Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item7 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 10===

What did it mean to use explosives?

What phenomenon was triggered by detonating a bomb?

Bombs didn’t just scatter their blast in all directions.

Properly controlled, their destructive force could be concentrated on a single point to pierce thick armor or fanned out to slaughter more soldiers in a single blast.

So detonating an explosive at close range wouldn’t necessarily kill the bomber as well.

No Academy City Bomber would let something like that happen.

Thus…

“!!”

“!?”

Frenda Seivelun and Morning Call formed afterimages when viewed by ordinary human eyes. They were simply moving that fast.

Side to side.

Both of them repeatedly and irregularly slid over short intervals, securing enough mobility to have easily dodged every bullet of a submachine gun if one were being fired from directly ahead. They used the movements of their limbs in sync with the small blasts concentrated in one direction to move at speeds beyond the limits of their muscles.

It would have been easy to use this full force to throw punches or kicks, but their own bodies would have been destroyed by the speed.

(Seeing she went out of her way to make those goggles out of a dual-side phone, I thought she was just some tasteless freak who enjoys being called Morning Call. But…)

“Tch! In the end, you aren’t just some cheap bomber who ''only knows how to blow things up''!!”

“I learned it all from you, Senpai. I learned how guns that leave a single open hole as a path out for the explosive force and engines that trap gasoline and convert it into rotation are both products of explosions!”

Frenda swung her right arm horizontally to send an orange blast sweeping out like a sword. Morning Call jumped three meters straight up and dropped her heel, sending a blast down toward Frenda’s head like a guillotine. Frenda fell back as if repelled by that attack, her feet digging into the rooftop to bring her to a stop.

“Shaped charge, self-forging.”

When Morning Call swung her right hand to the side, a rough-hewn steel sword was already extending from it.

“Acceleration, attitude control!”

She used the force of an explosive to cut sharply in and strike.

Orange sparks flew.

Frenda held a small shield in her hands. Like a bulldozer blade, the steel shield could stab sharply into and tear pieces from a target.

Explosions could produce more than destruction. At times, they could induce movement or creation.

''What did it mean to use explosives?

This was the answer.



It was the same as humanity obtaining fire.

A bomber was someone who controlled the entirety of human civilization and wielded it as a weapon.



Kinuhata had thought she could defeat that civilization with a bit of strength and had paid for her mistake by taking a dive off the skyscraper’s roof.

Mugino had been cautious of that civilization’s knowledge and been pinned down by overwhelming force.

A mere esper lacked the power to surpass all the knowledge and technology accumulated by humanity over millennia.

Morning Call had a grin on her lips.

She wore simple VR goggles made by tilting a smartphone on its side and attaching it to her head with rubber bands.

She used her eye movements to operate the detonation control app displayed over the real scenery and she prepared her next attack.

“An uncivilized ape that can’t open her eyes and learn about the world around her would be dead three times over by now.”

Ultimately, only a bomber could take on a bomber.

That was true, but did Frenda really think she had reached that level?

Morning Call couldn’t believe it.

It looked like they were evenly matched, but Frenda had her hands full simply keeping up. Morning Call wasn’t yet at her limit, so she continued to secretly toss explosives around whenever she threw a punch or kick, setting them up for later.

“You’re keeping up well enough, but I’ve already learned everything there is to know about Frenda Seivelun. You are the old and dusty remains of my former Senpai. Struggle as you might, the real you can never surpass the towering wall that I am.”

“…”

A line of red blood dripped from Frenda’s temple to her cheek.

Even if none of the blasts and fragments directly hit them, the rapid pressure changes could still injure and kill. Every unexpected thing and delayed calculation opened the gap between the two bombers until one would live while the other died.

Frenda was already in the palm of her hand.

“Technology is cumulative. None of it is inherently better, worse, more advanced, or behind the times. You only have Frenda Seivelun, while I have Frenda Seivelun and my own technology, so you have no way of defeating me. It goes without saying who wins between precisely 100% and at least 101%, right?”

Dull metallic sounds came from Frenda and Morning Call simultaneously.

There was no need to stick with their makeshift sword and shield.

Bombers used “fire”. They wielded all of human civilization as a weapon, so insisting on a single weapon would only limit their options.

The uncreative were the first to be eliminated in the world of bombers.

They both gave a roar and ran along the shortest route to each other.

“Ohhh!”

Just as Frenda’s skirt fluttered, a great mass was launched overhead by an explosive. It was a cluster bomb that split into 24 bomblets that were blasted out to evenly fill the space around it.

“Ohhhhhhh!”

Morning Call pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it overhead, using its blats to eliminate some of the bomblets and securing a safe zone for herself.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Frenda twirled a metal tube in her hand, using it to direct an explosive force and launch a lead bullet at great speed.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Morning Call detonated an explosive at her feet, tearing up the rooftop itself, turning it into a thick shield.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Frenda used an explosive to boost her leg strength and jump straight over that shield standing taller than a prison wall. In midair, she targeted Morning Call with a bomb.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Morning Call remotely detonated an explosive buried in rubble that had crumbled atop it, sending a scattershot blast toward the blonde girl.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

Several explosions coincided and exploded in quick succession.

(Got her!!)

A sneer formed on the lips below the simple goggles hiding Morning Call’s eyes.

They were using the same sort of power, but Frenda couldn’t keep up with the calculations. That gave Morning Call an advantage and the margin of error had just passed a threshold. A catapult bomb’s explosive force propelled a large quantity of gravel to speeds greater than a handgun, shredding Frenda’s body.

Or it should have.

