Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter3
Status: Incomplete
6/9 parts completed
Chapter 3
Part 1
The parking garage roared with flames.
The three sisters could hardly complain since they had done this themselves to corner and deal with Mitsuari Ayu, but they were still not delighted at the thought of going in there. It was a lot like walking through the minefield you had created yourself.
“Riku-Kai Onee-chans, can I head in?”
“Go ahead. Rikuri Nee-san, you keep an eye on our surroundings with your drones. Be on the lookout for the target making a desperate attempt to jump down from a higher floor. If she’s lucky, she could survive a drop from the third story.”
“Yes, yes. Kaibi-chan, you head in too and support our cute little sister, will you?”
“Rikuri Nee-san.”
“We don’t need your Measure Heart to keep Anti-Skill away. I will handle it, so you get going.”
Those flames and smoke were like their own minefield.
However…
“Amazora.”
“Ugh, w-where were you hiding all this time, Kai Onee-chan?”
The girl in a dress breathed a sigh of exasperation at the less-than-130cm Gatling gun girl who did not seem to care how much of her bright thighs were showing off. And about half of that exasperation had to do with the thighness of that younger girl’s thighs.
Kaibi pulled up her own short skirt and drew a small handgun from her own bright thigh.
“You stand out too much. Do you have the distribution memorized?”
“Course I do.”
“Then tell me.”
“I’m not some little kid, Kai Onee-chan! I can run errands without a memo!!”
“Remind me again who it was that bought a pack of eggs at full price even though they were on sale.”
Yes.
If you had created the minefield, you would know where all the mines were buried. At the very least, you were not going to step barefoot on one of the explosives. The parking garage was filled with flames and smoke, but that did not mean there were no avenues of entrance.,
Those two espers had combat-level powers.
The second and third sisters looked up at the burning prison of reinforced concrete.
“Let’s get started. Let’s go with the usual plan.”
“I chase her down and you finish her off?”
“Just like at Tokiwadai, right?”
“Why do you always get the best part!?”
The youngest child needlessly flipped her short skirt up as she swung her large weapon around while red in the face, but that empty-headed girl failed to notice how her older sister was intentionally taking the jobs that required bloodying one’s hands. She also failed to notice that this made her all the cuter.
It was said that people’s hearts could not be measured by their words or expressions, but being able to alter people’s hearts with Measure Heart had taught her that was an empty ideal.
The girl in a dress, Kaibi, held her gun in one hand and pressed the other to the side of her alluring neck.
“Let’s get this over with and head home. This job kept us from eating those raw oysters, right?”
“Wait, did L.S.S. actually give us some?”
“Amazora.”
The third sister paid no heed to the girl in a dress’s chiding words.
Unnecessary chatter should be avoided on a job. Especially when it came to their client’s name. If people managed to link this back to the client, it defeated the purpose of hiring someone to do the job for them.
“Hm, it is true the oyster stew we had for lunch wasn’t quite what I wanted, but twice in one day might be a bit much. I love the luxury of it, but I’m afraid I’ll get tired of them.”
Part 2
They were soaked.
The fire burning below had practically turned the parking garage’s 5th floor into a sauna. At this point, neither sexy high school girl Kumokawa Seria nor small middle school girl Mitsuari Ayu could worry about the fact that a boy was around. Thanks to their thin summer uniform and sleeveless gym clothes, they were giving off a sweet scent and the white or flushed pink color of their skin was showing through.
“You have no idea how much this helped,” said Kamijou while cooling his forehead with an ice cream pack that resembled a drinkable gelatin pack. Mitsuari’s refrigerated bag was not working at 100% in this heat, but somewhat cold was better than nothing. Even room temperature water would be valuable in a situation like this.
Meanwhile, the fluffy-haired girl waved her small hands wildly with her face beet red.
“(O-oh, no. That’s the one I used at Tokiwadai to trap that Gatling gun dummy. By which I mean I held it in my armpit to melt it and then kept the rest around in case I needed to use it for another trick, but how am I supposed to say that now?)”
“?”
Kamijou gave her a confused look while also looking so happy to have that cool package against his forehead.
Then a deafening roar reached them from below. This was not the roar of the flames consuming oxygen or of a car blowing up. This was the kind of real, unexaggerated gunfire you could not find even in a movie. And instead of just a shot or two, this was a continuous stream where the individual shots were indistinguishable and it sounded like the single long tone of a broken buzzer.
