Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 7===

Bullets didn’t work.

Thoughtlessly throwing a bomb would only got them blown away by the blast and shockwave.

An anesthetic like hexachloroethane or a toxin like carbon monoxide would be rendered useless by the heat.

But that didn’t mean they were out of options.

“A concussion blast probably won’t reach her. If it isn’t detonated a meter or two in front of the target, it can’t rattle her skull enough to knock her out, but anything at hand-thrown speed will be shot down before getting that close.”

“That’s fine, so just do it, Molotov maid! If we rattle her body with the shockwave of several explosions, it’ll damage her red blood cells and oxygen will stop reaching her brain!!”

Frenda and Kinuhata stepped forward.

Takitsubo could predict Mugino’s actions to an extent, but only Item could communicate rapidly with their eyes and fingers. It would take the Mugino Family longer to decode the message, which would increase the odds of them being blasted and killed.

“You cutesy housekeepers can provide support from behind. Just keep throwing bombs over our heads. We’ll draw Mugino’s attention on the front line and divert her Meltdowner fire elsewhere!!”

“We’re risking our lives too. Even with Offense Armor active, I’ll be super killed if that hits me.”

A fearsome beam flew in from dead ahead.

At this point, most cover was only an obstruction to their own view and movement. Frenda suppressed her urge to flee in that direction and swiftly hopped to the left or right in accordance with Takitsubo’s instructions.

Dodging even a single blast was a lot like a miracle.

But Takitsubo, the star of the show in that regard, spoke up.

“Frenda.”

“What, Takitsubo!?”

“I don’t think we’re going to last long enough to destroy enough of Mugino’s red blood cells.”

“Kh. In the end, who said that was the real plan!?”

That was mostly a bluff, but it wasn’t entirely untrue.

Takitsubo was always accurate as their sensor, yet Mugino’s head began to wobble as if to contradict Takitsubo’s prediction. She even placed her empty left hand on the side of her head.

“Orthostatic hypotension.”

With a name like that, it might sound like a complicated disease.

But it really just referred to feeling dizzy when standing up.

“In the end, you’ve been forcing yourself through superhuman actions too. Your circulation isn’t going to remain normal forever!!”

In the brief moment the Meltdowner attacks ceased, the Molotov cocktail maid leaned out from the trench and tossed an explosive that detonated right next to Mugino.

A concussion bomb.

That nonlethal weapon rattled the brain with the shockwave itself instead of using a fragmentary effect.

But track suit girl Takitsubo shouted sharply for once.

“Dodge, Frenda!!”

Someone grabbed Frenda’s collar from the side before she could react. Kinuhata’s skinny arm used the strength boost of Offense Armor to swing her around like a wrecking ball.

A beam pierced the exact spot Frenda had been standing a moment before.

She didn’t feel saved.

Kinuhata was almost as bad as Mugino. Her senses were supposedly those of an ordinary human despite her esper power, so how did she have reflexes like that?

Frenda clenched her teeth.

The red blood cell destruction via shockwaves wasn’t fast enough. And neither the orthostatic hypotension nor the concussion bomb were enough to knock Mugino unconscious.

If none of it was effective, then they were really and truly out of options.

The Molotov cocktail maid spoke as if despairing in her impeding doom. She had supposedly learned from the style of Western gangs, but she showed an oddly Japanese side here.

“Shizuri-sama is Academy City’s #4 Level 5. She is literally a product of science and technology. Perhaps it was a mistake to attempt to challenge her using cheap explosives made from chemical fertilizer.”



Chemical fertilizer?



Frenda Seivelun stared wide-eyed as she muttered to herself.

“No, it can’t be, but in the end…wait.”

“What is it, Frenda?”

She didn’t have time to answer Takitsubo’s question.

She was too busy working a massive amount of calculations in her head.

“I can’t be certain, but this might work. Hey, Molotov maid!! I need your Mugino Family help too!”

“What kind of help?”

“In the end, our esper can gather the nitrogen from the air!!”

There wasn’t time.

That monster wouldn’t give them a chance to hold a lengthy strategy session.

The maid was a pro too.

When Frenda kicked up a parabolic antenna (presumably for satellite TV) that had fallen to the ground from a villa roof or balcony, Hanagai seemed to catch on. She nodded.

“…”

Mugino Shizuri also slowly moved.

Was she worried about making herself dizzy again? She didn’t need to run or leap. She only had to slowly direct her right palm toward them from a distance.

There really wasn’t time.

“Kinuhata, activate Offense Armor. To the very limit!!”

“No matter how super much I defend myself, a direct hit from Meltdowner will obliterate me!”

“Kinuhata.”

At Takitsubo’s gentle urging, the little Level 4 pouted her lips and obeyed.

The air swirled around her.

Kinuhata Saiai’s Offense Armor gathered just the nitrogen from the air around her and compressed it to such an extreme it could defend her entire body.

Nitrogen made up more than 70% of the air. Nitrogen itself was a nontoxic, nonflammable, and stable gas.

But make no mistake. No substance in the world was truly safe.

Yes…

“''Nitrogen compounds are a representative explosive ingredient.''”

Of course, gathering all the nitrogen in the air wasn’t enough to create an explosive, but Frenda was a professional bomber. The knowledge and skills she had learned in Academy City told her countless ways of converting nitrogen into a dangerous compound. And despite their vast fortune, the Mugino Family had intentionally used cheap explosives as a “signature” left at the scene of the crime. That meant they would have plenty of tools for creating nitrogen compounds.

This was very dangerous.

It was so delicate a task that Frenda would ordinarily have wanted at least half a day to work on it.

