Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS3 Chapter7 (section)

===Part 4===

Those girls had definite power.

But it had gone unrecognized.

Theirs had been a pitiful life and one they were not allowed to escape.

Weren’t they supposed to have risen to a higher stage if they had more power? But in the end, the riffraff were just the riffraff if they did not have the title of a prestigious school.

So.

“You are letting this get to you, Acid.”

“You can still read me, Counselor?”

“What else am I good for?”

“Yes. …What ''do'' we have left if our powers are taken from us?”

However.

Esper powers were not necessarily convenient.

They passed the stick of lip balm from lips to lips as if passing back and forth a microphone they were sharing.

“Shall we double check?”

“Is that really necessary?”

“My oxyacid cannot be set to stun.”

The identical twins discussed their situation while reaching for the buttons of the baggy dress shirts they wore. This was a necessary ritual. The oxyacid created by combining oxygen with plenty of hydrogen ions was powerful, but that meant even a small drop could spell disaster. They would immediately notice if any got on their skin, so they had to worry about it getting on their clothes and eating a hole in those. But in those cases, it was not always too late.

Once they had stripped down to their underwear, the girls checked both sides of their shirts in turn.

“I do not see any holes or scorch marks.”

“No problem here either.”

“Oh? Counselor, whose shirt is this one again?”

“I can ‘read’ you, Acid, so I can tell you truly do not know. And to be honest, I am not sure either.”

Their bodies were exactly the same size, so it did not really matter. After checking their shirts, they put them back on. With the ritual complete, it was time for their next move.

“Acid, you can have this.”

“Ahm.”

They held hands and looked overhead.

Highly-concentrated oxygen whirled around them and then the ceiling collapsed, sending construction materials crashing down to the floor nearby like a waterfall or avalanche.

The two of them whispered to each other as if none of that were happening.

“How fragile.”

“It really is, Counselor. Although I am afraid of some of the oxyacid dripping down when I use it overhead like that.”

The bottoms of their baggy dress shirts fluttered dangerously.

The ceiling had collapsed, but they did not actually need to dissolve the entire thing. No high-rise buildings were actually made of nothing but reinforced concrete these days. That would be too weak to impacts and vibrations and it would have terrible insulation, reducing the efficiency of the air conditioning. So if they damaged the joints connecting the various materials, the rest would collapse under its own weight.

They did not fly through the sky or anything like that. Acid did not control the wind or the air which were a mixture of different gasses. She only controlled pure oxygen. That meant producing a gust of wind was an inefficient use of her powers.

She excelled at chemical reactions. Specifically, she produced boxy coffin-like blocks out of the empty air and stacked them up.

That muddy-colored staircase was of course a collection of various oxides.

Acid had created a powerful oxyacid by combining oxygen with hydrogen ions and then the moisture in the air, but that was not her only specialty. She could also create solid blocks by combining the nitrogen and carbon in the air.

The silver-haired twin girls held hands and readily climbed those disconcerting steps that would cause untold harm if you licked them. They showed no concern at all for how exposed their bright thighs were.

“They are from Tokiwadai, aren’t they?”

“Yes, a prestigious girl’s school.”

“A status we could never hope to achieve.”

“If a delinquent school produces high-level espers, they don’t even know what to do with them, do they?”

That was their story.

Their school had had a bottom-level ranking and never should have produced a single Level 4, much less two, but they had not wanted to let that prize transfer away. When the Ugly Duckling or Cinderella suddenly shined through the riffraff around them, would they really find happiness? No. If their family or sisters were truly unkind, would they just watch as the star of the show left home?

The school had gotten in their way.

“Our school has the technology to produce fantastic esper powers such as this.”

They needed those twin girls attending their school if they were to make that claim. They also wanted the record of the twins graduating from their school. …So the teachers had written falsehoods into their permanent records and doomed them to forever remain in that bottom-level delinquent school. Endless possibilities should have opened up to them, but no one had grabbed ahold of their outstretched hands. On paper, they had supposedly hit their teachers countless times and aborted an untold number of nonexistent children. The teachers had only sneered and told the twins to sue them if they had a problem with it. They were supposed to prove their innocence, but how? Were they supposed to spread their legs and say “take a look” every time some false accusation was leveled against them? People snickered when they walked around town, their photos were posted on social media like mugshots, and they had even had raw eggs thrown at them in front of the train station. When their parents called, they only ever heard shrill shouting these days. They were stuck there until graduation. And with the nonsense accusations written up about them, they could not hope for much better at the next level of their education either. They would be stuck in bottom-level delinquent schools forevermore.

