Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 7===

This wasn’t a suicide.

She fell to a location less than three meters down. It was likely part of the training ground, but a net was laid out there to catch anyone who fell.

Takitsubo wouldn’t have taken that sudden dive if she hadn’t recalled seeing it earlier.

“This way. Super this way!”

Kinuhata Saiai had fallen earlier and she was beckoning over from behind a large fake building wall. Takitsubo adjusted her grip on Frenda, dropped from the net to the ground, and ran over to Kinuhata.

Fake buildings, trees, streetlights, benches – there were plenty of places to hide, but the training ground was still an open outdoor space. Staying here was not an attractive option. If they wanted to avoid being caught in a pincer attack, they needed to find a back entrance and withdraw indoors.

Takitsubo lowered the fluffy blonde girl from her shoulder to a concrete-looking floor.

“Frenda.”

“What, can’t you tell? In the end, you can’t expect any help from me.”

“I want to know how those drones work. Only you would know that.”

Did Takitsubo Rikou know exactly what people wanted to hear at times like this?

The Academy City Bomber reacted with a twitch.

“Those are just your standard wandering self-destruct drones that carry a bomb and charge at their target, right? Their structure itself is simple. Based on how far Kinuhata was blasted, the explosive they’re carrying isn’t anything special. If they’re loaded with 100 grams and it expands 800 times, in the end, that’s about the same force as a grenade. The lethal range should be around 10m.”

…But 1.75 million grenades thrown at you one after another would be more than enough of a threat. A minor fortress or combat airfield could be stained with blood and destroyed by that.

“1.75 million… She can’t be controlling them all manually, can she?”

“In the end, she’s probably providing general instructions with her phone and the exact calculations are all handled by AI. Like playing an RTS on easy mode.”

“Then super what if we jam those signals? That will cut off the manual instructions and I bet they’re linked up to a fairly large supercomputer to constantly perform so many flight control calculations.”

“I doubt that would work. She uses 250 thousand at once and has a total of 1.75 million in case some are brought down. Even if each one has a cheap toy of a CPU, linking 250 thousand of them together in parallel will provide some decent processing power. They won’t need a stationary supercomputer.”

It sounded like jamming the wireless network itself would still work, but they didn’t know what the swarm used to communicate. And if they were military, they would likely use multiple methods at once: EM, IR, magnetism, ultrasound. Actually jamming them would require blocking every one of the methods…but how many methods was “every one” of them?

Kinuhata sounded fed up with it all.

“Drones that super small have to run out of fuel or battery before long, right? If we stay on the run to buy time, won’t they eventually break down?”

“Kinuhata, we can’t make that kind of assumption without seeing their design or specs. They might generate power from the wind or the sun and they might be remotely charged using ultrasonic waves or microwaves.”

A portion of the blue sky was colored black.

As if ink had been splattered into the world.

Frenda looked up with her lips twisted into a stiff half-smile.

“So…in the end, which sounds better to you: having them attack us in a straight line or having them spread out and attack us as a wall?”

“Either way, Kinuhata would be the only survivor.”

“250 thousand at once and 1.75 million in all… If I’m super pummeled by that many bombs, not even Offense Armor is going to last.”

Kinuhata could only watch the drone swarm in a daze.

They circled an area as large as a schoolyard as they took aim. Like a giant flying serpent. If the Item girls stayed outside, they would be swallowed by a sandstorm of mechanical explosions.

And…

“Ah ha ha. You call that escaping?”

They heard a voice.

“Being out in the open makes it easier for me☆”

It belonged to Norsitro Chatellenie.

She jumped lightly down toward them from from the broken window a few meters up.

She was less than a hundred meters away.

“!”

Still seated on the floor, Frenda immediately pulled multiple explosives from her short skirt.

“I seriously doubt that will work.”

The wind roared as it spiraled thickly around them.

A giant tower rose up on either side of Norsitro. The wind wrapped around and extended high into the sky, forming powerful tornadoes.

Realizing what that meant, Frenda froze before making her attack.

The brown girl’s hair and leather skirt were flapping wildly, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Handheld rockets have a terrible tendency to miss when exposed to crosswinds. I hear that world-famous Russian one that only costs 20 or 30 thousand yen has trouble hitting at even 500 meters. And with this kind of random turbulence, you have no way of calculating a path.”

Tornadoes.