“That’s the Gatling gun girl!”
“Senpai.”
“What, did you want half of this?” Super high school girl Kumokawa Seria wrinkled her brow while holding in her mouth a colorful popsicle that came in a tube and could be broken in two. “A Gatling gun, huh? But it sounds like she’s firing from below us instead of from a distance. I can’t see any good reason for entering the sea of flames she created herself. Well, if I had to come up with some kind of benefit, she may be tearing down the walls to create airways that send in oxygen and increase the intensity of the blaze to kill us. Y’know, like how they would blow air into the stove through a bamboo pipe in old kitchens.”
“Not the kind of advice I was looking for,” said Kamijou. “For now, you wait here.”
“What?”
“Someone’s in here and, according to Mitsuari, this is one of three espers. But with a small number of elites, they can’t surround us perfectly. It at least doesn’t look like we’re surrounded by a group of more than a hundred. You’re the only one who can drive the bike, so I want to keep you around so you can use the bike’s speed to lose them and get Mitsuari to safety.”
The motorcycle’s rear tire had blown when they landed, but that mystery busty high school girl seemed skillful enough to steal any of the cars or motorcycles parked in this garage. She could straight up steal them, or she could remove a tire to fix the busted motorcycle.
However, the black-haired forehead girl breathed an exasperated sigh.
“Justify it however you like, but I’m not greedy enough to demand gender equality while also insisting on a ladies first policy.”
“And I feel like you left something important unsaid back there,” added Mitsuari. “If the gloomy boobs girl is driving and I’m in the back seat, then what about you!?”
Kamijou did not answer that question.
He crouched low in the way he had seen Kumokawa do and approached the downward slope that seemed to symbolize death at the moment. The slope belched heat and black smoke, so it felt like he was sticking his head inside an oven.
He was not doing this out of courage.
When they had been attacked by the giant dragon(?) created by that Biohacker, he had run away, leaving Kumokawa and Mitsuari behind.
He had come back, but that was only an excuse.
He still remembered the look on Kumokawa’s face when she had grabbed his arm and told him to run into the alley. He could picture it so vividly he could make out her eye color.
(To hell with that.)
That was what it came down to.
He was not fighting because he was brave.
Kamijou Touma was a coward. That was the kind of boy he was.
(I’m never letting myself feel that way again. So it’s 100 times better to stand up and face the threat!!)
Alone, he moved down to the 4th floor.
There were no partitions in between. He had only descended the slope one floor, but the air itself seemed to change. It prickled at his skin so much he felt like he was one careless inhalation away from scorching his throat.
The enemy apparently planned on climbing one floor at a time.
He had his doubts about that.
The fourth floor was the same height as a school building’s top floor, and it was already this bad. How much worse of a hell would one find at the source of the fire on the ground floor?
Guns and esper powers were unnecessary.
Simply losing your sense of direction in that black smoke would be enough to lose your life.
“…”
He held a hand to his mouth and looked around the area.
Then he made his way to the slope down to the 3rd floor.
The elevators were stopped and the Gatling gun had apparently already blown away the emergency stairs on the outer wall. That left just the one route up and down: the slopes he was using.
He was descending while the enemy was ascending.
He did not know who this assassin was or what they looked like, but he was bound to run into them somewhere.
Another roar of gunfire sounded from below. They must not have cared about preserving ammo, but Kamijou did not know if they were blowing up cars to accelerate the blaze or if they were using a rain of bullets to tear down any cover creating a suspicious hiding spot.
The roar was closer than last time.
And not just because he had descended a floor.
They really were getting closer.
(They’re coming.)
The pointy-haired boy slowly descended the slope to the 3rd floor.
There was more than just heat and smoke this time.
He felt some other kind of pressure.
It was like returning to school at night to collect a forgotten item and spotting someone else there.
He sensed a human presence.
(They’re coming!!)
Both sides were approaching the third floor from above or below, so Kamijou Touma finally saw the small grim reaper.
“Huh?”
This came as a surprise.
It was a small girl of only about 130cm. Her gaudily bleached blonde hair and her spangle-covered dress seemed a little much for her age, but that alone would never have led him to guess she was an assassin.
