Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM2 Depth8
Depth 8: A Circular Horizon
Part 1
The blazing summer sun shined down from above.
Misaka Mikoto, a student at the prestigious Tokiwadai Middle School, groaned as she sat up to find she didn’t recognize her surroundings. The ground was hard and metallic. The blue sky was as clear as could be, the scent of sea salt hung in the air, and a watery horizon surrounded her in all directions.
“Where am I?” she thoughtlessly muttered.
Taking a seated look around brought no answers and opening her phone’s map app only produced a full-screen error window.
Mikoto hadn’t been the only one lying there. Dozens – no, hundreds – of unconscious girls wore the same summer uniform. She hadn’t actually counted them all, but she guessed that the entire student body was present.
Mikoto couldn’t remember what had happened.
Hadn’t she been in class like normal a moment ago?
(Was I knocked out with some kind of drug? No, it doesn’t seem like it. I think I would remember the moment I passed out if that was it.)
And they appeared to be on a ship. Not just a boat or a yacht. This was bigger. It was probably a massive ship measuring several hundred meters long.
“It looks like a cruise ship,” commented a thoughtful-looking Shirai Kuroko, the twintailed underclassman who had approached at some point. She would hug or nuzzle up against Mikoto given half a chance, so Mikoto used her palm to shove the girl away.
“Fgrhrgh. The ship is named…Izanami? I’ve never heard of one called that.”
“Huh.”
Knowing the names of all the major domestic and foreign cruise ships was a sign of just how rich these girls were.
“Izanami,” repeated Mikoto, still with a somewhat vacant look on her face. “Then this must be a Japanese ship.”
Eventually everyone came to and, without anyone instructing them to, they all began searching around on their own. Or maybe it was just so hot they wanted to get out of the direct sunlight.
(Come to think of it, I’m not sunburned. Does that mean I wasn’t lying out there for very long?)
Mikoto looked out to the horizon, looking puzzled. Her conclusion didn’t seem to fit for other reasons.
Mikoto and the others took a walk around.
Counting the windows from the flat deck showed four or five levels. The odd design of the windows made it hard to be certain. Two bright and shiny buildings towered up on the left and right. The pathway they were walking through now was like a canyon between them. No, it was more like a wide, straight path cutting diagonally across the entire ship. It was a bold spatial design for a cruise ship. It looked something like an open-air arcade in a stylish shopping mall.
However…
“Hm? The cafes, boutiques, and other shops are all empty. There’s no one there. No store clerks and no ship’s crew.”
“Reminds me of the Mary Celeste,” commented Shirai.
Mikoto wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded ominous and she chose not to ask about it.
More importantly…
“As big as this ship is, we are still on the ocean.”
“My. Kongou-sama, why is that a problem?”
“Water and food will be limited. And with nothing but water to the horizon in every direction, we have no idea which way to look for land. Heh. That means we are all adrift together!!”
“My, my. Leave it to you to realize something so important before anyone else!”
Kongou Mitsuko and the swim team members didn’t sound all that concerned, but they were essentially correct. Why noticing their crisis was something to be proud of was a mystery, however.
Adrift.
Stranded.
Could their lives be at risk here?
“We probably don’t want to stay here for long.”
“But, Onee-sama, are you suggesting we operate this large ship ourselves? And we don’t know which direction to go to find land.”
“We don’t need to worry about all that. A ship this size will have a communications room. We only have to send out an SOS and wait for rescue. And if we send out a radio signal on the empty ocean, the rescue team can locate us from that.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
Now, operating a ship and using the radio required licenses, but the Judgment girl didn’t seem to have thought it through that far. Mikoto wanted to get the necessary work done before that righteous lecturer got around to complaining.
But just then…
“Misaka-saaan. A moment of your time.”
For some reason, Shokuhou Misaki, who she normally didn’t get along with, chose that moment to approach her.
Why?
The queen’s ringlets partner was only standing by her side and smiling, so she didn’t seem all that reliable either.
Shokuhou gestured Mikoto over to the interior of the ship, where the air was quite a bit chillier.
And not just due to the air conditioning. The space was as wide open as a shopping mall, but there was no sign of anyone here either. There were no announcements or even music playing. It felt like they had carelessly wandered inside before opening time.
But apparently this wasn’t what Shokuhou had wanted to show Mikoto. Hokaze opened a metal waterproof door that was very clearly meant for staff only and the Queen walked through first. They all descended an exceptionally steep and narrow staircase that felt terribly out of place on a cruise ship.
