Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter3

==Chapter 3: Pulling the Strings==

===Part 1===

It was evening at the District 5 discount shop.



Tension ran between the four members of Item.

The presence of Judgment, who maintained order within Academy City, was nothing unusual. The city was full of schools and each one had a Judgment branch, so there had to be a decent number of them around.

Not wearing the armband wasn’t unusual either. Judgment members were also ordinary students who studied at school and they would only don the armband when trouble broke out between students or they otherwise felt the need to work, so they would spend the majority of their time without the armband.

However…

“(I don’t like the way she has her armband off but is in that sharp-eyed work mode. What is this? Is there some reason she can’t loudly announce her presence as Judgment? Like quietly setting up a perimeter before they capture a major target?)”

Of course, the student-run Judgment wouldn’t be operating a large-scale arrest like this. The students were able to blend in better, so had they been sent in first to secure the location and set up a perimeter before the fully-equipped adult Anti-Skill officers barged in?

“(In the end, I don’t think Busty Glasses there has noticed us.)”

“(Is Judgment even super after us?)”

Kinuhata’s question was understandable, but whether this was about Item or some other fugitive, they could still be caught up in this arrest. Those criminal girls couldn’t just hope for the best. Even a simple question about their address or occupation could prove dangerous.

“(Mugino, what do we do?)”

“(Let her pass us by.)”

That was an awfully passive opinion for Mugino Shizuri of all people.

However, this was the result of the unique education she had received from the Mugino Family.

“(Killing her would be easy, but it would only work against us. It’s the same reason gang members avoid killing cops.)”

Maybe setting up the perimeter surreptitiously was the priority here, but they didn’t seem to be setting up any baggage check points or metal detectors. So mixing in with the other customers would likely be enough to slip out the exit and escape.

Or so Mugino thought until Takitsubo spoke up again.

“Mugino. Something’s bothering me.”

“Huh?”

“Staying near the exit to keep an eye on the entire place is the usual tactic, but the Judgment girl over there has chosen a bad position. That decorative column next to her should be blocking a large portion of her view, but she doesn’t seem bothered at all.”

“That Busty Glasses, you mean? You sure she isn’t just too stupid to know it matters?”

“She might have a power that lets her see through obstacles. Like Clairvoyance. …And something about her seems familiar to me.”

Kinuhata just about turned around to get a look, but Mugino grabbed her head with a hand to hold it in place. Why would you try to hurriedly hide from someone who could see through any kind of cover?

Mugino reorganized her thoughts based on this new information.

Judgment and Anti-Skill were preparing for a major arrest in this discount shop. They likely weren’t after Item, but as criminals they might end up as an unexpected bonus prize if they were caught up in it all.

They couldn’t afford to be arrested here.

No matter what.

“This could be bad if she really does have Clairvoyance… If she notices us trying to sneak out, we’ll have no choice but to kill her.”

===Part 2===

Judgment and Anti-Skill were slowly and quietly completing their perimeter.

They likely weren’t directly after Item, but with so many illegal actions in their past, they would be in trouble if they were caught in this big arrest.

They needed to escape and quick.

And they had to do so quietly and inconspicuously instead of mowing down those arbiters of justice and making a break for it.

“So who are these overzealous Judgment and Anti-Skill people actually after?”

“Mugino, probably her.”

Takitsubo indicated a distant point with her gaze alone.

A girl with a ponytail was sneaking around there. And her shopping cart contained…

“That’s a lot of insecticide and bleach. More than a normal household would ever need.”

“That’s gotta be for sulfur dioxide. It’s an ingredient for sulfuric acid.”

“Yeah. In the end, hasn’t there been a recent thief who keeps dissolving the dials and levers to safes? They’re known as the Bubbly Burglar.”

“So are we super going to create an opening there?”

They didn’t need to arrange a detailed plan.

The four of them got to work.

Frenda grabbed a high-end mobile battery from a shelf of phone products and slipped it into the fugitive’s pocket. While her hand was still in the girl’s pocket, she yanked on a loop of thin wire.

