Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter6
Chapter 6
The turmoil continued into the night.
Saten Ruiko was sleeping within her room.
She had been found in that rocky area by the sea that had been destroyed by missiles. She seemed to have swallowed a lot of seawater and she must have been relieved to have seen Mikoto and Uiharu who had come for her because she passed out as soon as she saw them.
Shirai Kuroko somehow managed to teleport them all back to the hotel, but the hotel was not exactly functioning properly either. It had not been struck by the Mixcoatl missiles, but all the panicked people out on the roads had wanted to at least escape to somewhere with a roof, so the hotel had more people in it than it was designed to hold. Possibly because of all the people rushing into it at once, the entrances had stopped functioning and the glass automatic doors had been smashed.
Everyone had realized that a tragedy was occurring.
They understood that it was not an attraction and that people’s lives could easily be lost. Because of that, the invisible atmosphere hanging over everyone had turned to one of discomfort.
Mikoto, Shirai, and Uiharu had gathered in the hotel room Saten slept in.
They had no idea how long the hotel would stay in operation and there was a risk of turmoil breaking out within the building given all the people gathered there. They had decided it would be better not to be separated.
“This has gotten bad…” Mikoto muttered.
The night scene that had been visible out the window the previous night was gone. Without all the lights, the darkness covering the sea made its usual eeriness all the more noticeable. Also, the orange lights of flames could be seen in places within the darkness.
It seemed the Mixcoatls had focused their attacks on the public transportation facilities and the airfield for the Liberal Arts City fighters. As such, no one had been directly hit and killed by the missiles despite the great commotion they had caused. However, it seemed the turmoil linked to the attack had left some people injured.
(Really, I thought this was just going to be a field trip that I could enjoy like a vacation. Why did we have to get caught up in this war-like situation?)
Mikoto gritted her teeth.
She heard another girl’s voice in her ears.
“I’m not sure we can trust what they say since they try to pass everything off as a show, but it seems Liberal Arts City did not have time to do so with this commotion,” Uiharu Kazari said while acquiring information from the network using the IC card charger.
“But this is odd,” said Shirai Kuroko as she pulled some fruit from the refrigerator installed in the room. “Why would they leave after only doing a certain level of damage when they had such an advantage? If it was me, I would continue to crush the city without giving them a chance to prepare anymore defenses.”
“Shirai-san!”
Uiharu shouted in protest, but Mikoto agreed with Shirai. It was not a game or a competition. It was a true fight to the death, so there was no reason to think about fairness.
Which meant…
“So is the mere destruction of Liberal Arts City not the goal of whoever is piloting those Mixcoatls?”
“Or maybe they could not find their true target, so they had to tearfully turn back to resupply.”
Mikoto was about to give an additional view, but she stopped.
She thought her idea was unlikely. And even if it was possible, she felt the destruction would have come at a sooner stage if it were the case.
(What if they already have the overwhelming force needed to finish this and they could do so whenever they want to…?)
“Yeah, I guess it isn’t that.”
“?”
Mikoto spoke without thinking and Shirai and Uiharu looked at her with confused looks on their faces.
With the Mixcoatls gone, the turmoil within the city started to settle down. However, it was human nature to be full of dissatisfaction once that happened. It hadn’t been the hotel workers’ faults, but a lot of people (some not even people staying at that hotel) flooded to the front desk or grabbed workers in the halls and yelled at them as if trying to tear them apart.
It may have been the attackers’ intention, but fortunately no one had died yet. However, there were some people injured. That led to a very tense atmosphere.
No one knew when the Mixcoatls would be back. On top of that, the undersea tunnel and the heliports had been destroyed, so there was no way to escape the city. It was difficult to remain calm in that kind of situation, but the atmosphere made it feel like even a slight shout could stir up a great disturbance, so it was about as uncomfortable as it could get.
“…It looks like we were right to order room service,” Mikoto said.
After cheering up the exhausted looking hotel worker by giving him a rather large tip, Mikoto and the others ate a late dinner in Saten’s room.
“Since the direct cause of the disturbance, the flying fish, has left, I think everything should calm down given time.”
“Of course, that’s only if the flying fish do not come back tomorrow.”
“…Shirai-san.”
They had ordered a simple dinner centered around beef. The flavor was not bad, but it had the impression of being compacted since the space on the room service cart was limited.
Saten must have smelled the food because she started stirring in the bed. Her eyes slowly opened and she sat up like a child waking up.
“S-Saten-san! Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, I’m more or less fine…Hm? What you’re eating looks pretty good, Uiharu.”
“Sh-should I really let her have some of this? It’s pretty heavy…” Uiharu said looking over to Mikoto for help. “Why don’t you start with this salad and then move on to the meat if the salad sits well with your stomach?”
“Uiharu, come over here. We only ordered food for three, so let’s reshuffle it all into four portions,” Shirai suggested.
When Shirai tried to secretly move only the food on Mikoto’s plate to her own, she got biri biri-ed and the food was then redistributed evenly.
After they finished eating, Saten started to tell the others what had happened to her.