They ended up in a space that had to be more than 100m across. The bulkheads had been intentionally removed.
Bright lights lined the ceiling like in a gym and shined down on elevators large enough to raise and lower a truck and all sorts of tools Mikoto couldn’t identify.
And it was all meant to work on what covered the floor.
Fighter craft.
Mikoto could see more than 20 of them.
There could be even more elsewhere, of course.
What were those doing here?
Shokuhou had found them earlier and already had an answer.
“It’s some kind of aircraft carrier. A nuclear-powered one.”
“That’s absurd…” reflexively replied Mikoto, but Shokuhou slapped her palm against a large button on the wall.
With a deafening operation siren, one of the walls opened up. The thick fore bulkhead opened, letting in the sea breeze.
Something drew a straight line along the floor.
It was a groove. Or more accurately, the guide rail for an electromagnetic catapult.
“I’ve never heard of one that directly launches the aircraft from the maintenance hangar, but it’s probably meant as a form of camouflage.”
“Did you say camouflage?”
“Remember the arcade up top? That wide, straight-line path cutting diagonally across the entire giant ship? Remove the rain sheet off the top and it would gain some landing runway ability, don’t you think?”
Camouflaged Aircraft Carrier Izanami.
That would mean this ship pretending to be a cruise ship was in fact a 300m nuclear-powered ship.
“Does this really matter?”
“Ugh, we really are on different wavelengths… Even Academy City follows the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. So don’t you find it odd the country would build a nuclear-powered military ship and disguise it as a passenger ship? And these are stealth aircraft, but not the usual American F-35s. They all look Japanese to me.”
“I’m more interested in surviving.”
The Queen puffed out her cheeks and repeatedly slapped at Mikoto, but she was so unathletic it didn’t hurt much.
“Sigh, I don’t know why I bothered telling you… And slapping such a flat chest doesn’t provide much sensation ability or fun.”
“Do I need to punch yours to make them really jiggle?”
Anyway, the pressing task for Mikoto and the other girls was not to solve this mystery or conspiracy.
A military ship was guaranteed to have some professional communication equipment. Sending an SOS to land and waiting for rescue was their top priority. Whether this was a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier, even a ship of this size would only have so much water and food, so they would run out eventually.
And there were already some girls pulling out thick manuals and flipping through them.
“Hm, I see. So this uses an electromagnetic catapult system. And when landing, you use this net.”
“You understand all this, Kongou-sama?”
“She is the daughter of an airline company, after all.”
Kongou Mitsuko and Wannai and Awatsuki of the swim team appeared to be enjoying themselves.
Maybe this was just what happened with the elites of Tokiwadai. Even if they had never seen something before, they were fast learners. Instead of limiting themselves to communications, they were poring over every manual they could find. At this rate, they might learn how to operate the laundry, how to tame the nuclear-powered engine, and everything in between.
Even if Mikoto and Shokuhou did nothing, it looked like someone would probably send an SOS from the bridge or CIC before long.
“Onee-sama, where are you going?”
“To check those fighters. The aircraft should have radios too.”
“If the carrier’s radio can’t reach land, there is no way an aircraft radios could. The difference is like comparing a TV station to a taxi radio. You just want to get a look at it, don’t you?”
Part 2
A Japanese stealth fighter.
It sounded like the stuff of dreams and romance, but it did exist.
(Not even counting the bizarre Academy City ones.)
The experimental technology demonstrator had been built from only domestic parts to learn the technology, not to actually take part in air combat.
“The Shinshin, huh?”
Mikoto hadn’t been interested at first, but the desire grew inside her as she thought about having to say goodbye once rescue arrived. She was outside the wall and this was a Japanese stealth fighter. She wanted to touch it while she had the chance.
“Was it only ever a life-size model, or did they actually make one? Whatever the case, I never heard anything about it being mass-produced,” said Shokuhou Misaki, her lips pouting.
Mikoto was surprised to find her still in the hangar. She had assumed the girl would be on the bridge or CIC so she could boss people around.
The craft had an elegant streamlined shape and a somehow pointed look.
But it wasn’t like a katana.
She sensed none of the heat of steel that had been forged by a human hand.
This was pure icy beauty. And nothing more. Each and every tiny part might as well have been stamped with a “computer-optimized design” message, like the sutra written all over Hoichi the Earless.
