Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter7

Flave and Over were working on Liberal Arts City’s number three short runway.

“We are sending some of the Laveze Squadron to intercept them, but they’re coming from the complete opposite direction…” Olive trailed off there for a second. “Our PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles were destroyed by the Mixcoatls the other day and our remaining firepower is at its limit dealing with the enemy to the east. At this rate, they’ll fly right in and destroy a few of the stationary Salmon Reds on the west side of the city.”

In response, Shirai grabbed Mikoto’s hand and they disappeared via teleportation.

The Xiuhcoatl ship was much faster than it had appeared from the distance and before Mikoto knew it, it had passed by over her head. Even the second and third ones were about 50 meters past.

Uiharu Kazari was in an eastern area of Liberal Arts City.

She had not yet boarded one of the Salmon Red lifeboats. She was using a maintenance computer to hack into the network that was starting to fall apart. She was using the security cameras to see if there was anyone who had not managed to escape.

She may have been doing it out of a sense of justice or a sense of duty or she may have been doing it because she did not like the idea of simply boarding the large lifeboat while leaving everything to Mikoto and Shirai. Whatever the reason, Uiharu continued working while the distant explosions caused her fingertips to vibrate.

“Uiharu! We need to get onboard soon!!”

“Just a bit longer…Saten-san, you get on before me!”

“Uiharu!! Dah! C’mon!!”

Saten Ruiko was waiting for Uiharu while stamping her feet in frustration. Uiharu thought the girl was a truly good friend.

(Everything’s fine here…and here…and here… As for inside the hotels…the individual rooms don’t have cameras, so I can’t check there…but they should be fine. The workers reported that they already checked through all of them. That leaves…)

After 5 minutes, she had checked all of the important areas. There did not seem to be anyone who had not escaped yet. It pained her to have to leave the armed officials she saw around, but it didn’t seem there was anything left for Uiharu to wait around for.

“Uiharu! C’mon, hurry!!”

“O-okay.”

Urged on by Saten’s words, Uiharu started to leave the computer.

But then she froze.

She turned back toward the computer. She heard Saten tearing at her hair, but there was no time to worry about that. Her fingers raced across the keyboard, but she could not get the information she was after. According to Saten’s story, what she was thinking of should be in the most secure area. That meant the information may not be saved in a place where it could be accessed over the network.

Uiharu moved away from the computer and grabbed Saten’s shoulders.

“Saten-san!!”

“Wh-what?”

“You said that official told you the missing people went beyond those double doors, right!?”

“Wait…” Saten seemed to have realized what Uiharu was worried about. “Are you saying those people are still there? But wouldn’t the officials have led them to one of the Salmon Reds…?”

“There is no guarantee that they would.”

“B-but can’t you check on the computer!?”

“The information seems to be treated as classified, so I can’t access it through the network. And I doubt they would give us a straight answer if we contacted them.” Uiharu stared Saten straight in the eye while still holding her shoulders. “Saten-san. You don’t have to be too detailed, but tell me where you got in the facility and where you went once you were inside. Also, please draw me a map that shows the inside.”

Saten did not think she could.

If she followed Uiharu’s instructions, Uiharu would head back into Liberal Arts City. The situation was dangerous enough as it was, so there was no guarantee that she would come back safely.

But…

“Saten-san!!”

She heard Uiharu loudly call her name.

She looked into her friend’s eyes, hesitated, looked back into those eyes, and then made up her mind.

“…I’ll go with you.”

“Eh?”

“C’mon!! Let’s just go check and come back!! Xochitl and the others haven’t made it to the city yet, so let’s get this over with while we have a chance!!”

“Saten-san…”

Uiharu fell silent, but then nodded. She and Saten ran from the lifeboat dock.

They left that temporary area of safety and started their own fight.

Mikoto and Shirai moved across the ocean’s surface at high speed using the slight footholds of the buoys.

They were after the Xiuhcoatls above their heads.

They had taken out one which left three more.

Those huge crafts were over 100 meters long and they seemed incredibly oppressive up close. At the same time, their rounded bodies gave a sense of revulsion like they were the bellies of giant insects.

However, the Xiuhcoatls were not undefeatable enemies to Mikoto. Shirai teleported them directly underneath one of them and Mikoto fired an arcade coin straight up at three times the speed of sound. In an attempt to crush the two girls, the Xiuhcoatl scattered a great mass of flames around, but the Railgun blew away the fuel oil-like burning liquid and continued on into the bottom of the Xiuhcoatl.

Mikoto fired a second and a third shot which destroyed the second Xiuhcoatl’s body. The wooden exterior was smashed to pieces and the Xiuhcoatl came apart in midair.

