Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Chapter2 (section)

===Part 3===

That was it.

Saten Ruiko’s soul was now fully out of her mouth.

(Stupid.)

She wasn’t faking it this time.

Saten’s eyes really had rolled back in her head while she howled on the inside.

(Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!! I-it’s true I couldn’t see the screen to check. And it’s true I generally don’t check every time to see if the flash is on! Did the auto setting decide the room was dark enough to need the extra bright LED strobe light!?)

Unfortunately, her silent laments would not turn back time.

“…”

Needless to say, Uiharu Kazari would have noticed the flash. Even if she was wearing a thick eye mask and napping in her seat, missing that would have been scary in a brand new way. Saten quickly let go of the phone and returned her arm to its original position. But that wasn’t going to convince Uiharu nothing was amiss. In fact, she couldn’t imagine what kind of miracle would lead Uiharu to not link that flash to her.

She had no choice but to shut her eyes and see what happened.

The footsteps approached. Slowly. The sound like straining leather may have been her squeezing the police staff painfully tight. Actually, would Thermal Hand let her release the limits on her muscles by forcibly keeping her body temperature at a level that provided miraculous strength in an emergency? Was she really only Level 1!? The darkness made it all scarier, but as much as Saten loved information, she knew opening her eyes now would be the last mistake she ever made.

(Ah, abh, abwababrabh.)

There was nothing she could do.

At this point, opening her eyes wide and attacking Uiharu in a last-ditch effort might be an option, but she lacked the courage to attempt it.

She tried to recall some more enjoyable memories to gather up as much courage as she could find.

Emotional control was crucial.

(It was always so easy to trick Uiharu with her skirt and underwear. She was wearing cute polka dotted ones just yesterday. Ah ha ha. Eh heh heh.)

“…”

She only managed to depress herself by discovering a possible motive for Uiharu to kill her.

She couldn’t imagine how she could escape this one.

There was an unseen power, a thick wall of pressure, and a violent aura that told her she didn’t stand a chance. Why did Uiharu seem so untouchable today?

She was normally so unobservant Saten had no trouble sneaking up behind her and flipping up her skirt.

Saten’s heart pounded loud in her chest.

It wasn’t even a physical threat anymore. Some invisible weight seemed to have taken Uiharu’s side. She was sure of it. That girl was a ruler. As long as she remained in this room, she was a little god who could shut down any puny human resistance in a single blow. But this wasn’t the kind of god found at a Shinto shrine like the one whose power resided in Saten’s good luck charm (which she still treasured despite always insisting on the latest and greatest of everything else). This could only be described as an evil good.

She could only endure it with her eyes shut.

“Saten-san.”

There was no warmth in Uiharu Kazari’s voice.

This was one of those deals where responding to the voice calling for you was the wrong move. In urban legend terms, it was like the Aka Manto or Hasshaku-sama, where responding would get your soul stolen away. Something had gone seriously wrong when her strategy was based on something as poorly defined as a soul.

(O-oh, no. Do I feel like the blood is rushing to my head because she’s using Thermal Hand on me? Can’t she kill me from the inside if she forces my temperature to stay at nearly 42 degrees? No, I’m imagining this. She wouldn’t attack me when she thinks I’m already dead. Or wait. Which is it? I can’t tell!)

She couldn’t control her racing heart anymore. She understood that, but had the extreme tension caused some kind of thread to snap and now she was having a slight out-of-body experience?

“Saten-saaan. ''I know you’re watching.''”

Uiharu called again.

(No, she’s bluffing. Don’t play along! She isn’t using Thermal Hand!!)

Uiharu may not have been expecting a response. She may have been watching closely for any movement of the eyelids or shoulders. Saten couldn’t tell what Uiharu was thinking anymore. It was even possible she was staring into space and speaking with some high priest or something. Oh, but an entirely illogical explanation was even scarier somehow.

Uiharu didn’t call her a third time.

Because another bright flash erupted from the phone.

After a short pause, another one.

They continued like that. Uiharu finally caught on and spoke her thought out loud.

“It’s on a timer?”

“…”

She’d bought it.

Saten heard rustling cloth. She couldn’t be certain with her eyes closed, but Uiharu had probably crouched down and picked up the phone again.

Saten had activated the timer just before letting go of the phone. If there was a reason for the camera to go off on its own, there was an explanation for the flash other than Saten’s survival.

“Hm,” said Uiharu after a long while. She didn’t trust it right away. “And I thought for sure I’d caught her in my trap by gradually dimming the room’s smart lighting.”

(Wow, so that wasn’t just an accident? When did we wander into a world of deception and superpowered battles, Uiharu!?)

Of course Uiharu would be careful. She was risking everything here as well.