Mikoto usually thought of stealth aircraft as black, but the Shinshin was mostly pure white. It also had bright red and blue lines. Although that may have been because it was only experimental.
(Were the 3D model and small flight test models colored this way too?)
“But wait. It’s bigger than I expected.”
“Probably because it’s a 2-seat custom,” said Shokuhou.
Sure enough, it had two seats, one behind the other.
The actual specs weren’t public, but the idea had been to more or less match the F-22A.
Stealth technology wasn’t a divine miracle, so it wouldn’t remain exclusive to America forever.
In fact, while gathering the technology and developing one was all well and good, Mikoto wondered how Japan’s defense budget could afford so many of the super-high-tech stealth fighters that had been too much for even the military superpower of America to produce in great quantities. Real life wasn’t a robot anime and a single ultimate craft wasn’t enough.
(So who paid for all of these and from what budget?)
Mikoto pushed over a simple gangway that resembled a pool lifeguard tower and took a look inside the cockpit.
She opened the clear canopy.
And she climbed in.
“Ugh… Surprisingly cramped.”
“It’s military. What were you expecting?”
There were no gaps, making her feel like she was the foot slipped inside a high-heeled shoe.
“If it’s designed for long flights, I thought it would be more, y’know, comfortable, like with a memory foam back.”
“Soft cushions would be squashed flat by the ultra-high-g environment, so they wouldn’t be very useful.”
Mikoto tested a few buttons in the cockpit until she heard some static.
Maybe it was thanks to the thick bulkhead open to the outside, but the craft’s radio had picked up the carrier’s communication signal.
“Um, SOS, SOS, mayday! This is the Izanami. We do not know our situation, but we are adrift. If anyone is near enough to hear this, we ask that you follow this signal to rescue us.”
“Well, that’s done.”
“Come to think of it, can we really just wait for someone’s rescue ability? Since we’re in the ocean, we definitely aren’t in Academy City, so I hope there isn’t any trouble with another country related to the esper development and our DNA maps.”
Mikoto felt they could wait until they had escaped their current predicament before worrying about that. Arriving ashore alive was their top priority for now.
And it turned out Mikoto wasn’t the only one relaxing.
More voices arrived over the radio. Since their phones couldn’t communicate with the land-based servers while out on the empty ocean, even the basic call and email functions weren’t available, so everyone had started carrying around handheld radios.
“Huh? We’re in the ocean, but there’s a pool.”
“We really are the only ones here. We won’t even have to wait in line.”
“They have karaoke. I-is that one of the legendary bowling alleys I’ve heard so much about!? Since we’re here, we might as well check it out!”
Mikoto stared into the distance.
…She felt awfully silly pretending to be a foot in a high-heeled shoe inside a hangar that reeked of machine oil. The cruise ship camouflage appeared to have been a thorough job, so enjoying the resort would be a much better way to spend the short time until rescue arrived.
And while this realization was sinking in…
An earsplitting electronic tone exploded from the speakers throughout the ship.
“What!?” shouted Mikoto as she poked at the cockpit’s communication controls. “Is that an alarm!?”
“I-it’s a false alarm. Nothing more,” someone replied on the radio. “The ship’s early-warning radar appears to have picked something up… It’s flying straight this way from the northwest, but it’s probably whoever’s coming to rescue us.”
Mikoto saw motion on one of the small monitors in the cockpit. It appeared to have a datalink to the carrier’s early-warning radar.
There was indeed a large dot there.
And it was moving fast.
“That must be our rescue. Now we can finally get back home.”
The voice on the radio (probably from the bridge) sounded unconcerned.
At some point, Shokuhou had shoved her head right up next to Mikoto’s.
“Excuse me, Misaka-saaan.”
“Whoa, what do you want!?”
She was standing on the simple gangway that resembled a tennis umpire chair so she could lean into to cockpit and see the display. That brought her face extremely close. Her long blonde hair tickled against Mikoto’s cheek.
Shokuhou was still staring at the display.
“Mach 1.25. That doesn’t sound like a large helicopter to me. Not a tiltrotor either. My guess is a large aircraft equipped with two or even four engines.”
“So what?”
“A 40m aircraft has no midair stopping ability. It also can’t land on a carrier runway. …The quick arrival is appreciated, but how do they plan on rescuing us?”
