Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Ending

“I am sincerely sorry.


“I must apologize for the trouble my failure has caused all of you.”


It’s fine. As long as you’re safe.

But even a voice on the phone can become a target? The dark side really is a frightening place. Nowhere in the world is truly safe, is it?


“The situation has been resolved, so only the cleanup remains.


“Shiokishi-sama, will that be acceptable?”


Yes.


“Good. Then I have approval and authorization from the Board. I will be handling this one with my own personal connections and possessions.”


Don’t push yourself too hard. We do have people to fight on the front lines.


“I will be fine.


“I will not let anything like this happen again. We need to make sure people know what happens if they take the dark side lightly – and its higher ups especially. Right?”


…Umm. Oh, dear. Are you drinking something by any chance?


“Of course not.


“I am sober this time.”









It was night.

One place had a very different feel from the energy of the Daihaseisai.

Everyone overlooked that one spot.

Thanks to a blown bicycle tire, Anti-Skill hadn’t been along on their usual patrol.

Even the drive recorders and home security cameras from different companies had all been silenced.

Who had gone to that effort?

The work was so perfect no one even asked that question.

“Sigh. God, this thing’s heavy.”

A woman was walking along that dark street carrying a metal stepladder under her arm.

With all the camera-equipped press in the city for the Daihaseisai, that alone wasn’t too unusual, except it did stand out late at night when no events were held. Or it would have if anyone had been around to see it.

She was in an ordinary (or maybe fairly cheap) residential area filled with short apartment buildings. In Academy City, the large dumpsters on the side of the road would automatically process garbage, but they even operated at night, which had led to a fair number of noise complaints. It really came down to the morals of the neighborhood, but when people didn’t separate out their garbage properly, spray cans could end up rupturing inside the large boxes, creating a lot of noise during the night in some areas.

“I can’t drink until the job is complete. Honestly, at least I can smoke.”

The woman wore a tight skirt suit and she placed her soft palm on the side of the stepladder. The surface seemed to peel away, unnaturally revealing a deadly weapon longer than she was tall.

It was a Metal Eater Trial .50 caliber anti-tank rifle.

The monster fired absurdly large bullets and even had a full-auto mode.

It had been hidden so it couldn’t be seen.

In addition to simple camouflage, she had made full use of optical illusions that tricked the brain.

All her skill as a disguise expert had gone into it.

(If you hide things too much, people will want to see inside the box. But whether it’s a stepladder or a chain-link fence, people assume you can’t hide anything in something with gaps you can see through, so they let their guard down. Really, it’s one of the standard assumption-based tricks stage magicians use.)

…That said, applying makeup to a weapon wasn’t an unusual idea. In past wars, bricks of explosives had been painted like actual bricks or coal to disguise them and just about any sniper would spray paint their gun with camouflage.

The woman whispered while focused on her wireless earphones.

Her target was a black luxury car.

“Do you think your diplomat plates make you untouchable? I sure hope you aren’t relying on that cheap myth in Academy City’s darkness.”

“!?”

“I can’t believe you would sell out a voice on the phone fairly deep in the dark side and even try to take her life. Humans contain such depths. I’m really starting to think the final dungeon for humanity isn’t the deep oceans or space – it’s the psychological world. I have no idea what you were thinking. But it does seem you want to become the kind of horrific corpse that will go down in the history of crime.”

The other side of the phone call was a mere 10m ahead of her. She heard something from inside the thick black luxury car that was motionless thanks to an ''incredibly unnatural'' malfunction.

Maybe he was begging for his life.

She ignored it and pulled the trigger.

She didn’t have to worry about the noise. The car’s bulletproofing was only designed for 9mm handguns, so firing 12.7mm anti-materiel rounds into it at full-auto turned it to Swiss cheese in less than a minute. In fact, over half of the car’s 2-ton weight was gone.

.50 caliber, 12.7mm. That she wasn’t flipped over onto her back from firing those on full-auto while standing upright suggested she was using several forms of technology, including an extra-large muzzle brake.

The muzzle flashes shined bright like camera flashes at a press conference and the reflected light tore through the shadows.

The woman was Hanano Choubi.

“Well, that was boring. It’s always like this with them. Since it’s an electric car, I thought maybe he’d be electrocuted.”

