Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 8===

Behind the idol concert stage, Mugino noticed some lights in the distant darkness out of the corner of her eye. The number of artificial lights at the river’s sandbank was growing, presumably for the work there.

Meaning…

“Looks like the stubborn fireworks technicians have finally given in,” scoffed A-ko. “It’s going to explode now. So how about you turn tail and run like the filthy villain you are”

(What the hell is Frenda doing? She’d better not have screwed it up!)

Mugino worked to keep the panic off her face, but she couldn’t leave here and head to the sandbank in these circumstances. She was dead as soon as she took her eyes off this enemy.

It was one against one.

But Mugino Shizuri had a question as she faced A-ko.

A-ko’s power boosted the destructive power of her attacks during a cross-counter. She knew that.

That couldn’t be explained physically, so it was probably possible with a psychological power. Because anyone who wielded a weapon or esper power was aware how painful and terrifying their attack was. The power probably took the image in her enemy’s mind, flipped the target of the pain from herself to her enemy, and then brought that imagined pain to the surface. To a level that could cause physical wounds.

(It’s a powerful card to have in your deck, but I have my doubts that’s ''all'' she can do if it is a psychological power. Controlling people’s bodies or rewriting memories or personalities like we saw in that stadium before seems more convenient to me.)

Yes.

But a power like that shouldn’t be able to ensure a successful counterattack every single time.

She couldn’t be reading Mugino’s mind with a psychological power.

That would mean she could easily die from a failed cross-counter against a deadly attack. Why would she risk her life like that?

This didn’t just apply to Meltdowner.

Bullets were everywhere on the dark side and they too could kill. There were several different ways to stab or slash with a knife, making attacks hard to predict. To be blunt, no amount of training would bring her cross-counter success rate even to 50%. And in a battle where weapon reach and body weight differed, it might be as low as 10%. And this was in the world of real combat where a failed attack meant instant death. So how had A-ko survived to this day?

There was a trick to her consistent victories.

Mugino Shizuri suddenly spoke.

“A microwave speed gun? No, that isn’t it. It would have to be something more sensitive than that. Maybe a drum style or a rotary prism style?”

“Oh, you figured it out?”

A-ko didn’t seem particularly concerned.

“Don’t underestimate analog tech. It can produce precision and speeds unreachable by switching signals on and off with semiconductors.”

“Ultra-high speed photography, huh?”

“The Octopus Shutter. It’s sensitive enough to divide a single second 20 million times. And by reading the images into a machine as data, you can ignore the effort needed to develop them.”

A-ko pulled something from her breast pocket.

The single-lens optical device was about the size of a ping-pong ball. It used eight octopus-like metal arms to skillfully station itself on her right shoulder.

“''So what if you know about it''?”

A-ko smiled.

And stated the fundamental problem.

“You still can’t escape the 1/20,000,000th of a second cage. No matter what. How could you when that’s much faster than the transmission speed of human nerves? There’s nothing you can do with a power ''that requires you to consciously choose to shoot.'' I can monitor every one of your movements from beginning to end, so my cross-counters always hit. Scared to use your power now? If you still want to try it, then give it everything you’ve got, Level 5. But if you do, I hope you’re ready to at least lose your upper body!!”