Mikoto and Shokuhou exchanged a glance at extreme close range.
The alert siren increased in volume and the ship’s lighting all switched to red.
“Oh, no!” shouted the voice from the bridge. “How do I switch off this false alarm!?”
“Is it…not false? Bridge!! Send all the data you have to me!!”
That request came too late.
With a rumble, the 300m nuclear-powered aircraft carrier shook vertically. Including the cruise ship camouflage, the hunk of steel had to weigh more than 100 thousand tons.
“Eh? Eh?” said the voice on the bridge.
“They shot something at us?”
“It didn’t hit us,” said Shokuhou. “See that big pillar of water in the ocean outside the open bulkhead?”
What would have happened if that had hit?
The fighter’s small display made it hard to tell, but a few centimeters there had to mean an actual distance of more than 100km.
At that kind of distance, a small speck separated from the larger dot.
No, it had been launched.
That was the second shot.
The size, speed, and trajectory of the rapidly-approaching weapon must have triggered an automatic prediction from the carrier’s database. English text appeared on the radar screen.
Estimated Model: ASM Harpoon.
“That’s an anti-ship missile…”
The identification was made through computer estimation.
Mikoto paled.
“That Harpoon was designed to destroy ships like this! I don’t know who this is, but is that a bomber coming for us? All we did was send out an SOS over radio, but did they follow the radio signal to sink the entire damn ship!? Without even a word of warning!?”
“It still might be a false alarm,” suggested Shokuhou.
“You saw that earlier explosion! And the second shot is flying this way!!”
“The Harpoon was launched from the air, so we aren’t dealing with pirates or terrorists! That has to be a national military. Why would they open fire without even checking to see who they’re firing on!?”
An explosive noise continued on and on, sounding something like a much deeper version of buzzing wings.
The close-in defense Gatling guns installed across the Izanami (and disguised to look like parts of the cruise ship) must have opened fire. They were of course under automatic control, so the girls didn’t even have to touch the console.
Eventually, they heard an especially loud explosion.
A distant one.
The Harpoon must have been shot down near the water, but…
“You understand that we only got lucky there, don’t you?” said Shokuhou. “We can’t count on that happening again.”
“…”
“With their second shot failed, they’ll just launch a third. They’ll keep going until they blast through the ship’s hull!! They will eventually break through our close-in defenses which can maybe shoot down one missile after firing tens of thousands of rounds. Do you want to be strewn across the sea along with the nuclear-powered engine that will be leaking who-knows-what into the water after the hull breaks open? We need to cut off the threat at the source!!”
What was Misaka Mikoto currently seated inside?
It wasn’t a movie theater seat, that was for sure. She had a chance to alter the situation playing out before her eyes.
Shokuhou pouted her lips.
“Misaka-san, all you’ve done is read through the thick manual. What makes you so sure you can actually pilot this thing?”
She didn’t need to say a word.
With a buzz, all of the systems in the Shinshin’s cockpit came to life.
Misaka Mikoto was a Level 5 with power over electricity. That gave her more than just destructive power – she could use her power to hack in and tame programs or to perform cyber attacks. She could control the flaps and thrust vectoring nozzles as easily as opening and closing her hands.
“Too easy.”
Despite what the old RCS models suggested, it seemed the latest fighters didn’t use a HUD that placed the display over the actual view. In order to transform her entire field of view into a weapon, Mikoto put on a pair of ultra-thin goggles that were even more delicate than sports sunglasses.
“Ugh, really. If you’d screwed up the startup process, I would have had an excuse ability to stop you.”
Shokuhou held a hand to her forehead atop the simple gangway and snapped her fingers with the other hand.
Immediately, Mikoto’s body jerked to the side.
No, that wasn’t what happened.
She couldn’t see straight down from the cockpit thanks to the pointy nose, but Hokaze Junko, who was always at Shokuhou’s side, had grabbed the fighter’s front landing gear and started pulling. With Rampage Dress, not even the 20-ton Shinshin could stop her.
“Whoa, hey, H-Hokaze-san!?”
“This is faster than hooking it up to a tractor and guiding it that way,” said Shokuhou. “Now, the electromagnetic catapult guide rail is over here, so attach the wire over here.”
“Queen.”