A shrill roar sounded. It was a shoplifting alarm.

The criminal herself had to be the most surprised.

“Dammit. Why, why, why!?”

“Warrant posted. This is Anti-Skill! This is not voluntary. If you resist, it will only add to your charges!!”

They must have decided the criminal would panic and take some other customer hostage if they stuck to “slowly and quietly”. Judgment and Anti-Skill rushed toward the source of the noise.

None of them were paying any attention to Mugino and the rest.

The perimeter had collapsed.

“(This way.)”

Mugino guided the other members to one of the seven exits.

Clairvoyance allowed its user to see through objects and view what was on the other side, so staying behind cover wouldn’t work. …Or so one would think, but that wasn’t actually true.

“It comes down to the number of layers.”

“?”

Kinuhata tilted her head, so their leader elaborated.

“Clairvoyance has to be focused just like ordinary vision. If it could truly see through everything, it would also see through the person on the other side of the wall. That would be no different from not seeing anything at all, right?”

“Oh, I get it. So she has to super focus it on whatever she’s trying to see.”

“We can use that to our advantage. If she has it set to view things through one wall, we can remain hidden behind a wall if we make sure there are three layers of cover between us and her. Takitsubo.”

“I can tell generally how far she’s viewing based on her posture and her center of gravity. It looks like she isn’t paying any attention to anything other than the decorative column in front of her. That means she has it set to see through one layer.”

The discount shop provided plenty of obstacles. The section with cheap licensed character T-shirts hanging everywhere would be perfect for use against Clairvoyance. The one small space contained a large number of “layers” arranged haphazardly.

The security cameras were operating.

Mugino and the rest moved from cover to cover while making sure their actions remained natural enough to not arouse suspicion if the security footage were later reviewed.

And as they did…

“Mugino.”

“?”

Mugino immediately raised her guard.

This was one of Takitsubo Rikou’s “oracles”. Those were never good news.

“The glasses girl has shifted her center of gravity forward a bit. She’s looking farther away. I can only guess, but I would say she’s changed to view through two layers if not more.”

“(Nothing’s scarier than when they act on a meaningless whim like that! There’s no way to predict it!!)”

Mugino clenched her teeth and got moving.

But not to hide behind the shelves. Instead, she walked right out in front of the Judgment’s Busty Glasses. At close range.

The Judgment girl’s Clairvoyance was set to view through at least two layers.

That meant Busty Glasses was currently ''seeing straight through any object that wasn’t hidden from her by at least one layer.''

The Judgment girl shifted her focus elsewhere without any apparent suspicion, so Item took that chance to walk past her. Less than a meter away from her.

They reached the exit without being noticed.

They found the ordinary evening outside.

However, that nostalgic and gentle scene was disturbed by restless red lights.

Parked just outside were several special vehicles painted white and black and decorated with red lights and speakers. The four girls kept away from those as they took the sidewalk away from the store.

Frenda looked down in her hand.

“Oops. In the end, I brought the ear pick with me.”

“Super why do you care after they caused us so much trouble?”

“There was an incident. One caused by Anti-Skill themselves. We had to leave in a hurry. If there’s a fire while you’re in the fitting room, they won’t arrest you for theft if you evacuate without changing back into your original clothes, right?”

That said, did this mean they had finally escaped to safety?

Takitsubo Rikou was as expressionless as ever.

“We made it.”

“I get the feeling Takitsubo-san has more super guts than any of us,” said an exasperated Kinuhata. Her heart was still pounding.

“Of course she does,” said Mugino like it should be obvious. “A while back, we had some traitors in the support team. Some pieces of shit were leaking information. Threats and torture aren’t always enough to track someone like that down. In the worst case, ''I was thinking I’d have to eliminate all of them to make sure we got the traitors'', but then she comes along and solves the entire case on her own. …Takitsubo identified the traitors after asking the support team five questions. She got every last one with a measly five questions.”

Kinuhata looked at Takitsubo again, but the girl’s expression was still blank.

Frenda sighed.

