Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 10===

This early in the morning, no one was around. So Frenda attacked the physical “warehouse” for a sketchy online store that sold quite a few strange medical products.

It was a major drugstore.

Of course, the entire group wasn’t part of the illicit business. A hired pharmacist was making some extra money on the side. But that wasn’t her target here.

“Uonaka Ichijo. Hm, all easy kanji.”

Frenda smiled bitterly at the print-out she held.

Images from security cameras outside Academy City were grainy, but she did have an image of his face. It had only been a few hours since he disappeared, so she didn’t have to worry about him changing his face with plastic surgery. Just like when falling and scraping your knee, it could take days for even a small wound to heal. Unlike in TV dramas, surgery to the entire face required a lengthy schedule before the bandages could be removed.

She knew about the forest safe house thanks to intercepting a radio exchange.

Not all of Kanagawa was big cities and tourist destinations. It was mostly associated with the coast, but more than a third of its area was taken up by mountains and woods.

The resort areas where redevelopment had failed were in a tragic state. When buying a house, people ordinarily took out a mortgage at the bank and spent their entire life paying it off. But in these places, a lot of properties went for less than a million yen. And even with such low prices, the places were ghost towns. There weren’t any stores nearby and cell coverage was spotty at best that deep in the mountains. Living there was about as inconvenient as could be, but it was easy for shady people to acquire a temporary hideout there.

So it was time to get moving.

“Whew. In the end, I’m glad it turns out you can hitchhike in Japan.”

“You can’t! It’s way too dangerous! What is a teenage girl like you thinking flagging down cars? What would you have done if I hadn’t picked you up!?”

She was on her way to her destination with some help from a worrier of a trucker.

…The long-distance trucker reminded her of the truck driver killed by the explosion in Shinjuku, Tokyo, but that was meaningless. She tried to force the thought from her mind.

And couldn’t manage it.

(Damn.)

She glared at her silly face reflected in the passenger side door window. She lived in Academy City’s dark side. She had seen plenty of lives she hadn’t been able to save.

The driver’s eyes widened when they arrived at her destination.

The air was damp. The cricket and katydid cries were nearly deafening.

Even in early September, the mountain trees had not yet begun turning red.

“You really want to get off at this ghost town overgrown with weeds? What are you even doing here?”

“Ah ha ha. My grampa moved here for a new life after retiring. The houses here are super cheap and did you know there’s a hot spring near here? It’s a great place, but his laundry piles up if I don’t visit him every so often.”

“Huh, so your grandfather loves Japan, does he?”

“More like he loves Japanese military history. Apparently a lot of famous Japanese warriors lived around here. I only half listen when he goes on about it, so I don’t remember any of the names other than Takeda Shingen.”

“Oh, Sengoku period warriors? That’s a little different from the Minamoto clan or Shizuka Gozen, I guess. But maybe it has to do with Odawara Castle or Tsukui Castle?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

Frenda smiled and kept on telling lies.

If he got the impression she was out in the mountains to kill herself, he might try to stop her. …And a kindhearted man like that would only shorten his lifespan considerably by getting involved in this mess.

She wasn’t responsible for the Shinjuku bombing.

But she was sick of feeling the way it made her feel.

She waved as the truck drove off and, after making sure it was good and gone, she got to work.

(In the end, I’m going to end this here.)

She entered the ghost town overrun by weeds.

This was also a route leading to Academy City, but the scenery was completely different from the route to the east gate going through Shinjuku. Here near the south gate, everything was mountains and greenery.

It felt chillier than in Yokohama, but instead of the altitude, it probably had to do with the lack of the heat island created by the concrete and asphalt.

(Honestly. In the end, it’s hard to believe Academy City is right on the other side of the wall from this.)

The natural scenery seemed like a good fit for a semiconductor plant…or would a hot springs region actually be a bad fit because of all the extra minerals in the water?

The rusty road sign said this was the road to Hot Spring Shrine. Before science had explained how hot springs worked, they may have been linked to mountain worship.

(That traditional atmosphere is nice. Seems like it would actually be better for your health.)