The real problem was what he saw right next to her risquély-exposed bright thigh.
She casually held an enormous Gatling gun at her hip.
“You’re not the girl from the photo. Are you some normal person who didn’t get out in time?”
“Are you playing dumb? I flew through the sky on Senpai’s bike and crashed into one of the higher floors. You set this place on fire and have it surrounded, so I know you must have seen that.”
“Ha ha☆”
To be blunt, Kamijou Touma did not properly understand the threat of a Gatling gun. If he had, he would have crumbled just like he had when facing the raw power of that dragon. He might have been more afraid against a smaller knife or stun gun.
And that was why he had the “confidence” to immediately dive behind a rectangular concrete pillar as soon as the bundle of barrels began to rotate.
A moment later, the pillar was blown to smithereens.
The stream of bullets swept by horizontally at just above hip height.
If he had not fallen over while diving behind cover, his top half would have been removed from the bottom.
The weapon must have been using a motor.
If not for the one second delay needed for the barrels to begin rotating, the initial shot would have killed him.
The destruction did not end there. All the cars parked along a horizontal line from there were blown away and lifted into the air before the gun swept back the other way to fill the flaming scraps with even more holes and tear them down beyond recognition. The metal became scorched fireballs that rolled every which way like living things. Hiding behind the pillar did not matter at all. A cold sweat poured down Kamijou’s body as those giant distorted dice rolled his way.
“Dammit!!”
He rolled along the bare concrete to avoid what looked a lot liked crumpled balls of aluminum foil. The pointy-haired middle school boy finally realized how destructive this weapon was when he considered those were all that remained of a sports car’s classy streamlined shape reminiscent of polished pumps.
He was dead if that hit him.
And the bullets were not the only thing to be afraid of.
The terrain was crumbling and the cars were exploding and flying through the air. The water spraying from the burst pipes was evaporating and increasing the humidity to the point of a sauna.
While making sure he did not lift his head, he slid behind a light truck that had been smashed into the ground.
And his thoughts did not focus on the Gatling gun that gave a much louder roar than a park lawnmower.
The unique rules of Academy City had shown themselves here.
(This is definitely scary, but a small kid like that couldn’t swing that monstrous thing around.)
He clenched his teeth.
Fiercely.
That meant there was a hidden element to this that was bending the laws of physics.
He doubted there was a medical power assistance suit hidden within that thin dress.
This had to be an esper power.
“…”
He silently clenched his right hand into a fist.
Whether it was her arm strength or grip strength, if she was using some kind of power to buff her physical body, he could neutralize it by slamming his fist against her body. Then she would either be flipped over by the recoil, or crushed below the Gatling gun’s weight. Even an amateur like Kamijou could tell that was not a weapon meant to be carried around by human hands.
If she was using a trick to bypass that impossibility, he only had to remind her how impossible it really was.
Fear of that terrifying barrage crept up on him and tears welled up in his eyes, but the area was full of smoke and deafening gunfire thanks to the Gatling gun girl blowing up all of the cars. If he stayed low and slowly circled around her, he could approach from a different angle.
“Check.”
Blank.
The calm voice that reached him from the side made Kamijou Touma’s mind go completely blank.
(Wait…there’s someone else here. There’s someone else in this smoke!? And they found me right away! But how!?)
His thoughts were scattered.
He did not even have time for his throat to dry up.
Dry gunshots flew toward him from the side.
Part 3
The girl in a dress, Kaibi, used her Measure Heart power.
It allowed her to adjust the emotional distance between herself and a target.
It was a purely psychological power that could not even make a single leaf float up in the air, but there was still some room for more creative uses of it.
She used a handkerchief to wipe the beads of sweat from the side and nape of her alluring neck.
(Knowing the distance between our hearts lets me know where the other person is located without relying on my eyes or ears. Just like the tension is very different depending on whether someone is standing in front of you or behind you. It’s only a vague sense, but it still functions like a cheap bug detector.)
She was not foolish enough to mention her trump card aloud while on a mission.
She adjusted her grip on the automatic handgun and walked forward, as if parting the dark smoke. Approaching this irregular target meant moving within the swiveling Gatling gun’s range. She could contact Amazora via radio, but the third sister would not hear her within the maelstrom of noise caused by that powerful gun.
But that was fine.
Amazora could do as she wished while the older sister made some adjustments.