“So Clairvoyance, huh? As the Academy City Bomber, that’s one of the last powers I want to tangle with. On the other hand, it ranks pretty high on the powers I’d love to have.”

“We don’t know the exact conditions of that Judgment girl’s power, though.”

Still, it couldn’t hurt to be cautious.

It likely came from being raised as a born gangster, but Mugino Shizuri didn’t seem to have relaxed her guard even after escaping.

“This doesn’t smell right to me. I mean, do you really think we’d be caught up in this by chance?”

“Mugino. They were trying to arrest some other fugitive, so it isn’t like any of us made a mistake.”

“I didn’t say you did. But someone could have led that fugitive to our location. Without her even noticing.”

“In the end, are you trying to say someone else secretly sent Anti-Skill and Judgment after her? In order to harass us?”

They had to find out who had done it.

The fastest option there was to start by learning why they had done it and what they gained from it.

“In the end, has there been any real conflict within the dark side recently?”

“I don’t know. There’s always someone fighting somewhere.”

Frenda and Mugino began trading thoughts while Takitsubo kept her position a step removed and listened expressionlessly to the debate.

And.

Someone else had sweat dripping down her face.

That someone was Kinuhata Saiai.

An unseen villain had encouraged Anti-Skill and Judgment to attack a target. While the villain themselves watched on from safety.

That sounded far too familiar to her.

Wasn’t that very similar to how the blackmailers operated? She had thought that was over after defeating the “legitimate” VIP who acted as a Board member’s wallet, but could it be?

(O-oh, no. ''Could that still not be super over''???)

===Part 3===

Everything was peaceful.

It was the day after the weird incident at the discount shop.

Frenda had walked to District 13 between jobs. In the normal world, it was the time known as afterschool. However, it was still before three, so the sky was still blue. The weather was nice again today.

The trees lining either side of the wide street were dyed in reds and yellows.

It was already October.

Gone was the heat that made her curse the sun whenever she walked outside. However, the ultraviolet was still there, so she couldn’t let her guard down just because it seemed cool.

Her 7-year-old sister was walking by her side and holding her hand. She was wearing her backpack on the way back from school.

“Have you chosen a Halloween costume yet?”

“Hmm?”

Frenda Seivelun looked up into the blue sky in thought.

Halloween was still viewed as a temporary fad in Academy City and ''had yet to'' become an established annual event, but people were saying it would catch on before long. The manager of the elementary school dorm (a place where seasonal events were of the utmost importance) even dressed up in costumes on a regular basis. Furthermore, the Seivelun sisters’ blonde hair was neither dyed nor bleached. So whether or not it had caught on in Japan, it was a familiar event for them.

And while the capable older sister used her eye movement to guide her younger sister’s eyes up toward the blue sky, she operated her phone in the blind spot this created.

After a “poof!” of cloth inflating with air, she was wearing a full-body mascot costume.

“Whoa!? Th-that’s so cool! But in the first place, what is it!?”

“Costume outerwear. In the end, it’s equipped with a small electric fan.”

“Nyah,” cried the cat-like costume.

Clothing equipped with cooling fans was convenient, but it had been derided as ugly because of how it swelled out from within…so this had been invented to take advantage of that downside. It was normally worn as a thin hoodie or coat, but a phone app could inflate it into a costume. There was no need to stuff it with cotton or shape it with a metal frame.

…The biggest problem was the “so what?” question. In a normal life, there was no need at all to instantly switch between ordinary clothing and a costume. In the end, it had no use outside of magic shows and Halloween-like events.

“In the first place, what should I dress up as?”

“How about you let your handy sister sew something for you? Maybe a magical girl? Or Alice? In the end, just let me know and we can go select the material☆”

“I don’t want yours. You have childish tastes.”

The 7-year-old was pouting her lips and complaining. Little sisters were a challenge.

“Here, here,” said that little sister as she tugged on Frenda’s hand. It only took an instant to switch back from costume mode.

“I’m in elementary school now, so I can choose my own clothes. In the first place, how about we go there? I’m so grown-up now!”

The sparkle in her eyes was something else.

