Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

A luxurious cottage stood on a mountain.

A full slice of an enormous aromatic tree sat in the living room as a table. Five tablet computers were arranged in a C-shape on the table.

“Is that the UAV Frenda was talking about?” asked Mugino.

“It is,” flatly said Takitsubo, a video game joystick in her right hand.

The five screens provided a 180-degree view from the front of the UAV, along with status information. A different window could be opened to access the view from behind or below.

Long ago, a computer the size of a storage container had been used to control UAVs, but with modern parallel processing, ordinary household machines were enough. Apparently. All this information came from a girl who was currently out and Takitsubo wasn’t too confident on her own.

The UAV she was operating had been custom built by Frenda.

It was about 2m long and had a sharp silhouette resembling a gardening spade or a double-edged sword. It did have small wings spread on either side, but it mostly stayed airborne with the brute force of its ramjet engine’s thrust. It reminded Takitsubo of a bottle rocket with the bare minimum of wings.

“Isn’t this more like a remote-controlled surface-to-surface missile than a UAV?” asked Mugino.

“She said an ordinary UAV would be flipped over by the crosswinds if you tried to fly it in this typhoon,” explained Takitsubo.

Of course, this toy was built by a bomb expert like Frenda, so it probably could perform a precise bombing of a surface target or crash into an enemy fighter and explode.

“Won’t they send out a Six Wings when they detect this thing flying around?”

“The typhoon has bicycles, signs, and other large pieces of metal flying through the air, so Frenda said the airport radars and programmed alerts will be set to overlook a lot.”

That must have been true since the UAV was flying between the skyscrapers without getting shot down.

The UAV was flying through District 14.

That was a strange district where the high-tech skyscrapers were mixed together with short Italian-style buildings with orange roofs and white walls. If they moved the camera, they would have seen a Chinese block, a Korean block, an Indian block, and other small blocks with entirely different designs. The district had more foreign transfer students than any other. It was a lot like a single park with each flower bed containing a different type of flower.

And all of the roads were flooded.

“Hey, Mugino, didn’t the emergency alert say the areas with poor drainage had more than a meter of flooding?”

“Sounds like Venice. It floods every year there, like it’s a seasonal event.”

They could also see broken and toppled wind turbines here and there. Academy City’s power generation was distributed between all the many wind turbines instead of done at a giant centralized power station, so there was supposedly no concern of a power outage…but this made them wonder.

“Anyway, Mugino, does it look like we’ll make it on time?”

“I haven’t seen any non-typhoon alerts, so we should be good.” Mugino Shizuri sighed softly. “Ainame Caroline got my skin…which means she has my DNA map, but that isn’t enough to use for esper development. I’m one of the seven Level 5s, remember? To keep my information secret, all the medical equipment used to develop my power was special-made at my lab. No other equipment will do, so if she wants to cause trouble with my DNA map, she’ll have to attack that lab.”

If it was all used within a secure lab and never left the premises, they could ignore all the safety standards when designing the equipment. That meant Ainame Caroline would have a hard time acquiring the same thing elsewhere.

“I see. That would explain why she spent so much time gathering research data using her online marriage scams. She must have wanted plans for that equipment, or at least enough secret data to create replacement machines for what’s too difficult to get out of the lab.”

“But that tells us she would have a hard time getting into the lab. She’s having trouble. So if we attack the lab first, we can hide inside and set up an ambush. If she could get everything she needs with those marriage scams, she would have finished by now. Which means she can’t get it all. She’ll eventually get impatient and take more forceful measures. And if we know Honey Queen will attack there, I want us in control there first.”

But like she had said, that secret lab was secure enough that even Ainame Caroline and Tachiuo Mary wanted to avoid attacking without a plan. On the surface and in secret, it was no ordinary lab.

“Hula Hoop,” said Mugino Shizuri. “That’s the world’s most powerful particle accelerator buried deep below Academy City’s outer wall. Hah. What better place to develop an electron beam Level 5?”

“Hm? But isn’t Hula Hoop’s control center located below District 23?”

“Officially. But most every facility that large has a higher-level lab hidden within it. The official side gets all the responsibility on paper, but the hidden side gets priority on using it in secret.”

One building looked out of place in the district of international transfer students.

Its vast grounds were surrounded by a tall wall and the building itself had a futuristic design similar to an airport terminal. Its purely functional beauty was a blot on the scenery. And the giant facility sat right smack in the middle of a residential area with no explanation of its purpose.

Takitsubo’s mouth formed a small triangle while she held the joystick.

“That’s the most lab-y building I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s perfect camouflage. ''Nothing could be more uninterestingly common in Academy City''.”

But the UAV controlled by Takitsubo failed to reach the space above the lab.

Something happened as soon as it moved out from between two glass-covered skyscrapers.

With a sizzling sound, the 5-tablet 180-degree view suddenly went dark.

Mugino leaned forward a bit.

“Something just happened.”

“Isn’t this your lab, Mugino? Don’t you have information on its defenses?”

“Defending the lab isn’t my job.”

“Also, this isn’t a problem.”

The five tablets instantly switched to the view of a different UAV. They had more than one in flight. It may have been similar to a soccer video game where a single person controlled the entire team.

“UAV-CAM-02 – manual mode. This one was flying along with the first one, so it should have seen everything.”

With the wide view still in place, Takitsubo opened a smaller window and quickly rewound the footage to the moment UAV-CAM-01 was destroyed. But that didn’t tell her much. After a light like a camera’s flash or welding, the UAV suddenly exploded.

“That was a laser weapon,” concluded Mugino. “And not a single, straight-line optical weapon. I thought there was an unusual number of skyscrapers in the area when they’re guarding their secrets with a tall wall. They must have sprayed a special coating on the glass without permission. Now those skyscraper windows act as mirrors, bending the invisible beam any number of times.”

“That would mean they can hit us even if we approach between the buildings or below the pedestrian bridges.”

“In the worst case, even if we’re inside the manholes.”

That was when a dark shadow appeared on the footage from the upper left corner, static ran through the footage, and UAV-CAM-02 ceased responding.

“UAV-CAM-03…no response. I’ll send UAV-CAM-04 out ahead as bait and switch UAV-CAM-05 to manual mode.”

Takitsubo sacrificed another UAV to give herself some freedom of movement.

The mystery UFO was flying through the air along with their UAVs. It resembled a weather satellite. Solar panels and jets were attached all around the sides of a cylinder with a combination of three long metal rods sticking out of the rear. It looked to be around 5m long in all. It had no wings or propeller, but it managed reach a complete standstill at an altitude of 100m by precisely switching between its jets. It also flew around in small, irregular bursts. Overall, it moved like a small, cowardly fish.

“Is it a ramming weapon?”

“UAV-CAM-05 lost. Switching UAV-CAM-06 to manual mode.”

“It didn’t ram that one.”

“The noise in the footage is getting worse. And the UAVs stop responding to the joystick before they’re shot down.”

“There must be another EM weapon that sends out a beam of powerful microwaves… The EM waves would explain the strange burst of orange sparks just before they’re shot down.”

Their UAVs were more like rockets than airplanes and they had sent them in from multiple directions, but they were still losing them fast. It went without saying what would happen if they tried to approach by foot on the flooded ground. It was starting to make sense why even that arrogant Ainame Caroline had wanted to avoid a direct attack on this place.