The girl in a dress softly sighed.
(What would she find it hard to shoot? Yes, the emotional distance to a kitten abandoned in the rain should do it.)
Even if that youngest sister could not see through the smoke or hear over the Gatling gun, that emotional distance would still accurately affect her heart. Just like a suspicious presence approaching from behind in the dark would send a tremor up your spine. If she was implanted with the idea that she did not want to shoot whatever was in that direction, then she would obliterate her own ally with friendly fire.
Kaibi did not even need to duck down while that stream of bullets swept horizontally at a rate of more than 6000 rounds per minute.
This was one of the scientific esper powers developed in Academy City.
She had no interest in arguing with the skeptics who wondered how those powers stacked up to a gun or doubted they were superior to a nuclear bomb. They provided a greater breadth of options and that was enough to give them tactical value. It was like playing a game of rock-paper-scissors while having a fourth move available only to you.
That could tear down the rules of the battlefield.
That was true of any power proven to exist by the researchers.
She confirmed the boy’s presence through the smoke.
She dangerously approached him through the obscuring smoke and did not hesitate to speak.
“Check.”
The flow of time reverted to normal for her.
Dry gunshots flew toward him from the side.
After confirming his general distance and direction with Measure Heart, she had fired thrice for good measure toward the figure curled up beyond the smoke. But she still kept her gun at the ready because this was Academy City. She did not know this person’s name, so she did not know what their power was. Just like she had located him by breaking the rules, he might have some kind of barrier that also broke the rules. That might sound ridiculous, but she had to consider the possibility that he could gather up the air or sprinkler water to create a solid wall or that he could use pure telekinesis to repel anything flying his way.
Not knowing what to expect made things difficult.
If she had a special fourth move in this game of rock-paper-scissors, then he might have a special fifth move.
When she circled behind the scrap metal that looked like a sponge after a dog chewed it up, the person she had supposedly shot was nowhere to be seen.
A car door with broken hinges lay there, but its position could not be explained by the gunfire coming from just the one direction. Someone had likely grabbed the broken door and then throw it away later.
The paint was stripped away by cheap bullet holes different from the youngest sister’s Gatling gun rounds.
It had been used as a shield.
The girl in a dress grimaced.
She lightly poked her slender foot at the damage on the metal panel.
“He blocked it and ran away?”
Not saying the important things out loud was the standard while on the job.
She wished this had taught her something about the power he had used to defend himself, but this could mean he had used magnetism to move the door into place or that he was a powerless Level 0 who had held it in his hands. To reiterate, not knowing what to expect made things difficult. She had revealed her Measure Heart power and her handgun, but her opponent was still a mystery. She might seem to have the upper hand, but he had actually outdone her in the unseen side of the battle. She actually felt ashamed of her miserable performance. This was a lot more troublesome than having received a cut from a blade.
(But in that case.)
An invisible pressure reached her temples and she felt something odd gathering around her brow as she activated her power.
With Measure Heart, she could generally search out her target’s direction in the smoke.
(I don’t know who that boy is, but I have exposed him more than if I knew his name. I have his emotional distance in my hands!!)
He was moving in a large circle around the girl in a dress.
He was slipping between the burning scrap metal.
And he was approaching Amazora’s coordinate while she fired blindly with her Gatling gun???
“Oh, no.”
His top priority was not Kaibi, who had attacked him from the side, but Amazora who was firing wildly from head on.
However, the tracking using Measure Heart was no more than a side effect. It did not give her very detailed information. She had no guarantee she could accurately hit him if she aimed her gun through the smoke. And this would all be meaningless if she hit Amazora instead.
But knowing that did not mean there was anything she could do.
She quickly reached for her earpiece and shouted into the radio while ignoring her slipping shoulder strap.
You were not to say the important things out loud on a mission, but she could not inform her cute younger sister of the threat without shouting loud enough to be heard over the roar of the gun!
“Amazora!! Get away from there!! I don’t know who it is, but they’re headed your way!!”
Part 4
Really, the assassin girl with a handgun was overthinking things.
Kamijou Touma was only an amateur middle school boy.
When up against gun-wielding criminals with esper powers, he was nowhere near calm enough to cleverly stay a step ahead of them.
“Oh, god! How am I not dead!?”