She had chosen the kind of cheap fast fashion shop found in just about any district of the city, but it seemed to look like an indoor amusement park to the 7-year-old.

And they appeared to sell Halloween costumes here.

Halloween. It had not ''yet'' fully caught on in Academy City, but maybe the company wanted to create a one stop shop for everyone’s clothing needs.

Event costumes weren’t bought on the day of, so they already had a special section full of colorful costumes: witches, fairies, maids, etc. But wait. Were maids really a Halloween thing?

“In the end, what type of costume do you want, my sister? A good guy or a bad guy?”

“Something cool!!”

So not cute then. But what did a 7-year-old consider cool?

The younger sister spoke with the college-aged woman who had been stocking the shelves. She was explaining what she wanted with lots of gesturing and smiling. This was one more thing she could do on her own now.

The next thing Frenda knew, several employees had gathered around to debate the issue. Eventually, the little sister returned to Frenda with a costume folded up in her arms.

“In the first place, I chose this! Now to try it on.”

“That looks like an unusual costume with lots of zippers and bows. In the end, can you put it on yourself?”

“Thou shalt not treat me like a little kid.”

The 7-year-old refused any help and shut the fitting room curtain.

…And since when did that little sister talk like that? Maybe she had picked it up from one of the employees. The righteous big sister glanced over and the group of female employees all averted their eyes.

“Huh? In the first place, this part goes like this and then I zip up the back, so…huhh?”

The squirming behind the curtain suggested she was having a hard time.

Figuring the wait was going to be a long one, Frenda grabbed a nearby Halloween costume.

(Wow. In the end, how do you even wear this mummy girl costume? Oh, you wear something like beige full-body tights below. Like a figure skater. But your figure will still show through.)

“All done, Onee-chan! Trick or treat!!”

The curtain flew open.

She was dumbfounded.

Frenda Seivelun, who could shrug off seeing a dead body, was truly dumbfounded.

Someone was posing in something like a bunny girl costume except with bat wings and curly horns. She had her hands up next to her face in a grabbing gesture and a tail was swishing side to side behind her hips.

She smiled and spoke in front of petrified Frenda.

“Tah dah! This was the shop’s top recommendation. They said it was the most grown-up and cool one. In the first place, I’m dressing up as this suck-you-bus thing this year!!”

“I-in the end, who was it! What stupid employee recommended my pure sister should dress up as a succubus of all things!!?”

“Hm? Suck you☆”

===Part 4===

Kinuhata Saiai and Takitsubo Rikou descended to the luxury tourist hotel’s first floor lobby.

However, they were not there to enjoy some afternoon tea.

They had something to discuss without Mugino hearing as she lazed in the suite’s unnecessarily fancy bed.

“This is super bad.”

Apparently the blackmailer case wasn’t quite as over as they had thought.

If nothing was done, Sudori Sayu and the other ordinary people could become targets again. And if the events leading to saving those people were brought back to the forefront, Mugino could discover Kinuhata and Takitsubo had lied to her and acted behind her back. No matter the reason, betrayal was punished with execution. There would be no exceptions there.

Which meant Kinuhata Saiai had something to do.

“They directed Anti-Skill and Judgment there to catch us. What if that’s just an extra component super added onto the previous blackmailer system?”

“Our previous solution will still work. The odds are good they will have a negotiator posted near the target to keep an eye on things.”

Strangers were used to attack the target while the villain never left their safe zone. For the target, this could not be more annoying because defeating the physical attackers wouldn’t solve anything, but at least they could counterattack using the same method as before.

“Then let’s capture some super random security robot around here and look for anyone walking around with five or ten phones.”

That was when Kinuhata’s phone rang. As if someone were watching them.

She looked down at her phone’s screen.

Number withheld.

“…”

Not answering the call would ordinarily be the right move, but she pressed the talk button.

A young female voice answered.

It may have been a girl around their age.

“Good morning. Just making a business greeting. Now, do you know who I am? Given then timing, you should be able to guess I’m not just pretending to play a role in this.”