They heard a whooshing sound.

One side of the destroyed Xiuhcoatl’s exterior was spinning around while still emitting that mass of flames. The wreckage scattered the flames in all directions covering the third Xiuhcoatl flying nearby in flames.

“This is our chance!!”

Mikoto’s eyes shined bright as she looked over at the third Xiuhcoatl that’s movement had been dulled. In order to finish it off, she instructed Shirai to take them up into the air. They would land directly on top of the craft and give it a nice gift of a close quarters Railgun blast.

However, Shirai’s landing failed.

There was nothing below her feet.

Mikoto and Shirai had essentially been tossed up 50 meters into the air.

It had not happened because Shirai Kuroko had messed up her teleportation calculations.

With a great noise, the Xiuhcoatl’s shape had greatly changed. It had opened up from the inside like an umbrella.

It had been ignoring aerodynamics before, but the air resistance from opening up a giant parasol-shaped object had been enough to make its speed drop suddenly. Mikoto and Shirai corrected their position and landed on top of the giant flower-like object.

“What…?”

It was a circle with a diameter of about 200 meters.

In the center, something like a long, narrow pillar rose up.

It almost looked like an umbrella opened upside down with its handle pointing up into the air.

But…

(No, this is…!!)

Mikoto looked up into the blue sky while imagining what was on the other side.

“A parabolic antenna!?”

At a location 35,000 kilometers up, a giant object floated in a pitch black area with no oxygen or gravity.

Given the normal techniques of making a rocket or space shuttle, it was hard to imagine making one out of wood, cloth, and obsidian, but that was what this object was made of. In modern terms, it could be referred to as a satellite…no, a space station. The round pieces of obsidian arranged across it flashed at irregular intervals possibly for transmission purposes.

Ancient hieroglyphs were carved into the side of the main body.

They meant Xiuhcoatl, the sun serpent.

It was the fifth Xiuhcoatl craft and it was the main craft.

That symbol of a civilization had been forcibly launched ignoring the laws of physics by a people who had a high level of astronomical knowledge and skills during a time when certain legends still ruled their world.

In those legends, it was believed that it was possible for the sun to be destroyed. This was not the modern idea of the star slowly approaching its death over hundreds of thousands of years. They believed that the sun could be destroyed right that very instant, so the people had decided that they needed to do something themselves to protect that radiance. That was why they had used various methods in an attempt to interfere with the sun.

They had done many things. They had carried out all sorts of ceremonies in order to give power to the sun. One of those projects was launching Xiuhcoatl into space.

Xiuhcoatl was the name of a god they believed had the duty of carrying the sun from the ground into the sky.

The duty of the satellite they had given that name to had been to launch a large amount of flint into the weakening sun in order to restore its vitality. In modern terms, the concept was similar to putting another fuel rod into a nuclear reactor.

In the end, the project had failed.

However, Xiuhcoatl still had a use despite losing its original role.

In other words, it could provide a large scale bombing from orbit.

Xiuhcoatl was also the name of the weapon that had defeated 400 gods.

There was a flickering in the blue sky.

It was not just in one spot.

Bright sunlight poured down like it was midsummer, but the sky flickered like a sky full of stars. Before Mikoto could figure out what it was, the downpour of destruction hit the surface.

“!?”

Everything was swallowed up by the noise.

The one-sided roar stole all other information from Mikoto’s ears. The objects raining down were over 1000 brilliantly white beams of light. With the opened parabolic antenna in the center, an area with a diameter of 10 kilometers was utterly blown away.

Mikoto and Shirai were lucky that it had not been one giant bomb. The randomly scattered attack was more like a shotgun blast, so Shirai could carefully teleport around just barely managing to evade.

A huge amount of seawater was evaporated.

The parabolic antenna was blown to pieces by its ally’s attack.

The sea of flames that had been spreading across the ocean’s surface was utterly blown away.

Shirai continued to teleport around while still holding Mikoto and somehow managed to make it through the first wave. However, a second and a third wave were already raining down from above.

One Xiuhcoatl craft that carried out the role of the parabolic antenna remained.

It flew outside the range of the bombing and headed for Liberal Arts City.

“Kuroko, are you okay!?”

“Leave it…to me!!”

Using the slowly falling remnants of the parabolic antenna as a foothold, Shirai teleported around irregularly.

The downpour of light would not last forever.

From what they could see of the sky, the next wave or the one after that would be the last one.

(Can we make it…!?)

Mikoto glared at the final Xiuhcoatl heading for the horizon. It was about 50/50 whether they could catch up to it. It wasn’t fair to Shirai, but Mikoto had no choice but to have the girl continue evading the downpour of light.

