Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item Chapter1 (section)

===Part 6===

Several highways were linked together by the loops of a multilayer junction.

The area directly below it was shielded from satellite surveillance thanks to the many overpasses blocking the sky. It was the perfect spot for attacking a vehicle even if it was being escorted by several military trucks to the front and back.

First, a few beams of light flashed from behind.

The slightest of grazes melted the armor of the rearmost truck, causing it to crash quite spectacularly, so the rest of the convoy sped up. The instant they triggered an infrared laser crossing the road at a height of one meter, an unmanned rocket fired from the side of the road.

“Good, the off-route mine got them!!”

Frenda clenched her fist in victory a short distance away.

With the frontmost truck engulfed in flames, nothing could stop them.

The black luxury car ended up in a multivehicle crash with its bumper caught below the rear of the taller truck in front of it, so its tires squealed in a futile attempt to move froward or back.

As long as the trucks had proper bulletproofing and anti-shock construction, the soldiers inside would be injured but alive. The flames only affected the exterior, but they were still out of the fight now that their doors were bent and burnt too badly to open. The bulletproof trucks were made sturdy, so the soldiers the VIP had paid so much to hire were trapped inside. In Academy City, there was a saying(?): if you need to get rid of a bulletproof car, knock it into the water.

“Don’t let your guard down yet, newcomer.”

“Super yeah, yeah.”

Mugino and Kinuhata left the studio bus that drove up behind the mess. Mugino used Meltdowner to burn the driver’s side door just enough to trap the driver inside. The target car was also bulletproof, so the same conditions applied. Kinuhata jabbed her skinny arm into the rear bulletproof door and tore it away with brute strength.

Dry popping sounds rang out.

Kinuhata Saiai took a spray of gunfire from a T-shaped PDW smaller than a puppy, but she didn’t even flinch. A layer of concentrated air forcibly stopped the small caliber bullets.

“E-e-eeeeek!?”

Kinuhata dragged out a man holding a now-empty gun. Takitsubo carried over a giant caddy bag. If you folded in someone’s limbs and stuffed them inside, it functioned like a straightjacket.

Takitsubo expressionlessly puffed out her cheeks.

“Mugino told you not to let your guard down.”

“I didn’t. Which is why I’m not hurt. So where are we super taking this guy?”

“While it is soundproofed, I don’t want to take him to our usual hideout. I’ll have our support organization find a decent spot for us. Maybe an abandoned factory or hospital.”

He must have decided there was no telling what these girls were going to do to him.

The elderly man, who was looking 50% grosser than normal with all the sweating he was doing, gave a desperate shout.

“''K-Kouzaku-kun''!!”

“''What a pain.''”

It sounded a lot like a bedsheet flapping in the wind.

Someone placed a foot atop the destroyed black luxury car’s roof so gently it was like gravity didn’t affect her. The gloomy black-haired girl wore a short-sleeved blouse with the chest left unbuttoned and a miniskirt. That was probably some school’s uniform, so she looked like a high school student, or maybe a middle school student. Well, if not for the silver horns on the sides of her head, the bat wings on her back, and the pointy tail at the back of her hips.

Mugino frowned.

“Metal. …And is it a liquid? Who hired you to hand out tissues in that getup?”

“Ah ha ha. Do you really think this is ''just'' a costume? It was originally the ''product'' of high-level cushioning research, but it turned out it was too heavy for practical use. But it’s a ''perfect'' match for my power☆”

Was the weird emphasis on some words meant to hide her natural speech? Despite her short skirt, the black-haired devil girl called Kouzaku bent forward, allowing her silver tail to rise up like a scorpion.

“Now, greasy old men aren’t my ''type'', but this bad grownup promised to tell me everything he ''knows'' about the Windowless Building. I’d at least ''like'' some plans of the place before I make my attack, so I’m sorry to say I’m doing some ''work'' for him.”

“Hah. What can one loner girl do? In combat, defense is a much harder role than offense. You have to defeat all of us while keeping that guy alive, but you couldn’t pull that off even if your power can grow you 6 cold arms. All you’ll do is give me some speedy target practice, loner metal!!”

“Oh, really?”

Something splatted against the studio bus’s windshield.

It was a lot like a raindrop.

Except it was silver.

Plus, no ordinary raindrops could reach the bus below the overpass.

“Hm? Everyone, look out above,” whispered Takitsubo Rikou when she noticed something.

A silver downpour began.

The “raindrops” were in fact metal arrows a bit longer than a pencil. But these were falling from an altitude of more than 10 thousand meters, so they had enough force to tear through the overpass and pierce through a bulletproof car’s armor.

The spiraling junction’s overpass collapsed into blocks.

Colorful cars crashed down along with it.

