Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 2===

Their laundry was still spinning round and round inside the industrial washing machine.

The LCD display said it would be a few more minutes until it was done. They had taken travel time into account when deciding when to leave, but they had still arrived at the laundromat a little early.

“Ugh, I’m so bored. It’s these brief moments of downtime that really piss me off,” complained Frenda.

“Hey, if we super don’t do something, the Academy City Bomber is going to start a fireworks show over here.”

Kinuhata’s annoyed comment made Mugino scratch her head with a hand.

“Damn, I hate this too… Okay, how about we play rock-paper-scissors impressions?”

“What’s that? Ooh, I’ve never heard of that party game. In the end, you need to tell me all about it!”

“Hm? Since when do you know about these things, Mugino?” asked Takitsubo.

“I just heard about it at my school is all. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

While the four of them were playing their game, an electronic beeping sounded.

Now their laundry really was done.

“Super whose underwear is this? They’re all see through and there definitely shouldn’t be a hole here.”

“In the end, any of the sexy ones will be from Mugino’s collection.”

“Kinuhata, those are mine,” said Takitsubo.

“!?” “!?”

[[Image:Item3 BW1.jpeg|thumb]]

First, they collected all their dried laundry. Laundromats these days were as bright and shiny as a trendy cafe, so there wasn’t all that much reluctance for girls to use them.

Once done there, they returned to the multi-tenant building containing the karaoke box.

There was a spa in the same building.

It too was kept bright and polished, probably to give it a clean look to draw female customers. That said, the fake marble texture made it all look quite cheap. And based on the layout, it was probably a former sex industry establishment remodeled into a spa. With all its university students, District 5 had a lot of izakayas, smoking bars, and other adult-oriented establishments.

There were several teenage girls gathered there right as the spa opened, but were they all summer break runaways?

Item took a shower first and held a strategy meeting at the same time.

“Ahh, I can finally wash the sleep sweat away…”

“Mugino, stop avoiding the issue.”

Whether robbing a bank or staging a kidnapping, the greatest threat to a crime carried out by a group was infighting. So quickly strengthening the bonds between the group of gathered criminals was an even greater insurance of safety than a counterfeit passport or a getaway car.

Enough so that the dark side had people who specialized in providing that service.

Mugino raised her head to enjoy the warm shower water to its fullest as she spoke.

“They’re known as bond builders. A robbery team might be thrown into a cheap apartment or campsite and forced to live together, eating the same things and going to sleep at the same time every single day…''to artificially create the bonds of a family within the group''.”

Kinuhata spoke from the adjacent booth.

“Oh, really? And is there any super objective proof this works?”

“Of course not. We’re not Anti-Skill or Judgment.”

That was how it worked with the criminal underworld where there were no compliance rules or reports to be filed.

Since they couldn’t just throw more people at the issue like the government could, your own experience and nose for danger were your lifeline on the dark side.

“Bond builders, huh? Super sounds to me like they’re consensually doing some light brainwashing.”

“Because they are. Supposedly, a week with them and you have so much love and affection between you and your accomplices that you won’t rat each other out even if Anti-Skill captures you.”

If the Sadistic Dolls were using a bond builder to create instant unity within their group, they would be a client and that bond builder would have their personal information.

After drying their hair with driers and putting on fresh clothes, the girls rode the subway.

The subway station had a lot of boys and girls in casual clothing. They appeared to be out trying to make the most of the last few days of summer break. Being forced to study every day and compete in the entrance exams and then having your breaks controlled by the higher ups was definitely not fun.

“Huh? Weren’t we suppose to meet on the upper deck for our patrol?”

Item heard an odd voice from overhead. The speaker was descending the long escalator while Item ascended it. Three girls were wearing their school uniforms even during the break. Mugino gave them an irritated glare before looking away. Annoyingly enough, those girls wore special armbands on their right shoulders. They were from Judgment.

(“Ugh. And we super know one of them. That’s Yamagami Erina.)”

They had happened to run into that girl at the Colosseum and the illegal casino. And she wasn’t alone this time.

That just made this worse.

If their eyes happened to meet here, she might recognize them even in this crowd. And the escalator was a single long path, so they couldn’t slip away into a side route or turn around at this point.

They were going to meet at the center point of the up and down sides of the escalator.

They would be less than a meter from each other.

“It’s so easy to lose your sense of direction in a subway station, so maybe Sarusa-chan is lost on the platform below.”

“She’s not you, Aomi. I doubt that’s it.”

“You can cheat using your power, Mii. Your judgment isn’t reliable on this.”

Frenda and Mugino looked down at their phones to hide their faces as much as possible and Frenda surreptitiously tossed a firecracker down to the bottom of the escalator with her other hand.

The Judgment girls reacted quite sensitively to the harmless “pop!!”

“Whoa!? What was that!?”

“It’s our job to find out. Erina-chan, it might not have been a gunshot or explosion. Summer break is almost over, so some idiot streamer might be setting off fireworks in the station.”

The teacher’s pets rushed down the escalator, so they never even glanced over at the suspicious girls right next to them.

Mugino and Frenda suppressed a chuckle, but…

“Mii, use your Clairvoyance to check all around this area! Did you find anything!?”

Hearing that, the two quickly resumed their act.