“The catapult switch is on that box hanging over there, isn’t it? Okay, Misaka-san, close the canopy and fasten your seat belts. Oh, and make sure to clench your teeth so you don’t bite your tongue. You will be accelerating past 250km/h in less than 5 seconds, so you could injure your neck if you aren’t careful☆”
“Are you sure you want to stand on that guide rail, Queen? That is well within the contact danger zone.”
It turned out she didn’t actually want to do that at all, so the blonde girl scrambled away as the Shinshin shot forward with a loud metallic scraping sound.
It was a lot like taking off from within a tunnel.
The Japanese stealth fighter shot from the bulkhead gaping wide at the bow of the camouflaged aircraft carrier.
Part 3
It was a lot like a roller coaster.
As soon as it was released from the guide rail at more than 250km/h, the fuselage shook. It was thrown out into empty air without even the bare minimum of safety assurance. The blue ocean raced by just 7m below.
If it contacted those rolling waves, it would be torn to pieces.
(Whoa!?)
Mikoto quickly adjusted her grip on the control column.
But while it wobbled at first, everything was fine after she lifted the nose just a bit and began a slow climb. The shaking settled down after the landing gear was stored away. The ground effect and extra air resistance must have been the problem.
“That was scary… But huh. So this is the mysterious Japanese stealth fighter? It isn’t hard to control at all.”
“Misaka-saaan.”
A voice arrived on the radio.
The solid footsteps joining the voice suggested the girl was walking with a small radio in hand.
“Oops. We didn’t decide on a call sign, so I used your real name over the air.”
“You can’t convince me that wasn’t intentional, Shokuhou.”
“What was that – payback? Anyway, the enemy is about 100km northwest. I’m on my way to the CIC, but with the Shinshin’s top speed, you might be done before I even settle down in the command chair. …Wait, um, Misaka-saaan? Wait!!”
“The enemy’s to the northwest! Then I’ll just make a quick turn in that direc–––––!?”
Mikoto’s vision whited out.
Everything sounded like it was coming from a great distance.
She couldn’t seem to remember where she was or what she was doing. Like some gear in her head had slipped out of place…?
(H…………u…………h…………?)
She had a feeling not doing anything would be very bad, but she couldn’t seem to conjure up any idea of why that was.
“…ne……………sa………”
She heard something from somewhere.
While just barely clinging to consciousness, she focused her mind in that direction.
It immediately transformed into a voice.
“Onee-sama!! You need to grab onto the control column immediately! Do you want to stall out and die!?”
“Oh, whoa!?”
Oh, right. She was piloting a fighter craft!
It probably hadn’t taken even 5 seconds. But in a supersonic fighter, that was enough for her surroundings to entirely change. She took a hurried look around and checked her coordinates on the small monitor.
Thoughtlessly swinging the craft around had pulled the blood down from her brain and nearly knocked her out. Yes, Misaka Mikoto was wearing her usual summer uniform. She had left in a hurry, so she wasn’t wearing a thick anti-g suit!
(Oxygen. Where’s the mask? Is this it? Urp, it’s gotta be this small tube hanging from my ear like a hands-free mic!!)
“I-I was wrong. This isn’t easy… What genius built a machine with no care for how the human body works?”
And that wasn’t the only source of surprise.
Something was flying alongside her.
The single-engine fighter was smaller than the Shinshin. It looked a bit like an F-16, but the details were a little different. Was that a Japanese-made F-2A?
And that was her underclassman seated in the cockpit.
“K-Kuroko? Why are you up here too!?”
“I am here as well!”
“Whoa!?” shouted Mikoto.
Another F-2A flew on her other side. Piloted by Hokaze Junko. They were only a few meters apart, making this look like some kind of acrobatic flying. Their IFF signals had them tagged as friendly, but Mikoto still should have been paying more attention to her radar.
As the oxygen made its way into her brain, Mikoto’s mind and vision gradually cleared.
“That was a very good decision for short notice, Shirai-sama. When Misaka-sama wasn’t responding to your hails, I never would have thought to detonate an air-to-air missile just outside of the lethal range☆”
“Kuroko.”
“You would have had a one-way trip to hell if you hadn’t woken up.”
Mikoto hadn’t been following all the details since she had passed out for a bit, but why had Shirai and Hokaze taken off as well? They couldn’t tame the machine with their powers in the same way Mikoto could.
“It is admittedly risky, but, well, I was too worried letting you do it on your own, Onee-sama.”
“…Oh.”
“Yes, I was worried you would get so carried away you skipped straight past threats and warnings and went for the kill right away.”
