Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 10===

Ladybird had a lock on two targets.

She walked barefoot across the floor and accurately obeyed her instructions, but she also had a question.

Why were the children necessary?

Kihara Hasuu—her Sensei—was researching androids. He had already successfully created one, so he no longer needed to capture biological humans to dissect and observe them. This disagreement appeared to be over ownership of the Child Errors (she failed to realize it was her education by that true Kihara that led her to use the word “ownership” in this context), but why was the old man so insistent on this?

That unfortunate research was a thing of the past.

She was an android built from purely mechanical parts, but she could use an esper power. That meant no more human specimens were needed for esper development experiments. They only had to mess with machines from now on. The Child Errors no longer needed to be captured and used up.

She thought that was a wonderful thing. She could not believe the people who still clung to the old system that required humans to use other humans. Did they wish to protect the status given to them by the current Level system? If they truly believed their fight was just, then they were beyond reasoning with. Machines were not the only ones that could have their memory data rewritten. Humans could have their feelings and thoughts falsified as well.

So she would bring an end to it all.

She was fighting here to end the misfortune and tragedies caused by the esper development program.

“Ohhhh!!”

The boy raised a meaningless battle cry, ran in, and repeatedly fired his handgun. She only had to block those shots with her machete.

But he had apparently learned how she fought.

She tried to hit him with the ricochets, but they refused to hit. When she deflected a bullet back, it would follow the same straight trajectory. Placing a single piece of plywood in the middle would change things. A bullet’s force was determined by its muzzle velocity. The force of the ricochet would generally be lower. That was obvious enough since bullets were not constantly accelerating like a rocket or missile. So he could set it up so he could shoot her through an obstacle, but she could not break through it on the way back.

Her use of ricochets was similar to Accelerator’s reflection, but all her machete did was knock the bullet back. She could not ''include the actual vector in that''.

That said…

(I doubt someone with such a stupid face could do this. He must be receiving assistance with the calculations.)

She considered jumping. Lifting both feet from the ground was usually a bad idea in combat, but not so with her. With her android specs, she could kick off of one column to the next and attack from the air.

She heard the loud roar of an engine while dealing with the bullets.

It appeared to come from a forklift.

“Aneri, surround the kids! I don’t know where that old man got off to, but don’t let him get close!! If he tries it, run him over!!”

“Don’t get distracted.”

He could have gotten a hit in on her by sending the forklift in from the side while firing on her from the front. Not that a blow like that would be enough to destroy her frame.

She swung the thick machete in her right hand while gathering her strength in the space between her eyebrows.

That was how she aimed.

A blast of wind blew away the obstacles between her and Hamazura Shiage. It was more like they were obliterated by an explosion than swept away by wind.

“An esper power!?” shouted the boy.

“It looked to be Level 3 or higher,” said the girl.

She no longer had to worry about the gunfire now that the line of fire was clear. He must have known the risk of ricochets was back because he stopped attacking and hid behind a nearby column, but that was no defense. She could charge in and slice through the column and his torso behind it with a single horizontal sweep of her blade.

She had enough time to reach her other hand to her thigh, pull out the bottle, and take a drink of the discharge machine oil.

A dull boom burst out.

She was only an android modeled after the structure of the human body, but the materials used for her skeleton, muscles, and everything else were bizarre dark side tech. If she wanted to, her horsepower could rival a V12 engine at max RPM.

But even as she chose the correct action, her mechanical head was filled with questions.

She had used a wind power.

But hadn’t she used fire during her previous clash with these people? And what about the time before that?

Androids had the same structure as humans, so a single android should only have a single power. Or could she do what humans could not because she was a machine?

(Sensei?)