Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth1 (section)

===Part 4===

They rushed back to the carrier like their lives depended on it.

It had been a scouting mission, so they had achieved their objective.

But they sure didn’t feel successful.

As soon as she landed, Mikoto asked a question of Awatsuki who was helping with the work.

“Where did the Ruler go!?”

“E-east. Or that’s what everyone’s saying.”

“…”

Did that mean the United States of Narmeli had lost the gamble they started?

The Ruler had begun slowly moving toward the instigators, not toward the Republic to the south. If they hadn’t tried anything, she might have stayed there in the ruined center of the continent.

It was easy to call that their just deserts, but the United States had plenty of cities full of innocent people.

Mikoto couldn’t let those people be trampled.

“First, we need to figure out what the data we gathered tells us.”

“Bleh…”

“C’mon, scheming Queen. Stop melting onto the floor and get your butt down to the CIC!”

Mikoto headed down into the carrier while dragging along exhausted Shokuhou whose hair was a complete mess. They still didn’t have time to change out of their flight suits. They passed Watanabe-sensei on the way.

A bob cut upperclassman was waiting for them.

“We have combined the data from all four fighters and begun the analysis…but we honestly don’t know much of anything.”

Shirai and Hokaze joined them too.

YF-22A was too large to fit in the CIC, but they had set up a tall LCD screen for her. The camera-equipped monitor had been in the cruise ship area and it was meant to display an avatar store clerk. When displayed at that size, she really did look like a human girl.

Kobayashi got started.

“The Ruler’s body temperature is a bit higher than a human’s and we detected carbon dioxide coming from her mouth and nose. That means she does breathe. On the other hand, we haven’t seen her blink even though she does have eyelids. It’s possible she doesn’t need to protect her eyes. Her pupils dilate and constrict, so they probably aren’t just decoys like the eye patterns on a moth’s wings.”

They had never seen a life form with sturdy eyes. They had to throw out the idea that eyeballs were always a weak point.

Kobayashi displayed a few photos and small numbers on the display.

“At first glance, the Ruler appears to have a humanoid structure. She is a girl, after all. But observing her movements, her joints don’t seem to matter. And when she bends backwards, we can’t see the position of her ribs or organs through her skin. She is too perfect. Unnaturally so.”

That made it sound like they were out of options. It had been bad enough hearing the eyes wouldn’t be a weak point, but now they couldn’t even trust in the general idea of sniping her head or heart from a distance.

“I really don’t want to think of her as a single soft mass of flesh that happens to be shaped like a girl.”

“Agreed. She has a mouth and nose, so there are likely cavities inside her body. She also shows signs of receiving information from her eyes and ears. She may also have a spine-like core that supports her body.”

On the other hand, that was all they could say.

She might have cranial nerves throughout her body. The interior of her soft-looking limbs could even contain a crab-like skeleton formed from wrapping layer after layer like a baumkuchen.

It would be nice if this meant she had a weakness unique to her strange body structure, like being weak to mold or that the smoke from a factory smokestack would make her writhe in pain.

“It didn’t make sense from the beginning.” Kobayashi resumed speaking. “Humans can only live comfortably because we are the size we are. At 1800 meters and 750 thousand tons, the pumping of her heart and veins can’t be enough to circulate her blood back up from her feet. The intense reactive force of her own footsteps should crush her organs. I just don’t see how this could work structurally.”

Mikoto had blacked out while flying her fighter. If you had an extreme amount of blood and gravity was always tugging down on it, would you be at risk of that at all times?

“Well…I agree she’s unnatural for an 1800m life form to stand upright on two legs.”

“It really is. Which tells me she is built completely differently on the inside. A girl standing dozens of meters tall walking on land without issue is a product of fantasy stories. Science tells us something so absurd could never actually exist.”

“Um, but…I’m right here and very real…”

Someone who couldn’t actually exist made a timid protest.

“Since we know we have an 1800m mass out there, we know she must have a structure that allows her to live without pain or suffering. Knowing what that is could tell us what we need to bring her down.”

''Could'' tell.

Kobayashi herself didn’t have the answer yet. It all came down to the data from the drone pods.

And the others continued the discussion.

“Even if they were only air-to-air missiles, is it really possible to stop the blast with nothing but thick muscles? It didn’t even harm her skin.”

“I would like more details on that. If it slid across her skin and didn’t penetrate it, then we might be able to get through it if we focus our attacks there to dent it in some.”

“She might be a strange life form that eats petroleum to function, but she is still a life form, right? If we lure her out to sea and she can’t swim, couldn’t she drown?”