“Oh, I see how it is! Anyway, Kuroko, why are you wearing that formfitting suit? It’s pink! That’s not any anti-g suit I’m familiar with!”
“You would be surprised if you saw what the carrier is equipped with.”
“And, Misaka-sama, I do not want a lecture on common sense from someone who took off in a fighter wearing her school uniform. I’m not even sure boosting my muscles with Rampage Dress would be enough to avoid blacking out.”
It sounded like both of the others were wearing full-body tights that showed off all of their curves. Had the threat to their lives overpowered their teenage shame?
Meanwhile, something passed them by from up ahead.
It was 1000m below them.
It was skimming just off the ocean surface, yet something like a skinny contrail stretched sharply behind it.
That was a missile’s rocket smoke.
“M-Misaka-sama!? Something just flew rapidly by us…they must have launched another anti-ship missile toward the carrier!”
“Don’t, Hokaze-san. You can’t catch up to the Harpoon by making a U-turn now. Shokuhou and the others on the carrier will have to shoot it down!”
“Ughh, Misaka-san, you’re asking the impossible…”
“Shut up, Shokuhou. If you screw it up, you’ll sink along with the wreckage of the carrier, so do it like your life depends on it. …We’ll be shutting off the source, so this third missile will be the last!!”
Now wasn’t the time to be chatting.
In the supersonic world, you covered more than 330m every single second. How far would they travel in the time it took to have a conversation lasting just a few minutes? Time wasn’t money – it was life.
“20 kilometers to the target,” said Shokuhou. “If the air is clear, you should be entering visual range. It’s almost time!”
“Kh.”
“First, give a warning. Next, get a radar lock. If that doesn’t work, use some warning fire with your machine gun to obstruct their course. Don’t shoot their engine or main wings right away. And no trying to look cool by blowing them to smithereens with a missile. I know how you think, Misaka-saaan!!”
“Why does everyone see me that way?”
Mikoto sighed while looking between the dot on her radar and the actual blue sky.
An object was approaching from 20km ahead.
This was a scale not normally experienced living in a city.
But.
What was that?
…It only looked like a sesame seed at this distance, but was it a transport ship? A bomber? No, neither of those fit what she was seeing. It was shaped more like…huh???
Something shot right past her.
Very close by.
A moment later, her craft shook violently up and down. She hadn’t been attacked. That was only a sonic boom, the shockwave created when breaking the sound barrier.
Meaning…
“Something just passed us? Is there someone else out there!?”
“Wait. Nothing is showing up on ra-”
“It’s stealth. We should break formation and scatter before it can make a U-turn and get on our tails, Onee-sama!!”
Shokuhou seemed upset that Shirai had interrupted her.
The situation had changed.
The large bomber or something was launching long-range anti-ship missiles from a distance, but it had an escort.
Whatever the case, they couldn’t just ignore the craft that had passed them. If the unidentified stealth craft made a U-turn, it could get on their unguarded tails. Then it could fire on them with air-to-air missiles, a machine gun, or whatever else. Unlike a race at a school athletic festival, whoever was behind had the advantage in a dogfight.
Mikoto’s Shinshin and Shirai and Hokaze’s F-2As had been bunched together in formation, but now they each turned at different angles. They each took a fishook-like course. Together, they looked like a giant blossoming flower.
Mikoto knew she wasn’t supposed to push herself too hard, but she still felt a great squeezing at her lungs. A dull pain throbbed in her head and darkness crept in from the sides of her vision. She smelled blood in the back of her nose.
(I really should’ve changed before taking off.)
The unidentified craft appeared to have chosen to pursue Shirai, but that meant ignoring the other two. Mikoto’s Shinshin twirled around and then turned further to get behind the unidentified craft pursuing Shirai.
Shirai would die if an air-to-air missile was fired on her.
“We’re past the point of warnings and thre-!! …???”
Mikoto started to shout on reflex, but she suddenly stopped.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating due to lack of blood and oxygen to her brain, but apparently not.
She was really seeing that in this supersonic world.
The unidentified craft pursuing her underclassman Shirai Kuroko’s F-2A was…
A butt.
A girl’s butt was flying there.
“Wha- bu- huh? Am I being influenced by a secret weapon that directly influences my mind with EM waves or low frequency sound?”
“Do not worry, Misaka-sama. That looks like a flying butt to me as well.”
