Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter2 (section)

===Part 8===

“Tch!!”

Anti-Skill was operating next-gen weapons, including the Five Overs, and Shokuhou had her brainwashed group. Mikoto didn’t like the idea of being caught by either one.

She clicked her tongue and used her magnetism.

She set foot on a nearby building wall at around the 10th floor.

Then she leaped toward another building.

The brainwashed army on the ground couldn’t reach her when she was magnetically jumping from building to building. It wasn’t a 100% guarantee thanks to esper powers and next-gen weapons, but the barrier of height could sometimes trump a difference in numbers.

Someone on the ground formed a megaphone with her hands and shouted up at Mikoto.

“You’re such a show off, Misaka-san!! You’re just so…so…!!”

“I’m so what?”

“So tactless. You’re the kind of person who just wants to be popular so bad. I bet you’d set up your phone and start dancing in a convenience store or a conveyer belt sushi place!!”

“Look, I already know you’re trying to pick a fight with me.”

“But if you keep jumping around wayyyy up there, you might just run out of stamina ability! Heh heh. I don’t need anything special for this☆ I just have to wait until all your unnecessary acrobatics catch up to you and you fall to your- hey, are you listening!?”

“Uh, oh!!”

After a few more jumps, the tempered glass window Mikoto was planning to land on was suddenly shattered by someone slamming a chair at it from the inside. The blank-faced girl looked to be Kuriba Ryouko.

(Wait, does Mental Out work like normal on a cyborg who’s replaced some of her organs with machines? What kind of cruel god gives such a convenient power to someone like her!?)

The barrier of height wasn’t working. Shokuhou could brainwash anyone just by aiming her TV remote at them, so she could apparently go for ordinary people by the windows on the higher floors.

Mikoto realized anew how useful Mental Out was and how much it should have been given to anyone other than Shokuhou.

(At this rate, she might brainwash some people out ahead of me. I could be in trouble if she captures me in a pincer attack. …Hm?)

Mikoto looked down at the road in confusion and saw the Queen struggling to catch her breath.

Shokuhou had said she was waiting for Mikoto to run out of stamina, but hadn’t she been using Mental Out an awful lot too?

“P-pant. Gasp, wheeze. Urp, what is happening to me?”

“You don’t see this every day. The schemer really is drowning in her schemes.”

But they couldn’t have this end with the #3 and the #5 both overusing their powers, running out of stamina, collapsing on the ground, and trembling while fighting like caterpillars. Or rather, Mikoto had no interest in joining the unathletic idiot down there.

(But this is still a problem.)

The people brainwashed by Shokuhou weren’t the only threat to Mikoto.

The organized counterattack by the freshly recovered Anti-Skill was becoming a real nuisance.

And Shokuhou changed tack with a smile.

She didn’t hesitate for a second.

“Hee hee. If I brainwash the investigative agency in charge of the rules, can’t I set up a dictatorship to force the foolish masses to follow my laws, my morals, and my violence ability?”

“You really are a sadistic dominatrix who would dress up in bondage gear, aren’t you!?”

“My, my. A free tip, Misaka-san. If you’re trying to insult someone, you should try to avoid paying them an obvious compliment.”

“I should’ve known a pervert would love being called a pervert.”

And.

There was no bright light or loud noise.

It happened suddenly but it had been inevitable.

''When Tokiwadai students crossed the line, it was only a matter of time before she made an appearance.

She was walking on hard asphalt with pumps, yet she moved in total silence. Which made it all the more terrifying. She was not a ghost or a phantom. How could a human with real mass move like that?

She was here.

The ultimate trump card had been played.

Her glasses glinted in the light.

The dorm manager of Tokiwadai Middle School’s off-campus dorm had finally made her move.

Mikoto’s mind blanked out.

There was a span of a few seconds where she found only a gap in her memories.

She may have shouted something in that missing time.

And she had turned tail and run. For some reason, she had jumped down from the building wall and took off running full tilt. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what had happened before that. Academy City’s #3’s teeth chattered and she had tears in her eyes.

Color finally returned to the world, the distorted sound returned to normal, and reality caught back up to her.

She continued running with all her might.

“Y-yikes!!?” “Y-yikes!!?”

Her voice was in perfect sync with Shokuhou’s next to her. The terror must have removed the unathletic #5’s mental limiters. She looked like her Achilles tendon could snap and her knees could shatter at any moment, causing her to topple forward, but she was keeping up with Mikoto’s speed for once. At times, fear was a greater motivator than anger.

