Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS3 Chapter5 (section)

===Part 7===

This had all occurred in a long tunnel, so their biggest fear had been another car being caught off guard and crashing into it all. After managing to stop the ambulance, Shirai Kuroko’s next job had been to assemble a triangle of reflective panels found in the vehicle and place it behind the ambulance to inform any approaching cars of the danger.

“Uiharu, has the tunnel still not been blocked off!? The truck scraped along the wall, so pieces larger than concrete blocks are scattered everywhere!!”

“GK> There’s nothing we can do until Anti-Skill arrives! …There won’t be more like Inoue Kasha mixed in with them, will there?”

Just as Uiharu suggested that frightening possibility, Saten rode up on a bicycle after apparently using the emergency walkway located a step higher than the road. Sakibasu was standing on the back (while looking horribly bothered by the fluttering of her skirt).

“Shirai-san, is there anything we can do to help?”

“Why did you come here when there is a possibly-armed Anti-Skill officer on the loose!?”

Shirai snapped at them while opening the ambulance’s driver’s side door, passenger side door, and back door.

Saten tilted her head while kneesock girl Sakibasu nervously got off the back of the bicycle.

“Um, Shirai-san?”

“It seems that Inoue guy manipulated the oxygen level to knock out everyone else in the ambulance. It would be best to let in some fresh air.”

Shirai sounded exasperated, but some of her breaths were unusually deep. There was also a cold sweat on her brow. She looked a lot like someone trying to suppress their motion sickness. She had only activated the emergency break, but she might have been in trouble if she had stayed inside the ambulance just a little longer.

“Agh…”

Someone was squirming within the back door.

It was the leotard girl who had somehow managed to undo the stretcher’s belts. The effects of the high oxygen level meant drool was dripping from the corner of her mouth and her leotard had been cut open with scissors for first-aid, so her appearance was nowhere near as sinister as before.

She was a powerful Telekinesis user and an expert criminal.

Shirai held out a hand to stop Saten and Sakibasu and she pulled a metal dart from the belt on her thigh.

“I will hear no excuses about the oxygen even temporarily dulling your mind. If you resist, I will attack.”

“Please.”

But escape was apparently not the leotard girl’s plan.

She seemed to be holding onto the Anti-Skill officer who was lying on top of her.

“There’s something wrong with him. He isn’t waking up like I did. Please, can you check to see what happened?”

“Shirai-san.”

“Be very careful.”

Shirai gave that quick warning, but Sakibasu pushed her out of the way to step forward. She and Saten dragged the limp Anti-Skill officer out of the ambulance.

The EMT was apparently still conscious. He weakly waved at them while slumped back against the ambulance’s wall. Was he saying he could take care of himself?

The EMT must have thought he could not do the job himself with his fingertips trembling so much, so he instead forced out a warning.

“The effects…of oxygen vary a lot from person to person. He’s in a dangerous state…”

Even after laying the adult Anti-Skill officer on the exhaust-covered asphalt, he did not even groan.

Saten looked disturbed.

“He isn’t…dead, is he?”

“Carbon Search.”

The girl with the rolled black twintails crouched down and whispered.

Then she grimaced.

“He is still breathing, but there is something wrong with the hemoglobin in his blood. It might be because he is a smoker, but the amount of oxygen his blood can transport was already reduced before all that excess oxygen was sent in.”

“I am aware of that!!” The slashed leotard girl could not even stand up, but she managed force out her voice. “Please, do something about it! I was the target, so these other people were uninvolved… And when we were going to crash into the truck, he said he would lie on top of me to absorb the impact. He asked me to escape from Inoue and turn myself in at the nearest Anti-Skill station. That verbal promise has no real power, but he clearly risked his life for a criminal. I don’t want him to die, so please!!”

“Wah, wah! Wh-what do we do, Shirai-san!?”

“…”

After some thought, Shirai Kuroko grabbed a convenience store bag that had blown in from somewhere.

“It might seem simple, but if the issue is with the balance of oxygen in his blood, we should be able to reduce the symptoms by having him breathe in the carbon dioxide produced by his own body.”

“No, Shirai-san. This Anti-Skill officer…Maeda-san was it? His breathing is extremely shallow. Covering his head with that bag won’t work!!”

Sakibasu was right.

Excessive oxygen in the blood was enough to harm the entire body. If breathing in their own carbon dioxide was not an option, it could also be solved with artificial dialysis that replaced all the body’s blood with fresh blood, but the ambulance was not equipped for anything on that level.

They knew a way to solve this, but it was not enough.

They could only wait as his breathing grew ever shallower and eventually stopped altogether.

“Please… I’ll tell you everything. If you save him, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!!”

