Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 5===

An Anti-Skill officer leaned out from behind cover and shouted with special binoculars in hand.

“Visual confirmation of top-priority target!!”

Thanks to the martial law, the runway was not properly lit. That allowed Anti-Skill and Judgment to take action before Kamijou got a clear view of the figure in question.

A battle broke out at the second defense line.

“Begin!!”

Frist, they launched mortars from the ground. To Kamijou, they seemed like bigger versions of the fireworks available at convenience stores and discount stores. And they were used in much the same way. The projectiles were launched into the sky above, but instead of falling back to the ground, they decelerated above the target’s head and scattered light even brighter than a car’s headlights. These were parachute-equipped flares. Anti-Skill wasn’t showering the enemy with explosives right away – they were first ensuring a clear view.

This allowed Kamijou Touma to see the small figure more than 500m away.

It was Christian Rosencreutz.

That confirmation froze his spine and legs with fear. This was someone who made him wish the veil of darkness had not been swept away.

And the initial flares had a secondary purpose.

Anti-Skill and Judgment were meant to preserve order in the city, so they had a process to follow.

“Warning shot achieved.”

Yes, no matter what the type of projectile, ''they would fire the first shot above the enemy instead of directly at him.

And since the target continued walking and did not put his hands up…

“The suspect is not surrendering! Repeat, the suspect is not surrendering! Conditions for use of force have been met! Open fire!!!”

The heavy machineguns and automatic grenade launchers began to fire, held in place by the metal stakes driven into the asphalt. Needless to say, Anti-Skill was holding nothing back. They fired in the enemy’s general direction while adjusting their aim to hold him in place before taking careful aim with their tank guns and mortars that could not fire quite so rapidly. If this wasn’t Academy City where they were trained to handle espers, they might have known this was the most efficient method, but they would have been hesitant to use it against a human.

Kamijou himself ''felt somehow relieved.

Because he knew Christian Rosencreutz could take this kind of attack.

Although that thinking may have meant he had begun to accept how strong the man was.

With such a dense barrage underway, Kamijou couldn’t rush in with fist clenched. His Imagine Breaker could not block fragments of everyday(?) bullets and shells, so a careless approach would only get him blown away by friendly fire.

Kamijou wasn’t the only one irritated by having to stand around.

“Argh, 500m? I can see him, but I can’t reach him. My Railgun would burn away in the air before it got there!!”

And.

Kamijou heard chuckling laughter coming from among the explosions and shockwaves.

CRC was mocking them.

While on the receiving end of such a concentrated attack.

More sandbags were piled up to reinforce their defenses. This robbed the tanks of their mobility and their guns creaked as if intimidated. Kamijou understood not wanting to die, but now the tanks were no more than 120mm gun emplacements.

Christian Rosencreutz’s face showed only scorn.

“Do you really think that can defeat this old man?”

“They’re risking their lives because they do, halfwit.”

A blonde demon interrupted.

Something else happened at the same time.

The Bologna Succubus’s spell was called Cold Mistress.

It did not produce any bright lights or loud sounds. It apparently replaced the target’s pleasure signals with excruciating pain.

But what did this attack mean for Christian Rosencreutz ''who was only motivated by passion and playfulness? The silver young man's eyebrow twitched, his body slightly shifted to the right.

A tank gun scored a direct hit.

Even CRC’s body had to be made of protein and calcium. He couldn’t stop shells because his body was unusually tough – he activated spells to repel them.

So.

What if he was stopped from activating those defense spells, even for a split second?

The explosive boom erupted a moment later and a cloud of gray dust swelled out.

But Anti-Skill was not foolish enough to celebrate quite yet.

“Not yet!!” shouted an adult holding special binoculars that used electronics to expand their functionality “He’s still in one piece and standing on his own two feet!!”

(Damn monster.)

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

He could only pray CRC had survived but had taken damage. The tank guns and grenade launchers fired again and again, not waiting for the dust to clear. This showed Anti-Skill’s fear that he would attack the instant they stopped firing.

“Kyahhhhh!!”

The honey blonde girl shrieked. Something other than deafening gunshots and sparks had grazed her at high speed. Probably a stray shot or a ricochet.

But Kamijou couldn’t do the obvious thing and duck down behind cover.

He was too worried.

The inability to see what was happening was wearing at his patience,.

He was intensely anxious that all of this was ultimately meaningless.

Ordinarily, they would have the upper hand here, but he was finding it harder and harder to trust that kind of judgment. Christian Rosencreutz was too much of a monster.

They were on the attack, yet they were the ones running out of options. Unable to bear this any longer, Kamijou shouted out loud.

“Is it still not over? Still!?”

“Damn, the target is walking. His shoulders are shaking… Is he laughing? He’s headed here! The dust is clearing! Wahhh!?”

The Anti-Skill officer sweatily peering through the binoculars screamed like he was having a nightmare.

With the “snap!!” of breaking metal, the heavy machinegun providing a dense barrage was suddenly destroyed and stopped moving.

It all happened in an instant.

Rosencreutz rushed in. Once he was inside the defense formation surrounded by the sandbag walls and barricades, their bullet-and-shell-based strategy would cease to function.

But Rosencreutz may have questioned what he found.

He had eliminated their optimal strategy and begun the hunt, but despite the terror on their faces, Anti-Skill and Judgment had not frozen up in fear.

“Everyone down!!” shouted a tough-looking Anti-Skill officer with something in his hand.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what he meant.

So he was slow to react.

The group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles all exploded ''from within''.

Kamijou hadn’t been anywhere near them, but his feet were still lifted from the runway.

And he was knocked backwards.

“Boy…………………!!”

The Bologna Succubus’s voice was too distorted to understand. It was so bad he couldn’t even judge how close she was.

