Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 4===

She was out of breath.

Surprisingly, it was Kinuhata Saiai who first gave up and stopped moving.

“Pant, pant. Why? I super don’t get how I could lose to Takitsubo-san.”

“Kinuhata, you’ve been running at an anaerobic sprinting pace. You only want to run all out until the enemy has lost sight of you. Then you switch to an aerobic marathon pace or you’ll wear yourself out.”

The difference in their dark side experience showed itself in these places.

And since Takitsubo couldn’t directly fight, failing to hide or escape would get her immediately killed. She would never get careless in those areas. Plus, the track suit girl was the kind of person who could float face down in the pool for a disturbingly long time.

“A-anyway, I made it. Cough, I super somehow managed to escape!!”

“Kinuhata. We need to check each other for injuries.”

“Eh? Huh?”

“You can’t check your own back, can you? When extreme exercise leaves the brain short on oxygen, your ordinary sense of pain can numb over, so it’s safer if we do a visual check of each other.”

“Ah, ah, wait! Help me, Mugino! Am I super trapped in this pattern where I get attacked right when I think I’m finally safe!?”

It was still 4 or 5 in the morning and no one was around, but a public road was no place to be stripping a girl. Nevertheless, Takitsubo performed the task calmly and expressionlessly.

“Mugino, Frenda disappeared.”

“Hey, don’t strip me! And wait, do we still have to go after her!? The Mugino Family is clearly the super real danger!!”

“Either way, I think we should run into Frenda if we pursue the Mugino Family.”

It didn’t matter if they did or did not have a reason to fight her.

If Frenda got scared and chucked a bomb their way, they would die. The real question was how Frenda viewed Item after they had been hunting her.

Was their enemy Frenda? Or the Mugino Family?

Mugino scratched irritably at her head.

“Tch. …If we can’t trust the Family, then we can’t use that hotel anymore. For that matter, Mujinayama arranged it for us, so Sakuya definitely knows all about it.”

They might as well have made an enemy of the entire city of Yokohama.

A decent number of the butlers and maids of the Management appeared to have joined Sakuya’s rebellion and it seemed unlikely the name of Mugino Shizuri would be enough to get the soldiers to open the way.

“…”

''“Listen, Shizuri-sama.”

An old memory returned to Mugino.

She had obtained her esper power in Academy City, but that old butler was at an even deeper part of her.

She remembered the time she had followed that butler into the winter mountains while carrying an old wood stock rifle (while very much inside Japan). Her target had been a large animal, but thinking back, he had been acting more as an instructor than a spotter.

''“Just as the recoil of firing a gun causes you to tense momentarily, all attacks give the enemy an opportunity. Whether close or long range, this is a common fact in all fields other than sniping.”

Mugino breathed out while concentrating Meltdowner in her palm.

(So Mujinayama is the enemy’s pawn. This is going to be a pain in the ass.)

The light in her palm vanished.

Her power was an ultra-powerful projectile. It was possible that old butler’s education had affected her psyche in a way that caused her control over electrons to manifest in that form.

Her attacks gave the enemy an opportunity.

In fact, Mujinayama’s martial arts had surpassed Academy City technology. Easily.

There was more that worried her.

“With Frenda staying on the run this long, they’ll probably be sending in another team before long.”

“Super meaning?”

“If we don’t do something soon, something’s going to happen inside Academy City.”

They all fell silent.

They had known Frenda’s Achilles heel from the beginning.

Item hadn’t played that card.

But not out of kindness.

If they relied on that and ''the unexpected happened'', it could greatly distort the nature of Frenda Seivelun’s villainy.

And there was nothing more frightening than a skilled villain who had succumbed to self-destructive thinking.