But then someone had spoken to them.

“Then why not destroy that school yourselves?”

It had been a revelation.

If the school was gone, nothing would remain to hold them back.

They might not be able to clean up the poor reputation that had already been established, but they could at least crush the source of that trouble and break free of the vicious cycle. They could not change the present, but they would stop things from getting any worse in the future.

And to top it all off, the twin known as Acid could accomplish some useful things with her power to control oxygen.

That oppressive mass of reinforced concrete had burned like a campfire at midnight. That was all it had taken to rob the school’s 300 students and its teachers of their stagnant territory. They had banded together as the lowest of the low and mocked those twins, but the girls had no idea what had become of them once they were split up and sent to separate schools that worked differently. The students had probably failed to keep up with the classes and powers development and the teachers had probably been labeled as idiot factories that could not even write on the blackboard properly. Either way, the mockers would have become the mocked. But the twins were honestly not interested enough in those people to keep track of their lives after they had their revenge. For them, it had ended with that one act. They did not see how they could ever make any progress if they continued carrying that with them.

What they had needed was liberation.

It had felt like the world was opening up before their eyes.

Once they had done it, they had tilted their heads and wondered why the thought had never occurred to them before, but it had been that person who had told them what to do. That adult woman had been the first person to ever reach out a helping hand to them and her lessons had changed how they viewed the world like a piece of trick art.

Of course they were going to follow her.

She had told those twin girls that all their troubles had been caused by a problem with their birth. If they had been born into a family with history and style behind it, money would have come to them as a matter of course. If they had attended a prestigious school from the beginning, none of that trouble would have ever happened.

And she told them it was not too late.

Their current environment was a mistake. If they were lifted up to the position they rightfully belonged in, they would have attended a prestigious school like it was normal and developed their powers even further like it was normal.

So that was what they would do.

No matter what it took.

This was not like robbing a bank for money or making threatening phone calls to a rich kid. They were only taking back what was rightfully theirs. So why should they show any restraint?

“There they are.”

“Indeed they are.”

The silver ponytail twins giggled, passed the lip balm with their lips, and pressed their cheeks together.

They had known this from the beginning.

“The one in the hallway straight ahead is Misaka Mikoto.”

That was enough for the Electromaster to frown, but…

“The one behind that thin partition wall is Shirai Kuroko.”

The frown turned into a full-on grimace.

But Counselor was not done yet.

“The one behind the vending machine is Shokuhou Misaki.”

With a click of their tongues, the Teleporter and Mental Out had to move out into the open. Using cover was only useful when it acted as a shield or hid your presence, but neither use applied here if Acid concentrated her attacks on them. And if the wall or hiding place ended up trapping them, it would only work against them. Once their presence was known, they had to move out.

It was of course Counselor who had read all this.

But…

“…?”

“Counselor?”

There was a deviation in the tempo of their laughter. Acid opened her mouth a bit, but the lip balm never arrived.

Mikoto casually scattered electricity from her palm in front of them.

And as soon as it hit the floor, the entire surface of the floor burst into flames.

“I really do not approve of abusing the Judgment fire-prevention manual to open up all the valves,” said Shirai.

That explained why the sprinklers were not functioning, but that was not Acid’s main focus. Counselor was acting weird, so she worked to organize what information she had even though that was not usually her job.

This was a first.

She had to half-steal the stick from her twin’s lips instead of having it passed to her.

“Is this some kind of oil? No, is it wax?”

Acid had taken control now, but her confusion was not just about Mikoto’s actions.

Counselor could “read” everything, so why had she not given advance warning? That confused her much more.

But before she could correct this mistaken situation, Arsonist Mikoto opened her mouth.

“Acid, you are an oxygen-controlling esper. That much I’m quite sure of.”

There was a low roar.

At that point, Acid finally realized why their enemies had spread this fire around.

“Fire consumes oxygen,” said Mikoto. “It is normally too small a difference to notice, but the flickering and intensity of the flames should reveal how much oxygen is left.”

“Wax fires burn at a lower temperature than you would think,” added Shirai. “At the very least, they are not as hot as kerosene or gasoline.”

“So don’t you think they can act as our canary in the coal mine?☆”

Shokuhou’s bewitching smile elicited an outburst of anger from Acid.

“You!! Counselor, get ready. We don’t need to worry about unnatural-looking injuries. We can dispose of their bodies in the very fire they set!!”

“…”

However.

Counselor still did not respond.

Acid poked her lips with the stick of lip balm held between her own lips, but her twin did not grab it.