The leotard girl was too weak to get up, but she still clung to him with what little strength her arms had. Shirai’s group had no way of knowing what had happened to her, but the way she was sobbing with tears and snot on her face made her finally look more her age. At the same time, if the world betrayed her here, that soft part of her would be forever sealed below thick ice, never to emerge again.

Just then…

“Okay!!”

There was a loud slapping sound. Sakibasu Yuri had let go of her violin case and struck her cheeks between her hands.

And she started speaking to herself.

“You know what you have to do, Sakibasu Yuri. Yes, there is no time for any other method. You just have to provide him with more carbon dioxide than his normal breathing will provide. In that case, there is one method we haven’t tried!!”

“Wh-what method is that?”

“Carbon Search.”

Sakibasu muttered those two words in lieu of answering.

But what was she using her power on in this case? She had already finished scanning the Anti-Skill Officer, so it would not be him. Redoing it was not going to reveal some convenient new fact.

Shirai’s eyebrows twitched up.

“Wait, are you using the carbon dioxide in the air itself!?”

“You will only distract me, so be quiet. …And you must never tell anyone what I am about to do.”

What was she asking them to keep secret?

For some reason, she blushed and took a deep breath before stopping moving all together. She just sat there for a bit. She did not want oxygen, so she had to take in the air and “consume” it herself first. Then her slender hand grabbed Maeda’s jaw as he lay motionless before her. Once she tilted back the Anti-Skill’s head to open his windpipe, the preparations were complete.

The time had come to show her resolve.

She placed her lips on his and breathed out with enough force to fill Maeda’s lungs like a balloon.

A few long seconds passed.

“Pwah!!”

After removing her lips from the Anti-Skill officer’s, Sakibasu took another deep breath, stopped, shut her eyes, and did it again.

This was different from artificial respiration meant to send oxygen into someone. She had to consume it in her own body before providing him just the right amount of carbon dioxide.

It did not feel like she was working with another human being. It felt disturbingly strange, like she was blowing up a leather bag. There was no response. A great hopelessness started to fill her heart, but not yet.

She could not give up.

This choice and this method could not have been wrong!!

“Nhhhh!!”

She did it again.

Sakibasu Yuri was not Misaka Mikoto or Shokuhou Misaki. She could not solve everything in some clever way and there was only so much she could do.

But so what?

Everyone had the right to save people and everyone should have the right to be saved. She might just be one of the masses, but she was not going to let her efforts go to waste. She did not care if it was ugly and unsightly. If she did everything she could to make it work out, she could catch up from behind. She might feel out of place and not up to the task, but she could be one of those who reaches out a helping hand!!

She persistently repeated the process.

And…

“He moved,” muttered the leotard girl. “His fingers just moved!!”

“Pant, pant… O-of course they did. I am not just randomly breathing into his lungs. I am constantly using Carbon Search to monitor the amount of oxygen in his body’s blood and the optimal density of the gas. I know exactly how much carbon dioxide is needed to treat him.”

She had blown all her air out over and over, so Sakibasu herself had to be feeling a little dizzy. The curly black twintail girl could not support herself and ended up pressing her forehead against Maeda’s chest while she smiled weakly.

The Anti-Skill officer was still sprawled out limply on the ground, but his breathing was gradually growing less shallow.

It was growing deeper and more stable.

He would be fine now.

“Phew…”

Sakibasu must not have had it in her to pull out a handkerchief because she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, sat flatly down, and then lifted her butt back up out of concern for the inside of her skirt.

Shirai Kuroko spoke up in surprise.

“Sakibasu-san.”

“Gwaaaahh!! Please do not say anything!! And I must reiterate that you are not to tell anyone about this!! This was my first time doing that, but it was an emergency and I had no choice! Anyway, I want to wash off my lips and eat lots of sweet things to overwrite the memory. Yes, like a thick pancake dripping with lots of honey!!”

“No, um, I hate to ask this, Sakibasu-san, but did you never take the disaster response class run by Judgment? Artificial respiration normally is not quite so romantic. You place a handkerchief or something between them and you. Um, to protect against infectious disease…”

Something fluttered in the air.

It was a specially-designed resuscitation tool that Shirai Kuroko had pulled from her skirt pocket. It was something like a square handkerchief made of transparent plastic. It had a hole with a special fold in the center so air could be blown through without direct contact being made.

“So, um, uh, if you had asked, I could have lent you this…”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

This time, Sakibasu Yuri turned to stone in the middle of this city of science and technology.

At the same time, Misaka Mikoto appeared through the broken emergency exit door with the corrupt Anti-Skill officer draped unconscious over her shoulder.

“Hey, I’m all done. Huh, what’s with all of you?”

“Well, um…”

“You must not tell anyone what happened!! This is all the more reason why this must be a secret!! Ahh, ahh, gwaaahhhh!!!!!!”