Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter3 (section)

===Part 4===

Really, the assassin girl with a handgun was overthinking things.

Kamijou Touma was only an amateur middle school boy.

When up against gun-wielding criminals with esper powers, he was nowhere near calm enough to cleverly stay a step ahead of them.

“Oh, god! How am I not dead!?”

A tingling pain remained in the bones of both his wrists.

The car door had been lying nearby by pure coincidence. If nothing had been within arm’s reach, a lead bullet would have smashed his skull and killed him.

And that was just the small handgun.

How much worse would it be with the Gatling gun?

(I don’t know if they have special goggles or an esper power, but if they can track me through this smoke, they wouldn’t be using that Gatling gun. They could have snuck up on me and taken off my head. That means their scanning ability isn’t that great.)

That was all he had to work with.

Fortunately, it was not hard to locate the less-than-130cm girl in the smoke. She was constantly producing enough noise that it not only rang in his ears but also seemed to smack him in the face.

(That means a hostage should work! That Gatling gun girl must be on the same side as the scan girl, so if I use her as a shield, the troublesome scan girl can’t attack!!)

For him, 10,000 anti-material rounds thicker than his thumb were no different from a single 9mm handgun round. If any one of them hit him, he was done. If they did not, he would not shed a single drop of blood. It was a binary choice for him.

He was scared.

Scared, but coping.

His opponents must not have been very coordinated because the scan girl had clearly known where he was yet she had not informed the Gatling gun girl.

That meant he did not have to worry about an accurate counterattack.

The cacophony of gunfire told him where the little girl was even with the smoke obstructing his view, but that very same noise would mask the delinquent boy’s footsteps while he approached her.

He tore apart the curtain of black smoke with his fist clenched tight and attacked the left side of the little girl with the gaudy spangle dress.

People were slowest to react when attacked from diagonally behind them on the opposite of their dominant side.

“Wha-!?”

Her too-short skirt flipped up as she frantically turned around and the ammunition hose attached like to a vacuum cleaner wrapped around her slender waist. That clinched it. With a dull click, the gunfire suddenly stopped. The aluminum hose must have twisted past its limit because the belt of bullets got caught within and stopped moving. The motor kept the barrels spinning, but that was it.

Kamijou Touma showed no mercy even against a girl of less than 130cm.

He clenched his fist with all his might.

“Say hi to your big sis for me!!”

“You son of a bitch!!”

The enraged little girl showed no concern for her bright thighs while she grabbed the Gatling gun’s ammo hose with one hand and swung around the drum-like magazine she was dragging around like a vacuum cleaner. It was a lot like a monstrous morning star. How much did that weigh? A hit from that in a cross counter would shatter his skull, so he unclenched his fist and focused on dodging. He quickly ducked his head to let the horizontal attack fly past, but then he heard an odd sound.

It sounded like concrete cracking, but the giant metal magazine had not crashed into a concrete pillar.

It had unnaturally come to a stop in empty air.

And the sound had come from somewhere lower than that – from the ground below his feet. From the concrete shards produced by the merciless gunfire.

“You…”

“Tch! It’s stuck!?”

(She isn’t boosting her muscles or making the object lighter. If the oddity came from the ground…)

“You aren’t lifting that heavy-ass Gatling gun with your muscles or your esper power. ''Were you allowing the weight to escape into the ground''!?”

A poor student like Kamijou did not know what people pictured in their heads while using telekinesis. There had to be many different control methods – magnets, threads, wind, cranes, arms, etc.

But.

What if this was done by creating something like an “invisible support”?

The concept would be the same as a camera’s tripod. With a support to hold it up, she would not have to worry about the weight of the device on her own arms. With that separate support, the weight could escape into the ground instead.

Also, he was pretty sure Gatling guns were not designed to be mobile.

“In that case…!!”

“So what!?”

Before the unnaturally-stuck magazine could fall from the air, the Gatling gun girl let go of the hose and reached her small hand toward the back of her gaudy dress. Did she have a knife hidden there? While the ''close-to-home fear'' of something other than the Gatling gun clutched his stomach, Kamijou threw his first toward the little girl.

He felt an electric tingling in the back of his head.

He had meant to show no mercy, but her appearance may have made him hesitate at the last second.

The fist intended to land on her head instead hit her shoulder and slid down from there. Amazingly, that sent his fist straight toward the “line” connecting the giant magazine and the concrete floor.

A moment later, the invisible support shattered and the weight being sent into the ground returned to the device.

“Bgyuh!?”

The midair drum magazine suddenly crashed into the concrete floor. The hose wrapped all the way around her slender hips squeezed tight and forced an odd sound out the self-bondage girl’s mouth. She was a lot like the anchor when one side lost badly in a game of tug of war. Her feet left the floor and she was tossed forward.

Which sent her right into the chest of today’s lucky bastard, Kamijou Touma.