This was a first. Acid was always cheek-to-cheek with her twin, but something seemed off about that identical girl now. The silver-haired twins in dress shirts were no longer in sync. Acid’s partner was soaked with a disturbed sweat like it was a giant frog’s belly rubbing against her cheek.

Finally, she broke the rules. Counselor opened her mouth to speak without holding the stick between her lips.

“But…that means…”

“Yes, we have a pretty good guess about your power as well.” Mikoto glanced down at the sea of flames surrounding her. “Acid controls oxygen, but where does it come from? At the very least, she doesn’t seem to gather it from her surroundings. It seems she produces oxygen in her lungs and breaths it out into the air to control it. The flames are obviously growing stronger around you two. …Then what about Counselor? As identical twins with the same genetic makeup, you should have similar powers. That means you do not read people’s minds by scanning the electrical signals or chemical compounds in their heads. ''You are only taking readings centered on oxygen, just like with Acid’s power.''”

“Ah.”

Counselor gasped.

In a way, that was the answer.

How was oxygen linked to people’s emotions and thoughts? Counselor herself had given it away.

“There are plenty of actions you have no control over, like trembling in fear or shedding tears,” said Mikoto.

“Like if you walk up the stairs long enough, you can’t help but start gasping for breath. And that gives away your inner thoughts.” The Queen smiled with a TV remote in hand. “Breathing. …Just like perspiration, it accurately reflects one’s tension and emotions. Come to think of it, they monitor that in Anti-Skill interrogation rooms, don’t they?”

“What a curious thing to know,” commented Shirai. “But if that was all it was, it could be fooled by consciously regulating your breathing. And you could hold your breath to refuse to give a reading, no matter how unnatural it looked. So it has to be more than that. Would it be best to assume you read a form of breathing that cannot be consciously controlled?”

That girl could read minds through oxygen.

They could not just think of it as an absurdly useful power and stop thinking there. For example, their friend Sakibasu Yuri could use her carbon-based power to do everything from appraising antiques to accurately reading the flow of the air. It would hardly be surprising to find other espers who could use other elements like oxygen, hydrogen, or nitrogen.

Mikoto wagged her finger a bit.

“For example, what about cutaneous respiration? Covering yourself in gold dust does not suffocate you and taking a bath does not drown you, so it might not seem all that important and there are a number of exaggerated stories related to it, but at the very least, I’ve never heard of someone who could freely control it. If you can read it, then there really is no way for a normal person to avoid it. We can’t hide our thoughts from you unless we wear an airtight spacesuit or something.”

Counselor had initially spoken directly in Mikoto and the others’ minds, so she must have been able to write information into that minute amount of oxygen instead of just reading it.

However.

Counselor had not lost control of herself because her power had been revealed.

In the most extreme examples, there were battles that could not be won even if the esper’s power was discovered. If this group had ''only'' done that, Acid and Councilor could have used their teamwork to crush them.

But that would not work here.

Counselor had noticed a fundamental problem before Acid did.

She had given the positions of Misaka Mikoto, Shirai Kuroko, and even Shokuhou Misaki who reigned supreme at the top of Counselor’s own field of psychological powers.

And because she could “read” all that…

“Where…is she?”

“Good question.”

Her thoughts were a complete mess. Counselor had been left behind by her confusion. She should have had the stronger psyche, yet she had trampled on the twins’ rules and completely overlooked the distrust she was creating in her partner.

“The other one. There was another one with you!! That girl with the unrealistic ringlet curls. Where is she hiding!?”

“Why not control the oxygen to read our minds? Isn’t that your specialty?”

The Ace answered her with a cruel smirk.

And that smile spread to the Queen as well.

“Rampage Dress. …She is a Level 4 who controls her own bioelectricity to place every part of her body – including her organs and blood vessels – under her conscious control. My clique’s right-hand girl is an exception who can actually control her cutaneous respiration. Once she understood how it worked, escaping your grasp was not difficult for her☆”

“Then…then where is that monstrously strong girl!?”

“I really don’t think reading any of our minds is going to tell you. I mean, she never told us where she was going. Silly girl. ''Reading someone’s mind is useless when that person doesn’t know the information you want.'' Hokaze Junko has gone into hiding to act independently of us. Invading our minds will not tell you what she is thinking. …And I would recommend not underestimating my right-hand girl. When boosting herself, she has the muscular strength to bench press more than a ton. You can control oxygen? Then use those mental abilities you’re so proud of to work out a way of using that to defend yourself. But if even a single blow takes you by surprise, a flesh-and-blood human like you will be pulverized.”