She was interested in the compound, not the nitrogen on its own. Which meant she needed other ingredients.

For example, she needed a large quantity of sulfur.

However, she couldn’t spend the time and effort it would take to create an ammonium nitrate explosive.

But she did know an explosive she could make more directly from nitrogen and sulfur.

(Tetrasulfur tetranitride. Heat or even an impact will make that dangerous crystal explode!!)

“In the end, it’s a good thing we’re in a hot springs area far from the city. And blasting the spring water drains exposed a lot of it to the open air.”

The manpower of the Mugino Family boosted their manufacturing rate by a lot.

They combined cutting edge Academy City tech with Mugino Family tradition.

And then they forced it through with their own luck.

“In the end, I can endlessly gather up explosives from all over the world as long as I have Kinuhata with me!!”



Once ignited, the world was compressed.



And in that moment.

What Frenda, Kinuhata, and Takitsubo released while holding hands may have been more like an artillery shell than a bomb.

Ordinarily, an explosion would spread out in a sphere, but that shape could be adjusted. Using what was known as a directional explosive. For example, if the explosive was spread thinly across the inside of something like a concave mirror or a parabolic antenna, the blast would be concentrated on a point out ahead, creating enough explosive force to blow through the door of a bulletproof car more than 100m away.

Furthermore, if the parabolic explosive had metal particles like iron sand mixed in…



It would become a self-forging fragment.

A special kind of warhead designed to pierce through a tank’s thick composite armor.



She reacted.

To an attack that had to be well past the sound barrier. And she made it seem normal. Mugino Shizuri really was a threat. Specifically, the deadly beam flew straight toward them before she could even move her raised hand to take careful aim with her palm.

''But.

For some reason, not even the Academy City #4’s Meltdowner could vaporize the self-forging fragment. Instead, it was sliced through from the middle and scattered all around. Its force was not lost. The scattered smaller rays of light sliced through the surrounding villas and streetlights.

That meant the flying weapon had a secret.

The coating used to form the projectile had been a semiconductor from a Two Wings.

This triggered diffusion.

That new substance had been created using the research done on Mugino Shizuri herself.

Yes.

The three of them hadn’t been enough.

Only all four Item members together could pull this off!!

(In the end, we forced it through!! And I trust you’re too much of a monster to let a little thing like this kill you, Mugino!!!)



It exploded.



Mugino had fought it with all her might and it indeed did not make it all the way. The semiconductor self-forging fragment melted and vaporized just before reaching Mugino Shizuri’s nose. The gale produced by an exploding projectile swirled around her. The vacuum blade appeared to have shallowly slashed her on the right cheek, but that was all.

It had been negated by Meltdowner.

Even this may have been a notable accomplishment, but they couldn’t let this satisfy them.

There were only two options here: 0 or 100.

If they didn’t win, it was all meaningless.

“…”

Mugino Shizuri’s lips moved.

Not good enough.

That may have been what she was trying to say.

But it was Frenda Seivelun who grinned.

“Did you forget, Mugino?”

Mugino herself had made this talented girl join Item because she recognized her skill.

And the pro bomber spoke.

“In the end, if you forcibly remove the nitrogen making up more than 70% of the air, the concentration of oxygen and hydrogen will rapidly increase!!”



Something exploded right in front of Mugino Shizuri.

The air itself had become a bomb.

A massive shockwave compressed the air at 300m/s, violently rattling the #4’s skull.



Silence.

No, not a chance. The tremendous explosion had simply temporarily deafened Frenda.

First a shrill ringing and then the actual sounds eventually returned to her.

And in the few seconds it took for her hearing to normalize, she had stood completely exposed in front of Mugino without being killed.

Yes.

Mugino Shizuri wobbled to the right.

And this time…



“We got h-”

“Not yet.”



Frenda’s celebration was cut short by Takitsubo Rikou.

She wasn’t even given a moment.

The track suit girl always seemed out of it, but she was always correct.

“I-In the end…”

Frenda Seivelun’s breath caught in her throat.

Something was wrong with her heart.

The intense fear kept her from even controlling her body.

“After all that…we still can’t stop her!?”

Mugino had wobbled to the side, but she hadn’t collapsed. She caught herself. Her center of gravity was still shifted unstably as she glared at the other girls.

She wasn’t broken yet.

Even from a distance, the girl covered in burns held out her palm.

Almost like she was asking for a farewell handshake.

It ended in an instant.

Oddly, Frenda found laughter growing inside her.

(Ha ha. So in the end, she’s prepared to take us down with her?)

Frenda’s luck had run out.

Or so she thought.

But.

Not yet.

Behind Mugino.

Someone who couldn’t even get up from the ground still managed to lift a bloody right hand to gently grab at her cardigan.

Frenda and the rest of Item, the maid wielding Molotov cocktails, and the butler with the heavy machinegun were not the only ones fighting here.

There was another.

Still.



“Honestly.”



This other stopped her.

It was the old butler Mujinayama.

He had been shot in the back.

He had been injured too severely to stand back up.

He had to dig his nails into the dirt to crawl toward her.



“The trouble you put me through.”



For Mugino Shizuri, that one statement must have been far more devastating than an Academy City Level 4 or a cutting-edge bomb.

The old man in a tuxedo and monocle was still alive.

That one small answer briefly stopped Academy City’s #4 monster.

She tried to turn toward him.

A moment later, Frenda and Hanagai both threw explosives and detonated them above Mugino Shizuri’s head.

One destroyed the red blood cells throughout her body.

The other rattled her skull, giving her a concussion.

She received a solid hit from both and was finally brought down to the dirt ground.