“Don’t say that in such a matter-of-fact way!! What the hell is that!?”
In plain terms, this is what she saw.
There was more than just a butt. The whole body was there. Mikoto was chasing after a mystery girl who was flying in a prone position. The girl looked to be 14 or 15. Her hair was done up in long rolled twintails.
She wore a formfitting suit which resembled a long-sleeved black leotard.
Aerodynamic metal weaponry was attached to her from the top.
Specifically, a sturdy metal joint was attached from her back to the rear of her hips. Different blocks – the nose, the main wings, the engine, etc. – were attached to that.
It almost looked like she was wearing a weaponized backpack, but that probably wasn’t what this was. It had no shoulder straps. The hip joint was directly connected to her at three points: the pelvis and the shoulder blades. It also looked like her arms past the wrists and her legs up to the base of the thighs were actually machines capable of smooth movement.
Flat metal circled around from the bottom of the wings to her stomach, but rather than armor, that was probably the weapons bay used to store missiles.
Most likely, she communicated using signals coming from her tailbone or something. Whether those were neurotransmitter signals or binary 0s and 1s, who could say.
However.
“Sh-she’s huge!?”
Mikoto was not making a rude comment about a girl she had only just meant.
The girl really was huge.
With nothing for comparison, it was easy to lose one’s sense of scale with the blue sky acting like a green screen, but the flying girl wasn’t all that different in size from Shirai’s fighter.
That meant the mystery supersonic butt girl had to be between 15 and 20 meters tall!?
“Now that’s surreal. And that fleeing butt is wiggling side to side to escape my radar lock. But she’s still pursuing Kuroko, so if she weren’t a butt, this would be a serious threat to our lives.”
“You’re not making any sense, Onee-sama!? I have several alarms sounding in here!!”
The radar LCD displayed a dot and some text. The position was shifting a lot, but even if EM-based radar wasn’t working, Mikoto was close enough for her fighter to display a prediction based on visual and thermo data. The mechanically-acquired data must have been used in conjunction with the carrier’s server data.
Mikoto’s phone-based habits led her to tap the dot to display more information.
IFF: Enemy
Estimated Model: F-22A
What the hell?
That was the computer-estimated identity?
Mikoto was finally rendered speechless. But apparently the visual, the engine exhaust heat, the air current disturbance, the radar absorption rate, and all the other data had been analyzed by the carrier’s computer to make this prediction.
It was a dark craft.
It’s stealth allowed it to slip past not just a fighter but an aircraft carrier’s early-warning radar.
It was designed to store all of its weaponry on the inside to preserve its stealth capabilities.
It used its thrust vectoring nozzles to supply the speed and mobility needed to easily stay on the tail of a fleeing F-2A.
It was a stable and powerful craft.
This checked all the boxes.
If not for the ridiculous image of a giant butt in a long-sleeved black leotard, then this was indeed an F-22A!!
“Th-this is ridiculous. How can a butt that round still have high level stealth capability!?”
“Come to think of it, Misaka-sama, we all woke up on the carrier, but we don’t actually know where we are. That is, we know we were on the carrier, but we don’t know where the carrier is.”
(It’s not just the F-22A. I wasn’t imagining it when I saw the bomber.)
“…”
(I don’t know if that was supposed to be a B-1B or a Tu-160, but that was definitely a 40m blonde woman wearing a tank top and bike shorts!!)
“Does that mean we’re in another world that’s just like this?” asked Shirai.
Part 4
Was that the case?
Was this another world?
A completely different world where fighters and bombers were shaped like girls who flew through the sky!?
Part 5
But whether the enemy was a fighter or a long-sleeved leotard butt, they were flying through the sky, had a radar lock, and could launch an air-to-air missile. That was an F-22A regardless. More than 60 seconds had passed since she got on Shirai’s tail. Even in a dogfight, there was only so long you could escape the wobbling seeker.
Once the two marks aligned and the lock was complete, the missile would be launched.
Mikoto had to act before that happened.
“Kuroko!!”
“No time for a count to three. Now!!”
Shirai released all her flares to confuse the F-22A just long enough for Mikoto fly in from behind and spray it with machinegun fire.
She didn’t wait for a complete lock.
At this range, Shirai’s flares could easily confuse it anyway.