Suddenly, Mikoto heard the sound of something cutting through the air.

Mikoto looked over and saw something already a ways up from the ocean approaching at high speed seeming to slip through the gaps of the raining light. It came to a complete stop next to Mikoto and Shirai.

It was a special craft with a 5 meter long main body made of two canoes one on top of the other and two wings on either side.

It was a Mixcoatl.

Its body was completely covered in wood, so it was impossible to see who was piloting it. A certain name immediately came to Mikoto’s mind because it was the only one of their names Saten had mentioned.

“Xochitl!?”

Of course, no response came from the craft.

Something like a missile shot from a hole on the side of the body. With the sound of escaping gas, a long and narrow contrail was drawn behind it.

“!!”

Shirai frantically teleported to evade the missile.

However, she was worried about the raining light, so she tried to use a short accurate movement instead of putting a lot of distance between them. As a result, she succeeded in evading the missile, but the shockwave from the missile exploding hit her.

“Gaaaaaahhhhhhh!?”

Mikoto and Shirai did nothing, but their bodies slid 3 meters horizontally. All the oxygen in their lungs was forced out. The damage was much more than from a body blow.

And…

“Kuro—Kuroko!!” Mikoto yelled.

It seemed Shirai had passed out from the impact. Of course, that meant they could no longer benefit from her teleportation ability. Mikoto and Shirai once again properly obeyed gravity and started falling toward the ocean from a height of a few dozen meters.

Mikoto had no time to think.

Despite how high up they were, she only had a few seconds until they hit.

Mikoto held onto Shirai’s unconscious form and felt a powerful impact on her back. It was not from the water’s surface. It was from the destroyed Xiuhcoatl. They had landed on the giant wing made of wood, cloth, and obsidian that was attached to the destroyed side that was even then sinking into the ocean. It protected them like landing on a trampoline.

Mikoto kept one arm around Shirai’s waist and grabbed the coin holder with her other hand. She paid no heed to her unstable footing and stared up into the sky.

However, it seemed the Mixcoatl had no interest in them. After succeeding in the bare minimum needed to stop them, it headed down and landed on the ocean surface. It then sped off along the ocean in the direction the final Xiuhcoatl had headed.

“Dammit, wait!! Ah!!”

Mikoto’s footing wobbled and she subconsciously fought to keep her balance.

She was around 20 kilometers from Liberal Arts City, so the artificial island was quite far away. If she fell into the ocean there while still holding Shirai’s unconscious form, they would definitely drown.

On top of that, a large amount of seawater had been evaporated by the downpour of light. However, only the very surface area seemed to have been effected. The cold seawater below must have been mixing in because it was not boiling. Even so, she could feel a steamy heat just by holding out her hand. The water temperature had to be at least 70 degrees. It seemed like it was going to take some time before the deeper cold water managed to lower that temperature.

Seeing the plain horizon in all directions did not give her a sense of freedom or a sense of the majesty of nature.

It was the same as being trapped in the middle of a desert.

She was trapped in one point of a vast area, so she felt only impatience and fear.

“Kuroko…”

Mikoto looked at Shirai whose limbs were sprawled out and who was not moving.

She seemed to be breathing properly and she did not seem to be bleeding. Her life did not seem to be in danger, but she did not look like she would come to anytime soon.

“Kuroko…!!”

Mikoto’s legs trembled.

The Xiuhcoatl wreckage she stood upon was slowly, slowly tilting and beginning to sink. It was like a large board slowly sinking into the water. However, if that wreckage completely sank, Mikoto and Shirai would be dumped into water that exceeded 70 degrees.

(What do I do…?)

Mikoto was conflicted over whether she should start shaking Shirai’s shoulders. She looked around the area. Of course, there was nothing there that could act in place of a bridge or a boat. Mikoto could use electricity to cause all sorts of phenomena, but she could not support both their weights and fly through the air.

At that rate, they would sink.

They would sink without having stopped the final Xiuhcoatl heading for Liberal Arts City.

(What do I do…!?)

As Mikoto looked up into the blue sky out of annoyance, she suddenly realized something.

The wreckage of the Xiuhcoatl she had shot down had been smashed when it had hit the ocean surface, but there was something like a cylindrical tank inside. The strange tank was made of cloth pasted to a framework of wood.

(Come to think of it…didn’t the Mixcoatls have a large amount of hydrogen onboard?)

It was used as the propellant for the missiles and probably for controlling the entire ship itself.

Hydrogen.

A rocket engine using hydrogen.

“…”

Mikoto looked around.

