Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter1 (section)

===Part 4===

Misaka Mikoto bristled and shouted.

The #5 was close enough to hear her voice.

(God, I really don’t like her power or how she uses it!!)

Mikoto jumped onto a truck’s roof, hijacked the vehicle’s electronics, and had it drive forward to block the entrance to an alley. She hopped onto the ground before multiple esper powers could grab the truck and flip it over and she used those few extra seconds to run away. She magnetically planted her feet on the wall and escaped up onto a building rooftop. She repeated that kind of minor action to just barely avoid being swallowed up by the swarm of espers.

A mocking voice reached her from behind.

“Do you think you can escape me if you keep running? Everyone wears out eventually. You don’t have a perpetual motion machine ability inside you!”

“Not everyone wears out in a matter of seconds like you, slowpoke!”

“How dare you trample on my dignity ability as casually as downloading a free app!!”

While running out ahead, Mikoto made a magnetically-propelled leap.

She cleared the School Garden’s gate.

“Tch! She escaped outside. I really wanted to end this inside the Garden if I could.”

Shokuhou had brainwashed Hokaze to switch from over-the-shoulder to a princess carry while they passed through the gate.

Just then, she heard the roar of helicopter rotors. As Mikoto left below, several hunks of metal flew sharply in from above.

That was an entire group of Six Wings unmanned attack helicopters.

(She wasn’t using the emergency hotline to call Anti-Skill for help? Dammit, Misaka-san. You just had to hack the most troublesome thing, didn’t you!?)

Shokuhou reflexively aimed her remote toward the approaching threat, but she realized that was useless against machines.

She had the strongest mental power.

But it was entirely ineffectual against machines and animals other than humans.

“Oh, no!!”

Despite being princess carried, Shokuhou flailed wildly in an attempt to escape behind cover, causing Hokaze to trip. The brainwashed ringlets girl then escaped behind a vending machine with the Queen under her arm. As soon as the helicopter’s six arms spread out, machinegun fire tore a straight line through a multi-tenant building’s wall and converted the vending machine shield to scrap. Shokuhou and Hokaze somehow avoided harm, but that shield was not going to protect them a second time. And if those arms fired their explosives, only a smoking crater would remain. They had only a few seconds until the helicopter could take aim again. Shokuhou used that time to aim her remote at the ordinary people in the area. Several espers responded by holding their palms up toward the sky.

She just had to shoot it down before it could shoot her.

“?”

Then she frowned.

“I’ll gladly die fighting on the command of a cute girl. Ha ha☆”

“Hey, why are you escaping into a fantasy world in this emergen- gah!?”

Shokuhou had brainwashed Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose Seiri, and around 10 other espers, but they did not fight back with fire and ice. She could see them holding up their palms and wrinkling their brows in concentration, but they didn’t produce so much as a light breeze.

Tokiwadai’s Queen clicked her tongue when she figured it out.

She ordered Hokaze to hide behind a nearby truck as she spoke.

“A Level 0, a Level 0, and another Level 0? Is everyone here a useless esper or a non-esper adult!? Argh, where did my luck go!? These are all common or normal pulls!!”

“You do tend to overlook these things. But maybe it’s not your fault since you’re the Queen of the largest clique and you’re surrounded by high-level espers all the time. Simply put, you’re a freak.”

She was no longer in Tokiwadai or the School Garden where you could find high-spec girls wherever you looked. While 80% of the city’s 2.3 million people were espers, 60% of those were Level 0s. The odds of pulling a legendary had fundamentally changed.

(In that case, I want a list of espers along with photos. Would it be fastest to brainwash some Anti-Skill or Judgment people who can legitimately access the Bank?)

“I bet I know what you’re thinking, but ''I'' don’t need that list. In fact, it’s only a risk to me, so why would I leave it there for you to use!?”

Sparks flew from Mikoto’s bangs.

It wasn’t visible from here, but she had just done something via the wireless network. Wherever the Bank was physically located, it was probably no longer usable.