this look like some kind of acrobatic flying. Their IFF signals had them tagged as friendly, but Mikoto still should have been paying more attention to her radar.

As the oxygen made its way into her brain, Mikoto’s mind and vision gradually cleared.

“That was a very good decision for short notice, Shirai-sama. When Misaka-sama wasn’t responding to your hails, I never would have thought to detonate an air-to-air missile just outside of the lethal range☆”

“Kuroko.”

“You would have had a one-way trip to hell if you hadn’t woken up.”

Mikoto hadn’t been following all the details since she had passed out for a bit, but why had Shirai and Hokaze taken off as well? They couldn’t tame the machine with their powers in the same way Mikoto could.

“It is admittedly risky, but, well, I was too worried letting you do it on your own, Onee-sama.”

“…Oh.”

“Yes, I was worried you would get so carried away you skipped straight past threats and warnings and went for the kill right away.”

“Oh, I see how it is! Anyway, Kuroko, why are you wearing that formfitting suit? It’s pink! That’s not any anti-g suit I’m familiar with!”

“You would be surprised if you saw what the carrier is equipped with.”

“And, Misaka-sama, I do not want a lecture on common sense from someone who took off in a fighter wearing her school uniform. I’m not even sure boosting my muscles with Rampage Dress would be enough to avoid blacking out.”

It sounded like both of the others were wearing full-body tights that showed off all of their curves. Had the threat to their lives overpowered their teenage shame?

Meanwhile, something passed them by from up ahead.

It was 1000m below them.

It was skimming just off the ocean surface, yet something like a skinny contrail stretched sharply behind it.

That was a missile’s rocket smoke.

“M-Misaka-sama!? Something just flew rapidly by us…they must have launched another anti-ship missile toward the carrier!”

“Don’t, Hokaze-san. You can’t catch up to the Harpoon by making a U-turn now. Shokuhou and the others on the carrier will have to shoot it down!”

“Ughh, Misaka-san, you’re asking the impossible…”

“Shut up, Shokuhou. If you screw it up, you’ll sink along with the wreckage of the carrier, so do it like your life depends on it. …We’ll be shutting off the source, so this third missile will be the last!!”

Now wasn’t the time to be chatting.

In the supersonic world, you covered more than 330m every single second. How far would they travel in the time it took to have a conversation lasting just a few minutes? Time wasn’t money – it was life.

“20 kilometers to the target,” said Shokuhou. “If the air is clear, you should be entering visual range. It’s almost time!”

“Kh.”

“First, give a warning. Next, get a radar lock. If that doesn’t work, use some warning fire with your machine gun to obstruct their course. Don’t shoot their engine or main wings right away. And no trying to look cool by blowing them to smithereens with a missile. I know how you think, Misaka-saaan!!”

“Why does everyone see me that way?”

Mikoto sighed while looking between the dot on her radar and the actual blue sky.

An object was approaching from 20km ahead.

This was a scale not normally experienced living in a city.

But.

What was that?

…It only looked like a sesame seed at this distance, but was it a transport ship? A bomber? No, neither of those fit what she was seeing. It was shaped more like…huh???

Something shot right past her.

Very close by.

A moment later, her craft shook violently up and down. She hadn’t been attacked. That was only a sonic boom, the shockwave created when breaking the sound barrier.

Meaning…

“Something just passed us? Is there someone else out there!?”

“Wait. Nothing is showing up on ra-”

“It’s stealth. We should break formation and scatter before it can make a U-turn and get on our tails, Onee-sama!!”

Shokuhou seemed upset that Shirai had interrupted her.

The situation had changed.

The large bomber or something was launching long-range anti-ship missiles from a distance, but it had an escort.

Whatever the case, they couldn’t just ignore the craft that had passed them. If the unidentified stealth craft made a U-turn, it could get on their unguarded tails. Then it could fire on them with air-to-air missiles, a machine gun, or whatever else. Unlike a race at a school athletic festival, whoever was behind had the advantage in a dogfight.

Mikoto’s Shinshin and Shirai and Hokaze’s F-2As had been bunched together in formation, but now they each turned at different angles. They each took a fishook-like course. Together, they looked like a giant blossoming flower.

Mikoto knew she wasn’t supposed to push herself too hard, but she still felt a great squeezing at her lungs. A dull pain throbbed in her head and darkness crept in from the sides of her vision. She smelled blood in the back of her nose.