“Possibly, Shirai-sama, but she is 1800m tall. Her head would stick above the water unless we brought her to a very deep trench.”

They came up with several ideas, but one thing in particular had Mikoto’s attention.

She couldn’t forget the ending of that initial encounter full of failure.

“But didn’t she flinch when I shot her with the railgun?”

When she was diving from above.

Even if it had pushed her up several meters, she could have swung her long limbs to hit Mikoto and the others below her. Yet she hadn’t attacked like that or worked to recover. It had only lasted a few seconds, but she had definitely ''stopped'' there.

“Do you mean she had bigger concerns? But why would that railgun do that?”

“Onee-sama, a super weapon like that would harm anyone.”

“Even though she didn’t even glance over at all those other attacks?”

A short silence fell.

This was curious.

They may have already had the key in their hands. But if they didn’t know how to use it, it was useless to them.

“And whatever the case, we don’t have much time left.”

Kobayashi was tuned in to a civilian frequency. A United States digital TV broadcast appeared on the screen.

The staff was rushing around in the background while a female anchor read the news in a simple studio.

“The 50m object which hit the president’s residence was thought to have been a meteor, but analysis has revealed that it is made from the same ordinary materials as the continent. It was most likely a long-range projectile fired from the surface, but the government has yet to make an announcement.”

A meteor.

A piece of rock.

It was far too obvious who must have done that.

She had destroyed the center of that country without even walking all the way to their capital.

“We are currently unable to contact the president or vice president, so it is unknown who is in charge of the government.”

The United States of Narmeli was in shambles.

The Cutalularia Republic’s leaders had to be sweating right now.

Would the Ruler stop with the United States, or would she turn her attention to another country? No one knew. If she walked toward the Republic on a whim, they were doomed.

That settled it.

Tokiwadai could not return to Earth without dealing with this first.

Kobayashi held a hand to her cheek as she spoke.

“We don’t know what drives the Ruler’s actions. If we knew how she determines what targets to prioritize, we could use our wide-area radio to guide an evacuation of the United States.”

Mikoto’s intuition told her that colossus would attack anything that caught her attention in a positive or a negative way, but she couldn’t be absolutely certain. And a single misreading here would mean the deaths of millions or tens of millions of civilians.

And…

“Umm.”

The CIC received a radio transmission. It was from the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, flagship of the Republic’s Offense Fleet.

For some reason, it was a flight attendant style woman in this world.

“United States fighters like Sukhois and MiGs keep coming from the northeast asking for help, but what should I do about those guests?”

“Stranded fighters who’ve lost their carrier or air base, huh?”

“Hey! Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asked Shokuhou.

“Given the situation, it’s unlikely they’re going to challenge us to a desperate showdown. What would they get from that?”

Well, there was a small concern of them acting on some weird kind of suicidal pride.

Then Carrier Charles de Gaulle spoke again.

“From what I can see with my bridge’s ultra telescope, all the pylons under their wings and fuselage are empty. They must have dropped all their missiles in the sea to show they have no intention of fighting.”

(Argh, what a waste!!)

They would have been able to land at the Sky Pirate Islands and Ports, but the Girlish Weapons working in the military wouldn’t know about those.

Mikoto leaned forward and responded.

“Carrier Charles de Gaulle, have them split up and land. If you don’t have any space left in your maintenance hangar, you can borrow some of the Izanagi’s space, so don’t worry.”

“Understood. …Okay, everyone, I will guide you in to land. The Sukhois can land on me and the MiGs can land on the Izanami☆”

This meant they would have a mixture of Girlish Weapons from the Empire, Republic, and United States.

“That was scary.”

“Right? I didn’t know what to do with all the human soldiers gone. You can’t just tell us to make our own decisions all of a sudden.”

“I’m starving.”

“Ehh!? What’s water fuel? I just have to try it☆”

Mikoto visited the maintenance hangar and found a mountain girl MiG-29 and a forest girl MiG-31 gazing into each other’s eyes and comforting each other. The way the wings on their backs swing around when they moved, was awfully dangerous.

For Girlish Weapons, the lack of a runway to land on was bad enough, but they also couldn’t stand not having a master to give them orders. And did it really not matter to them who was giving their orders? They didn’t seem to have any qualms about being sold or switching sides, which was very disconcerting. These weapons were managed a lot like shogi pieces.

Mikoto sighed too softly for anyone to notice.

(We have more of them now…but we’re only going to see more sacrifices if we don’t have an actual plan.)

Their scouting mission had been a mess.

And the real battle was coming up soon.