Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Misaki SS (section)

===Part 5===

It felt like having a really sturdy bubble caught in her throat.

The girl herself did not know what exactly had happened, but her throat convulsed and the bubble burst.

She may have been imagining it, but that was when life returned to Shokuhou Misaki.

“Cough! Cough, cough!! Ugh…!?”

“Ahh, ahh. So you’re fiiiiinally awake!”

“Damn. ''I’d put paint bullets in the guards’ guns,'' but a few shots at close range must have been enough to rob me of my consciousness ability.”

She got up from the cold floor as she spat out the words.

Her pulse was still irregular and her head felt somehow heavy, but she sluggishly managed to ask Anatomy Mechatronics Misaki a question.

“Where’s that old woman?”

“I don’t know. She seems to have left through the tunnel we used.”

“Does that mean we were just her means to escape?”

“The Professor said she would be working on her ‘final project’. She also said something about Academy City being lost before long.”

While Shokuhou’s words were mixed with irritated barbs, Misaki’s tone was somehow sad.

She had ran through the city night and contacted Shokuhou Misaki to rescue the Professor, but then her creator had passed right by her on the way to the exit.

It had all been for herself and she had left her “child” in the cold prison.

“Sigh…”

Shokuhou gave a single heavy sigh and brushed her long honey-blonde hair from her shoulders.

She then looked over to the small doll who was sitting on the floor and hanging her head.

“What exactly are you, anyway?”

“…?”

“I know that you have the exact same arrangement of bones and organs as me, but that Professor didn’t have the technological ability to reproduce the brain at the base of my powers. Then what is it that’s making you feel so disappointed?”

This was a simple test.

The Anatomy Mechatronics replied without turning around or raising her head.

“I don’t know.”

In a way, that was the worst possible answer.

If a program could not define itself, no one could complain if it froze up.

“How am I supposed to know what ‘I’ am?”

But Shokuhou Misaki narrowed her eyes a little when she heard it.

She did not know how to define that doll.

Nor did she know what was creating these thought patterns in place of a brain.

But that was an answer a perfect machine could not give.

A mere program could never put off defining itself and yet continue thinking.

“There’s no helping it then…”

Shokuhou grabbed the doll between her thumb and forefinger.

“Wait! Wh-what are you doing!?”

“What you are or how you’re defined doesn’t matter and I truly don’t care what that old woman is plotting.”

Shokuhou looked the doll in the eye as she continued.

“But she used me to escape this place and she’s walking free after abusing the mysterious logic inside you. Doesn’t that seem like more than enough of a reason to make her pay?”

“…”

The doll…no, the person named Misaki remained silent for a while.

That old woman was her foundation. While it was frustrating to be used by her, she also did not want to be her enemy.

The inability to reach an immediate answer also seemed like a difference from a mere computer.

“What exactly are you thinking of doing? She’s a step ahead of us in everything and I don’t think we have any hints to figure out where she’s going next.”

“Oh? Have you already forgotten why I’m still alive?” Shokuhou spun the remote in her hand. “I already control every last one of the guards, including the old woman’s helper hiding among them☆”