A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 8 by Kazuma Kamachi

swung the carry-on luggage up with all her might, then brought it down on each of the gun-wielding men’s wrists in turn. There was a series of short shrieks. They couldn’t run—they couldn’t move. It was like they were wrapped in spider thread. If they tried to use their guns, they’d probably have to go through their own piled-up allies. As a result, despite all their murderous weapons, each one only waited helplessly to be knocked out and lose consciousness.
    “Well, that was nothing to write home about. In fact, it was a little
too
easy for my tastes,” she said derisively, though to no response.
    She poked the men with her toes to make sure they were all unconscious, then bound them all in Judgment’s nonmetal handcuffs. She ran out after the first four, so she made use of a loose cable lying on the ground. Despite the pressure on their wrists, none of them woke up.
    After giving Anti-Skill a quick call, Shirai glanced at their equipment.
    She looked at the name and model number of their guns, but she didn’t understand them. She knew they were completely different from the ones they’d held during Judgment training, though. The main pieces of handguns developed by Academy City weren’t made with metal and were thus extremely light. These men’s guns, though, were hunks of steel. There were numbers and English letters engraved on their sides. She briefly wondered if they were their official model numbers, but that was all. She didn’t have much technical knowledge regarding the armaments—Anti-Skill, which fought mainly with firearms, was one thing, but she used her ability for combat.
    Aside from that, she couldn’t find any identification on the suit-wearing men. It looked like they might have purposely erased them. She looked at the face of one of the fallen men and clicked her tongue in annoyance. “…Gold teeth?” she muttered dubiously at the wide-open mouth of the unconscious man. There were a number of better materials for that job in Academy City. Nobody used gold teeth in this city these days.
    She found cell phones with no registered numbers in the pockets of their slacks, but they were old as well. Academy City didn’t sell any of this stuff.
    It was said that Academy City’s internal technology level was twenty or thirty years removed from the outside world. Electronics went without saying, but even smaller articles that wouldn’t appear to have anything to do with “technology” sometimes looked different here.
    They were trained to a certain extent, given the way they held their guns, but they were completely led on by my ability, so it must have been the first time for them…Perhaps they do not have any ties to espers at all and are professionals from the outside.
    “…”
    And now for the carry-on luggage. Those outsiders had sneaked all the way into Academy City to get their hands on it. She looked down at it once again.
    It was large. Like other travel luggage, it was rectangular in shape. If she curled up, she could probably fit inside the thing. It was white, and its surface was made from a special material with a glossy finish, like it had been waxed or something.
    She put a hand to the latches keeping it closed—to no avail. “Locked…I suppose I should have expected that.”
    But upon surveying it again, she realized the lock was extremely elaborate. There were two physical locks, one electronic one, and even a magnetic lock, which was said to have a practically infinite number of patterns.
    “Well, none of that matters to my ability.”
    Her ability was teleportation. She couldn’t move something unless she touched it, so she couldn’t take an object out of a box. However, if she moved only the box itself, she could get the contents that way.
    She couldn’t move really heavy “boxes” like the ones in bank vaults, but a piece of luggage wouldn’t be that difficult. She casually held her right hand out to the luggage, then placed her fingers on its