Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter1 (section)

===Part 6===

Its giant form stood about three stories tall.

The breath unleashed toward the ground from its great maw roasted the space along a straight line of 50 meters. The heat was so great it burned away the branches of the roadside trees, liquefied the asphalt, burned and discolored the paint of the cars parked on the curb, and finally ignited their fuel tanks, making them explode.

That single attack recolored the world.

Recolored it orange.

The light of the heaven-scorching flames swept away the tranquil darkness of the city night.

Even the hot night air was blown away. The heat that now slammed into their faces was like sticking their head inside a sauna or oven. Kamijou almost thought his face was covered by clear clingwrap that had been dunked in hot water.

An odd buzzing sound came from the roadside trees.

The cicadas should have been docile at night, but they were frantically flying away.

Kamijou’s group had only survived because a powerful gust of wind had blown in from the side. The breath was slightly diverted to the side like water from a hose bending. Otherwise, they all would have been burned to death.

“Eek.”

Kamijou had no idea what was going on.

He had grown tired of the boring routine of everyday life?

He had wanted to step off the rails in search of some excitement?

“Wah, wahhh!?”

When someone’s limbs went limp, they apparently fell right back onto their butt.

It took him a few seconds to figure out that was what he had done. Shouting only drew attention to himself and crouching down kept him from moving to safety. If he had been munching on some popcorn in the living room and watching this scene on TV, he might have considered those facts. But he could not manage that here. Instead of his body refusing to move the way his mind told it to, it was more like his mind was not functioning at all.

It had gone entirely blank.

Emptiness filled his head.

Was this what he got for rescuing a stranger? What good was clenching his fist against something like this? ''The power in his right hand did not matter here.'' He was a middle school boy who could only curl up in a ball and get pummeled when facing some delinquents armed with cheap, easily-bent batons they had likely bought online. Of course an animal larger than a dog was going to terrify him. Worse, this one was a carnivore that could breathe fire. He did not even want to count how many rules of the city night this broke.

He had no idea what would help out here.

Meanwhile, Mitsuari was panicking in a different way.

She swung both her arms around with enough force to just about squeeze her chest with the strap to the bag she was wearing over her shoulder.

She gathered every last ounce of strength and screamed.

“Wh-wh-wh-what!? Nooo!?”

Then Kamijou felt a tug on his hand.

Kumokawa Seria used her other hand to push on Mitsuari Ayu’s back while yelling at them both.

“Into the alley!!”

“Eh? Ah?”

“I don’t know what that is, but a hit from that fire would have been the end for us. There’s no hope in a wide-open space like this!!”

Yes.

That green dragon was so large they had to look up at it. Its maw was lined with brutal fangs. This was not a pair of cold scissors or a mechanical press; it was a living creature’s mouth covered in the slobber that represented hunger. What would happen if those jaws snapped shut on them?

No, it did not need to reach that point.

A thick reptilian tail thicker than Kamijou’s torso was swinging around in obvious displeasure. It crushed a large motorcycle parked nearby and crashed through a building wall. It had to be heavier than a metal barbell. And not one of the dragon’s green scales seemed to have been dislodged in the process.

A human would be turned to mincemeat if it simply rushed forward and trampled them.

And just because it was big did not mean it was slow. If that entire body was a huge mass of muscle, it might be able to run as fast as, or faster than, a car.

Their eyes met.

Kamijou’s eyes met the emotional eyes of a living creature.

The giant dragon dragged its legs across the road as if checking to see what kind of surface it was. That was enough to peel up a layer of melted asphalt.

That thing did not hesitate.

Its enormous body finally charged forward!!

“Ahhh!?”

He could not do anything as fancy as turning around and running away.

He was still down on his butt, so he rolled to the side instead.

Except…

“Ah,” gasped Mitsuari in surprise.

He had rolled in the opposite direction that Kumokawa Seria had indicated by pulling on his arm.

He had not done it on purpose.

Or had he?

The action felt a lot like brushing off that good will.

He could no longer judge for himself why he had done it, but now that he had done it, he had to stick with it. He did not have time to turn back toward the alley the girls were running to. Even a second’s delay could mean being trampled to death right now.

So…

(I have to run!!)

He scrambled to his feet on the asphalt and finally managed to run, as if pushed on by the loud roar. On the way, he got his feet tangled up below him and stumbled.

He turned his back on everything there.

A loud boom sounded behind him.

Had the dragon knocked over a thick traffic light pole or the reinforced concrete of a building?

It might not have been so bad if the dragon had charged after him, but that was not what happened.

“…”

He only noticed after rolling on the road and climbing underneath a car parked on the curb.

The pressure was gone.

The only sound was the pounding of his own heart.

The giant dragon was focused on someone other than him.

(What happened?)

Even if it was temporary, finding safety brought his usual senses back to him.

It was like feeling the guilt rush in after leaving someone else to drown so you could use the piece of driftwood to float in the ocean.

(Did I kill them? Did I let them die!? Dammit, no, that can’t be! No, dammit!!)

Tears welled up in his eyes.

No matter how tightly he clenched his teeth, the slight chattering sound would not go away.

What was he doing?

He was curled up below a car desperately clinging to life like a bug on the underside of a stone.

He hated how much relief he found here.

Abandoning those girls and escaping to safety on his own like a chicken was the lowest of the low. After this, he could only crawl around in the shadows like a slug without ever receiving sympathy from anyone.

He felt pathetic.

He was on the way to becoming exactly the kind of grownup he did not want to be.

Or so it felt to him.

Which may have explained what he did next.

“To…”

Finally, that ordinary boy stopped fighting the pressure building up inside him.

“To hell with this!! I can’t stand it anymore!!!!!!”

