Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter6 (section)

=== Part 5 ===
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Lessar was running down a long narrow passageway.

The narrow duct had not continued on straight to her destination. There were areas where she had to come out above ground. And even if it had continued on, she would not have just headed through it. If the rioters had noticed her while she was travelling through that narrow area, she would have been trapped.

As such, Lessar had headed a certain distance through the duct and then come back up onto the first floor.

“I expected this wouldn’t be exactly easy…”

She ran at full speed without even glancing behind her.

“…but actually experiencing it is something else entirely!!”

It was like the scenes common to adventure-style action movies where the hero was chased by a giant steel ball.

However, there were dozens of men and women chasing Lessar in place of the steel ball. As they had legs, they did not need to roll, but the front row would be knocked down and trampled and then the next row would get tripped up in the same way. This made it look like she was being chased by a giant sphere made of human beings.

Lessar could feel something rather cold running down her spine while an enjoyment of the thrill somewhere in her heart caused a smile to come out on her face.

(This is bad. Very, very bad. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a ways to go before I reach the stock market center where the center of Code EIC is.)

She could feel a vague sense of cruelty chasing after her in addition to the physical pursuers.

(It looks like my approach was detected and they divided up the rioters to have some go after me.)

Lessar had so readily split up with Mikoto because she had expected that to happen.

But suddenly Lessar saw a large group of rioters flowing out up ahead in the long passageway. She was being attacked from both sides. The knives and fire extinguishers in their hands seemed even more dangerous than guns that could kill in one shot.

(Wow! Their fingers are fidgeting around like crazy!!)

Lessar suddenly changed directions and leapt to the other side of a metal door partway down the passageway. She sealed the door with the table and other heavy objects within and was finally aware of just what kind of situation she was in. She was fed up with it.

The room was small.

It was not a place for customers. Most likely, cleaning supplies were stored inside the room. There were no other exits.

She was isolated.

But Lessar completely forgot about that kind of issue.

A greater danger lay before her eyes.

“Why…?” she muttered. “Why is there a magical bomb set up in this city of science?”

A stone big enough to just barely be held in one arm lay in the center of the room. No, technically, it was not a stone. It was a stone of charms that was created from dozens, hundreds, even thousands of parchments glued together.

(…It’s using a misinterpretation of Revelation. I guess it’s a large scale bomb that uses the sulfur fire. Well, it’s a fairly popular method to change that description to an attack method.)

Sulfur fire was of course not something physical or chemical.

In that case, it was easier to think of it as something that gave one lasting and intense pain by giving a burning pain to the skin and damage to the internal organs.

It could not be seen.

It ignored all obstacles.

And yet it was a means of attack that would definitely damage every person within range.

The bomb did not kill. Instead, it gave people incurable pain.

(If this “invisible bomb” were detonated here while there is a rumor going around of someone hidden in the city trying to detonate a nuclear bomb, it’s clear what the rioters would mistake it for with their dulled judgement.)

While looking at the sulfur fire made up of a giant mass of charms, Lessar stuck her hand into her pocket. She pulled out a card-shaped communications spiritual item made out of thick paper.

“Hello, Bayloupe?”

“What is it, Lessar?”

“I’ve found a bit of a Revelation-ish bomb. Is this you or the others’ doing by any chance?”

“How about you ask me again? I’ll give you 100 spankings.”

“Hmm, I see…”

“So are you saying there’s another cabal hidden here besides us?”

“Pretty much,” Lessar said before smacking herself on the forehead. “Achahh!”

A banging noise could continually be heard. The rioters were touchingly acting as a group in order to destroy the metal door.

“This means this whole situation is likely to get a bit more complicated…”

“Lessar,” Bayloupe cut in stopping Lessar’s thoughts. “Sorry for cutting in while you were getting heated up, but I don’t think the merits for us outweigh the risks here.”

“Even though this has spread beyond a purely science side problem and has begun to involve the magic side as well?”

“That would be a job for the official groups like Necessarius. It does not fit our goal. There is some kind of plan being carried out in this city and some magicians besides us may be involved, but there is no need for us to clean up for them. There are no merits to match the risks, so we need to quickly retreat.”

“…I’m guessing this means I can’t expect any reinforcements.”