A tingling pain remained in the bones of both his wrists.
The car door had been lying nearby by pure coincidence. If nothing had been within arm’s reach, a lead bullet would have smashed his skull and killed him.
And that was just the small handgun.
How much worse would it be with the Gatling gun?
(I don’t know if they have special goggles or an esper power, but if they can track me through this smoke, they wouldn’t be using that Gatling gun. They could have snuck up on me and taken off my head. That means their scanning ability isn’t that great.)
That was all he had to work with.
Fortunately, it was not hard to locate the less-than-130cm girl in the smoke. She was constantly producing enough noise that it not only rang in his ears but also seemed to smack him in the face.
(That means a hostage should work! That Gatling gun girl must be on the same side as the scan girl, so if I use her as a shield, the troublesome scan girl can’t attack!!)
For him, 10,000 anti-material rounds thicker than his thumb were no different from a single 9mm handgun round. If any one of them hit him, he was done. If they did not, he would not shed a single drop of blood. It was a binary choice for him.
He was scared.
Scared, but coping.
His opponents must not have been very coordinated because the scan girl had clearly known where he was yet she had not informed the Gatling gun girl.
That meant he did not have to worry about an accurate counterattack.
The cacophony of gunfire told him where the little girl was even with the smoke obstructing his view, but that very same noise would mask the delinquent boy’s footsteps while he approached her.
He tore apart the curtain of black smoke with his fist clenched tight and attacked the left side of the little girl with the gaudy spangle dress.
People were slowest to react when attacked from diagonally behind them on the opposite of their dominant side.
“Wha-!?”
Her too-short skirt flipped up as she frantically turned around and the ammunition hose attached like to a vacuum cleaner wrapped around her slender waist. That clinched it. With a dull click, the gunfire suddenly stopped. The aluminum hose must have twisted past its limit because the belt of bullets got caught within and stopped moving. The motor kept the barrels spinning, but that was it.
Kamijou Touma showed no mercy even against a girl of less than 130cm.
He clenched his fist with all his might.
“Say hi to your big sis for me!!”
“You son of a bitch!!”
The enraged little girl showed no concern for her bright thighs while she grabbed the Gatling gun’s ammo hose with one hand and swung around the drum-like magazine she was dragging around like a vacuum cleaner. It was a lot like a monstrous morning star. How much did that weigh? A hit from that in a cross counter would shatter his skull, so he unclenched his fist and focused on dodging. He quickly ducked his head to let the horizontal attack fly past, but then he heard an odd sound.
It sounded like concrete cracking, but the giant metal magazine had not crashed into a concrete pillar.
It had unnaturally come to a stop in empty air.
And the sound had come from somewhere lower than that – from the ground below his feet. From the concrete shards produced by the merciless gunfire.
“You…”
“Tch! It’s stuck!?”
(She isn’t boosting her muscles or making the object lighter. If the oddity came from the ground…)
“You aren’t lifting that heavy-ass Gatling gun with your muscles or your esper power. Were you allowing the weight to escape into the ground!?”
A poor student like Kamijou did not know what people pictured in their heads while using telekinesis. There had to be many different control methods – magnets, threads, wind, cranes, arms, etc.
But.
What if this was done by creating something like an “invisible support”?
The concept would be the same as a camera’s tripod. With a support to hold it up, she would not have to worry about the weight of the device on her own arms. With that separate support, the weight could escape into the ground instead.
Also, he was pretty sure Gatling guns were not designed to be mobile.
“In that case…!!”
“So what!?”
Before the unnaturally-stuck magazine could fall from the air, the Gatling gun girl let go of the hose and reached her small hand toward the back of her gaudy dress. Did she have a knife hidden there? While the close-to-home fear of something other than the Gatling gun clutched his stomach, Kamijou threw his first toward the little girl.
He felt an electric tingling in the back of his head.
He had meant to show no mercy, but her appearance may have made him hesitate at the last second.
The fist intended to land on her head instead hit her shoulder and slid down from there. Amazingly, that sent his fist straight toward the “line” connecting the giant magazine and the concrete floor.
A moment later, the invisible support shattered and the weight being sent into the ground returned to the device.
“Bgyuh!?”