Uiharu seemed to be teetering on the edge of believing it, but if those scales tilted in the wrong direction, she might just strike Saten’s head with that heavy police staff or the corner of the phone.

Eventually, Uiharu’s voice arrived from beyond the darkness.

“Could I check the photos?”

“?”

“If that initial flash took a picture of the ceiling, there’s nothing to worry about. But if it took a photo at any other angle, the timer ''alone'' can’t explain it.”

“!!!???”

Oh, no.

Oh, no, no, no!!

Saten couldn’t shut her eyes and suppress the shaking much longer. She felt more tension than any other time that day.

Uiharu grabbed her hand.

“Is it a fingerprint lock? No. It doesn’t use her eyes or face either. Hm. Saten-san must have known that an old-fashioned password is still the safest option when it comes to face-to-face trouble.”

“…”

Saten didn’t feel like she had escaped disaster yet.

Uiharu sounded awfully unconcerned for her plan failing.

The phone’s lock screen was fairly trustworthy against an ordinary person, but Uiharu Kazari was far from ordinary. She was probably Judgment’s top cyber crime specialist. In other words, she was a skilled hacker. She could easily break through a commercial phone’s password lock.

And needless to say, the angle of that initial photo wouldn’t check out because Saten had been holding the phone toward the door. Once Uiharu found that photo, she would know for sure that Saten was still alive and had taken the photo herself.

Simply put, Saten was screwed once her phone was analyzed.

Then Uiharu would finish the job with that extra-large blunt weapon. A lot of brain training apps promised to make your brain more flexible, but Uiharu was going to take a much more literal approach to that.

Saten wondered why her mind tried to make weird jokes in extreme situations like this. Maybe the terror was so great she would scream if she faced it directly.

(Wh-wh-wh-wh-what do I do!?)

She forced her eyes open a crack to see what she could see.

Uiharu appeared to be hooking Saten’s phone up to her computer with a cable. So what if she destroyed the computer? She didn’t dare move her head, so she used just her eyes to look around. There were thick cables tangled up on the floor. The power cables for the microwave, coffee maker, and so on were plugged into a power strip. One of course connected to the computer.

This would work.

But could she do it?

The cables were pulled pretty taut. If she reached out her leg and caught it with her foot, she might be able to pull the entire power strip’s plug out of the wall. What part of the computer was working when that LED was flashing? She didn’t know, but she thought it would damage the computer to lose power in the middle of that work.

But wait.

Would that actually work?

No matter what she chose, the cowardice crept up on her and struck her in the heart.

Knocking out the power wasn’t guaranteed to damage the computer. Maybe it would for an ordinary computer, but what if Judgment ones were made especially tough? Uiharu would know best, but Saten couldn’t exactly ask her and she didn’t have her phone to look it up on either. She was stuck. Her mind spun fruitlessly and she couldn’t reject the worrying possibility.

Besides.

Even if she did yank out the power cable and shut off the computer, wouldn’t Uiharu question why the cable had come unplugged? Saten would only be drawing suspicion back to herself. But if she didn’t do it, it was only a matter of time before Uiharu was through the lock screen. She was doomed if she didn’t escape the immediate threat, so she couldn’t sit around worrying about the threat that came after that. She just had to do it! Even if every option available to her was deeply flawed!!

Abandon your pessimism, Saten Ruiko.

Be reborn.

If you want to escape this and go on living, you need to take action!!

(Kh.)

While doing her best not to disturb the pool of fake blood on the floor, she gradually gathered strength in her leg. She slowly stretched it out, trying her best to not make any noise. She didn’t like that her skirt pulled up as she did so, but she could worry about that later. She focused her mind on her big toe. Could she reach the power cable on the floor? Just barely. It was going to be close. In fact, she was tensing her leg so much it was close to ''cramping''!!

She had to be careful.

A single drop of water would cause it all to blow up in her face.

But she was interrupted by yet another unexpected turn of events. This one came from outside her field of vision. The loud rattling sound did not come from inside the room. It probably came from the hallway outside the door.

“Uiharu? It’s nearly time to leave. You need to get ready for today’s joint training with Anti-Skill. We’re doing a mock crime scene investigation for a convenience store robbery. My family gave us an entire store to work with.”

(Huh!? Sh-Shirai-san!? Why did she have to show up now!?)

Saten’s heart was approaching its limit, but then she remembered Shirai was a member of Judgment and she visited Branch 177 a fair amount. An outsider like Saten was the one who had no business being here.

Also.

She couldn’t let the surprise distract her. Wasn’t this the chance she needed?