A distorted presence approached from behind.

It was like being pursued by a thick invisible wall.

This had nothing to do with their specs. Shokuhou could brainwash anyone and control them, but she had decided to flee instead of aiming her remote. Because her instincts told her even the slightest unnecessary action would allow their pursuer to silently catch up and get her in a wristlock.

While they ran at max speed, the two girls exchanged friendly banter.

“Gasp, pant. M-Misaka-san, you’re the physical fighter, so take responsibility and go fight that dorm manager from hell!!”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Even the Mariyo Bros. who stomp and burn their way across their enemy’s kingdom will die instantly if they fall into a pit! Are you asking me to fight the human equivalent of one of those insta-death pits!?”

Stopping out of exhaustion was simply not an option.

They were up against the dorm manager from hell. If she so much as laid a hand on their shoulder, they were dead.

They had to run away at all costs.

“What are we going to do – gasp – Misaka-saaan!?”

“This.”

Like most big cities, Academy City had plenty of bicycles and scooters illegally parked on the sidewalk alongside major streets. Mikoto looked through those, spotted one that looked especially fast, and destroyed the thick antitheft chain with an iron sand sword.

She had chosen an electric unicycle with a very thick tire and T-shaped handlebars.

The #5 honey girl panicked when she realized what was happening.

“Excuse me!?”

“Are these really street legal? Academy City traffic rules are so lax.”

Shokuhou didn’t want to hear that from a girl actively breaking the law by stealing the vehicle, but Mikoto easily started it up with a motor sound much lighter than with a gasoline engine. She took off down the street at more than 60km/h. And it went without saying that a unicycle only had one seat.

Yes.

Climbing a vertical building wall was not the only way to escape a mindless group. If the dorm manager from hell secretly used an elevator to reach a window on the same floor as Mikoto, it was all over. So the simpler and more effective way to stay safe was to gain speed and put horizontal distance between them.

Shokuhou was stuck on foot.

She could try using a car or motorcycle, but with her brainwashed support group spread out across the road, her own allies would get in the way of any vehicle she tried to use. Funnily enough, the strongest dorm manager was swallowed up by that crowd. Unfortunately for her, she was caught in an avalanche of small children like Fremea, Azumi, and Kanou Shinka. It was a good thing she only ever attacked misbehaving Tokiwadai students.

(That stupid queen bee sacrificed efficiency for a more intimidating visual.)

“Misaka-san, hey, don’t leave me☆ Please, cough, gasp.”

Mikoto thought she heard someone quite seriously approaching tears behind her, but she wasn’t going to turn back for that. ''Ahh, the wind feels so nice.

(Anyway, where am I?)

She had been running aimlessly away thanks to Shokuhou’s force, Anti-Skill, and then the dorm manager from hell chasing after her. She wanted to see outside the city’s wall to find out what this world was, so she wanted to avoid running around in circles. If she continued traveling in one direction, she would eventually find what she wanted.

She spotted a blue sign on the side of a pedestrian bridge overhead.

“District 18?”

(Then the shortest route would be to the District 11 gate leading to Shinjuku! I finally have a route to the goal!!)

But this was a problem at the same time.

District 18 was home to a lot of elite schools, including Kirigaoka Girls Academy and Nagatenjouki Academy. Those schools’ uniqueness could be seen in the fact that they openly referred to the School Garden as their rival. While the School Garden was an old-fashioned space of classy girls, District 18 had the colder and harder feel of inhumanly efficient technology.

And with so many research secrets to guard at those elite schools, the defenses would be strict.

The asphalt to Mikoto’s right suddenly melted into black goo.

An intruder had been detected and a shot had been fired with no warning.

Or maybe the troublemaking intruder wearing a Tokiwadai summer uniform had rubbed them the wrong way.

Because Mikoto was the #3 Railgun, the peak of the electrical espers, she instantly identified the invisible attack.

It had come from a giant metal tower far away at the center of District 18.

“A deadly microwave focusing weapon… Why is Academy City using something like that!?”

Of course, Mikoto had never seen this before, so this observation wasn’t enough to say anything about the identity of this world.

She tried emitting lots of EM waves from her body to confuse the EM weapon tower’s targeting, but then her head wobbled heavily.

(Oh…no. My…stamina…)

She didn’t even have time to scream.

An invisible wall of EM slammed into Misaka Mikoto.