The ocean water spread around her…no, the water molecules spread around her was made of oxygen and hydrogen. If she used electrolysis, she could retrieve the oxygen and hydrogen from the water.

She did not hesitate.

Bluish-white sparks flew from her bangs and a lightning spear was fired at the ocean surface.

But…

(It’s no good. I can break them apart, but I can’t turn it into fuel…!!)

Even if she could retrieve the oxygen and hydrogen, there was simply too little of it. To get anywhere, she needed to obtain a whole lot more hydrogen all at once.

The wreckage jerked below her feet.

She only had a few minutes before it completely sank.

(…No.)

Mikoto’s head suddenly shot up.

Something was odd.

As previously stated, she was an esper that could manipulate electricity. As a side effect, she could also control things such as magnetism and the Lorentz force, but she could not interfere with any phenomenon that did not have its basis in electricity.

But for some reason, the range of what Mikoto could control spread by quite a bit. It was like she had stretched invisible sensing tentacles into the air around her. It was a very strange feeling like she could control every single thing stretching even beyond the horizon in every direction.

(This is…?)

Mikoto looked around.

More accurately, she looked at the air around her.

(Water vapor…? I see. Because such a large amount of seawater was evaporated all at once, the water molecules are floating in the air having been turned to particles!!)

And a faint force existed bridging the space between the tiny particles.

It was static electricity.

(The bonds between the tiny particles are being realized using electricity… The laws are a little different, but if I use my equations for gathering iron sand into a sword using magnetism…)

It would not have worked with mere water molecules.

Mikoto could not control water or mist.

However, the “proportions” of the water molecules drifting through the air may have been optimal or the sea wind mixing with the water vapor may have altered the electrical conductivity. Mikoto did not know the details herself, but she could probably manipulate the huge amounts of water molecules floating in the air around her.

(Once the water vapor cools, the water molecules will join together returning them to mere drops of water. And who knows how long the conductivity will remain at this perfect level. This is my only chance. But if I can acquire the output of a rocket even for a short period of time…!!)

It was an odd feeling like thinly, thinly stretching out.

Mikoto did not fight it.

“…!!”

She greatly switched out the direction her power was headed effectively “grabbing” the huge amount of water molecules drifting through the air. By taking her equations for creating the iron sand sword as a base and switching out some of the values and symbols, she newly built up equations to use static electricity to control the water molecules in the air. The water vapor in the 10 kilometer area the downpour of light had hit all compressed toward Misaka Mikoto.

That alone was not her fuel.

That aggregation of the water molecules in the air was nothing more than a catalyst connecting the electricity and seawater together.

After putting a large cushion between them, she sent her true order to the seawater spread out around her via the huge amount of water molecules. It was like creating a chain reaction from a single phenomenon.

She had everything she needed.

Mikoto looked up into the sky.

She then focused her power on her forehead and sent out the final instruction.

A tremendous roar rang out.

Bluish-white wings of burner-like light appeared from Mikoto’s back.

Technically, that was inaccurate.

[[Image:RAILGUN_SS1_07_026.jpg|thumb]]

What rose up from near Mikoto’s back were wings that looked like blades made of water. Also, bluish-white eruptions that looked like laser blades were being emitted from the side of the wings.

At the same time as the water wings gave Mikoto lift, they also took on the heat transferred from the burner. They would normally evaporate in a few seconds due to that, but seawater was spread out over the entire area. If she constantly replenished from there, it was no problem.

Carried by the two wings, Mikoto slowly left the ground while holding Shirai in both arms.

The Xiuhcoatl wreckage sank into the ocean as if it had been waiting for that moment. She could no longer go back and land.

“…Whoops.”

Mikoto was managing to float in the sky, but her balance must have been off because she started floating to the right. She immediately modified the equations she was using, added on four smaller wings, regulated her balance in the air and the output of the burners, and managed to come to a complete stop in midair.

“Okay, that’s enough for the warm up exercises…”

Mikoto intensely stared forward and the burners erupted all at once.

A bluish-white beam of light shot out behind her.

“Wait for me! I’ll show you that this hasn’t truly started yet!!”

She seemed to be dragging along a tail of light as she headed straight for Liberal Arts City. Now that she had started to control the seawater via the water molecules floating in the air, there was nothing to be afraid of.

In order to replenish the fuel for the water wings and the burners, something like a giant human arm shot up from the distant ocean surface. With that “arm” still connected to her back, Academy City’s #3 Level 5 soared through the sky.

Misaka Mikoto flew through the sky at a speed fast enough that it was difficult to breathe in any air.

She had a single goal.

She had to shoot down the Xiuhcoatl heading for Liberal Arts City and protect the tourists and workers there.

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