Mountain worship. That meant this was a place for ascetic discipline. Searching on foot was probably going to be a pain.

The mountain road mostly took a winding route up the slope, but tiers had been dug into the slope to create a level surface for a small hot spring inn, a hotel, and more…or what had once been those things. The tiers were uniform, but the heights of the buildings differed, so some buildings stretched up higher than the next tier.

“No sign of life here. In the end, the place can’t be entirely abandoned.”

After spotting a deteriorating gate for a Spring Water Shopping District, Frenda left the winding mountain road.

She expected she was overthinking things, but a single long path was a scary thing for a professional bomber. It would be the perfect place for tripwires, sensors, and other traps. She slipped past what looked like an abandoned souvenir shop and walked through a weed-filled garden before finding some steep stairs climbing the concrete retaining wall holding the tiered slope in place.

She hadn’t found any traps yet, but that was no reason to relax.

In a minefield, one step being safe was no guarantee the next one would be.

She didn’t see any graffiti on the walls or anyone sleeping on the roadside. Probably because people still lived here, however few they might be.

More than just conifer trees, the foliage in the area included some chestnut and tea plants. Had someone grown them in their garden, or had animals carried the seeds here?

Animals.

“…”

Just as Frenda moved out onto the mountain road again, she crouched down and glanced at the guardrail which had fallen into disrepair.

She saw fur.

The tuft looked like wild dog fur except thicker. Had it been scraped off as the animal passed by?

“Ugh. In the end, they have the non-cute kind of bear around here?”

On the other hand, a wild animal like that would have triggered any kind of detailed and sensitive explosive trap. Frenda wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or see this as a threat.

She wasn’t sure if they were bulbuls or starlings, but some wild bird cries passed overhead.

She placed her hands on the rusty guardrail and took a look at the scenery below. She spotted a straight line cut out of the fluffy forest. A mountain railroad must have run through here at some point. And it looked like there was another road too.

She slowly but surely climbed the mountain.

She felt impatient.

But she knew this would end with conflict. She couldn’t afford to have her legs worn out by the time she arrived.

The actual elevation to her destination couldn’t have been even 500m. It was higher up the slope, but nowhere near the summit.

“Phew.”

For some reason, she found a barrier similar to at a railroad crossing in the middle of the road. The metal pole had rusted and broken and the sign had fallen to the ground.

Scenic Heights.

“In the end, this must be the place.”

This wasn’t like before.

Had her senses been sharpened by walking so long without meeting anyone?

She couldn’t say what exactly was different, but she sensed an unnatural “regularity” to this scenery. It was an indescribable sense of wrongness, like finding the overgrown weeds had been combed into place.

This was proof that someone had been in and out of here.

It would have been prime real estate back when the hot spring resort was functioning, but now the weeds had grown to Frenda’s hip height. Instead of inns or hotels, two or three story villas were lined up irregularly. Had those all been ultra luxury second homes that could draw spring water directly from the hot spring? The barrier from before may have meant this had been a fenced-off gated committee. And now look at it. It reminded Frenda of the Japanese idea that the prosperous will eventually decline.

The safe house being used by Crossword Uonaka Ichijo, the Mugino Family negotiator, was a villa toward the back.

The wooden villa was as big as a school building.

Just to be safe, Frenda slowly approached from downwind.

(Anyway, I need to capture Mugino Sakuya’s negotiator. Then my counterattack can begin!)

While organizing her plan in her mind, Frenda Seivelun approached the giant villa in a ghost town that had been forgotten by time.

And a moment later…



Something exploded.



Frenda wasn’t even close to the blast, but her small body was still knocked to the ground. If she hadn’t known how to land safely, she might have broken a limb.

More than half the mansion-like villa had been destroyed.

The building’s cross-section was plain to see.

(What in the…!?)
Frenda Seivelun was a professional bomber. She had confirmed in advance that there were no explosives in the area. And yet this had happened.

The sound of something beating at and slicing through the air passed by overhead. It turned in midair and directed its nose toward her.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

That was a remote-controlled, Academy City attack helicopter.

“A ''Two Wings''… Damn. In the end, Academy City has crossed a line now!!”