The midair drum magazine suddenly crashed into the concrete floor. The hose wrapped all the way around her slender hips squeezed tight and forced an odd sound out the self-bondage girl’s mouth. She was a lot like the anchor when one side lost badly in a game of tug of war. Her feet left the floor and she was tossed forward.
Which sent her right into the chest of today’s lucky bastard, Kamijou Touma.
Part 5
The girl in a dress clicked her tongue while hiding behind some scorched scrap metal.
(Measure Heart didn’t stop him from immediately swinging his fist at her? Agh, these self-righteous types are the hardest to deal with!!)
The emotional distance between herself and the target boy was that of a dangerous escaped convict. He should normally have been frozen in fear or immediately turned around without worrying about the little girl in front of him, yet he had stuck to the enemy there.
Her power had affected him.
The emotional distance had changed.
Yet his actions had not changed.
That sounded simple, but it was actually the hardest thing to do. Most people would not even try and skip straight to targeting her instead. Especially if their life was on the line and they wanted to escape that pressure as soon as possible. Except that would cause them to rush things, they would fail to unravel the tangled threads, and they would be stopped by the strength of that large tangle.
Yet this boy did not mistake what order to do things in.
As the one using the power, Kaibi knew the emotional distance really had changed and shaken him. It was working, but he did not change. It felt like she was up against a giant insect or an AI weapon.
He was straightforward and unwavering.
To someone from the back alleys, that alone was a threat.
She ignored her slipping shoulder strap while bringing a hand to her ear and speaking over the radio.
“Rikuri Nee-san, Amazora is down. And she’s been captured by the enemy. I will retake her, so you increase the drone surveillance outside. We can’t let our real target get away while we focus on this distraction!”
“No, Kaibi-chan. There is no need for that. You did well, so leave the rest to your big sister.”
“Rikuri Nee-san?”
She heard a buzzing even louder than an electric shaver.
And it was not alone.
A deadly army flew in like someone had split open a hornet’s nest.
“A distraction? Do not make me laugh. Nothing could be more important for us.”
The girl in a dress felt a chill run along her spine.
This was someone who could inspire uncontrollable emotions in an emotion-controlling expert.
She was a specialist in unmanned weapons and poisons.
She was Gokusai Rikuri, the Potion Lady.
That spider lured you out with a sweet aroma and then captured you in her invisible web.
“I hope he is ready for what is coming to him now that he laid a hand on my little sister. This is a job I am willing to do pro bono.”
Part 6
Kamijou Touma also noticed the change while carrying the dizzy Gatling gun girl.
The color of the flames changed.
The scorching orange became a blue and purple reminiscent of fireworks.
“What…the hell?”
A rotating yellow light was flashing over by the elevator. That belonged to a device installed specifically because this was a parking garage with a concrete ceiling. The scorched plate said it was a carbon monoxide detector.
Kamijou had heard of people taking their own lives using charcoal grills.
“Oh, no!!”
While struggling to untangle the hose from around the less-than-130cm girl’s hips, he half-dragged her over toward the elevator. There was a small metal box below the rotating yellow light. It resembled an AED, but this was different. He checked inside and found a mask that covered the entire face and a small air canister the size of a hair spray can.
That was better than nothing.
He hesitated for a moment, but still placed the mask over the little girl’s face.
That was when he heard a buzzing similar to an electric shaver.
He quickly stood up while holding the unconscious mass shooter.
“Oh, what a gentleman. Or is my older little sister’s power affecting you? …Well, that power is meant to bind herself with others, so she has always had difficulty adjusting the distance between two other people.”
“Power?”
“If you weren’t aware, then I should avoid letting anything else slip. She would probably let me have it if I did.”
An aluminum and plastic unmanned device resembling a large crane fly had skillfully stopped at his eye level. But this looked different from the ordinary drones that were discussed in relation to aerial photography and online shopping.
A reel of wire and a unit resembling a gas-powered tranquilizer gun were carried below it.
This was a lot like the models used to deal with harmful animals like wild boars and bears.
If it could handle a bear, it could easily handle a human.
And there could always be more. He could glimpse a swarm of silhouettes through the flames and smoke and this nonhuman opponent might be able to slip through gaps far too small for a human.
“I will be taking back my littlest sister. No matter what.”
“You picked the fight with us.”
“Street fights begin because you assume you can win. But I never intended to let you stand on equal footing with us. Be devoured like the herbivore you are.”