Fortunately, the glasses-wearing clairvoyant had never met them and, even if she could see through the walls and ceiling to see Item’s faces, she presumably couldn’t share that information with Yamagami Erina. The lack of objectivity when compared to thoughtography was one weakness of clairvoyance.

Only after reaching the top of the escalator and approaching the ticket gate with a casual gait did Frenda breathe a heavy sigh.

“Honestly… But in the end, we should be safe since clairvoyance can’t pick up voices, right?”

“She might be able to read our lips, so do be careful, Frenda.”

Hearing a short beep, Frenda – who could make friends with anyone – pulled her phone from her pocket, but the message-based social media app notification was for Mugino.



“Shiratori// Ehh? You’ve really completed all your summer homework already? But I was hoping to make an accomplice out of you by suggesting we work on it together. Ugh, now what do I do about this giant pile… Really, it’s all the Sadistic Dolls’ fault. Their latest music video is just that good. Oh, right. Is there a seat you want for the new post-summer seating chart? Class Rep Shiratori Okibi-chan here can use her magic touch to ensure you draw exactly the number you want from the box, so-”



Mugino didn’t bother reading it through to the end before closing the app. There was no way she was reading that wall of text.

Track suit girl Takitsubo tilted her head with a blank stare.

“Who was that from?”

“''My phone tree group''. For school. What a pain.”

Technically, it had been a hidden message that only showed up for the people designated by the poster. Mugino had brought up her school in the karaoke box too. She was aware herself that a sailor uniform and school bag looked wrong on her. In fact, her large chest tugged up on the top enough to show off her navel.

After climbing the stairs to the surface, they smelled greenery.

They were in District 21. The area had a lot of nature and included Academy City’s only mountain and dam.

“Why’d we come all the way out here? Do we super know that bond builder is stationed here?”

“In the end, they’re specialists who make a bit of cash off of major criminal plans like robberies and kidnappings, right? They must be paranoid of losing everything by having Anti-Skill raid the place before they can get their clients’ bonds built.”

“So lately, bond builders make sure they work somewhere they can’t be located by searching real estate.”

Mugino pointed with her thumb.

Being out in the great outdoors with all its negative ions made them feel a bit cooler than before. Maybe the heat island effect just wasn’t as strong here, though. The leaves hadn’t started changing for autumn yet, so everything was green. And a vehicle the size of a large tour bus was parked on the curb, seeming to encroach on the tunnel of trees overhead. As big as the vehicle was, it was still a personal possession.

“I see. So in the end, they went with an RV.”

That would indeed allow them to provide a living space while also staying on the move so they could slip past Anti-Skill and Judgment. Even if they were caught at a checkpoint, the interior was a lot more complex than an ordinary vehicle, which meant a lot more hiding places. If necessary, the criminal group could hide behind a sofa or under the floor.

Even this mountainous district would have cameras equipped with motion sensors to monitor birds and other wildlife and the drum-shaped cleaning robots were all over the place.

While keeping an eye on any surveillance of that sort, Frenda used a small multi-tool knife to cut through a plastic wrapper and stuck something to the middle of the door. Then she knocked roughly on the RV’s side door. The sound of the knock suggested the RV was bulletproof. The short girl with fluffy blonde hair leaned next to the door.

A voice that sounded like a college girl spoke through the (on the surface) metal door.

“Who is-”

Frenda ignored that and blasted the thick door.

The heavy bulletproof door was blown inwards, knocking over the RV’s owner inside.

Frenda and Kinuhata charged sharply into the smoky interior and made a quick assessment of the entire space. This was a challenge because they weren’t used this kind of space that wasn’t quite a room but not quite a vehicle either.

“Clear.”

“Super clear. Some petty car thieves are having a training camp in here, so what do we do about them?”

The sudden explosion had panicked the occupants too badly to put up much of a resistance. The two girls dragged a few large boys out by the collar.

Mugino spoke to the aproned young woman who was lying half-crushed below the door.

“Cough up your client data, bond builder.”

“A-are you – cough – asking me to retire?”

“You missed your chance to resist a while back, loser.”

Mugino snatched the bond builder’s phone from a table.

“Ah!”

She aimed the camera at the shocked woman’s face to unlock it and then operated the touchscreen one-handed.

“Let’s see. First, I’ll go to Cash Friend’s official site and borrow up to their maximum of 5 million yen...oh, already done. A simple 5-second approval test is a scary thing, huh?”

“Eh? Hey, wait!! What do you think you’re doing with my phone!?”

“Just indulging in my hobby: visiting consumer finance sites. Now to transfer all that money out of your online bank account. Next, I think I’ll borrow as much as they’ll let me from Luxury Celeb, Heaven’s Bank, and Share Chip. Or should I also try some usurious loan sharks while I’m at it?”

“…”

“And to be clear, unlike false billing fraud, the messages demanding payment won’t just go away if you ignore them.  Professionalism is all well and good, but do you really want to end up drowning in debt to protect some clients you’ll never meet again? Life has its ups and downs, but I really don’t think that would make for a fun time.”

The bond builder woman poured with a cold sweat.

Mugino continued toying with the borrowed phone in one hand.

“You brought the Sadistic Dolls together here, right? I want all the data you’ve got on them.”