Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 4===

“Not bad. It’s been a while since someone dodged three of my attacks in a row,” whispered the girl seated on a random cleaning robot.

She was enjoying the situation.

She wanted the dark side to continue because she could not live without this sort of excitement.

She tore objects from the buildings and threw them at her opponent: first a crane atop a building under construction, then a giant broadcasting parabolic antenna, and lastly a clear glass pool jutting out partway up a building. But none of them hit. She would have won right away if her opponent had acted out of pride and attempted a direct competition of strength, but once that opponent grew concerned she might be no match for this girl in pure power output, she had focused solely on dodging. That was the only reason she was still alive.

Maidono noticed the #3 briefly turn her head in a different direction while soaring through the air. They were currently engaged in a deadly battle, so that girl’s life was at risk. No one could look aside when they suddenly found a dump truck charging toward them.

So she must have spotted something important.

Something she thought she should prioritize over the death fast approaching her.

(So did she notice?)

If so, rushing into the crowded plaza and vanishing into the sea of Santas would not be enough. She had to kill that girl to fully cut off that line of investigation.

But more importantly…

“How should I spend my Christmas Eve?”

(I really want to get this all done with by 7 tonight. My school life might be built on lies, but I have made some promises. I do want to cut up those donuts with cheap plastic forks so we can all share them together.)

Light flashed up in the sky.

She could not avoid lightning by starting to run after seeing the light. Or she shouldn’t have been able to. But she was even humming as she slammed the heel of her boot against the side of the cleaning robot she was riding, causing a malfunction in the robot’s obstacle avoidance routine and making it move to the side. It only moved the length of a single human step to the side, but that was enough to cause an unnatural change in the lightning dropping vertically toward her. It instead split apart a Christmas tree located nearby. To intentionally use the tree as a lightning rod, she only had to picture a right triangle formed by the ground, the top of the tree, and her own position and adjust the angles to work out a safe distance for herself.

She even seemed to hear a tongue click from far overhead.

And now it was her turn.

“Found you.”

For fire safety purposes, some large wooden boxes were being carried to the rooftop using a window washing gondola instead of the indoor stairs or elevator. She “grabbed” at them and launched them to the side. Those containers were the size of a slender girl, so the #3 had to launch high-voltage spears from her bangs to blast them into pieces.

But did the #3 realize those boxes contained someone’s work tools?

A Japanese Christmas was far removed from the solemn atmosphere of a holy night.

Those electric attacks had triggered the professional fireworks meant for a countdown event during the night.

“Whew!!”

The Santa girl whistled while watching the tremendous explosion.

With a deafening boom, the midday sky was obscured by a whitish smokescreen. That might not be enough to kill the other girl, but fireworks used the principle behind a flame test, where specific materials would create flames of certain colors when ignited. And the materials used for fireworks were generally powdered copper, lithium, tin, or other metals.

Meaning…

(After the initial blast and flash of light, she has to contend with the smokescreen. That will blind her in the ordinary sense and it will also function as ''metal chaff'' that will mess with any microwave radar she might be using! And at that height, a single second’s delay can be deadly!!)

The explosive blast also destroyed a rooftop sign, but the girl only raised her index finger overhead. The metal sign had to weigh more than 20kg, but that was enough for it to come to a complete stop in midair. When she lightly swung her finger to the side, the sign sharply stabbed into a nearby concrete wall. She did it all as casually as operating a smartphone’s touchscreen.

Her Telekinesis was powerful enough to directly grab the underground structure spreading across the entire city and shake it hard enough to create a new fault line, so this actually qualified as delicate work for her. Stopping it was not the impressive part, holding it in place without crushing it was.

Telekinesis, aka psychokinesis.

That was such a popular ability that it was counted as one of the two major categories of esper power: PK and ESP. If someone was making a site or pamphlet meant for outside audiences, their primary examples would likely be using PK to bend spoons and ESP to read a face-down card. In fact, some academics even used telekinesis as a catch-all term for all powers that had physical effects, including teleportation and thoughtography. In the simplest form, it was the power to move objects with your mind.

Of those that could ''produce force out of nothing'', hers was probably the strongest.

The only reason she had not been given the title of Level 5 was because the adults saw no alternate uses or economic value in her power.

That power was too specialized for killing and destruction.

To the point that announcing her existence to the world could lead to as many international risks as announcing their possession of NBC weapons.

“Now, then.”

The blonde Santa looked over.

A portion of the polished glass was broken, so the target girl (who carried a silver-haired nun) had given up on clinging to the delicate wall and had apparently jumped inside a random room instead. It was not a bad adlib, but it was sorely underestimating the Santa girl’s power.

''Who ever said she could not destroy an entire 50-story building?

“The estimated number of deaths would be just under 2000. I do so love being freed from my usual restrictions about such things☆”

Maidono grinned and aimed her right index finger toward the entire building. And she pulled that finger straight down.

The skyscraper shrank to about half its height.

The destruction was much like crushing an empty can under the heel of your shoe.

But that was not her true attack. She was only setting the stage by bending all the doors and windows to seal her target within a giant cage. The humans within would not be dead. Not yet, anyway. Skyscrapers had a lot more gaps than the people walking through them thought. There were ducts, base isolation structures, cable pathways, and plumbing. Halving the height was not enough to crush the people within. Of course, they would be unable to stand and forced to crawl and the metal doors would be crushed and stuck in place, so it would certainly feel cramped.

(No sign of the target forcing open an exit and emerging. Well, she can’t rely on the original plans anymore. I’m sure she could blast through a concrete wall, but I bet she’s afraid of frying the people buried alive in there. Of course, that hesitation is only going to get everyone in the building crushed soon enough. Life is full of ironies, isn’t it?)

She only had to point her left index finger toward the building as well.

Maidono Hoshimi’s Telekinesis could crush that 50-story skyscraper to the size of a softball. The intense heat caused by the compression would make it glow like lava, but it would not even be allowed to drip down as a liquid. Just like the core of the earth was supposedly made of molten iron and nickel, yet it still managed to remain a solid.

But a moment later, she swung her left hand to the side in the exact same pose. The finger gun looked silly, but that was an absolute weapon coming from Maidono. Something had happened that forced her to aim that second trigger elsewhere. The Santa girl whispered a question while aiming at two targets at once like she was wielding dual handguns.

Her butt rose up from the cleaning robot and her boots touched the ground.

Playtime was over.

This irregularity was beyond what the stage magician’s recovery scenarios could handle.

“What brings you here?”

The threat took the form of a boy.

Bloody Kamijou Touma went ahead and answered her.

He used a word that did not at all suit Christmas Eve, when everyone was meant to be smiling together.

“Revenge.”