“You do know I have a hostage, right?”
Kamijou finally said it.
The flames around him glowed with an even brighter bluish-purple hue.
He could not see it, but the levels of carbon monoxide may have been growing. And it would be too late by the time the physical symptoms began to show themselves.
There were at least three of them.
He had previously seen the Gatling gun esper and the mental esper who had a handgun, so this had to be the one who used drones to wield poisoned wires. He still did not know who she was.
Poison and machines were a good combination.
In a fight between humans, you could get hit by your own poison. Poison gas and biological weapons were difficult to use on the battlefield because there was always a risk of being given a taste of your own medicine in retribution. But that was not an issue when using a non-living drone. After scattering it around to cover the designated area, you could hang around without any ill effects.
(Carbon monoxide and chloride gas are easy to get your hands on since the ingredients can be found anywhere. That makes them convenient poisons when you want to disguise it as an accident, right?)
Kamijou’s head was full of pointless trivia from suspense dramas.
His opponent could win simply by keeping him from leaving the parking garage before he ran out of strength. She only had to send multiple drones after him and restrict where he could go. She would not be harmed if he managed to destroy a drone. It was even possible they had a bomb hidden inside.
Which meant…
(For now, I hold onto the hostage and it doesn’t actually matter all that much if I can get outside right away. Carbon monoxide is scary, but it isn’t like a biological weapon that dooms you the instant it’s inside your body. I just need to get some fresh air. I can’t forget I have an entire Gatling gun here. If I destroy a wall, it’s sure to provide better circulation.)
His thoughts were fairly decent for a split-second decision.
Rapidly increasing the amount of oxygen might cause the flames to explosively expand, but he had bigger issues to worry about.
However…
“Hello, blockhead. Let’s not underestimate the Potion Lady, okay?”
He heard something slice through the wind from shockingly close by.
And that female voice had not come through a microphone or speaker. He was clearly hearing it directly. Had she filled the parking garage with carbon monoxide and then walked into the very gas chamber she had created!?
“!?”
She had already moved right up to him.
He had no choice but to toss away the little girl in his arms.
His enemy swung down something like a pen, but was it a syringe that used gas to inject its contents, or was it a needle launcher?
He did not have the martial arts skills to accurately knock back the approaching assassin’s wrist.
So…
(Her legs!!)
He forcibly suppressed the instinct to protect his face with his hands, looked the sexy blonde woman in the eye to draw her attention, and threw a kick toward her long legs. If he knocked her off balance, it would throw her aim off as well. By doing that and twisting his body around so he fell to the floor, he successfully avoided the needle of that mystery syringe.
He was amazed such similar dresses could look so different on different people. Was the poison hidden in her feather-shaped necklace, her dress’s spangles, or the decoration covering her ring finger? Perhaps it was all of the above.
When he viewed her again, he found her sex appeal had reached almost oppressive levels. This was different from busty high school girl Kumokawa. Instead of a youthful beauty, hers was on the verge of rotting.
“You don’t look like the fist-fighting type, so getting in punching range was not the smartest move,” he said.
The electric shaver sound tormented his ears.
And it came from more than one direction.
The toxic woman smirked while sweat gathered in her cleavage.
“Make sure you take deep breaths to carry the carbon monoxide into your lungs,” she said. “You are sweating and I imagine you are feeling faint. Now, are those real symptoms or merely the placebo effect? Think carefully as you enter that mental labyrinth.”
The situation should have been the same for them both.
At the very least, she did not appear to be using an air tank or mask.
Then why did she not seem more worried?
“Carbon monoxide is so dangerous because it bonds more strongly with the hemoglobin meant to carry the oxygen through your blood. Once the carbon monoxide takes up all the empty seats, there is no room left to carry the oxygen and you die of asphyxiation.”
The sexy blonde woman spun the syringe around in her hand like it was a pen, tapped it against the decoration on her ring finger, and then pretended to jab the needle into the side of her neck.
“But it has no effect on crustaceans like shrimps and crabs. That is because they do not use hemoglobin to carry their oxygen. Instead, they use a completely different substance known as hemocyanin. The toxin functions much like a power plug, so it only works because the plug just so happens to match the outlet. So if you change the shape of the outlet, it no longer works.”
“…”
“I am not an esper suited for the battlefield, but I can handle this much, don’t you think? Not that knowing this gives you any way of fighting it.”