But what had happened to CRC who had moved deep within the group of tanks and mobile combat vehicles?

The 8-wheel Predator Octopus and the rest of the military vehicles were designed to be operated remotely as ground drones. After the first defense line was destroyed so badly, no one thought CRC could be repelled with ordinary firepower. Which led to this strategy: triggering the self-destruct only after he had easily broken through the defense line and entered the defense formation.

They probably hadn’t used your average explosive either.

“Ah…gah?”

Kamijou’s retinas were scorched by a flash of light as white as welding.

Most likely, they had made use of a special reaction using aluminum or iron powder. At more than 3000 degrees, the blast could literally melt steel and it had hit the man at point-blank range.

Shirai Kuroko shouted over the boom while lying down on the runway, protecting her head.

“Did they really have to go this far!?”

“Seems that way. The suspect is still standing. He didn’t even duck!!”

The busty glasses Judgment girl must have had Clairvoyance or a similar power because she was directing her wide eyes toward the dust cloud.

“You’re…kidding.”

Mikoto had also frozen stiff. She may have detected something with her radar produced by reflecting weak microwaves off of things.

But Kamijou didn’t have time to see the truth for himself.

He heard a deafening tearing sound.

The XHsACV-15 Anaconda, the snakelike chain of armored vehicles, had started to move. It looked like the three units were going to run over Rosencreutz, but instead they formed the three sides of an equilateral triangle and came to a rapid stop.

First, they trapped him.

That 70m giant surrounded the same area as a schoolyard.

But it was not just a thick wall. The mobility to deploy as the situation demanded was the Anaconda’s greatest strength.

Down on the ground, an Anti-Skill officer shouted into a radio.

“Fire!!”

The guns on the sides of each unit opened fire on the interior of the giant triangle. Self-destruct drones were launched sharply out and 20mm Gatling guns sprayed bullets. The noise alone was terrifying. The barrage was so dense an ordinary human would have been turned into a bloody mist and splattered across the ground in less than a second.

But only an ordinary human.

And it didn’t end there.

Something fell from heaven to earth like a bolt of lightning. 120mm shells and 20mm Gatling guns were combined to create a manmade divine punishment of lead and powder.

Kamijou had seen this before.

A large transport plane had been converted into a mobile aerial gun platform called a gunship.

It flew in a large circle overhead, raining down a massive number of bullets.

An Anti-Skill officer shouted while crawling slowly along the ground.

“So the HsAC-03 Spotlight got here. 200m around the target point is a fragment warning zone! Fall back! Everyone fall back!”

“A 200m radius? That’s bigger than your average school or stadium. Which means it covers all of us here!” protested the honey blonde girl.

Several explosions erupted in quick succession.

The Anaconda’s wall was meaningless if the metal fragments and pieces of asphalt flew up in the air and poured down on their heads. This might as well have been a volcanic eruption on the surface.

Even with the martial law, they couldn’t have carried out a bombing this large in the more urban part of the city. This all-out firepower was only possible here in District 23 with its vast expanse of runways and not a school or dorm to be found.

Again, it didn’t end there.

Even higher up than the gunship ruling the skies, a star twinkled.

Or so it seemed just before a cylinder of ultra-heavy tungsten alloy dropped straight down from outside the atmosphere. It was 10m long and 80cm in diameter. It had been launched from Academy City’s giant satellite. The heavy metal pillar just barely missed the gunship circling overhead, nearly stalling out the 50m craft with the mass of air it brought with it, and dropped straight toward Christian Rosencreutz.

Sound was compressed.

Even light was trapped, unable to escape, before everything burst outward from a single point.

An artificial comet had struck. If the blast had been unmanaged and free to spread, it might have obliterated District 23 itself. Instead, the special grooves and angular points on the pillar’s side and the angle of its tip gathered the kinetic energy together, sending it piercing straight down into the ground. It easily dug up the experimental nuclear shelter spread out below the asphalt runway.

“!?”

While the vectors were concentrated to an extent, it wasn’t perfect.

The force that did escape was enough to twist and flip the 70m Anaconda all-terrain armored combat vehicle. Kamijou was nearly crushed by it, but it could easily have been worse. Without that wall there, the thick shockwave would have hit him directly and converted him into a clump of meat.

After gathering scrap metal into a giant shield, Mikoto muttered in a somewhat dazed way.

“Could they have dropped that on my head any time they wanted…?”

Rolling on the ground, Kamijou didn’t even have time for questions like that.

His aching head felt like it was going to split open.

But instead of a blow from the outside, it felt more like the pressure inside his skull had risen.

Just watching made him feel like his eardrums were going to burst.

In a subconscious urge to find anything at all to rely on, he ended up grabbing onto the Bologna Succubus who happened to be nearby. He looked a lot like a small child clinging to his mother in fear after a nearby lightning strike.

What did it matter if they weren’t special?

So what if they were all individuals and had no legends to their name?

These people had gathered for no other reason than to protect Academy City and they had demonstrated enough power to bring Kamijou to the ground just from watching.

The strange sticky sensation coming from his right ear scared him, but he managed a trembling voice.

“What happened…to Rosencreutz? After all this, he’s got to at least be limping, right?”

“''No,''” said an icily certain voice. It belonged to the Bologna Succubus as she held the boy close. “Remove your rose-tinted glasses and you’ll see. He can still move.”

His breath caught.

Was Christian Rosencreutz really this powerful? He was entirely unscathed after an attack so ferocious it literally altered the terrain? Then what could a measly right fist do?

Just then, a distorted voice came from an emergency speaker directly installed in the runway rather than a metal pole so it would be out of the way of takeoffs and landings.

Kamijou recognized the voice.

“Outta the way, third-rates. That was only the opening act meant to keep the bastard still for a second.”