Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 3===

Defeating the enemy Aradia wasn’t enough to end this.

An earsplittingly shrill sound exploded out.

A formation of four HsF/A-49 stealth craft passed by overhead. The aerial bombs that separated off in midair accurately dropped toward Kamijou and Aradia, but Aradia extended her left hand into the air just before they hit. One after another, several explosions burst in the frigid night sky.

“I will hold back her aerial forces. You go deal with Mut Thebes herself!!”

“Thanks!!” shouted Kamijou, running to the side deck. Aradia did not join him, instead mounting her mic stand broom and taking off toward the bridge roof.

More explosions burst like fireworks overhead while Kamijou ran until his surroundings changed.

The floor below his feet was flat.

He had arrived on the flight deck equipped with an electromagnetic catapult that launched planes using the same principle as a linear motor. That meant he was at the stern.

(Sure, you can use this to take off, but how are you supposed to land again!? Stupid Academy City and its stupid, stupid weapons!! Are they VTOL? Or do they use floats to land in the water and then the front of the ship swallows them like a landing ship!?)

He heard a dull tremor.

Mut Thebes had apparently separated the 10 aircraft cruisers attached to her back like a giant bird. The massive white shadows remained standing like shed skins as she slowly turned toward him.

And she stepped onto the flight deck.

The newly flat surface made it look like the entire environment was prostrating before Mut Thebes as its master, ensuring it would never end up looking down at her.

Kamijou Touma and the Transcendent faced each other directly below the moon.

Mut Thebes slowly tilted her head and spoke plainly. Her expression was no different from when she had asked him to pass the French dressing back at the consulate.

“Should I shout the name of my special attack?”

“I’d much prefer you said nothing and let me defeat you.”

“Leaving human territory. Risk 4: Life and death, pure and impure, quiet and noisy, holy and evil, correct and incorrect – releasing the dual seal. Swiftly activate, Dead Phoenix.”

“So much for my preference, goddammit!!!”

Kamijou clenched his right fist and Transcendent Mut Thebes swept her hand horizontally at the same moment.

Something white moved.

An object with a nearly 3m diameter emerged from her shoulder. It looked like an enlarged version of a circular saw for cutting lumber, but it was actually a giant 8-bladed propeller.

“!?”

It rotated rapidly at a diagonal angle from her shoulder. If it so much as grazed Kamijou, he would be torn to pieces. He hurriedly held out his right hand to negate it, but something wasn’t right.

It was so large that mere contact would mean instant death for a human-sized target like Kamijou, but one look at the massive bird wings from before was enough to know that a warship’s propeller should have been more than 10m across.

(''She changed its size''? Could she always do that, or is that what the inhuman Dead Phoenix mode does!?)

And Mut Thebes was already expressionlessly summoning another weapon.

A white object covered her back like a giant armored snail shell. It was in fact…

“A boiler.”

“Wha-?”

Roaring flames flew straight toward him. He negated them with his right hand, but the dark smoke obscured his vision. She made her next move while he was still choking. She swept her arm to the side and something like a white beam of light shot out.

“Water jet auxiliary power.”

(Water.)

The dark smoke was sliced through along a diagonal line.

There was no time.

The blade of ultra-pressurized water extended without end. After all, this was a propulsion device meant to push a warship weighing more than 100 thousand tons. A hit would easily slice apart a human torso. Kamijou ducked low to the ground to just barely avoid the horizontal sweeping attack, but the aircraft cruiser’s bridge was sliced off at the base, causing it to collapse.

Mut Thebes tilted her head and readily threw away the weapon boasting so much destructive power.

And next…

“Grounding plate.”

“What the hell!?”

“The base of the ground line. However, a ship can’t bury the plate in the ground like normal, right? Instead, the massive amount of excess electricity produced within the ship is sent out into the seawater.”

“Not my point. What’s with all these crazy things!?”

“You mean this?”

The brown girl brought her palms close together in front of her chest and thick lines of electricity crackled between them. If what she said was true, that had to be even more powerful than a train’s high voltage line.

“As I have already explained, I absorb the weapon’s shadow, not the weapon itself. I have no real reason to use them for their intended purpose.”

“So you can just do whatever you want!?”

“More or less,” she plainly agreed. “And another thing. Remember the boiler?”

“?”

“I was opening the maintenance hatch of a running diesel engine to forcibly extract the flames, but that isn’t all that emerged. What do you think happens to a human who breathes in ''invisible oxygen-deficient air'' created when combustion steals all the oxygen away?”

“…Gah!?”

Suddenly, Kamijou’s right knee nearly dropped to the deck.

Mut Thebes’s expression was unchanged.

“You do not need a special poison gas to kill someone. The air contains around 21% oxygen. Simply reducing that by half creates deadly air guaranteed to make a human pass out.”

“~ ~ ~!!!!”

“Or so it said in the engine room manual. Extracting the knowledge from the shadow wasn’t easy, just so you know.”

Using the items in such unusual ways may have been a privilege gained by leaving the human territory, but how far would she grow if she were to absorb the shadow of, for example, an original grimoire or Index?

And Kamijou couldn’t spend any time on that thought.

He could tell he wouldn’t remain conscious for long. Similar to motion sickness, he didn’t seem able to fight it despite being aware of it.

He wanted to end this quick so he could at least pave the way to saving Anna before he passed out. He could have Aradia, the caring big sister, carry him to Alice. He had seen enough of that goddess of the cold but gentle moonlight to trust her that much.

So he didn’t need to worry about himself.

He would focus on that life they could all save together.

“Gahhh!!” he shouted, breaking through his mental limiters like a hammer throw athlete.

He clenched his right fist tight and took a powerful step forward.

Mut Thebes only tilted her head.

She did not use the electrocution weapon she had called a grounding plate.

With a deep rumble, gravity suddenly released its grip on Kamijou. A push from below had launched his feet from the flight deck. His footing – that is, the aircraft cruiser – had moved.

The brown girl sighed softly.

“My control is not limited to the weapons attached to me.”

“Gwah!?” groaned Kamijou when, a moment later, he was slammed back down into the deck.

At least his right hand hadn’t touched the floor, causing him to plummet further.

But.

He couldn’t reach her.

Gathering all of his resolve wasn’t enough for his fist to reach that Transcendent.

He was out of breath and unable to get up, but when he looked up at her, he saw the girl raising both hands overhead with the moon behind her. Thick electricity crackled between her palms.

Mut Thebes did not hesitate.

“The ship’s fluid dynamic power generator produces 45,000kW of alternating current power at a frequency of 60Hz. That easily surpasses the power of a nuclear aircraft carrier and is enough to cause the human body to explode.”

“You think you can kill me with ''electricity''? Sorry, but I’ve built up a resistance to high voltage currents.”

“There is no such thing.”

An extra-powerful discharge burst out.

Kamijou Touma tried to raise his right hand, but he was trembling too badly to move.

The light filled his vision.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

His pure white vision did not return to normal. But that he could sense the passage of time meant he was still conscious?

“What…happened?”

He tried to speak and found his voice was terribly hoarse.

Still collapsed, he blinked hard several times before his vision somewhat returned. The deck was scorched brutally black right next to him. And Mut Thebes stood a short distance away. But she hadn’t had any reason to move away in that situation?

No, that wasn’t true.

The aircraft cruiser itself was tilted diagonally. The girl was leaning her back against a wall to prop herself up.

“What…”

She was moving her head side to side to see what had happened.

“…the hell?”