With a humming tremor in the air, a white beam tore through the darkness and shot violently toward Misaka Mikoto.
It was astonishingly fast.
"----!"
Misaka Mikoto could not help but be startled.
By then, the white beam had already reached her.
"Damn it!"
Violent electricity instantly surged across Misaka Mikoto's body.
"Bang----!"
With a dull impact, the incoming white beam was distorted by the current around Misaka Mikoto and abruptly shot into the sky, vanishing into the moonlit night.
"Wha...?!"
Mugino Shizuri froze.
It was not just Mugino Shizuri. Frenda, Kinuhata Saiai, and Takitsubo Rikou, who had come with her, all widened their eyes.
"No way!" Frenda cried out.
"Mugino's Meltdown was actually deflected?" Kinuhata Saiai sounded surprised as well.
"Mugino..." Takitsubo Rikou looked toward Mugino Shizuri.
Yet Mugino Shizuri ignored her three companions and stared intently at Misaka Mikoto.
In response, Misaka Mikoto simply shouted at Mugino Shizuri.
"What are you doing? That's dangerous!"
Hearing that, Mugino Shizuri paid Misaka Mikoto no heed at all and sank into thought.
Mugino Shizuri's ability was, in essence, the power to release pure electrons.
Normally, like light, electrons displayed and settled into either of two properties according to their environment: "particle" and "wave."
However, Mugino Shizuri's ability could forcibly manipulate electrons in an ambiguous state between "particle" and "wave," releasing the electrons themselves.
Even when such ambiguously stabilized electrons struck an object, they would remain there because they could not determine whether to react as particles or waves.
Thus, electrons with mass infinitely close to zero would become a pseudo-barrier the instant they lingered. Upon collision, even metal would be blown apart like scraps of paper, no matter how thick a wall was, it would melt away, and along with any cover, the target's body would be pierced through.
That was