“We have no way of finding out where Hokaze-san is or what she is doing.” Misaka Mikoto spread her arms within the sea of flames. “But we can still take our own individual guesses and provide thorough support for that option. But only Hokaze-san herself can know if we are correct.”

“A-Acid!!”

Counselor clenched her teeth and let her fear control her as she shouted to the partner standing right next to her.

However.

That obvious attempt to relieve her tension was ineffective.

Because a moment later, she heard a sound like a plastic bottle’s cap being twisted off, but much more ominous.

It came from right by her ear, as if whispering softly.

“Eh? Ah?”

Counselor may not have been able to see it because they were close enough for their cheeks to touch.

A raging wind had approached from behind and landed a karate chop in the center of Acid’s back, causing that twin to arch her back from intense pain similar to a hernia exploding. And the very next moment, the other arm wrapped around her neck.

It was over far too quickly.

And since Acid was the only one capable of directly fighting, her defat left Counselor defenseless since she could “only” read minds. The twins could have tried for a cross-counter against Mikoto or Shokuhou, but the raging ringlet curls wind prevented that by hiding the thoughts that leaked out through cutaneous respiration.

There was nothing she could do now.

Or there shouldn’t have been.

“Aciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!!!!!!”

Counselor’s shout was like a vocal slap to the face.

And that was enough to force life back into Acid’s eyes.

Mikoto just barely managed to grasp the situation through the flickering flames.

It was the oxygen.

Enough oxygen to cause hyperventilation under normal circumstances had just been swallowed into Acid’s lips!?

“Be careful, Hokaze-san!! She can still move!!”

“?”

This was somewhat similar to how the ringlet curls girl strengthened her body using bioelectricity. By controlling the flow of oxygen in her body down to the cellular level, Acid placed her body under her full control.

There was a dull sound similar to a metal bat swinging around.

It was followed by a heavy sound as Acid’s slender hand grabbed the ringlet curl girl’s neck. She was going to lift her up with one hand at this rate.

“Kah…hah!! Ghhh!?”

It must have been a subconscious action.

But that was why she showed no mercy or restraint. The ringlet curls girl used both hands to grab Acid’s wrist ''with all her might''.

This girl could bench press more than a ton and she could strip away a concrete wall with just her grip strength. But after boosting herself in a way similar to Rampage Dress, Acid’s slender arm showed no sign of the bones or muscles snapping.

“Ahm.”

Counselor practically stole the stick of lip balm from Acid’s lips.

She was fighting back and she resumed her footwork at the same time.

“Hokaze!”

“Acid, use her as a shield.”

Shokuhou Misaki immediately hit her TV remote’s switch, but the one twin swung the ringlet curls girl around while literally suspending her above the floor. Mental Out was such a wide-ranging power that she could only activate it when controlling herself via a TV remote. That meant she had to see her target and indicate them with her finger movement. With that physical curtain blocking her view, her attempt ended in failure.

“!!”

“Do not worry. I will tell you exactly what to do. We can turn this around together, Acid.”

Counselor was “reading” the contents of Misaka Mikoto, Shirai Kuroko, and Shokuhou Misaki’s minds. That could not be prevented on the fly after revealing the true nature of her power. Even if they surrounded the twins, their every attack would have a cross-counter waiting.

While being used as a shield with her neck in the one twin’s grasp, the ringlet curls girl tried to force out her voice.

“Shirai…-san!?”

Her warning did not arrive in time.

A dull sound exploded out as something hit the twintailed girl in the forehead. It was a solid compact containing a new autumn-exclusive color of foundation. While holding the girl up with one arm, Acid had blocked the enemy’s view like a bullfighter and used her strengthened arm to throw the cosmetic item she had pulled from her uniform’s pocket. Mikoto and Shirai used coins and darts as weapons, so they knew such things could be very destructive when used well.

The blow must have shaken Shirai’s head because she collapsed to the floor.

(We can’t make any careless attacks, but we can’t just stand here either.)

“I can ‘read’ that.”

They could not hope for a long-term battle.

If they did not figure out something soon, the ringlet curls girl would not last.

Her slender neck was being squeezed. With her control of her muscles, she might be able to reduce her oxygen consumption in a state similar to suspended animation, but not even that would last forever.

The silver-haired twins let the hems of their dress shirts flutter as the flames whirled around them.

They were back in top form. Counselor could read the enemy’s thoughts and Acid could control the oxygen.

They had climbed back to the top.