Instead of launching a guided missile that would pursue the dozens of heat sources provided by the firework-like flares, the enemy girl(?) prioritized her own safety and took a sharp turn. She readily abandoned the position that would give her an advantage in locking on.
(As ridiculous as she looks, she’s really cautious!)
Mikoto quickly moved to pursue.
But all of a sudden, the F-22A vanished from view.
She now only saw the lock seeker wandering uncertainly near the center of her view.
The F-22A had twisted herself into a clockwise roll and then pitched her nose upwards. The craft coiled around while advancing forward.
When Mikoto realized what it had done, a chill ran down her spine.
Aircraft used air resistance to brake. One method was to swing the craft around wide to increase the surface area that caught the wind.
And distance was another important factor.
Which was longer: a 10cm wire stretched out straight or a wire coiled around a 10cm pen? The answer was obvious.
A quick movement could move a craft outside its enemy’s view, break a radar lock, and also rapidly brake to make the enemy overshoot it.
“A barrel roll!?” shouted Mikoto just as an alarm sounded inside her cockpit.
The F-22A was already directly behind the Shinshin.
(Damn, I could see her if I looked back, but I can’t fire a Railgun like this!!)
Overlooking the enemy’s rapid deceleration gave them a chance to turn the tables.
The F-22A and the Shinshin had been developed at around the same time. The Japanese stealth fighter had been developed as a rival to the American stealth fighter.
So there was little difference in their specs.
(Was this a skill issue on my part?)
A missile was launched from directly behind.
Mikoto couldn’t escape.
If she forcibly swung the craft around, she would only knock herself out from lack of blood to the brain.
So only one option remained.
She switched off the jet engines.
In midair.
Mid-flight.
Intentionally.
That was suicide, but the air-to-air missile sharply approaching from behind flew right past her.
The F-22A had shown concern over Shirai’s flares. That meant her missiles used an infrared guidance system that detected and pursued engine exhaust heat.
“So if I eliminate that heat source, it won’t hit me!!”
Mikoto wasn’t going to let this happen twice.
She yanked the nose up.
Even while flying freely in the supersonic world, basic gravity did not just go away. An aircraft used more energy climbing than descending. Which meant it would decelerate when directed upwards.
What happened if you forced that action while the engines were switched off?
!?
She could have sworn she heard a gasp.
Something shot rapidly below the Shinshin. It was the F-22A that had been pursuing Mikoto’s craft from behind. Just like she had done to Mikoto before, Mikoto had tricked her into overshooting.
Mikoto reignited her engines.
Instead of operating the many switches and buttons, she directly manipulated electricity to control each wire separately. This was a forcible technique that only she could pull off. If she had attempted it with the usual manual controls, the engines might not have responded and she could have plummeted to the ocean below.
The wind and shockwave of the overshooting enemy rattled her craft, but Mikoto wasn’t about to let her quarry escape.
The F-22A and the lock seeker aligned.
Mikoto adjusted her grip on on the control column.
She only had to press the button below her thumb to launch an air-to-air missile.
But…
“…”
Was there any meaning behind her hesitation?
Mikoto used her index finger to pull the trigger on the control column to instead release a line of machinegun fire.
She avoided the giant girl’s bare skin and instead tried to chew through the thin armor on her right leg…which was probably part of the tail assembly.
There was no explosion.
Nor any red blood.
The F-22A’s flight destabilized, she couldn’t recover from her tailspin, and she began a gentle descent toward the blue sea below.
The girl had lost her wings.
At this speed and altitude, maybe it didn’t really matter either way.
“One down by machinegun.”
“The larger reading – probably a B-1B? – has turned,” said Shokuhou. “It appears to be leaving the area to the northwest. It probably felt exposed without its escort.”
“Onee-sama, should we go after it?”
“…No. Not if the ship is safe. We don’t want to pursue too far and end up without enough fuel to get back.”
Mikoto breathed a heavy sigh.
She felt an ache deep in her chest.
Was it her lungs or her heart that felt on the verge of tears?
Never again would she recklessly take to the skies in her summer uniform. Was the clear plastic canopy made with lead mixed in? She hoped desperately that it blocked the radiation and UV found at high altitude.
“Anyway, Shokuhou, can you send out a helicopter from the carrier? Or move the entire ship, if you would prefer.”
“Why?”
“Did it not show up on the radar? The display based on our shared datalink may have only shown a small dot with an ‘F-22A’ label, but you are not going to believe your eyes when you see this in person.”
