Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Mental Out SS (section)

===Part 7===

She was on the ****** committee.

So she would fulfill her duties.



So many people in the world were burdened with so much str***. So many carried that invisible weight on their backs. Maybe it was a sign of the times, but the burden was too great for many, crushing them. As a member of the ****** committee, she was supposed to look after her fellow students’ health, so she couldn’t just ignore this problem.

(I need to remove it.)
So she would give them a break.

She would free them.

(I will remove it all. I am on the ****** committee, so I will fulfill my duties. And that means freeing the students from that invisible weight.)

She could use her power to cause painless in****** bleeding. That led to blood **** ***tasy. Their minds would forget about reality, much like drifting off to sleep. Everyone had pleasures they could not resist. The people of the modern era succumbed to the weight of their stress because they had been pushed to the point that they couldn’t even do this.

She had saved many girls this way already.

Some girls had heard the rumors and secretly asked her to trigger the internal bleeding.

She was more than happy to.

She was ******* ****** and everything she did she did for the hea*** of her schoolmates.

(Academy City’s #5, Queen of Tokiwadai’s larg*** **ique.)

She had her next target.

(The poor thing has no choice but to waste her precious weekend with some uncouth boy to help with the joint drama class.)

So she did not hesitate to take action.

There was no reason at all to reject the pursuit of health.

People needed to pursue health even if it meant placing restrictions on their happiness or desires.

Her telepathy linked to others by “sharing their presence”. So even if she couldn’t see her target, she could forcibly establish a one-way link as long as she could sense their presence.

She had to sense that presence.

She had to combine their minds into one.

Her power let her establish a wordless understanding, like between tennis or badminton d**bles partners or fig*** skating pairs. She could establish that understanding in less than a second and take it even further.

As can be seen in the existence of the term “combat stress”, manipulating the mind could cause bleeding within the body.

Like how people in bomb shelters could begin bleeding from the heart.

Her target this time was the #5 and the Qu**n of the largest clique.

Her presence would stand out even in a weekend crowd.

She accurately read that presence and combined with it.

“1 vs. 1 – one-way forced link.”

(Got her!!)

And once she had the link, she only needed a few more conditions to be met before she could bring down anyone, no matter who.

<My, my. You think you have a link, do you? And who exactly do you think you are linking with while ignoring my presence?>

Her breathing stopped.

Her mind went blank – all her thoughts vanishing for a few seconds.

And by then, the counter-link was already in place. In addition to her one-way link to her target, a separate link had been established coming back from her target.

She had been masking her thoughts by applying noise using the wind direction value as the encryption key, but that had probably already been removed.

Now her mind was an open book.

(The winds are changing? Like a single gust was blowing in one direction but then the air swirled around and blew back the other way!?)

Now they had two-way communication.

Shutting down the link and physically running away was no longer an option.

<But wait. Does that mean this…''isn’t'' Shokuhou Misaki?>

<How do you do? I am Kobayashi Satori, the intellectual strategist and information security expert for the Shokuhou Clique. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, 2nd year health committee member Otonari Hibiku-san.>

<!?>

This other girl had read her identity.

She must have snatched away the list of terms that had come to mind as things Otonari wanted to keep secret.

<Hee hee. I believe my telepathy works very differently from yours.>

Was that how she had outsmarted Otonari?

But what exactly had she done?

<Did you really think I would just let you link to the mind of our Queen, the leader of our clique, Academy City’s #5, and the strongest psychological esper? You have some nerve.>

Otonari understood her reasons, but what had she actually done?

Why couldn’t Otonari hear Shokuhou Misaki’s mind?

Why was she hearing someone else’s voice instead?

Was it like a tunnel? Did they both have a link to Shokuhou’s mind and they were essentially sending their winds through that single long tunnel to clash at the center point?

No.

Otonari didn’t sense Shokuhou Misaki at all. This was not the #5’s mind. She had targeted the Queen, but she had ended up with a link to someone else’s mind.

Was that even possible?

Otonari could access the voice of anyone’s mind, but this was a first for her. It was a lot like dialing the wrong phone number, but how could that happen when establishing a link with her esper power!?

<Hee hee. This is not some elaborate trick where I messed with your brain or mind.>

This phenomenon was unknown to Otonari, but it was known to the other girl.

This unknown in the territory she excelled at brought her fear.

<''The truth is much simpler.''>

She heard a light thud.

It made no sense.

A golden color had been tossed to the ground. The thing lying at her feet looked like the shed skin of a mysterious animal, but it was in fact a long blonde wig.

This revealed a girl with a bob cut.

<What!? Kobayashi…Satori?>

<Add a “senpai” to that, you lowly worm. ''The vanguard and the rear guard were swapped from the beginning''☆>