“!?”

But a moment later, Morning Call detonated an explosive to slide rapidly to the right.

A sharp cut ran across her cheek.

(What the-?)

“Is it really so surprising? In the end, assuming victory without checking the body for a pulse or breathing is a common pitfall for second-rate bombers who like to blow people away with big explosions.”

She was alive.

Frenda Seivelun was looking down at Morning Call from atop the concrete shield jutting up vertically. The look in her eyes was icy. She was still alive.

It made no sense.

That had been a finishing blow. The battle wasn’t supposed to keep going. Yet a part of the battle Morning Call hadn’t needed to calculate out had arrived.

Each new second expanded the margin of error compared to the complete victory she had imagined.

Confused, the simple goggles girl sent out a series of explosively-boosted punches. At the same time, she released the small explosives she held, placing them in the midair positions she wanted.

Frenda had no way of dodging this speed and timing.

A punch to her vitals would knock her out.

Even if she blocked, she would have no way of avoiding the explosives positioned in the air. While Frenda tensed to endure the blow of the punch, Morning Call could pull back her fist and detonate the midair bombs to tear Frenda to mincemeat.

That was her plan.

She had calculated out the correct answer, so it was strange things weren’t playing out according to those values.

“…”

Morning Call tossed out an additional explosive. To fix the mistake.

The concrete shield audibly crumbled, but Frenda’s body wasn’t there. She easily landed on the skyscraper rooftop.

She wouldn’t die.

Why not? It didn’t add up.

When had Frenda become immortal?

This had nothing to do with being a bomber.

The girl who should have been dead grinned and whispered a term.

A term that didn’t seem relevant to the current situation.

“Tetra-ethylnipolita.”

“?”

“In the end, if you really had created a perfect model of me and made it a part of yourself, then why did you start using that explosive?”

This wasn’t simple curiosity.

Frenda’s voice contained obvious scorn.

When you could simply write “10”, it was a waste of time to express it as “1x10” instead. Frenda sounded like she was watching a fool go to the trouble of writing it out as “1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1”.

“In the end, the world’s bombers never use that because it’s inefficient. Sure, you can create plenty of substitute explosive by combining expired smokeless powder with a certain powerful acid, but no one is going to waste that much smokeless powder in this day and age. The logistics linking supply and demand have evolved beyond that point. That ‘alchemy of explosives’ is based on the assumption a lot of it is going to waste. It isn’t so convenient it ignores the conservation of mass.”

An explosive detonated with a “bang!!”

Frenda didn’t dodge to either side. The spear-like shockwave sent out by Morning Call shot right past her Senpai’s ear.

That had been aimed so it would hit when Frenda tried to dodge out of the way.

Morning Call’s plans weren’t working.

“In the end, I would never use that cheap substitute in one of my bombs.”

Morning Call tossed several more bombs overhead.

They didn’t simply fall back down.

Small parachutes opened. They would hang in the air, throwing off the timing for intercepting them, before the bombs sharply attacked directly below them. But Frenda pulled missiles from her miniskirt and accurately shot each and every one down.

“In the end, you are Morning Call. You are a completely different bomber from me. You aren’t Frenda Seivelun.”

She didn’t hesitate.

She smiled thinly while accurately manipulating SAMs the size of coffee cans.

“You thought you had perfectly modeled me and absorbed everything I know? Don’t make me laugh. In the end, you don’t even understand a tenth of what there is to know about the Academy City Bomber.”

“''Damn you''…”

“In the end, you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Something passed its limit.

The back of the girl’s raincoat burst.

Bombs continued to explode, forming giant glowing wings extending from her back. A lot like rocket boosters.

“You aren’t prepared to ''fly'', though, are you? Control the explosions precisely enough and you can turn yourself into a hot-air balloon, an airplane, a helicopter, or a rocket.”

“Sorry, but that kind of bomber is five generations out of date. I’m sure you’re doing your best to be clever, but I already made my own personal aircraft. At the start of August, I think it was.”

“Kh. This ends here! You used-up old hag…”

“You see bright and shining Frenda-chan as an old hag? How low is your strike zone?”

“I don’t need precise calculations! If I slice diagonally through this entire building, I can slam you into the ground and kill you for sure!!”

That was certainly true.

But Frenda was still smiling.

“Here’s the thing.”

The “thud” was a perfectly ordinary noise.

It was the sound of a heavy chunk of concrete being swung down. No technology necessary.

The concrete struck Morning Call in the back of the head.

Courtesy of Takitsubo.

“Gah?”

“Bombs aren’t everything in the real world. In the end, we are Item.”

They had spent so long fighting back and forth with so many different types of bombs, but there were other ways.

The means were not the ends.

If one side killed the other, they won. Those were the rules.

“A blunt object. I was defeated…by such primitive means?”

This too was an option.

But the raincoat girl hadn’t prepared it.

Morning Call had been too focused on bombs too fully become Frenda Seivelun.

“Gah, ah, ah, ahh, ahhhhhhhhh!!!!”

“Frenda,” called Takitsubo.

She had already stepped aside.

The girl holding a hand to her half-crushed head gave a roar. Were her simple goggles glitching, or was it her brain that was broken? She ignored all else and swung her glowing wings of constant explosions to cut through the entire skyscraper and kill Frenda and Takitsubo.

But a second beforehand.

The Academy City Bomber twirled a tube in her hand and directed its end toward Morning Call.

Like it was a magic wand.

But this tube was filled with gunpowder and a lead bullet.

She had received assistance from a teammate, but she hadn’t said a word about losing at her own specialty.