Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

They were soaked.

The fire burning below had practically turned the parking garage’s 5th floor into a sauna. At this point, neither sexy high school girl Kumokawa Seria nor small middle school girl Mitsuari Ayu could worry about the fact that a boy was around. Thanks to their thin summer uniform and sleeveless gym clothes, they were giving off a sweet scent and the white or flushed pink color of their skin was showing through.

“You have no idea how much this helped,” said Kamijou while cooling his forehead with an ice cream pack that resembled a drinkable gelatin pack. Mitsuari’s refrigerated bag was not working at 100% in this heat, but somewhat cold was better than nothing. Even room temperature water would be valuable in a situation like this.

Meanwhile, the fluffy-haired girl waved her small hands wildly with her face beet red.

“(O-oh, no. That’s the one I used at Tokiwadai to trap that Gatling gun dummy. By which I mean I held it in my armpit to melt it and then kept the rest around in case I needed to use it for another trick, but how am I supposed to say that now?)”

“?”

Kamijou gave her a confused look while also looking so happy to have that cool package against his forehead.

Then a deafening roar reached them from below. This was not the roar of the flames consuming oxygen or of a car blowing up. This was the kind of real, unexaggerated gunfire you could not find even in a movie. And instead of just a shot or two, this was a continuous stream where the individual shots were indistinguishable and it sounded like the single long tone of a broken buzzer.

“That’s the Gatling gun girl!”

“Senpai.”

“What, did you want half of this?” Super high school girl Kumokawa Seria wrinkled her brow while holding in her mouth a colorful popsicle that came in a tube and could be broken in two. “A Gatling gun, huh? But it sounds like she’s firing from below us instead of from a distance. I can’t see any good reason for entering the sea of flames she created herself. Well, if I had to come up with some kind of benefit, she may be tearing down the walls to create airways that send in oxygen and increase the intensity of the blaze to kill us. Y’know, like how they would blow air into the stove through a bamboo pipe in old kitchens.”

“Not the kind of advice I was looking for,” said Kamijou. “For now, you wait here.”

“What?”

“Someone’s in here and, according to Mitsuari, this is one of three espers. But with a small number of elites, they can’t surround us perfectly. It at least doesn’t look like we’re surrounded by a group of more than a hundred. You’re the only one who can drive the bike, so I want to keep you around so you can use the bike’s speed to lose them and get Mitsuari to safety.”

The motorcycle’s rear tire had blown when they landed, but that mystery busty high school girl seemed skillful enough to steal any of the cars or motorcycles parked in this garage. She could straight up steal them, or she could remove a tire to fix the busted motorcycle.

However, the black-haired forehead girl breathed an exasperated sigh.

“Justify it however you like, but I’m not greedy enough to demand gender equality while also insisting on a ladies first policy.”

“And I feel like you left something important unsaid back there,” added Mitsuari. “If the gloomy boobs girl is driving and I’m in the back seat, then what about you!?”

Kamijou did not answer that question.

He crouched low in the way he had seen Kumokawa do and approached the downward slope that seemed to symbolize death at the moment. The slope belched heat and black smoke, so it felt like he was sticking his head inside an oven.

He was not doing this out of courage.

When they had been attacked by the giant dragon(?) created by that Biohacker, he had run away, leaving Kumokawa and Mitsuari behind.

He had come back, but that was only an excuse.

He still remembered the look on Kumokawa’s face when she had grabbed his arm and told him to run into the alley. He could picture it so vividly he could make out her eye color.

(To hell with that.)

That was what it came down to.

He was not fighting because he was brave.

Kamijou Touma was a coward. That was the kind of boy he was.

(I’m never letting myself feel that way again. So it’s 100 times better to stand up and face the threat!!)

Alone, he moved down to the 4th floor.

There were no partitions in between. He had only descended the slope one floor, but the air itself seemed to change. It prickled at his skin so much he felt like he was one careless inhalation away from scorching his throat.

The enemy apparently planned on climbing one floor at a time.

He had his doubts about that.

The fourth floor was the same height as a school building’s top floor, and it was already this bad. How much worse of a hell would one find at the source of the fire on the ground floor?

Guns and esper powers were unnecessary.

Simply losing your sense of direction in that black smoke would be enough to lose your life.

“…”

He held a hand to his mouth and looked around the area.

Then he made his way to the slope down to the 3rd floor.

The elevators were stopped and the Gatling gun had apparently already blown away the emergency stairs on the outer wall. That left just the one route up and down: the slopes he was using.