(Did she call us because she knew we’d super locate her? That means she wants to stay in control.)

Her “role” here was obvious.

But they didn’t know her name or what she looked like. They knew disturbingly little.

“Yes. In the end, you don’t know who or where I am. Which is good because that’s how my job works. However, not having anything to call me would be awkward for you, so…yes, you can call me the Information Broker. It isn’t inaccurate.”

“Are you the blackmailers’ boss?”

“Hmm? That’s not quite accurate…but I am higher up than them.”

A few questions immediately came to mind.

But peppering her with questions wasn’t going to receive answers for all of them. She could end the call at any time.

So what did Kinuhata need to ask first?

“Why did you super decide to contact us? The incident should have ended when we defeated that legitimate VIP, so you could have escaped to safety by keeping your mouth shut and playing dead.”

“That’s the thing. I can’t just stop doing my job.”

Kinuhata glanced aside as she continued the conversation.

Takitsubo had captured a security robot a short distance away. While back behind a decorative column, perhaps to keep a ceiling security camera from seeing, she snuck up from the blind spot of the security robot’s camera lens and snatched it with both hands. Quite a bold move given they were in a hotel lobby.

Was she planning to trace the phone signals flying around even as Kinuhata spoke with the Information Broker?

Then Kinuhata had to make sure the girl on the phone didn’t notice.

“Oh, was that too subtle for you? I’m trying to say I’m pissed. Extremely.”

…Apparently she wasn’t the type to hang up when provoked.

And she got more talkative when pushed.

She wouldn’t hang up as long as she still saw herself as in a safe zone.

“I am a seller. Or maybe ‘creator’ would be the simpler term. I create intellectual criminal plans like that blackmailer one and sell them to consumers. They view the plans, construct the actual criminal infrastructure, and acquire massive fortunes, while I take some of that as a usage fee for my crime. I get a percentage off the top. That’s how the world works. I make a living through intellectual property.”

A breath of laughter followed.

Don’t get upset.

It’s easier to get information out of the enemy when they think they have the upper hand.

“That blackmailers were quite a lucrative client of mine. You slaughtered the goose that was laying golden eggs for me. I’m not going to be delighted about that, now am I? So I’ve decided to make you pay.”

“Do you think we’ll super sit here and take it? If we’re talking about who crossed the line first, you’re clearly the one who attacked ordinary people. That seems like enough reason to kill you if you ask-”



“''I’ll tell Mugino Shizuri everything, dammit.''”



The air froze.

A cold sweat poured down Kinuhata’s back.

And then…

“Just kidding☆ That’s my only trump card here. Use it and I lose all control over you. So don’t worry. I won’t blab that easily. But this means obeying me is your one and only path to survival. Does that clarify your situation?”

Of course Kinuhata was going to worry.

But she did understand the situation now.

“What are you super going to have me do?”

“Yes, what should I start with? What I want right now is the money I would have gotten from the blackmailers plus a little something extra for the trouble you’ve put me through. I hear you have quite the wonderful power, so you should be able to pay off this debt if you put it to criminal use.”

“…”

“Item, hm? An interesting arrangement you have there. For starters, you can launch a surprise attack on Mugino Shizuri and replace her as Item’s leader. That will turn you into an even more valuable pawn. You can begin repaying your debt after that.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying here?”

“Oh? I thought I was telling you to kill her. Did that not get across? Mugino Shizuri will find out eventually whether I tell her or not. If you want to survive and enjoy your life, you need to eliminate that deadly possibility. You already betrayed her once, so now you have no choice but to finish the job. Half measures aren’t enough. This plan benefits us both.”

Launch a surprise attack on Mugino Shizuri.

Kill her.

So she could survive.

But there would be no peace on that bloody path. The Information Broker was telling Kinuhata to become the leader “for starters”. That meant it didn’t end there. It was obvious these absurd orders would continue endlessly even after betraying, killing, and taking the leader position.

And, having knocked over and silenced the security robot, Takitsubo spoke calmly from nearby.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“…Who are you?”