She tapped her ear to switch off the ultra-precise noise canceling in her closed wireless earphones. The one flaw of the Metal Eater Trial was the noise caused by the ridiculous amount of powder it used. She hoped that would be fixed before the finalized version.

At any rate, she only had to leave this place and her job was complete. She would retrieve the stepladder, hide the giant gun in it, head back to safety, and start drinking. It was late, but she still wanted to eat a giant pile of fried chicken and fries. Days like this made her want to treat herself to the cheapest and most unhealthy luxuries.

And that would have happened.

“Uh…”

If she hadn’t heard an impossible groan.

What had been a thick door (and now more resembled a honeycomb or sponge) creaked. A bloody man rolled out. Probably the driver. He had likely been hit by the sharp metal fragments torn from the car rather than the bullets themselves.

Hanano didn’t hesitate to aim the Metal Eater Trial at him, but then someone emerged from the side.

A small figure.

It was Academy City’s #6. AKA the Dark Side’s Bane.

And she could only see a vague outline even at this close range?

“Please wait.”

“?”

“That man is only an embassy worker. He had nothing to do with this case and he isn’t even aware of Academy City’s seedy underside. You have achieved your revenge. The dark side has no shortage of cruel people, but no one is going to try and take advantage of your situation after this. There is no need to shoot an unrelated innocent.”

A short burst of explosive blasts followed.

Hanano Choubi had blown the collapsed man’s head off with three shots. Just to be thorough.

She belatedly realized she hadn’t hit the switch on her earphones, so the noise canceling must have been made to automatically switch on and off in certain conditions. Electronics didn’t come with paper manuals these days, so people often didn’t know every available feature.

The voice on the phone spoke in a kind voice like she was talking to a lost child.

“I decide who I kill. No one else.”

“…”

“This was my revenge, so that choice is my privilege. I need to eliminate any and all ''lingering concerns'' if I’m going to fully enjoy a healthy and peaceful tomorrow. I want to end it all today. Isn’t that how revenge works? I’m not interested in advice from an outsider who has never been hurt like this. It’s always like this.”

For a while, the #6 said nothing.

It took a full five seconds.

“”Are you…taking this lightly because ''it has already happened''?”

“?”

“Looking at the timeline, you cannot die ''here''. So do you think you are safe no matter how far you stray?”

She didn’t understand.

But hold on.

Hanano Choubi held one of the deepest positions in the dark side, but she didn’t understand this? When it was related to Academy City? Could that really happen?

Or.

…Was her position really as deep as she thought it was?

The small figure spoke.

“The thing is, no one can prove that Item’s voice on the phone is actually Hanano Choubi. She’s only an unclear voice coming from a machine, so the real one might be someone else entirely. Or things may be ''adjusted'' to make it that way. Discussing the past doesn’t necessarily confirm anything. You have no objective proof, so you may have already ceased to exist. …The truth is a malleable thing, so it cannot be used as a sword or a shield.”

“Wait…what are you talking about?”

“Two Wings.”

The voice was quiet.

But it seemed to pierce deep into a distortion of the world.

“Did an attack helicopter by that name exist? You can’t just let this slide. Look back further in the past to a conversation with a black market doctor. At the very least, Mugino Shizuri had already mentioned the Six Wings name ''in this same timeline''. Before the Two Wings was ever mentioned.”

Hanano Choubi of course had no idea what the #6 was talking about. She didn’t even feel like the small figure was speaking to her. It was more like they were talking to themself or ''to someone who wasn’t here'' and she was simply caught in the middle of it.

But despite feeling left out, a cold sweat dripped from her brow to her nose.

''This was bad.

''Really, really bad!!

“Like I said, the truth is a malleable thing, so it cannot be used as a sword or a shield. Have you forgotten the basic fact that we produce supernatural phenomena by distorting quantum physics which are vague and uncertain enough already in their rejection of Newtonian physics? Observation can change the world. It can be affected from the outside. And Academy City has raised a ton of those monsters.”

The small figure took a step forward.

The .50 caliber weapon was useless.

Hanano Choubi seemed paralyzed.

The small figure held out a small palm.

And Academy City’s #6 whispered while viewing some other far distant place.

The person known as the Dark Side’s Bane spoke.



“''I will bring you into this absurd distortion.''”

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