Frenda’s eyes widened because she had already been hit by an esper power attack here.

“You mean…in the end, she doesn’t just have lightning!?”

“What’s wrong? Was there some other weather you were hoping for? Or were you worried about low pressure because you get headaches on those days? Just let me know☆”

Norsitro smiled in her bright neon green bondage outfit.

And it began pouring rain.

Less than five seconds later, it turned to fist-sized hail.

Then a clear blue sky shined overhead.

It was like she was casually flipping an invisible switch. Frenda Seivelun was completely dumbfounded.

Was this Norsitro Chatellenie’s power?

“You’re…kidding.”

“It super looks like she can control all forms of weather, including lightning, doesn’t it? Her power might control the air instead of electricity.”

“Kinuhata, don’t treat maybes like confirmed information. Remember what I said about information the enemy gives you?”

“Yes, yes, I have to super take it with grain of salt! …But how else are we supposed to explain that ridiculous power!? Mutter, mutter…”

Kinuhata’s complaints were cut off.

By the repeating sound of something beating at the air.

It was a Two Wings helicopter that could be flown unmanned…no, based on the arm-like wings spread out on the sides, was it a Six Wings?

250 thousand at the same time with a total of 1.75 million.

As those things flew around, the “black dragon” must have shown up on Academy City’s anti-air radar. Their operator must have known that would happen, but…

“Shut up.”

It exploded.

Even Frenda wouldn’t want to be chased by one of those. That was just how brutal the Six Wings’ air-to-air and air-to-ground armaments were, but it happened so easily.

“I said it’s a super weapon superior to nukes, didn’t I? You can’t expect ordinary weapons – even an entire squadron of attack helicopters – to deal with it.”

“So in the end, is there no way of stopping her?”

Her power was frightening, but it wasn’t just her power.

The drone swam was frightening, but it wasn’t just the drone swarm.

All three Item members had the same thought: how could they even begin to deal with a monster like this?

Even now, the two tornadoes were raging across the ground.

With a din of destruction, drink vending machines, streetlights, and fake buildings were torn from the ground and thrown into the air. People were meant to climb and descend them with ropes, so it had all been bolted to concrete pedestals, but it didn’t seem to matter.

If a human was caught in there, they would be thrown high into the sky…and then what would happen?

Norsitro grinned.

She wasn’t making a threat to negotiate. The joy of someone who planned to ''use it'' spread across her face.

“I’m not saying there’s no hope at all for you. After all, one of you is supposedly a shield esper.”

“…”

“But if protecting yourself from the fall is ''all'' you can manage, then I just have to hit you again from the side. Which would you prefer to kill you: the self-destruct drones or my power?”

She was extraordinary.

The three Item girls didn’t see how they could win even if they all attacked at once.

Norsitro Chatellenie held a position near the very top if you ignored the excessive financial cost of operating those drones as an individual.

But that was all the more reason to fight.

They couldn’t leave someone this powerful to her own devices. She would prey on Academy City’s ordinary students, drive them to the blackmailers, and even threaten the parents outside the city to make even more money. The people having their lives and futures ruined were not the fools who had purposefully rushed to the dark side to snag some dirty money. Norsitro was like quicksand that endlessly swallowed honest people with no such intentions. And because she was such a formidable enemy, she would cause a massive number of victims if allowed to go free.

It would be too late by the time the city’s wicked grown ups decided to do something about it.

If she wasn’t defeated here and now, there would be victims.

Kinuhata clenched her teeth. Takitsubo had accepted Kinuhata’s plan to survive by having Mugino betray them and fight Norsitro, but that plan had mostly fallen apart. Now it was ''more important'' to silence her as soon as possible. Kinuhata was a dark side villain, not an agent of good or justice, but she still felt that need.

And then.



“Hey.”



She heard.

A voice.

Coming from even further back than Kinuhata Saiai, Frenda Seivelun, and Takitsubo Rikou.

There must have been a different back entrance.

Was that squishy sound all that remained of an unlucky guard who happened to be there?

“Why would you go off and have a party without me?”

A grin split across Norsitro Chartellenie’s face.

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

Sweat poured from Kinuhata’s body.

The Information Broker was supposed to be an expert in handling all forms of information, so why didn’t she understand what it meant for ''her'' to be here? Why didn’t she understand the great risk there?

Regardless, the silver-haired girl spoke her name.



“''Mugino Shizuri.''”