“Even if we save the people in this city, it will not benefit us in any way.”

“Then I have no choice,” said Lessar admitting her colleague was right. “Bayloupe.”

“What?”

“Let’s have a real fight once this is over. You can use your Gjallarhorn or whatever else you want.”

Having said what she had to say, Lessar cut off the connection.

She did a general analysis of the sulfur fire’s construction by sight.

(…The construction itself is simple, but the amount will make dismantling it take some time. It looks like it’ll take between 15 and 30 minutes.)

She heard a great thud coming from the metal door. The door was beginning to dent inwards.

(The problem is that they don’t look like they’re going to give me that much time.)

But she could not just leave it alone and wait for it to detonate either.

Lessar pulled out a few Nihon Daruma “souvenirs” from her pocket. She smeared a yellow chemical on her thumb, muttered a spell under her breath, and then traced her thumb across one of the charms making up the stone-like object.

The charm fell off like a dried leaf.

(I estimate there are about 30,000 of them. I’ve simplified the dismantling ceremony down as much as possible, but I still may not make it in time.)

As Lessar’s fingers raced along, the charms peeled off one by one.

However, she was indeed going to be too slow.

A violent din rang from the metal door clearly declaring her time limit. The door was already bent and multiple pairs of eyes could be seen peering through the gap.

She guessed the straining sound she heard was coming from the hinges.

Suddenly, an L-shaped crowbar stabbed through the gap between the door and the wall. With a cracking noise, the gap started to widen due to the principle of leverage.

(Not good…!!)

The door was not going to last.

If the rioters came pouring in before she had dismantled the sulfur fire, all of the civilians in the area would take the full brunt of the magical bomb.

Lessar was thinking that, but…

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out and the crowbar was knocked away.

The gunshot had not come from outside the door. It had clearly come from within the room. But there was no one inside the room besides Lessar.

Lessar turned toward the source of the noise in shock.

“…Above?”

“Moving through ducts is a basic part of action movies.”

A square portion of the ceiling was removed and the upper half of a woman appeared upside down through it. They were in a Russian facility but the handgun the woman held was a foreign gun, so it may have been a favorite of hers.

(So this city has ducts running through both above and below.)

“Who are you?”

“I am Enirya G. Algonskaya of the security guards,” said the redheaded woman giving a simple introduction. “I rushed over here thinking Misaka Mikoto was here, but it looks like I was wrong. At any rate, it seems you’re trapped here. I’ll protect you, so grab onto my hand.”

“I’d really, really like to do so, but…”

“?”

“Do you know what this is I’m dismantling? Nn, I guess you wouldn’t. Well…just think of it like a time bomb filled with a liquid explosive. If I just leave it here, those vigorous rioters will be completely blown way.”

“A bomb? …God damn it,” Enirya cursed.

She pulled her upper body back inside the duct and then dropped down into the small room right side up.

“Do you have the skills to dismantle it? Since you’re already touching it, I sure as hell hope you’re a specialist.”

“You don’t need to worry about that. More importantly…”

A great din started coming from the metal door once more.

“Could you do something about them?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Enirya stuck the barrel of her gun into the gap between the door and the wall and pulled the trigger without hesitating. Dry gunshots rang out and a sense of faltering could be sensed from the other side.

“How long is it going to take to dismantle that thing!?”

“Fifteen minutes if we’re lucky. Thirty if we’re not.”

Even as Lessar said that, her hands were sending charm after charm falling from the stone-like mass. The great amount of fallen parchments looked like a pile of feathers.

Enirya fired through the gap in the door and seemed to be contacting someone over her radio. She was likely sending a security guard unit to the passageway outside the door. But would they make it in time? Could they prepare enough strength to restrain the group of people who had become a mass of cruelty?

Suddenly, a new grinding sound became audible.

It was coming from the other side of the wall.

The wall opposite the door.

“Uuh… I have a very bad feeling about what that means.”

“?”

“You’re one of the security guards that was there back then, right? Then you should recognize that sound. Don’t you remember hearing that when the remote controlled equipment showed up?”

“That’s the sound of…treads…?”

Enirya stopped firing and turned around toward the opposite wall.

Immediately afterwards, the heavy equipment plowed through the reinforced concrete wall and appeared amid a cloud of dust.

