Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS3 Chapter6 (section)

===Part 4===

“Delusions about their bloodlines?”

Sakibasu Yuri shook her curly-tipped twintails by tilting her head at that unfamiliar concept.

Blue Blood.

Saten also looked confused.

“Blue…what?”

“That refers to noble blood, doesn’t it?”

Uiharu’s knowledge here may have come from her adoration of that high-class world.

The pajama girl seated on the training equipment, Hanakawa Hinadori, nodded.

“By delusions about their bloodlines, I mean people who baselessly think they have Napoleon’s blood or are a direct descendent of Nostradamus. They assume someone as noble as them could never be a simple office worker’s child. It’s a similar delusion to the people who think they’re the reincarnation of someone or other. Most of the time, they abandon the idea after everyone stares at them like they’re crazy, but sometimes there are people who build up so much detail in their head that they convince the people around them too. Once that happens, there’s no stopping them. In some cases, they themselves couldn’t back out even if they wanted to.”

“So you’re saying none of it is true?”

Mikoto sounded exasperated, but Hanakawa found the question even more ridiculous than that.

“It doesn’t matter either way. Bloodline? Noble descent? We live in a city of science, so surely you know none of that gets you anywhere.”

“…”

The twintail duo of Sakibasu and Shirai exchanged a troubled look.

Hanakawa Hinadori gave a snort of laughter.

“But it turns out those bloodline-obsessed freaks see Academy City as some kind of utopia. You understand why that is, don’t you?”

“Because your DNA determines your inborn talent. It determines the type of your esper power and its potential for growth.”

Mikoto understood this because of what happened when she supplied her own cells.

The military clones known as the Sisters.

Many factors had been complexly intertwined there, but none of it would have happened without her excellent esper power.

“Heh heh. But sometimes, promising seeds and buds are stifled by a poor teaching environment.” Hanakawa waved a hand dismissively. “Now, if you think you come from some noble lineage, what could be more attractive than the idea that people from a chosen bloodline can achieve the strongest esper power? After all, ''cutting edge science'' is proving their ridiculous discriminatory logic that someone’s status is determined by their birth. No theory of research could be more convenient for them.”

“But…”

That was wrong on a fundamental level.

If Oda Nobunaga had used Pyrokinesis to fire the matchlock guns or Tokugawa Ieyasu had used Psychometry to predict and prevent the treason of his retainers, there might be something to it, but there were no records suggesting that. Pursuing Einstein or Da Vinci’s DNA would not lead to an excellent esper power.

There was no connection between someone’s historical success and their Level as an esper.

And more than that.

On an even more fundamental level, it was not that great people accomplished great things. A lot of it came down to choosing a path in life that played to your strengths. No one was destined to accomplish great things from the moment they were born. That was why second-generation celebrities and athletes had so much difficulty. They were placed into a set framework before anyone knew where their strengths lay. And if a great person was not blessed with the ''opportunity'' to accomplish great things, their greatness would never be recognized. Plus, success did not come solely from individual skill; a great many factors were complexly intertwined to create that result. For example, if Napoleon were to relive his exact same life, there was no guarantee he could repeat his impressive string of military victories. If the world around him developed differently or the people around him did not cooperate, there was nothing he could do. Even the difference between sunny and rainy weather during a decisive battle could change the result. That was how random and hard-to-predict success was. Mere DNA was not a perfect roadmap to success.

But.

Even though the idea was so fundamentally flawed…

“That’s why they’ve gone completely nuts.”

Hanakawa continued on while sitting on the training equipment and letting her dangling legs sway a bit.

That unnecessary action may have been a sign of nerves not evident in her voice.

“They believe that a noble bloodline means a noble power. ''They know it to be true''. They never even considered any other possibility, so when the research comes back and says their bloodline is worthless, they throw it out because ‘it must be mistaken’. In the end, they’ve already made up their minds. You can call it a delusion if you want. They aren’t focusing on their bloodlines because science says it’s right. They already value their bloodline and they’re just focusing on any scientific theories that say what they want to hear. They’re like people who insist the earth isn’t rotating and will praise any heretical scientist that backs them up. Crazy, right?”

“…”

They could only fall silent.

Tokiwadai Middle School was a prestigious school for high-class girls. The students there carried a variety of titles, but that was no excuse. Belonging to a special family or corporation did not give you the right to look down on others.

Or so Mikoto and Shirai had been taught.

“That’s…just wrong.”

Finally, Sakibasu Yuri spoke up.

She was a rare kind of Tokiwadai student who had earned her own way into everything required to be a “high-class girl”.

“We might have those ruthless cliques we created, but that isn’t something the adults gave us, right? Even if we relied on adult connections, no one would gather around us if were only doing it because the adults told us to.”

Riot only shrugged.

The look on her face said not everything in the world ran on logic.

Mikoto groaned.

“So…Blue Blood, was it? Is there anything they’re actually trying to accomplish in reality? Are they happy as long as they have those Academy City keys that let them feel special?”

It was a pain either way.

But they could not put together a plan to fight back if they did not know what that group hoped to accomplish.

Hanakawa Hinadori put on a troubled look.

“Your bloodline is pretty pointless all on its own, right? Maybe it would give you something during the Warring States period, but what about in the modern age where we strive for equality between all sexes, languages, races, religions, and classes?”

“Well…um, that’s a problem for them, isn’t it?”

Saten was weirdly hesitant to speak, but that may have been because she was in front of “real high-class girls” like Mikoto and the others.

Hanakawa breathed an exasperated sigh.

“The more they insist on their view, the more they’re ostracized. They end up discriminated against for their discrimination. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about what’s right or wrong here. There are plenty of people I can’t stand for no logical reason. But even an idiot knows that whatever you might think about them, the wise choice is to keep your mouth shut. Because once the accusations of discrimination start flying, it almost never ends well for you. It’s a small world out there, so no one wants to be oppressed by the emperor in his new clothes. We live in an age of majority rule. Three cheers for democracy and all that. Does that match up with your understanding?”

Now it was Mikoto’s turn to be exasperated.

“There were some unpleasant barbs hidden in your words there, but, well, I can agree that life’s easier without discrimination than with it.”

“However, they could not keep their mouths shut.”

The series of noises stopped there.

Silence fell for a brief moment.

And then Hanakawa resumed speaking.

“They had to force their ideas through, logic be damned. Arguing their case normally would only get them drowned out by the majority of reasonable people, so they had to rely on less normal methods. Academy City’s keys? Those are no more than a distraction. They’re placebos that only temporarily hold back the symptoms. They’ve managed to fool themselves this long with words like ‘socialite’ and ‘rarity’, but it seems they can’t restrain themselves any longer. I mean, we’re talking about morons who get angry when they have to breathe the same air and eat the same food as normal people. They’re an even stranger lifeform than those plastic-eating larvae. There’s no way for them to establish a livable everyday life. Their frustrations have built up for so long that they’re about ready to blow. In other words, they need some way to let off some steam. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve taken some kind of concrete action.”