“You’re planning to become a faceless presence on the phone who orders a dark side member to complete violent jobs so you can profit from your safe zone. But ''isn’t that butting in on the Voice on the Phone’s territory?'' …The villains higher up in Academy City will take action if you violate their territory and steal their profits. All of them will. Sounds like suicide to me, but it’s your choice.”

The response was swift.

The call suddenly ended.

“Super wait!” Kinuhata was flustered. “Why would you anger her before we figured out who she is!? She was willing to talk on and on as long as we kept her going!!”

“She’s an expert at blackmail. She’ll be better at protecting her privacy than a video streamer, so I doubt even the sounds audible in the background would help you track down her location.”

Takitsubo was her usual self.

If Mugino Shizuri discovered their “secret”, she would kill them. Some mystery girl held that trump card in her hand. And if Mugino of all people was going to dole out punishment, it would be something so gruesome it would go down in legend even on the dark side. Takitsubo would be able to imagine that even more vividly than Kinuhata.

“Your life is more important. So first we need to keep that blackmail expert from acting. It’s true she can’t play her ‘tell Mugino’ card so easily, but there is still a chance she will. So I increased that to a 100% chance she won’t. That is obviously more important.”

“Is the Voice on the Phone really that super powerful of a card?”

“Not even we know who she is. That alone says a lot.”

Takitsubo didn’t hesitate to answer.

This dark side search expert could be scary in a different way from Kinuhata.

“It sounded like that Information Broker didn’t know anything about the Voice on the Phone. So she should be hurriedly searching for information on her identity right now. And she won’t dare to give us any orders until she feels comfortable there. If we manage to track her down and attack her before then, her threat will hold no power over us.”

The logic seemed solid.

But…

“That means we super don’t know the actual time limit… It’s still a precarious situation.”

“Kinuhata.”

Takitsubo pointed over at a nearby wall.

Kinuhata peeked around the thin wall.

Frenda Seivelun was pressed against it, pouring with sweat. Carrying quite a few cans of mackerel. Had she been resupplying at a popup shop within the hotel? That girl was highly skilled but was sadly deficient in luck.

“I-I didn’t hear anything…anything at all…”

She wouldn’t look them in the eye.

The fluffy blonde girl was asking them to believe the implausible.

The other two Item members had been worrying themselves half to death over this, but Frenda was trying to retreat to a position of safety? Still holding her canned mackerel and sodas, she was now seated in a Chanel sofa that must cost god knows how much.

Kinuhata Saiai and Takitsubo Rikou exchanged a look and a nod.

And they said it.

“We ended up super betraying Mugino together. Tee hee☆”

Frenda tried to flee at Mach speed.

Except Takitsubo Rikou wordlessly stuck out a leg to trip her, causing her to face plant on her very first step. Kinuhata did have to respect the guts it took to protect her canned mackerel more than her face. Even though denting the cans wouldn’t alter the flavor any.

“Frenda, I can predict your every move.”

“D-don’t trip the Academy City Bomber. D-d-d-do you want to trigger an explosion and reduce us all to charcoal?”

“Kinuhata couldn’t let that bank robber be killed because she was an ordinary person being threatened by the blackmailers, so she lied to Mugino and let the criminal escape, but wouldn’t you know it? Now a different villain who sold the design for the blackmailers’ crime has shown up. There, now you’re all caught up. And you’re one of us.”

“Noooooo!! Don’t tell me that! Don’t drag me into this! In the end, those three lines have ended my life!”

Frenda held her hands over her ears, but it was too late.

She tearfully shouted.

“You lied to Mugino and kept secrets from her!? In the end, that’s definitely getting you killed! You know she isn’t the type to listen to excuses and explanations!”

“Good point. Which means you’re at risk too,” continued Takitsubo with no change of expression. “You can run if you want, but if Mugino catches us, we will tell her it wasn’t just us and that you knew about it too. Then she’ll treat you like one of us.”

“…”

Mechanical lie detectors had their pros and cons.

Did Frenda know about the betrayal plan? Between yes and no, it would say yes. It couldn’t dig into the details of when and how she found out.