This had nothing to do with love or courage.

If anything, it was the opposite of justice or bravery.

He was driven by panic, anxiety, and fear – the same things that pursued anyone in their adolescent rebellious phase. He did not want to be any more pathetic than he already was. He would rather die than continue down that path. He moved his trembling fingers to grab at the asphalt, crawled out from below the car, and finally stopped being a bug clinging to the bottom of a stone for dear life.

He might look foolish and silly, but he had made the choice to be the type of person he wanted to be.

“Are you kidding me!? Don’t you dare die without my permission!”

It was a horribly selfish way of putting it, but that was they way he saw it.

He ran.

He ran back to where he had come, but that extremely conspicuous dragon was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’d it go?”

“You idiot!! Why would you come back after getting away!?”

He looked around cluelessly until the girl named Kumokawa shouted at him from the alleyway that was now a mess of large cracks.

A moment later, it dropped from above.

The giant dragon slammed into the ground like a meteor.

In this case, Kamijou Touma was saved by how pitifully small he was.

The asphalt rose up around the dragon’s landing point and scattered every which way, but it passed above his head while he curled up on the ground. If his legs had maintained their strength for even a moment longer, his entire head would likely have been knocked off.

“Whoa!?”

All logical thought left his mind as he stayed down on the ground.

The giant claws he saw before his eyes simply terrified him so much he swung up his right hand on reflex.

It was too weak a move to call a punch. It was more like a playful swat from a cat.

As soon as his fist touched it, he only felt a strange slimy sensation.

Nothing else happened.

(It really ''doesn’t work''!?)

“You dumbass!!” someone shouted from the alley entrance.

Then something wrapped around him as if tying up his neck and right shoulder.

As soon as he grimaced at the prickly sensation of a plastic rope, the loop tightened and he was forcefully tugged backwards. He struggled on the pavement while he was dragged over like someone caught in a cowboy’s lasso.

Something crashed down where he had been sitting earlier (was it the enraged dragon’s foot?) and tore up the ground.

“Ugh, gwehh!?”

“I tried to focus the weight on your shoulder, but I didn’t dislocate your neck bones, did I? But even that would be better than being trampled back there, right?”

He was dragged into the nearby alley.

“Also, why did you come back? You should have escaped.”

Kumokawa Seria had a hint of happiness on her face that belied her words.

That had been a close shave.

He initially just lay there where she had dragged him, but then he heard a loud crash like a truck plowing into a building. The space between buildings was just barely enough for a large motorcycle, so the slimy green dragon’s large maw could not fit.

But this was not over.

With the sound of oxygen being absorbed, orange sparks danced within its mouth again.

The flamethrower was coming.

The dragon was preparing its breath.

Kumokawa Seria used her slender chin to gesture toward the makeshift emergency stairs on the filthy wall instead of further back in the alley.

“Run!! Climb up!!”

They were entirely focused on escaping.

They could only count themselves lucky their legs had not frozen up.

A fearsome boom and flash of light erupted out. An orange flamethrower blast filled the surface of the narrow alleyway just as Kamijou’s group reached the third-story landing. Flamethrowers were most effective when used to quickly clear out complex and narrow spaces like trenches or caves. Hiding behind cover or around a corner was not enough to escape the wall of flames.

“Th-the color,” said Mitsuari Ayu in a daze. “It’s changed color.”

This was more than the reflected firelight could explain. The scales covering the giant dragon had definitely changed to an orange hue. But what did that matter? It probably did not mean anything. Mitsuari was probably subconsciously afraid that she would panic if she was not analyzing something and keeping her mind busy. It was like being in an elevator dangling precariously in the air. Feeling helpless while in a dangerous spot was horrifying enough to make breathing difficult.

They had avoided the fiery breath by running into the narrow alleyway and climbing the emergency stairs.

But they could not rest yet.

The fire’s heat would rise, so they would be cooked as if on a grill if they stayed put. Plus, the dragon was still on the move. It could think for itself and it was targeting them. They had to lose it somehow if they were to survive.

Mitsuari Ayu gasped as she finally managed to focus on reality.

“Um, could we call Anti-Skill!?”

“We would have to dodge those flames and that body for the several minutes it took for them to arrive!!”

Plus, could standard Anti-Skill patrol equipment really deal with that monster? Their 9mm handgun bullets could not kill even a human being instantly, so critics had pointed out they would allow a criminal to kill the hostage while they were dying. And that mass of muscle could probably deflect even a rifle bullet with ease.

Kamijou did not have an actual plan, but the beads of sweat pouring from his body demanded he hurry his thoughts along. The heat of the flames covering the alley surface was rising toward them. The night was hot enough already and now they had to contend with this sauna-like heat. Staying here would only drain their stamina and dehydrate them.

He roughly wiped the sweat from his brow.

He had the needlessly strong pride of a teenage boy, but he no longer felt any reluctance toward choosing to run.

“L-let’s climb to the roof for now. Staying here will just wear us down.”

But he had underestimated the enemy.

He heard something beating violently at the air and then a tremor erupted from directly above.

“…”

He hesitantly looked up to see the night sky had been covered up.

A giant form was pressing its thick legs against opposite buildings and looking down at them. The bat-like wings on its back were opened wide. Yes, it had wings.

It was unclear how far it could actually fly, but it could at least ignore most height differences.

It must have absorbed the color of the night sky this time because its scales sand wings were dyed a pitch 
black.

Its massive jaws opened.

An igniting sound rumbled out.

“Get inside!!” shouted Kumokawa as they all tackled the metal door together.

A moment later, the fearsome flamethrower breath shot straight down with enough force to melt the makeshift emergency stairs.