Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

“Gh, agh.”

A hoarse sound reached Misaka Mikoto’s ears.

Even she was surprised a sound like that could come from her 14-year-old throat.

(I’m not dead?)

She could not seem to access her memories of what happened. It was a rare but irritating experience. It was like her body was sending out a powerful warning signal telling her that opening the lid of her memories would destroy her own ego.

What had happened?

(What did Anna do? And what happened afterwards?)

Her vision was unstable. Not knowing what had happened was causing a mild panic within her. There was something flashing in front of her eyes and she felt a dull pain throbbing in her temples, but nothing was actually flashing – her mind just could not process the scene before her. It was like having a piece of trick art shoved in front of her face without being told how to look at it.

She slowly tried to get up and finally realized something soft was surrounding her head.

It was Shokuhou Misaki.

The other girl was apparently seated on the ground and holding her to her chest.

Almost like she was comforting a small child.

“Are you alive there?”

“…”

Mikoto forced herself to shake her head to focus herself on reality.

“I can’t believe you came to before me.”

“And I never imagined I would have to look after you like this. But it’s not like I had a choice. I can’t save him without sending you after Anna, so I’m willing to do anything, even try out my nursing ability.”

They were in District 15.

Anna Sprengel was not here. She must have already gone on ahead.

A scorched smell reached Mikoto’s nose.

She also saw a metallic shine.

A crushed and bent mass of steel lay on the ground nearby, but it was not a 4-wheel vehicle or an airplane with a distinctive silhouette formed from the main wings and tail. She saw what looked like squid or octopus tentacles and a special paint oozing out onto the street. The technology was sticky and liquid, reminding her somewhat of a rotting corpse.

She gulped.

(What is that? Some kind of machine?)

“That is the Five Over OS, Model Case: Mental Out.”

The two girls were hiding behind what looked like a ruptured plastic ball with a diameter of several meters.

Mikoto was limp and sweating despite the cold and Shokuhou gently raised one hand for some reason.

Her fingertips moved as if she were controlling a marionette.

The gloves she wore must have been made to read her finger movements.

“Have you seen the mantis-like #3 version, Misaka-san? Well, this isn’t just the #5 version. ''It’s another version derived from it.'' To be clear, I picked this up from the dark side and it’s said to have enough academic value to rival me. I never imagined I would have to sacrifice it to save my life like this.”

They had to catch up to Anna who had gone on ahead.

Mikoto calmed her breathing and tried to pull her head away from that warmth that felt as inviting as a down blanket during the wintertime. But her actual body refused to leave that comfort. Her body more than her mind had been infected with a fear that she really would die if she kept doing this.

She exhaled and asked a question.

“What do we do?”

“What else can we do? We save him. Which means stealing some kind of method from the villain. And I’m willing to immaturely play as many trump cards as it takes to do that. So how about a second one!?”

With a dull thud, a metallic flash flew in from the side.

This one was a bizarre parasitic wasp the size of a car. Its two front legs wrapped around Shokuhou Misaki while she hid behind the scraps. Mikoto just watched it happen, but once she realized she was about to be left behind, she quickly clung to its reinforced glass abdomen. The strange machine slid across the ground while it rapidly vibrated its four thin wings to take flight while otherwise motionless.

This was not the further derivation.

It was the original Five Over, Model Case: Mental Out.

(Honestly, I thought this thing was destroyed back then, but then I look into it again and find there was a full set of spare parts out there. You can’t let your guard down for a second with this city!!)

The military weapon modeled after an ichneumon wasp flew up into the sky while making a rapid V-shape like a red pen marking a test.

The relative speed caused the snow to feel a lot more like a blizzard blowing right at them.

“Do you know where Anna went!?” frantically shouted Mikoto. “She’s following her phone’s navigation, so if we don’t stop her now, she’ll head straight to the hospital. And it takes less than half an hour to get there from here!!”

“You can handle that sort of mechanical search of the city, Misaka-san. Start hacking security cameras and phones to find her!!”

Then had Shokuhou taken flight just to feel like she was ''doing'' something? She could look cold and calculating, but this side of her reminded Mikoto of ''someone else''. Mikoto pulled out her phone, but then she clicked her tongue. Finding Anna was not as easy as Shokuhou had made it sound, but…

“Some of the cameras have unnaturally repeating frames as if to hide someone?”

“Where?”

“Keep going east. She isn’t even trying to lose anyone tailing her, so she’s taking the direct route to the hospital!!”

Their flight sped up.

If they had not already known how far to go, they might have passed her right by.

Mikoto pulled out an arcade coin.

They were already in District 7.

If Anna really was headed where the girls thought she was, they did not have a moment to lose.

“Keep our attitude and speed steady! Let’s see how she likes an aerial bombing!!”

Then the giant wasp suddenly began to stall. The blowing blizzard created by relative speed changed direction. They dropped straight down like a marionette after its strings were cut. Mikoto’s eyes widened as she clung to the thing.

“What, did it malfunction!?”

“No, this was something else!”

The mechanical bug wings continued to vibrate so quickly they produced afterimages. There was no damage to the machine and its output remained optimal. Nevertheless, the cutting-edge military weapon lost its balance and dropped toward the ground.

Mikoto could see Anna Sprengel’s thin smile down below.

She was also holding her small palm straight up toward them.