And she would have to be lucky indeed if Mugino was calm enough to use anything like a lie detector in the first place.

“Mugino won’t be finding just one traitor. And after she finds two, do you think the third will be safe? Do you think she will calmly listen to your explanation when she snaps and becomes truly indiscriminate? Let’s hope she doesn’t blast us all with Meltdowner right away. But if you’re brimming with a baseless confidence that you alone will be safe, then feel free to head back alone and tell Mugino all bout it.”

Frenda didn’t move.

She had petrified.

…It was times like this that told Kinuhata Saiai that they really weren’t the good guys. Even when she risked her life and protected Academy City\’s peace, she found herself surrounded by something very different from justice.

So the filthy villain spoke with a smile.

She delivered the finishing blow.

“If you don’t like it, blame your own idiotic actions and choices. Super welcome to the world on nightmare difficulty☆”

“Noooooo! In the end, why would you do anything as ultra suicidal as throwing your lives away by lying to and deceiving Mugino!? Don’t drag me into thiiiiiiiiis!!”

She complained, but she had given up on running.

It was obvious which direction Frenda Seivelun’s villain side was leaning. Bright and shining things like love and justice did not apply to Academy City’s dark side. You wouldn’t last by betting on the possibility of a miracle. It was Frenda’s trust in Mugino Shizuri’s violence that told her her life was over if she didn’t come up with a physical safety measure here.

However, that didn’t mean she was through talking.

“D-do you really think Mugino is going to forgive a traitor!? She’ll attack us even more harshly than she does ordinary enemies. I was framed that time I was thrown out into Tokyo, but even that was hard to smooth over! But this time you really have stepped on the landmine! We’re dead for sure!!”

This wasn’t about Mugino Shizuri’s personal preferences. It was apparently the ideology and belief of the Mugino Family as a whole. One of their own, Sakuya-sama, had tried to take the family head’s life, but where was she now and what was she doing? She had completely disappeared.

“She’s a daughter of the Mugino Family. That born gangster doesn’t forgive traitors, so her punishment will be thorough. In the end, you’ll wish you’d never been born!!”

“Then let’s super use that. Say what you want, we can’t ignore this Information Broker thing, so we aim for two birds with one stone.”

Kinuhata hid her fear to get the response out.

Frenda didn’t follow her thinking, so she replied with a tremor in her voice.

“U-use it how?”

“Mugino super doesn’t forgive traitors, right? Then during our fight against the Information Broker, we ''have Mugino betray us.'' Then that born gangster will feel indebted to us and won’t be able to subject us to that terror show of unilateral slaughter. And if the gangster logic is that deeply rooted in her, she won’t be able to ignore that debt. Then if we finish off the Information Broker, this will all be over.”

“…”

“That could work,” said Takitsubo after holding her index finger to her slender chin and thinking through it. “My top priority is Kinuhata’s survival after stepping on that Mugino landmine. I won’t let anyone in Item be lost. Canceling out betrayal with betrayal would do that. In fact, I don’t see any other way for everyone to survive, but what do you say, Frenda? Do you have a better idea?”

Frenda Seivelun’s mouth formed a small triangle.

It would work.

But something felt fundamentally wrong about it.



“Aren’t you just saying that finding a real answer is too hard, so you’re just going to set a trap for Mugino? In the end, that crazy idea seems like even more of a betrayal to me.”

===Between the Lines 2===

An hour before, when the call to Kinuhata Saiai’s phone was made.



There were many different types of plastic pools out there and they were not all meant for little kids. The more expensive ones were as large as 15 meters across.

This one was usable in October thanks to the dozens of tons of water being warmed by the large external pump that was constantly circulating hot water. Although that seemed to make it more of a large open-air bath than a pool.

A girl with silver hair and dark skin lay on one of the nearby beach chairs.

She was around 14 and wore a two-piece swimsuit.

“The Voice on the Phone? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Wouldn’t that be the dark side intermediary and point of contact who is partially considered a legend? I don’t know if they really exist. Could she have been making that up to buy time?” asked the large man standing next to the beach chair.