It was a small snowplow.

This time it was not equipped with a light machine gun and it had no explosives on it. It was simply being driven by one of the enraged rioters.

Lessar and Enirya jumped to the walls on the left and right as the snowplow cut through the center. It plowed through the table and metal door on the other side of the room and continued into the passageway filled with rioters.

Even so, the next noise was that of cheering.

The rioters were letting out joyous voices at the fact that they could resume their violence now that the door was out of their way.

Enirya fired a few shots, but it was meaningless.

Countless rioters charged in through the two holes opened up in the walls.

Lessar did not stop her dismantling job and she was forced to wrap her arms around the bomb as if she were trying to protect it.

She felt her throat dry up, but there was nowhere left to flee.

She would be swallowed up.

It was pointless to ask Enirya for help. The woman was about to disappear amidst the crowd just as she was.

Arms…

Legs…

They both flew at her and pain exploded just beneath her skin. Before the feeling could disappear, the next strike would come. And the next, and the next, and the next. The number of blows accumulated in no time at all. She tried to ball up and protect her organs as much as possible, but she wasn’t sure how effective her efforts were. She was saved by the fact that the rioters were packed in too tightly, so they did not have room to aim their guns at her. However, being driven closer and closer to death by their bare hands was a hell of its own.

The situation may have been truly bad.

Lessar noticed an iron-like flavor welling up from deep in her throat. She could tell her thoughts were growing dull. Her pain exceeded a certain level and she began to feel nothing more than a vague heat.

(…Fire…)

That thought vaguely entered her head.

(Sulfur…fire…)

The mass she was holding in her hands fell to pieces. The final explosion-causing charm lost its effects and slipped from her hands.

With even her pain in a vague state, Lessar smiled slightly.

And then something flew by at high speed piercing through the walls on the left and the right that had not yet been destroyed.

It ripped through the air at three times the speed of sound.

An extremely tiny projectile pierced through the wall at a point almost at the ceiling. This smashed the entire wall spreading pieces of concrete everywhere.

A glowing orange line remained burned in the retinas of everyone there.

Shortly afterwards, the rioters crowded inside that small space were blown away as if it were an afterthought. Some were hit by the shockwave and some were hit by the whirling concrete fragments. As if that raging violence had been overwritten by an even more sublime violence, the situation was completely turned around in an instant.

A low rumbling noise could be heard.

With the four walls destroyed, the now unsupported ceiling began to collapse.

The rioters that could still move frantically ran from the room, but the tragedy they were expecting did not occur.

Ignoring gravity, the concrete ceiling floated in midair.

It was as if magnetism were being manipulated.

“…Chehh. You stole the best part,” Lessar muttered while still collapsed on the ground.

Enirya looked over in the direction Lessar was looking and discovered who the “ruler” was.

“Misaka…Mikoto…”

Enirya spat out some saliva mixed with blood and adjusted her grip on her handgun with bloody hands. The incessant violence had left her in a situation where she could not even stand up, but she still managed to hold her right arm out.

Mikoto’s expression did not change despite having the gun aimed at her.

“Aren’t you pointing that at the wrong person?”

“N...no. You are the…highest priority.”

Her hand was trembling, but there was a piercing light in her eyes.

Amid the strange silence, Enirya stared through her gun sight at the suspect and asked a question.

“Misaka…Mikoto. Are you…the leader…behind this…incident?”

Mikoto smiled slightly upon hearing the question.

And then she unhesitatingly responded.

Her response seemed to be directed not just at Enirya but at all the rioters there as well.

“Do you really think that person would come here to save a security guard?” This time, Mikoto asked a question. “Do you have any ideas who could be behind this?”

“That is…what I am currently…investigating. It’s not just…you. I am…thoroughly investigating…every single…suspicious person.”

Her strength must have been at its limit.

After saying that, Enirya’s right hand fell to the floor. It seemed she had lost consciousness.

Silence fell over the room.

Bluish-white sparks flew from Mikoto’s bangs destroying that silence,

“…I am really pissed right now.”

She did not run away. She headed straight into the rioters.

She did it because she knew it was right.

She did not hesitate.

“I am not trying to kill any of you as I head forward, but make sure not to screw up and get yourselves killed.”

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