The very nature of their blood was different.
When he thought about it, he realized filling the parking garage with carbon monoxide presented a huge risk to her sisters when she was supposedly here to rescue them. But she had a countermeasure. Some of her drones had a unit similar to a gas-powered tranquilizer gun. If she injected her sisters with a special drug that provided a way of transporting blood without hemoglobin, the carbon monoxide would no longer be a threat to them.
This might look like a trickier weapon to wield than shooting fire or electricity from the palm, but altering someone’s oxygen transportation method or oxygen capacity would give them the endurance to run a marathon and allow them to function normally in the deep sea or on a tall mountain. It was tricky to wield, but when wielded well, it would provide absolute victory.
In that case…
“Isn’t it a bit soon to assume I can’t handle this? If I take down one of those drones and steal the drug based on hemocyanin or whatever it was, I might be able to escape this as much as you.”
“If you really believed that, you would have kept it to yourself. If you came down with an unidentified disease and found yourself in a deserted hospital, what could you actually accomplish? You would see all the bottles of drugs lined up on the shelves and despair. A substance can be a life-saving medicine when administered by an expert and a deadly poison when used by an amateur. That is how this field works.”
She hit the bull’s eye there.
She remained as unworried as ever while holding her own body in her arms, squeezing her large breasts from the outside.
Stealing from a poison expert’s collection and injecting it into his body without knowing what it was would be reckless in the extreme. That would be like a game of Russian roulette when working with medicines meant to save lives, so he would have to be insane to rely on luck with the poisons that were designed to kill from the get-go.
And Kamijou Touma was second to none when it came to being unlucky.
That woman, who kept clicking her pent-like syringe against her ring finger decoration, only had to drag out this conversation long enough and she would win. This was already a path to victory for her, so she would be delighted to chat with him over tea.
The time had come to make a decision.
If he did not deal with her, Mitsuari Ayu and Kumokawa Seria on the higher floors would fall victim to her as well.
“So what will you do? Make up your own mind.”
“I’ll go for that.”
Kamijou Touma did not hesitate to point toward the floor.
Specifically, at the Gatling gun girl who was still dizzy and had a small oxygen mask on.
“I’ll take that mask from her.”
“…”
“You prepared everything in advance. That other esper – from what you said, I guess she’s an esper – hiding here somewhere may be getting that saving drug injected into her from one of your drone’s tranquilizer gun things, but not that kid. You wouldn’t have had a chance. Without the mask, she’ll die as much as me.”
The atmosphere changed, like powerful microwaves were boiling the moisture in the air, but if that was enough to deter you, you could never walk the back alleys.
“If you frantically pulled out your oxygen carrier, I could just take that, but I have no way of knowing how deep the rabbit hole goes on your tricks. I don’t want to swipe it from you and find it was actually poison. So the mask is my priority. I know that’s safe, so I won’t hold back. And you have a countermeasure ready, right? So she doesn’t even need the mask and I can take it for myself.”
“You really do have a screw loose.”
“What else did you expect from a guy so broken he’ll immediately punch someone in the face if the situation demands it?”
“I can see why my cute little sisters had so much trouble. You might be on the side of good, but your claims of justice change from one moment to the next. You take an all’s well that ends well stance, so everything leading up to that ending can get all twisted around. No one with normal sensibilities could throw aside the very small girl they had just worked to save. Even a professional soldier would get PTSD from that.”
Kamijou was closer to the collapsed Gatling gun girl.
He was 2m away, while the sexy blonde woman was 5m away. He would reach her first, but his opponent would not wait around while he swiped the mask and put it on his own face. That pen-like gas-operated syringe would be coming. And it was hard to predict what the drones would do while they flew all around like a swarm of bees in the flames and smoke.
But if he managed to get that mask, he would at least have a chance.
Then maybe the two girls waiting up above would not have to suffer in the same way.
“…”
There was no flaw in his thinking.
Not if you were solely focused on winning and losing.
But was that really acceptable?
That irremovable thorn of doubt may have been the worst poison of all.
The syringe spinning in her hand came to a stop.
The sexy blonde woman gripped it like a stake as she spoke.
“I will kill you, for those cute little sisters of mine.”
“And I’ll survive, also for them.”
Then they both took off running.
