Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

“Frenda.”

“In the end, I’ve got a general idea of the situation. If Mugino and Kinuhata are fighting, that means we know who I’m up against, right? Takitsubo, you focus on supporting Kinuhata. You said B-ko’s using a projectile weapon? That’s a bad matchup for Kinuhata. Close quarters combat specialist espers are in a precarious position. One wrong read and the battle can turn against them, so as her honorary big sister I’m just so worried.”

“Okay, Frenda.”

“Super wait! What makes you my big sister!? You’re the one without a power giving you a shield or armor, so a single hit will kill you instantly!”

“In the end, do you really think Perfect Dark Beauty Frenda-chan would make a mistake like that?”

Both sides of the large bridge were blocked off with red cones and striped bars.

And not just because a large crowd would be dangerously heavy.

The river sandbank acted as the launch site where all the fireworks technicians were gathered. The center of the bridge was in the danger area in case of an explosion, so the bridge had been blocked off just in case there was any trouble.

The bomb had to be on that sandbank.

It was Frenda’s job to defuse its.

A blast from the sandbank might not reach every part of the event site, but the front rows would be in danger. And there was a decent chance of people being trampled in the resultant panic. A wave made up of hundreds of thousands of people could easily crush a person to death. And the victims could very well include Frenda’s 7-year-old sister and her friends.

Defusing the bomb meant going to the sandbank, but her presence on the empty bridge would be conspicuous enough to gather attention from Anti-Skill and Judgment. With so little time, she couldn’t afford any extra trouble like that.

Which meant…

“I can’t swim there, so in the end it has to be here.”

Frenda walked along the riverbank and below the bridge.

The underside of the bridge was covered by steel beams laid out like a gym ceiling in order to distribute the bridge’s weight. If she used those as footholds, she could cross there.

Except someone was already there.

Of course someone was. This was the only route.

“…I thought you’d be here…”

She was above the water, on the underside of the bridge. That footing was unstable at best and the girl was clinging to it with her hands and feet like an insect. While upside down.

Sticking, connecting, and linking. Her esper power allowed her to adhere to anything. Level 4 Composite.

“In the end, you must be the Advanced Lab’s C-ko.”

“…We never had to deal with all of Item. Frenda Seivelun. If we take you out, no one else can perform the delicate defusing…”

“You think you can fight Frenda-sama, the secret strongest Item member? In the end, you lost the moment you didn’t come at me with all three members!!”

With that shout, Frenda launched a few homemade rockets she pulled from her miniskirt.

Their course wasn’t bad, but they detonated before reaching C-ko due to the jungle gym of steel beams.

But this wasn’t a failure.

In fact, the psychological effect on C-ko mattered most. The fact that only luck and random chance had saved her would instill fear and surprise in her. She just had to be made aware that it wasn’t her own skill that had saved her.

From a distance, this would only sound like a food stall’s popcorn popping or someone using party crackers to stand out from the crowd, so this wasn’t enough to cause a panic.

(First, I scare them with a decoy attack, I confidently hold my ground, and once their wounded pride sends them into a rage, they approach just in time for me to remotely detonate the bomb I planted in advance… In the end, that’s the standard plan.)

The dust in the air split as C-ko rushed sharply in.

This was much sooner than Frenda had anticipated.

She didn’t even have time to scatter traps on the steel beams using magnetic suction bombs. The standard plan was based on some optimistic assumptions. It wasn’t too reliable in a real battle.

“…You expect me to give a bomber time…?”

By then, C-ko was already right in front of her.

She jabbed her small palm artlessly toward Frenda. Composite let her adhere to anything.

“!?”

Frenda couldn’t dodge. Just before C-ko grabbed her right wrist, Frenda flipped her poncho up and wrapped the hem tightly around her hand. That was better than having her bare hand adhered to.

She felt a powerful tug.

They were already close enough to touch. Their faces were less than 100cm apart.

“What? In the end, did you want to handcuff us together for a chained deathmatch!?”

She detonated her bomb regardless.

…A bomber who complained that bombs were useless at close range wasn’t second or even third rate in Academy City. The direction of the blast was easily altered using metal plates and such, so with the right connections you could blow away only the enemy even at close range. Such as pressing it against them with your palm.

“Zero-inch bomb!! Hwa ha ha! Behold Frenda-chan’s genius! In the end, watching that kung fu movie marathon with Kinuhata was worth it!!”

“…''That really doesn’t matter''…”

A voice slipped into her ears.

It wasn’t that C-ko had jumped back at the last second. She had kept her feet on the steel beam as she rotated 180-degrees around to the bottom. By attaching herself upside-down like a bat, she had skillfully avoided the uppercut-style blast aimed at her upper body.

Frenda dropped a few more bombs at about the same time C-ko kicked off the beam supporting her to reach another beam.

After all, their field was a collection of steel beams similar to a gym ceiling. C-ko’s ability to move around and attach to anything gave her a major advantage.

But at the same time…

“You abandoned your shoes.”

“…”

“And your socks too. Hmm? Were you using your ankles when it looked like you were using your hands and feet before? So does your power require direct skin contact? But in the end, you do know your toes have the equivalent of fingerprints, don’t you? Not a great power for a criminal.”