He was descending while the enemy was ascending.

He did not know who this assassin was or what they looked like, but he was bound to run into them somewhere.

Another roar of gunfire sounded from below. They must not have cared about preserving ammo, but Kamijou did not know if they were blowing up cars to accelerate the blaze or if they were using a rain of bullets to tear down any cover creating a suspicious hiding spot.

The roar was closer than last time.

And not just because he had descended a floor.

They really were getting closer.

(They’re coming.)

The pointy-haired boy slowly descended the slope to the 3rd floor.

There was more than just heat and smoke this time.

He felt some other kind of pressure.

It was like returning to school at night to collect a forgotten item and spotting someone else there.

He sensed a human presence.

(They’re coming!!)

Both sides were approaching the third floor from above or below, so Kamijou Touma finally saw the small grim reaper.

“Huh?”

This came as a surprise.

It was a small girl of only about 130cm. Her gaudily bleached blonde hair and her spangle-covered dress seemed a little much for her age, but that alone would never have led him to guess she was an assassin.

The real problem was what he saw right next to her risquély-exposed bright thigh.

She casually held an enormous Gatling gun at her hip.

“You’re not the girl from the photo. Are you some normal person who didn’t get out in time?”

“Are you playing dumb? I flew through the sky on Senpai’s bike and crashed into one of the higher floors. You set this place on fire and have it surrounded, so I know you must have seen that.”

“Ha ha☆”

To be blunt, Kamijou Touma did not properly understand the threat of a Gatling gun. If he had, he would have crumbled just like he had when facing the raw power of that dragon. He might have been more afraid against a smaller knife or stun gun.

And that was why he had the “confidence” to immediately dive behind a rectangular concrete pillar as soon as the bundle of barrels began to rotate.

A moment later, the pillar was blown to smithereens.

The stream of bullets swept by horizontally at just above hip height.

If he had not fallen over while diving behind cover, his top half would have been removed from the bottom.

The weapon must have been using a motor.

If not for the one second delay needed for the barrels to begin rotating, the initial shot would have killed him.

The destruction did not end there. All the cars parked along a horizontal line from there were blown away and lifted into the air before the gun swept back the other way to fill the flaming scraps with even more holes and tear them down beyond recognition. The metal became scorched fireballs that rolled every which way like living things. Hiding behind the pillar did not matter at all. A cold sweat poured down Kamijou’s body as those giant distorted dice rolled his way.

“Dammit!!”

He rolled along the bare concrete to avoid what looked a lot liked crumpled balls of aluminum foil. The pointy-haired middle school boy finally realized how destructive this weapon was when he considered those were all that remained of a sports car’s classy streamlined shape reminiscent of polished pumps.

He was dead if that hit him.

And the bullets were not the only thing to be afraid of.

The terrain was crumbling and the cars were exploding and flying through the air. The water spraying from the burst pipes was evaporating and increasing the humidity to the point of a sauna.

While making sure he did not lift his head, he slid behind a light truck that had been smashed into the ground.

And his thoughts ''did not'' focus on the Gatling gun that gave a much louder roar than a park lawnmower.

The unique rules of Academy City had shown themselves here.

(This is definitely scary, but a small kid like that couldn’t swing that monstrous thing around.)

He clenched his teeth.

Fiercely.

That meant there was a hidden element to this that was bending the laws of physics.

He doubted there was a medical power assistance suit hidden within that thin dress.

This had to be an esper power.

“…”

He silently clenched his right hand into a fist.

Whether it was her arm strength or grip strength, if she was using some kind of power to buff her physical body, he could neutralize it by slamming his fist against her body. Then she would either be flipped over by the recoil, or crushed below the Gatling gun’s weight. Even an amateur like Kamijou could tell that was not a weapon meant to be carried around by human hands.

If she was using a trick to bypass that impossibility, he only had to remind her how impossible it really was.

Fear of that terrifying barrage crept up on him and tears welled up in his eyes, but the area was full of smoke and deafening gunfire thanks to the Gatling gun girl blowing up all of the cars. If he stayed low and slowly circled around her, he could approach from a different angle.

“Check.”

Blank.

The calm voice that reached him from the side made Kamijou Touma’s mind go completely blank.

(Wait…there’s someone else here. There’s someone else in this smoke!? And they found me right away! But how!?)

His thoughts were scattered.

He did not even have time for his throat to dry up.

Dry gunshots flew toward him from the side.