With a highway running above, the ordinary vehicles were not spared the devastation when the road suddenly collapsed below them. This destruction violated all the rules and standards of the dark side, which preferred to keep their presence hidden.

The deadly ceiling of silver arrows continued its descent.

“Tch. SAMs!!” shouted Frenda, swinging her arm horizontally.

Immediately, her short skirt ''flapped in the wind.'' More than five spear-like objects emerged and rocketed up into the sky. Explosive cylinders far thicker and longer than bottle rockets loudly exploded overhead.

Explosive blasts and steel pieces scattered in every direction, the two barrages collided in midair, and the distribution of the deadly rain ''was thrown off''.

Small holes – safe zones – were forcibly created.

“Eek!?” tearfully shouted Hanano Choubi, clinging to Frenda’s hips and falling onto her butt.

But not even multiple microwave/IR short-range surface-to-air missiles could shoot down tens of thousands of “raindrops”. Frenda felt a chill down her spine.

“Takitsubo!!”

The silver rain collided sharply with the asphalt. An earsplitting metallic screech drowned out Frenda’s shout. Every last metal arrow vibrating at the moment of impact created a noise far louder than a giant chandelier falling to the floor. The hard pavement accepted the arrows like clay, letting them stab deep.

But the pink track suit girl was not shredded along with it.

That was thanks to Kinuhata Saiai.

She lay on top of Takitsubo and blocked the metal downpour with an invisible nitrogen barrier. Deflected arrows lay all around her.

“Takitsubo-san, are you alright? This is super my job here, right?”

“Don’t give up, Hanano. You can still come out on top.”

But she had only managed to protect this one small area. There was nothing she could have done about the collapsed overpass or the cars that had fallen with it. One car was badly crushed and its windshield shattered. Something stuck out from the bottom of its broken door: a family fireworks set sold at just about any department store.

The plastic packaging was stained dark red.

Frenda Seivelun spat out an unusually low voice for her.

“In the end, you won’t get away with killing ordinary people for no reason. If you want to play, find a worthy opponent first.”

“I super agree. And it’s our turn now.”

There was a flash of light brighter than a nearby lightning strike.

After all this, Mugino had left her defense entirely in Frenda’s hands. She hadn’t even glance toward the falling “rain” as she held her hand straight out. All so she could vaporize her target with Meltdowner.

“Whew. Giving up on defense for an all-out offensive? How ''exciting''☆”

With the sound of flapping wings, the gloomy girl worked her metal bat wings and hopped down from the black bulletproof car’s roof. She placed her feet on the pavement she had just obliterated.

The wind finally carried over a rusty scent.

While Item’s bus had been bulletproof, it had still been torn to pieces. The metal arrows had pierced through the roof and even the chassis to reach the asphalt below. The windshield had turned white from all the cracks. No, there was red there too. The delinquent driver was probably dead.

The same had to be true of the enemy.

That devil girl had protected her client, the general manager, but no one needed to see what had happened to the bodyguards trapped in their vehicles. There had to be a mixture of blood and gasoline pooling up on the road below those vehicles.

Mugino clicked her tongue.

That girl was completely indiscriminate. Academy City’s shitty side was leaking out into the sunny side.

“Don’t just kill everyone. Safely cleaning up those corpses isn’t cheap, you know? You did it, so I hope you’ll be footing the bill for the cleanup. And if the #6 learns of this, you deal with that supposed Dark Side’s Bane on your own.”

“You’re so nice to get angry for the people who died, Mugino.”

Takitsubo was as expressionless as ever as Kinuhata helped her up. Maybe your sensibilities had to be that abnormal if you were going to get along with a violent Level 5.

And Kouzaku didn’t bother waiting around.

The tens of thousands of metal arrows piercing the pavement began to lose their shape. They gathered together and silver dolls rose up. There had to be at least 50 life-size dolls who looked a lot like Kouzaku herself.

“Ah, the dolls really ''are'' the easiest ''to'' control.”

The devil laughed as she raised her hands, gathered air in her wings, and wiggled her tail alluringly.

“''As you can see, I’ve got plenty of teammates too''.”

She used metal in liquid form. That should have been enough of a clue right there. It was absurd to think that skinny black-haired girl could carry around hundreds of kilograms or even several tons of a metal with a greater relative density than water. And if she could freely alter its shape, there was a simple solution there.

Not so much a mist as a cloud.

By filling it with plenty of air and parking up at high altitude, she could have it condense and pour down like rain when she needed it. If the surprise aerial bombing didn’t do the trick, she would then have an army of soldiers down on the ground.

“So what was it you were saying about having greater numbers?”

“…”

“Like you said, I need to defeat all of ''you'' while keeping this guy alive. ''This'' should be enough for that, don’t you think? Looks to me ''like'' you’re the ones on the defensive ''now''.”

Along with her casual comment, the countless silver dolls rushed toward Item from all sides.