(I really should’ve changed before taking off.)

The unidentified craft appeared to have chosen to pursue Shirai, but that meant ignoring the other two. Mikoto’s Shinshin twirled around and then turned further to get behind the unidentified craft pursuing Shirai.

Shirai would die if an air-to-air missile was fired on her.

“We’re past the point of warnings and thre-!! …???”

Mikoto started to shout on reflex, but she suddenly stopped.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating due to lack of blood and oxygen to her brain, but apparently not.

She was really seeing that in this supersonic world.

The unidentified craft pursuing her underclassman Shirai Kuroko’s F-2A was…

A butt.

A girl’s butt was flying there.

“Wha- bu- huh? Am I being influenced by a secret weapon that directly influences my mind with EM waves or low frequency sound?”

“Do not worry, Misaka-sama. That looks like a flying butt to me as well.”

“Don’t say that in such a matter-of-fact way!! What the hell is that!?”

In plain terms, this is what she saw.

There was more than just a butt. The whole body was there. Mikoto was chasing after a mystery girl who was flying in a prone position. The girl looked to be 14 or 15. Her hair was done up in long rolled twintails.

She wore a formfitting suit which resembled a long-sleeved black leotard.

Aerodynamic metal weaponry was attached to her from the top.

Specifically, a sturdy metal joint was attached from her back to the rear of her hips. Different blocks – the nose, the main wings, the engine, etc. – were attached to that.

It almost looked like she was wearing a weaponized backpack, but that probably wasn’t what this was. It had no shoulder straps. The hip joint was directly connected to her at three points: the pelvis and the shoulder blades. It also looked like her arms past the wrists and her legs up to the base of the thighs were actually machines capable of smooth movement.

Flat metal circled around from the bottom of the wings to her stomach, but rather than armor, that was probably the weapons bay used to store missiles.

Most likely, she communicated using signals coming from her tailbone or something. Whether those were neurotransmitter signals or binary 0s and 1s, who could say.

However.

“Sh-she’s huge!?”

Mikoto was not making a rude comment about a girl she had only just meant.

The girl really was huge.

With nothing for comparison, it was easy to lose one’s sense of scale with the blue sky acting like a green screen, but the flying girl wasn’t all that different in size from Shirai’s fighter.

That meant the mystery supersonic butt girl had to be between 15 and 20 meters tall!?

“Now that’s surreal. And that fleeing butt is wiggling side to side to escape my radar lock. But she’s still pursuing Kuroko, so if she weren’t a butt, this would be a serious threat to our lives.”

“You’re not making any sense, Onee-sama!? I have several alarms sounding in here!!”

The radar LCD displayed a dot and some text. The position was shifting a lot, but even if EM-based radar wasn’t working, Mikoto was close enough for her fighter to display a prediction based on visual and thermo data. The mechanically-acquired data must have been used in conjunction with the carrier’s server data.

Mikoto’s phone-based habits led her to tap the dot to display more information.

IFF: Enemy

Estimated Model: F-22A

What the hell?

That was the computer-estimated identity?

Mikoto was finally rendered speechless. But apparently the visual, the engine exhaust heat, the air current disturbance, the radar absorption rate, and all the other data had been analyzed by the carrier’s computer to make this prediction.

It was a dark craft.

It’s stealth allowed it to slip past not just a fighter but an aircraft carrier’s early-warning radar.

It was designed to store all of its weaponry on the inside to preserve its stealth capabilities.

It used its thrust vectoring nozzles to supply the speed and mobility needed to easily stay on the tail of a fleeing F-2A.

It was a stable and powerful craft.

This checked all the boxes.

If not for the ridiculous image of a giant butt in a long-sleeved black leotard, then this was indeed an F-22A!!

“Th-this is ridiculous. How can a butt that round still have high level stealth capability!?”

“Come to think of it, Misaka-sama, we all woke up on the carrier, but we don’t actually know where we are. That is, we know we were on the carrier, but we don’t know where the carrier is.”

(It’s not just the F-22A. I wasn’t imagining it when I saw the bomber.)

“…”

(I don’t know if that was supposed to be a B-1B or a Tu-160, but that was definitely ''a 40m blonde woman'' wearing a tank top and bike shorts!!)

“Does that mean ''we’re in another world'' that’s just like this?” asked Shirai.