The brown girl shook her long hair and chuckled.

“I don’t actually need to track down their identity. All I need to know is if they’re getting involved in ''this''.”

She was not alone.

She ordinarily did not dirty her own hands. So she did have some burly soldiers to do her bidding.

She tugged down her sunglasses with a finger and glanced up at the person standing right next to her.

“More importantly, we are now a step away from completing our criminal infrastructure. This is always when trouble decides to present itself. I need your Dark Rescue Squad on standby for some rough work.”

Dark Rescue Squad.

Armories, drug factories, garages for repainting or swapping the plates on stolen cars – criminals tended to handle dangerous objects a lot more often than ordinary people. One mistake and they could be caught in a fire or explosion. But even if they were engulfed in flames, their life was over if they called the ordinary fire fighters for help. They might be rescued from the burning building, but they would then be handed over to Anti-Skill.

''Which was why'' the dark side had its own rescue squad that specialized in dangerous disaster sites.

The Dark Rescue Squad would rescue any criminals who had a contract with them, use the flames or explosion to destroy the evidence, and transport the criminals to safety before the actual fire fighters or Anti-Skill arrived.

Their origins were similar to that of black market doctors. That illegal industry existed because hospitalization would lead straight to arrest for certain types of injuries. This was the same idea but for fire fighting.

They were the girl’s pawns.

Instead of simple destructive power or lethality, their were experts in enacting a safe and sure withdrawal. They were the trump card for survival rather than death. That she had chosen them in particular hinted at one aspect of the girl’s personality.

(Well, they seemed sick of charging into disaster sites full of fire and toxic gas for no more than the cheap contract fee those thugs pay. It wasn’t hard to get them to follow when I took advantage of that displeasure.)

She would complete a new criminal system before long.

Then each member of the Dark Rescue Squad would receive plenty of money. Unlike a bank robbery, this wouldn’t be a one-time payment. They would regularly receive that money for life. None of them would be hurting for money ever again.

The Dark Rescue Squad members were all itching to get started, but the girl alone smiled icily.

The girl with long silver hair and dark skin sang softly.

“Watch out overhead.”

“?”

“It’s hard to pick up by ear, but the mechanical sensors can tell. I can hear rotors far overhead. …And given how quiet it is, it’s probably a Two Wings attack helicopter.”

The Two Wings was an aerial weapon with a complicated development history. The official adoption competition had been won by another model, so it had no official model number. …But some VIPs must have decided to take advantage of that because it was seen in ''unofficial'' use like here.

Nothing would be recorded in the official records, so no authorization was needed to make an attack.

The higher levels of the dark side operated almost exclusively through paper documents and digital databases, so it was said a lot of them didn’t even know it existed.

Did that qualify as a sort of stealth?

Still lying on the beach chair, the girl whispered in a singsong voice.

“A VIP blackmailer’s obvious crimes made for nice camouflage, so it’s a shame really.”

The Information Broker girl sighed in exasperation.

By voicing the image in her head, she gave concrete form to the vaguer parts of her thoughts.

“But with that shield broken, our top priority is keeping our names and appearances hidden. Which is why the most troublesome enemy at the moment would be Kinuhata Saiai and Takitsubo Rikou who broke that blackmailer shield and are now trying to track down our identities.”

“You mean…?”

“Yep. Now we crush them to keep ourselves safe. That’s our top priority.”

The most comforting thing for servants was clear direction from their superior. The more succinct the better.

Mincing your words because of the danger would not earn trust. Trust was born by being open and honest even in a dangerous situation.

…Even if you were actually hiding the real truth below that.

If you were going to be dishonest, you had to stick to it.

As long as they never found out, that trust would remain intact.

“We need to make sure the blackmailers remain the ''only'' new social problem plaguing Academy City. We can’t allow them to look past that and discover our business.”

The girl removed her sunglasses and got up from the beach chair.

Slowly.



“Now, let’s get started. First stop: a certain luxury hotel in District 5.”


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