That was all, but…

“Did she grab at the air and the atmospheric pressure itself!?”

Airplanes and helicopters could not fly just anywhere. They had a maximum altitude. Devices that flew by interacting with the air would lose their power to fly if the air was too thin.

A dull roar reached Mikoto’s ears shortly thereafter.

A localized whirlwind attacked the Academy City sky and the Christmas lights and trees were torn away and flung upwards as if on a space elevator. The Five Over was caught by it and could only fall now that it had lost its flyable environment.

“Gahh!!”

They crash landed and the accumulating white snow burst into the air around them.

They had used two Five Over superweapons without doing any real damage to Anna at all. They were less than 200m from Anna, although they were separated by a few temporary warehouses (probably delivery drone bases) that looked like circus tents.

“Well, we’ll just have to make do,” muttered Mikoto while getting up from the ground.

In a dragged-out robot anime battle, the main characters would withdraw and try again the instant they ran across the slightest problem, but in reality, only the side with greater quality and quantity could escape enemy pursuit to leave the battlefield. If the weaker side carelessly turned their back, they would simply get shot down like this.

Would Anna Sprengel come to them?

Or would she ignore her surviving enemies and continue walking toward the hospital?

Misaka Mikoto exhaled and spoke.

“Shokuhou, hey, you with the excess fat.”

“What is it, you cut of bland lean meat?”

“I’m going to attack Anna again, so you use that opening to get away from here and return to the hospital.”

“Don’t you have that backwards? Placing me in front of the goal won’t accomplish anything. We already know Mental Out doesn’t work on Anna.”

“Yes, which is why you need to get that idiot out of there. If we called him up and told him, I just know he’d come here instead. We’re already in District 7 and this is only 20 minutes away from that hospital on foot, after all.” The rapid clip at which Mikoto spoke suggested even she was not fully convinced about her idea. “You might be hopeless in a direct physical fight, but you specialize in the more confusing worlds of influence and conspiracies, right? I don’t care how you do it, just spirit him away to somewhere Anna can’t reach him. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the vaccine or antidote from her. I swear it. So you get that idiot to evacuate. Take him outside Academy City if you have to.”

“Are you sure about this, Misaka-san?”

“Of course I’m not,” she spat back. Then she clarified. “But I know he would hate to see what happens if we don’t. If the peaceful hospital is attacked and all the doctors and patients are hurt while he watches on, he’ll blame himself for it. So you need to get him out of there before that happens.”

This was not a fight to win.

It was to avoid a bad aftertaste after they lost. Their best case scenario had already fallen that far.

They had to accept that Anna Sprengel was enough of a monster to change the modern era.

“Misaka-saaan.” Shokuhou Misaki sighed. “I won’t forget you for at least a week.”

“Oh? That’s longer than I expected. The world might be destroyed by then.”

They bumped fists and then got to work.

Misaka Mikoto moved toward a building wall while crouched low and Shokuhou Misaki instructed the ichneumon wasp combat machine to pick her up.

However, something had slipped both their minds.

Or maybe they had never had a chance to accurately assess their location after making an emergency landing due to the irregular stall. They deserved praise enough for making sure they did not crush any of the boys and girls who were visiting supermarkets and discount stores on Christmas to buy soba or a mochi maker for the New Year.

In other words, what would happen if they had happened to land on the direct line between Anna’s current position and the hospital?

A dazzling flash of light blasted right through the temporary warehouses in between.

They had been careless.

That 2-3m metal orb that could produce the world’s oldest whatever was enough of a threat, but Mikoto and Shokuhou had been attacked in another way afterwards. They had not given any thought to what that light had been. And in a clash between supernatural powers, leaving any gaps in your understanding was tantamount to suicide.

They were not given enough time to analyze what had happened. Just like the audience drawn in by the stage magician’s act, they could not make out the truth of what they were seeing despite seeing it directly.

Even seeing clearly grew difficult.

Shokuhou Misaki would have died if the ichneumon wasp Five Over had not left her control and automatically protected its user. It was bent, crushed, and pushed backwards while it counteracted the force. The thick shield very nearly flattened the human it was meant to protect. A torn-off shard of metal grazed the Queen’s cheek as she scooted back on her butt. A cut ran across her cheek like someone had slashed her with a blade.

The ichneumon wasp silhouette fell apart.

It could no longer fly and probably could not even walk.

But Shokuhou did not have time to worry about that. Things were even worse. If they were crushed here, their plan to “make the most of their loss” would fall apart too. She could see that solid pillar snapping before her eyes.

Since they were so near the hospital, an ambulance with siren blaring had to swerve out of the way of the “obstacle” collapsed on the side of the road.

In other words…

“Misaka…-saaan?” called Shokuhou from behind the crushed metal.

There was no response.

The other girl looked like a cat that was hit by a car. She was lying on her side and she did not even turn her head toward Shokuhou. The only movement was her short chestnut hair weakly fluttering in the chilly December wind. The white snow was falling on her and starting to accumulate so evenly and cruelly.

And Shokuhou also heard some quiet footsteps.

''She'' was coming.

“Misaka-saaan!!”

Still no response.

The girl who had sworn she would retrieve the vaccine or antidote now lay collapsed on the side of the road.

The disconcerting sirens clutched at Shokuhou’s heart.