“…Shut up. I didn’t ask for your opinion…”

“And in the end, I already know how to deal with this.”

That shut C-ko up.

And Frenda was doing anything but shutting up.

“You have a close-quarters power that requires direct skin contact. …That means I can use the tactics I’ve put together for use against Kinuhata in the sparring sessions that super nice Frenda-chan does for the silly new girl whenever I have some time. No matter how nimbly you can move in any direction, you can’t avoid a blast that forms a complete wall! And if you use irregular movements to try and approach from my blind spot, I just have to create wall blasts in all 360 degrees around me!! And more than that! In the end, as long as those wall blasts are holding you back, preventing you from approaching your target, you can’t lay a finger on the world’s ultra-fragile treasure that is Frenda-chan!!!”

To reiterate, a top rate bomber could trigger explosions at extreme close range without harming themselves. Which meant they could use explosions for defense.

And C-ko whispered atop the steel beams.

“…I can stick hands together, preventing you from escaping. I can attach my feet to my footing, preventing myself from slipping off…”

Yes.

C-ko made her point clear.



“…Did you think I would be classified Level 4 if that was all I could do…?”



C-ko waved a plastic ruler in her hand.

Clear specks sprinkled from it.

She had scattered something into the air.

Some kind of white smoke spread out unnaturally.

Frenda immediately caught on.

(In the end, that isn’t just smoke. Is it some kind of acid!?)

“~ ~ ~!!”

Frenda held her breath.

She abandoned her offensive stance and jumped back on the unsteady footing.

C-ko laughed.

In just a few seconds, around half of ruler had already dissolved.

“…Breathe it in and maybe you’ll figure out what acid that is…”

“Nice joke. In the end, I’m not letting my windpipe and lungs dissolve.”

“…With sulfur, you can create sulfuric acid. You can find the ingredients even in a beautiful city filled with clean air…”

The other likely candidate was nitric acid.

The chemical formula was HNO<sub>3</sub>. Hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen could all be found in a river or the air.

(Is she choosing what element she wants to adhere to? And that’s a powerful acid smoke, right? In the end, that’s such a dangerous way to use that!)

An unpleasant straining sound rang out.

The steel beams supporting the bridge’s thousands of tons were crying out in protest.

Not even acid smoke should have been enough to make the bridge collapse so suddenly.

There was another cause.

“…By removing the carbon from the steel beams, they return to being pure iron. That makes them soft and less sturdy. Didn’t think my adhering power could be used this way, did you…?”

Frenda didn’t bother listening to the end.

Her vision was shaking too much.

The steel beams supporting the underside of the bridge spanning the large river were breaking.

Which meant her footing was collapsing.

But Frenda did not plunge into the dark river.

(Damn, did I fall onto the sandbank!?)

That meant she was at the off-limits and highly flammable fireworks launch site.

The damage to the bridge had caused a lot of noise, but had the fireworks technicians not noticed them?

Frenda cautiously sent her gaze darting side to side and saw something unpleasant.

A rubber boat equipped with an engine was crossing the dark river to reach the sandbank.

Had the technicians not been on the sandbank because they were boycotting the start of the show? But if they were approaching now, the show would soon begin. And then hundreds of thousands would be made victims. Frenda’s 7-year-old sister, her friends, and so many others were out there.

(There wasn’t anyone here!? Then in the end, I should have destroyed the control board!)

There was no time.

As a bomb expert, Frenda had to defuse the bomb set up by the Advanced Lab trio, but she couldn’t do that with the enemy here. The sabotage apparently wasn’t too large scale, but she doubted it was something she could kick away without it reacting. She had no idea when a stray shot would hit the bomb and detonate it.

And even if it had only been from the height of a building’s second floor, she had still fallen onto an area much like a rocky riverside. She would even need to be careful when walking normally to avoid spraining an ankle. That she hadn’t broken an ankle when landing from that height was either dumb luck or further proof that Frenda-chan was a super genius.

A short distance away, a small figure landed with no evident excitement.

It was C-ko.

The sandbank was definitely a killing zone. Or right in the middle of one anyway. Was she really willing to approach the giant bomb her group had set up here?

Frenda made sure to keep her breathing steady.

“You’re going after Takitsubo because she’s an old friend, right? Mind if I ask why you’re willing to blow up a fireworks show with hundreds of thousands in the audience for such a personal reason?”

C-ko’s answer to Frenda’s question was simple.

“…None of your business…”

“Glad to hear it. …In the end, if you were doing this for a casual enough reason to mention it here, it would mean you had really and truly lost it.”

Frenda pulled a few convenient explosives from her dress’s miniskirt and calmly considered the situation.

C-ko. What could she do on this sandbank?

Her “selected component extraction” allowed her to extract and use a specific type of atom or molecule in whatever substance she touched.

She could weaken especially strong materials like blast-resistant concrete or special steel.

Either ability was enough of a threat.

And there was more.

The biggest threat was something else.

“…Wrapping the poncho around your hand earlier was a smart choice…”

“Damn… In the end, this is why I hate these high-level monsters.”

“…Without that, it would have been instantaneous. By removing the H<sub>2</sub>O that makes up 60% of the human body, I would have turned you into a dried-up mummy…”