Armed with that police staff longer than a bamboo sword, Uiharu was the god of this room, but that localized divinity would mean nothing against a Level 4 Teleporter or the Level 5 Railgun. It was only valid against an ordinary person like Saten. Uiharu might be able to break the conservation of mass to cover up all the evidence of her crime, but she wouldn’t be able to defeat Shirai Kuroko in a direct conflict.

(Yes!! My savior has finally arrived!! That’s right. There’s more to this world than terror. Has Shirai-san always been like Temple Born T-san!?)

Then she could wait.

She could shut her eyes, lie flat on the floor, and let this play out.

Without making a single rustle of cloth.

Screwing up now and getting the police staff to the head 3 seconds before help arrived would be too tragic to consider. It was best to not even try it.

And Uiharu did seem flustered all of a sudden.

“Eh? Ehhh? Sh-Shirai-san!?”

In fact, her voice shot up in pitch. Her voice was trembling and tearful.

The god of destruction had rapidly deflated.

She was the usual mouselike Uiharu again.

Shirai Kuroko was oblivious to all of this, so the door clicked open without so much as a knock.

“What are you doing in here, Uiharu? You need to get ready for-”

''Whack!! Thud!!!!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

(Eh?)

This time, time really did stop for Saten Ruiko.

Her eyes were still shut, so she started to wonder if the entire world had vanished around her.

It was just that quiet.

What had those sounds been? What was this painful silence!? Had her savior, Saint Shirai Kuroko, been knocked out with the police staff!? Surely not, right!?

Then she heard the straining of a solid object under stress. Most likely, that was the ecofriendly plastic police staff being squeezed in someone’s tight grip.

Uiharu’s Thermal Hand was only Level 1, but what if she could alter her body temperature with hot water or the air conditioning and then lock it there in order to freely switch on or off the limiters for her muscles?

(Eh? Huh?)

Saten may have made a grave error.

Even a Level 4 was still human. An unexpected blow to the head would kill them the same as anyone else. It was possible she could have prevented this. Maybe she should have risked it all and gotten up to tell Shirai to watch out.

But it was too late now.

That ship had sailed. There was no going back to that crossroads.

“Hah. Ha ha.”

She heard dry laughter.

Uiharu Kazari’s voice sounded unstable as she talked to no one in particular.

“You can’t just barge in without knocking, Shirai-san. Fortunately, disposing of two bodies isn’t that much more difficult than just the one.”

(O-oh, no. Say it isn’t so, Shirai-san.)

Saten couldn’t suppress the shaking anymore.

(If she can knock out a Level 4 like Shirai that easily, what chance does a Level 0 like me stand!? Wh-wh-wh-what do I do!? Please, tell this isn’t really happening!! I can’t rely on the power level rankings and seek out Konori-senpai or Misaka-san’s help! But who does that leave? Haruue-san? Edasaki-san? I’d even take Janie or Febrie’s help right now! Oh, I never should have let them go! Is this my punishment for completely forgetting they existed recently!? Anyway, I need some goodhearted person from a more honest world or this is only going to get worse!!)

Actually, wasn’t Uiharu Kazari supposed to be one of those comfortingly good people? When the party’s soother had gone completely off the rails, sticky darkness rapidly filled the entire world. It was like sinking into a bog.

The darkness of her shut eyes was scaring her too badly now. She couldn’t stay like this forever, so she slowly opened them a crack while still lying on her side.

Mere centimeters away, the twintails girl lay entirely motionless with blood dripping down into her opened eyes.

Her face wasn’t even symmetrical anymore.

The one side looked weirdly shaded because it was dented in on the side.

Something pink and thicker than blood was oozing out from behind the eye on that side.

There was no doubting it. Shirai Kuroko had to be dead!!

“Bh-”

That was her limit.

Babbling nonsense left her mouth before her mind could keep up.

“Bwbhbjhahaerh!! Bhjfhwieurhbng!?”

Shirai was dead.

Did that mean she was breathing the same air that surrounded an actual corpse!?

And didn’t the rules of this small holy ground prevent her from ever overthrowing its master? She had already seen what happened to any who defied her.

She couldn’t let this room’s master know she was still alive.

Realizing she had just shouted out loud, she stiffened and trembled violently.

What could she do now? What options were left!?

“Ha ha. Saten-san.”

She was afraid.

Afraid to turn around.

But she was still the same urban legend lover who was never satisfied until she had gathered all the information. She chose to check behind her instead of meeting her end not knowing.

She turned silently.

A girl splattered with her victim’s blood had an incongruously sweet smile on her face.

Saten heard a dull straining sound.

The smiling girl was squeezing a red-soaked police staff in her hand. Level 1 Thermal Hand proved to be far from harmless and anything but ordinary as it bared its fangs here.

“I knew you had to be still alive. And it’s too late to escape now☆”