Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

Academy City’s #1.

Item had no idea what interests had brought him onto the game board.

How deep did the darkness go in this case that began with a bizarre hanged corpse!?

“A-anyway, don’t even think about fighting him. I super mean it,” groaned Kinuhata, still looking toward the hole in the wall. “Maybe a purely psychological esper would stand a chance, but even then it would be a life-or-death gamble. And a super high firepower physical esper like Mugino doesn’t stand a chance!”

“So we should escape, but, in the end, how do we do that?” Frenda sounded rattled. “You say he can control any and all vectors? If he really has a stupid power like that…then stealing a car and driving out of here probably won’t be enough to escape.”

“…”

Kinuhata, the expert on this topic, said nothing.

Which meant Frenda was right.

So fighting was suicide, but they also couldn’t think of any way to escape.

They were trapped before the fight even began.

“In the end, what do we do?”

“We can’t fight and we can’t run. To be blunt, there’s nothing we can do that will help us here. …So what if we super got him to withdraw?”

“Kinuhata, explain what you mean,” said Takitsubo.

“I have no clue why that monster is here, but District 23 is generally off limits, right? It’s not like we ran across him in a dangerous shopping area.”

It was true the odds of this happening by chance were so terribly low it felt downright malicious.

So it was more natural to think of it this way.

“In the end, he gets something out of this…or to put it another way, he’s here on the orders of a client or intermediary?”

“Almost certainly. So holing up in the lab and super buying time works in our favor.”

Kinuhata presented her choice.

It was an opinion they hadn’t mentioned before.

“In the meantime, the voice on the phone above us can apply pressure to the #1’s client or whatever. It can be a negotiation, threats, or persuasion – I don’t care. As long as the enemy’s superior super gives in, the #1 should be ordered to withdraw!”

It looked like the correct answer.

However, there seemed to be plenty of hurdles they would have to clear.

“I doubt the voice on the phone will go to that effort for us,” simply stated Takitsubo.

“Kh.”

“Besides, how are we supposed to buy time against the #1 if he can manipulate any and all vectors? Even if we throw things at him from afar, he’ll probably just walk right up to us.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? I did my best to come up with an idea! And we’re almost out of time! Dammit, the #1 is super coming here!!”

“''We just have to defeat the enemy'',” said Mugino who had been keeping quiet and thinking until now.

The track suit girl didn’t even have time to hug panicked and angry Kinuhata’s head.

Takitsubo tilted her head and made sure she had heard that right (while going ahead and hugging Kinuhata regardless).

“Mugino?”

“Bwah, these boobs, what he hell, are these super real!? Wait, why are you raising your head, Mugino!? You’ll get it super blasted off by the #1!!”

“Will I, though?”

It was true her Meltdowner beam had been bent. No, reflected. There was no denying that fact. And not just anyone could do that.

But don’t forget. This was District 23, a special district that felt out of place even in Academy City where the technology was said to be 20-30 years ahead of the outside world. It was an off-limits zone that specialized in aerospace development. Which meant it as replete with devices, equipment, and facilities found nowhere else.

For example…



“There’s an underground silo mass driver out there. That huge-ass launcher uses electromagnetic guidance to launch cargo weighing tons all the way to the moon or Mars. That might just be able to create ''an electric field'' large enough to alter a Meltdowner beam’s course!!”